Biblical/Jesus errors

Ronie Mooney ronie@InfoAVE.net
Sat, 02 Jan 1999 10:48:21 -0500 (00915313701, 002101be3667$57d41200$debe74cc@ronies) 

Hi Ray!



Ray:

You say this "Bible Encyclopedia" claims that some "early documents" of
Mark do not have this quote about Abiathar. What does "early" mean? Some
early documents are incomplete. Is this some gamesmanship or are you
claiming it was not a part of the original and was added by way of scribal
error? Why would a scribe do something like that? Adding embarrasing
passages was not what was done. What was done was embarrasing passages were
sometime omitted, as described by Metzger above. This is certainly an
embarrasing statement because everyone familiar with the OT knew Abiathar
was not the high priest when David ate the showbread. Your statement
therefore that it is not present in some "early" manuscripts is a red
herring and nothing more.

DAVE
   You make some good observations here Ray....it is far more likely that
embarrassing passages would be omitted than embarrassing passages *added*. As
for Luke and Matthew omitting it, does that mean evry time we find a phrase
omitted in two of the synoptics that is found in the third that we should take
it with a grain of salt?

Ray
 I would appreciate some help here from the Greek
scholars on this board (Nancy or Mooney are you there?) as I suspect a
harmonizing translator at work here.

Dave
   I am *not* a greek scholar Ray. Sorry. However, one of the benefits of my
later years as a christian was learning how to do greek word studies. Anyone can
do this. There are a great deal of greek lexicons, word study volumes,
concordances and such that are availible for the layperson to use. If used
properly, one can *sound* like a scholar when he actually isn't. But be aware
that there are scholars that support virtually any position there is to take.
That may make one wonder "why bother?" However, it is through debate that you
become aquainted with other arguments that either refine your knowledge or helps
you shed some faulty information. That is one reason to bother. But thanks for
your opinion of my posts.

Ray
If you read the text from 1 Samuel 21 it is very clear that Ahimelech was
the priest. I note your translation admits he was the high priest while
another defender of the faith had earlier claimed he was never high priest.
Although it seems to me he must have been high priest, it is not really too
important as it is abundantly clear thar when the eating of the showbread
occurred Abiathar was most definitely not the high priest.

The conclusion must be that the reference in Mark was simply wrong, which
should not be a surprise as the author of Mark was not very familiar with
much that was Jewish and could easily have missed this one. It is clearly
in error as it stands in the KJV for example, which is the bible of
preference for most inerrantists.