Tuesday, May 01, 2012


1827- SCHOOL LOANS AND HOW MANY TIMES DID THAT ROOSTER CROW?




I want to try and do both ‘politics and religion’- lets start with politics.

This story is a couple of days late [the big one this week is the anti Romney ad that the Obama campaign released- saying he would not have killed Bin Laden].

This story is last week’s fight over keeping the cost of federally funded student loans from doubling in July.

Basically in 2007 congress passed a law to keep the interest rates low- and it expires in a few months.

Now- both sides of the aisle actually agree on this- they just disagree on how to pay for it [around 6 billion in cost].

The Dems in the senate want to ‘tax the rich’ yes- they are not afraid to keep going to this pool- even though eventually this pool will run dry [not saying all the rich will become poor- but ultimately you drive the wealth from the country- people put their money where it won’t cost so much to keep!]

The Dems in the house want to tax the oil companies.

The Repubs want to pay for it by taking some money out of Obama care.

Okay- as the battle lines were drawn- the Repubs control the house- so they passed it- with about a dozen Dems on board- with the money coming from Obama care.

The President threatened to veto it- and the Dems began accusing the Repubs of waging ‘a war on women’s health’.

Boehner [speaker of the house] actually got mad and said the Dems are waging a phony fight.

Who’s right?

Okay- as an independent- there are some points on both sides- but the ‘war on women’ is a stretch.

Why?

The fund in the health care law that the Repubs want to use- is a fund for preventative care- less than 1 % of this fund is targeted for women’s health.

The President and the Dems were the first ones to tap into this fund- as sort of a slush fund- when they needed the money for- of all things- a tax cut!

Yes- in the recent fight over extending the payroll tax cut [Social Security] the Dems came up with the idea to tap into this same preventive fund- and they used the money [billions] to give people a tax cut.

Now- when they did it- it was not a ‘war on women’ it was a ‘good thing’.

When the Repubs did it- it was a war on women’s health.

So- this is gridlock- this is why our country is becoming more and more dysfunctional as the days go by.

I have said this over the past few years- if we don’t actually elect people who will deal with the real issues- the big one being the cost of Medicare- which at the current rate will consume around 50 % of all federal spending in a few years- if we don’t elect people who will do this- then all the other little ‘campaign’ talking points will mean nothing.

Okay- this past week I went thru a course by Professor Bart Ehrman.

He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He teaches Christianity and the New Testament and has been popular the last couple of years because he had a N.Y. times best seller- Misquoting Jesus.

Whenever I study a course- I usually do a parallel teaching on the blog.

Not word for word- I usually have a background in the subject already- and if the course goes too ‘off course’ I dump it and just finish the blog study by memory.

This time I never planned on covering the course from the get go- because I knew Ehrman was what you would call a Liberal scholar.

Now- Liberal and Conservative- in the field of Theology- are not political matters.

Liberals are those who hold to the critical view of the bible that was developed in the 19th century- primarily out of the German universities- men like Rudolph Bultman were leaders in the field.

This ‘way’ of interpreting the bible- called Higher Criticism- had some good points to it- but at the end of the day they came to reject the historical accuracy of scripture- and said that the Gospels were written by unknown men who wanted to simply convey spiritual truths that Jesus taught.

Conservative teachers [like me] hold to the belief that the bible is indeed historically accurate- and the ‘Inspired Word of God’.

Okay- as I went thru the course- I honestly expected Bart to make a better case for his side.

I really learned nothing knew- I was already familiar with the critic’s points- and he made the same ones that the conservative side has already refuted.

Now- let me give you a few examples.

When I first started reading thru the bible as a new believer- I did find some of these ‘discrepancies’ myself.

I noticed that in Matthews’s gospel the story about the denial of Jesus says Peter will deny Jesus 3 times before the ‘rooster crows’.

In Marks gospel it says ‘before the rooster crows twice’.

When I first saw this- it really wasn’t that big of a deal to me- and one time I mentioned it to my Pastor- a good Baptist man who was trained in a Fundamentalist school- and to my surprise he was not aware of this.

I also noticed a few more things like this over the years- and my pastor simply was never trained in these areas.

Now- I mention this only to point out that if you get a well rounded education- it really should include some of these so called discrepancies.

Some of the Higher Criticism is helpful- some not.

But to avoid these textual problems- simply because you’re a Fundamentalist- does more harm than good- especially when your parishioners are learning the stuff on their own!

Okay- I ‘solved’ the problem of the denials by simply seeing that even though one gospel says ‘before the rooster crows’ and the other ‘twice’- that at the end of the day one writer is simply giving you more detail.

It really is not a contradiction- if Matthew said ‘before the roster crows once’ then yes- that would be a problem.

But he simply gave less detail than the other writer.

Okay- after becoming familiar with Ehrman- and knowing that he is famous in the field of liberal scholarship- I thought for sure he would come up with something better than this.

But in actuality- this was one of his main examples of why the bible is not historically accurate.

I couldn’t believe it.

Now- to be fair- there are other things like this that do happen- but they are all minor details of the story [John’s gospel seems to indicate that Jesus was crucified on a different feast day than the other writers say].

But all these minor details in no way justify rejecting the gospels as historically accurate.

Let me just hit on a few things that the higher critics have right.

They do point to the fact that the early followers of Jesus lived in an Oral culture- things were passed along by word of mouth for the most part.

The writing of books [scrolls] did take place- but it was not an easy- or cheap trade.

We live in a day of books and internet access and all sorts of ways for the printed word to be distributed- but in the early church it was not like this.

So- the gospels were probably written about 20-50 years after the death and resurrection of Christ.

What?

Yes- this is true.

The more conservative scholars go with the earlier date [some go as early as 15 years after Christ] but no one claims that the gospels were written at the same time as Christ walking the earth.

Yes- the stories were transmitted orally [oral culture] but they were written later on.

Now- the ultra liberal scholars say ‘see- how could they have known all the facts if they were written so much later’- and Ehrman uses the example of the game ‘telephone’ [or something like that?].

Where you have one person in class tell something to the next in line- and at the end of the line you get a different account.

Ehrman says ‘see- we have no idea what/who Jesus really was’.

Okay- the main discrepancy that Bart used- was the rooster crowing.

He actually sounded mad on the C.D. [I listen while I work!] and he said ‘well- which is it [damn it!!] did the rooster crow once- or twice!’

And then he jumped to the conclusion that the gospels were really fake stories that were made up by unknown men- well meaning men- but they had no real historical truth to them.

This my friends is what I call a ‘leap of faith’.

Geez- if we did this was all other biographies- we would have no ‘factual’ histories about anyone.

I’ll end with a note to my Catholic readers.

A couple of years ago I read the Popes book- Jesus of Nazareth- I did a brief review on the blog and I really liked the book a lot.

One of the things the Pope deals with [remember- Benedict was a priest from Germany- where the whole school of higher criticism arose] in the book is this whole debate over the historical accuracy of the bible.

At one point- as he graciously- yet boldly defends the conservative view- he is talking about the liberal view that the gospels were written by these unknown men who basically made the stories up.

The Pope asks ‘and just how did these men manage to write the most popular books of all time- books that came to be revered and known and loved by generations and generations- and yet no one even knows the names of the authors?’ [I did ad lib a little here]

The bottom line is- if the gospels were written by a bunch of anonymous men who simply wanted to convey some spiritual truths about Jesus- and they managed to stay hidden for all these centuries- this theory has more holes in it than say- a rooster crowing once or twice.






Note- Do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on. Thanks- John






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