The Apologetics of Confrontation and Anger

[Juvenal]

Guess I need to go back and reread my scriptures - I have apparently shifted my image of Jesus over the years from the reality as depicted in the gospels. Ironically, your response had the effect of reducing my respect for the Jesus of history. Have at it, then.

Yo, carpe.

That's just Matthew, surely my least favorite gospel, and not just because of the more contentious way it portrays Jesus. The other two synoptics leave out the insult before speaking of the coin and the similar hearkening to whitewashed tombs.

They also miss the riding on two animals at the same time into Jerusalem, and the earthquake accompanied by swarms of holy zombies at Jesus' death, and the guards at the tomb, and another earthquake, and the list goes on. Who thinks the first thing a guard would want to do after seeing an angel descend from heaven and drag away the stone at Jesus' tomb is to head back to work.

Matthew, and Matthew alone.

Two out of three synoptics agree with John against Matthew. Jesus wasn't much into insults.

[psstein]

Carrier of course, but my mind goes immediately to Craig's debate with Lawrence Krauss. Krauss actually brought a buzzer with him to buzz Craig during the debate when he felt Craig was offering an incorrect argument during his turns. It was so bad that the non-Christian moderators of the debate called Krauss on it a couple times, and the audience cheered when they would. The skeptic community itself was pretty torn with some feeling extremely ashamed of Krauss' behavior (which they shouldn't have, since Krauss doesn't represent them), and others applauding his actions because they passionately hate Craig's guts, and think of him as a liar and charlatan.

There's a famous creationist debate with Duane Gish and Ian Plimer. Plimer famously insinuates that Gish is a pedophile, then later in the debate offers him two live wires to test the theory of electromagnetism.

I have mixed feelings about WLC, but I don't think buzzing him when you disagree is ever an appropriate response. Krauss seems to have been shunted off to the side among "New Atheists," though.

[tabibito]

Guess I need to go back and reread my scriptures - I have apparently shifted my image of Jesus over the years from the reality as depicted in the gospels. Ironically, your response had the effect of reducing my respect for the Jesus of history. Have at it, then. But perhaps you might want to consider the possibility that this is a factor in the shift away from traditional Christian faiths in the U.S. Since 2007, Christians, as a share of the U.S. population, fell 7.8% to the current level of 70.6% (http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/), and the trend appears to be continuing. Increasingly, the young seem to be shifting away, citing any number of factors. I don't know about anyone else, but when I am reviled as a "godless scum," "baby-killing liberal," or "hypocrite," I do not find myself inclined to run towards those acting that way.

BTW - I DO recognize that this is not ALL Christians. I was specifically addressing those who feel this is a good way to conduct an apologetic. It just seems self-defeating to me.

Insult was then, and is still, considered a legitimate means of delivering a rebuke. That does not deny the reality that insult (then and still) can also be gratuitous.

[Cerebrum123]

Insult was then, and is still, considered a legitimate means of delivering a rebuke. That does not deny the reality that insult (then and still) can also be gratuitous.

[Adrift]

Yo, carpe.

That's just Matthew, surely my least favorite gospel, and not just because of the more contentious way it portrays Jesus. The other two synoptics leave out the insult before speaking of the coin and the similar hearkening to whitewashed tombs.

They also miss the riding on two animals at the same time into Jerusalem, and the earthquake accompanied by swarms of holy zombies at Jesus' death, and the guards at the tomb, and another earthquake, and the list goes on. Who thinks the first thing a guard would want to do after seeing an angel descend from heaven and drag away the stone at Jesus' tomb is to head back to work.

Matthew, and Matthew alone.

Two out of three synoptics agree with John against Matthew. Jesus wasn't much into insults.

Matthew also gives us the beatitudes showing us that not only did Jesus have the authority to condemn, but the authority to bless.

Jesus doesn't ride two animals at the same time into Jerusalem,

Source: Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey by Craig L. Blomberg

It is often alleged that Matthew has garbled the picture by speaking of Jesus astride two donkeys (Matt 21:5, 7), but v. 5 is a case of synonymous parallelism, while the antecedent in the Greek for the final "them" of v. 7 is more naturally the cloaks, not the animals. That a mother would be needed along with her colt to make the younger animal willing to be ridden (and the text does not say that the animal had never previously carried any kind of pack) is only to be expected. See Gundry, Matthew, 409; Witherington, Matthew, 391. Cf. Also D. Instone-Brewer, "The Two Asses of Zechariah 9:9 in Matthew 21," TynBul 54 (2003): 87-98.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Matthew by Craig A. Evans

Although some commentators have thought that Matthew has misunderstood the synonymous parallelism of Zech 9:9 in thinking that the text speaks of two animals, others rightly recognize that it is highly unlikely that the evangelist, who can work with Greek and probably Aramaic and Hebrew, would not recognize synonymous parallelism. As with other texts that are cited as "fulfilled," Matthew may well have seen a correspondence between an event in the life of Jesus and the details of a prophetic text. Matthew would have read Mark's reference to the colt as "never been ridden" (Mark 11:2) and so would have assumed that the mother of the young colt was present and would have accompanied it. Matthew either assumed this from the practice of his time or actually knew that this had been the case. The presence of both the mother and the foul, seen through the eyes of typology, would have drawn a close correspondence with the prophetic text...

The disciples "put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them" (v. 7). Jesus sat on the garments of one of the animals (we should assume the colt, the never-before-ridden animal, with its mother trotting alongside); we are not supposed to think that he rode the animals successively (or at the same time!). The presence of the colt's mother attests to the newness of the colt and justifies the claim that no one had yet sat on it (cf. Mark 11:2).

© Copyright Original Source

Source: A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew by Craig S. Keener

Although Matthew himself does not stress that the colt is unbroken, Matthew's tradition may mention the mother to emphasize that the colt was, indeed, unbroken; such a colt might require the mother's presence to keep it calm amid shouting crowds (Gundry 1975:199). Citing the sacredness of unused animals in some traditions, some think that the borrowing of an unused animal must be legend here; "But it is just as likely that Jesus deliberately chose an unused donkey for the sacred occasion" (Gundry 1975: 197). As in later Palestine, one would drape the garments (on which Jesus sat) across both the mother and the colt, although Jesus would ride only one (Gundry 1982; 410; the "them" on which he sat could mean the garments).

© Copyright Original Source

There wasn't a swarm of holy zombies at Jesus death in Matthew. That lame zombie caricature is beneath you, something I'd expect from some grumpy "I'm euphoric in my enlightenment" teenager.

According to the NT scholars Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh in their Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, "the saints who had fallen asleep" is a designation for Jesus' direct followers, so the picture painted is not swarms of dead rotting zombies rising from their graves, rather it would have been those relatively recently dead followers of Jesus (that had died within his three year ministry), placed in their rock-hewn tombs (as was the tradition in Jerusalem), who had lived within or near Jerusalem proper. And while Matthew states that there were many who were resuscitated, that word is relative in his Gospel, ranging from about a half dozen on up. A half dozen recently dead disciples of Jesus who were resuscitated after Christ's death may have been noteworthy enough for Matthew to consider penning about while his contemporaries felt a need to focus strictly on Jesus' death and resurrection itself.

The guards, as near as I can figure, don't go back to work in Matthew's account. ,

[carpedm9587]

Yo, carpe.

That's just Matthew, surely my least favorite gospel, and not just because of the more contentious way it portrays Jesus. The other two synoptics leave out the insult before speaking of the coin and the similar hearkening to whitewashed tombs.

They also miss the riding on two animals at the same time into Jerusalem, and the earthquake accompanied by swarms of holy zombies at Jesus' death, and the guards at the tomb, and another earthquake, and the list goes on. Who thinks the first thing a guard would want to do after seeing an angel descend from heaven and drag away the stone at Jesus' tomb is to head back to work.

Matthew, and Matthew alone.

Two out of three synoptics agree with John against Matthew. Jesus wasn't much into insults.

Thanks for broadening my world. Perhaps I was remembering the other two gospels.

[carpedm9587]

Insult was then, and is still, considered a legitimate means of delivering a rebuke. That does not deny the reality that insult (then and still) can also be gratuitous.

I am not sure what "legitimate" means. I was questioning it's effectiveness in "drawing people to the faith," either target or observer. IMO, most (all?) insults are, by definition, gratuitious. They simply are not necessary to convey a point or objection.

[One Bad Pig]

Yo, carpe.

That's just Matthew, surely my least favorite gospel, and not just because of the more contentious way it portrays Jesus. The other two synoptics leave out the insult before speaking of the coin and the similar hearkening to whitewashed tombs.

They also miss the riding on two animals at the same time into Jerusalem, and the earthquake accompanied by swarms of holy zombies at Jesus' death, and the guards at the tomb, and another earthquake, and the list goes on. Who thinks the first thing a guard would want to do after seeing an angel descend from heaven and drag away the stone at Jesus' tomb is to head back to work.

Matthew, and Matthew alone.

Two out of three synoptics agree with John against Matthew. Jesus wasn't much into insults.

Er,


Pretty sure the audience was insulted by that.

Similarly, Jesus told his disciples:

Source: Mark 6:11

And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!

© Copyright Original Source

Jesus did not use insults often, but he seems to have thought that those unwilling to listen were fair game for them.

[Sparko]

Er,


Pretty sure the audience was insulted by that.

Similarly, Jesus told his disciples:

Source: Mark 6:11

And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!

© Copyright Original Source

Jesus did not use insults often, but he seems to have thought that those unwilling to listen were fair game for them.

or being hypocrites.

[Juvenal]

Matthew also gives us the beatitudes showing us that not only did Jesus have the authority to condemn, but the authority to bless.

Hello again, Adrift,

I'm not disputing Jesus' authority to bless or curse, at least so far as he's portrayed in the gospels, I'm disputing the implicit and unwarranted assumption of univocality between the gospels defended by conservative scholars such as those you've cited here.

And yes, I'm also calling out Matthew as a strident outlier.

Jesus doesn't ride two animals at the same time into Jerusalem,

Source: Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey by Craig L. Blomberg

It is often alleged that Matthew has garbled the picture ...

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Matthew by Craig A. Evans

Although some commentators have thought ...

© Copyright Original Source

Source: A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew by Craig S. Keener

Although Matthew himself does not stress ...

© Copyright Original Source

In critiques of Matthew, rhetorical excess should be excused. Noting that Keener's review takes advantage of the time-worn tactic of simply making things up and sticking them in wherever convenient, it's clear this applies to Matthew's defenses as well.

More parsimoniously then, Matthew does indeed put two animals into his narrative, despite the fact the old testament prophecy whose fulfillment he was shoehorning into his gospel did not, in fact, refer to two animals. Instead, it used the poetic expanding repetition common in much of the older text, "three things God hates, four make him angry ..." or "on a donkey, the foal of a donkey."

There's just one animal there. Two descriptions, but one animal.

There wasn't a swarm of holy zombies at Jesus death in Matthew. That lame zombie caricature is beneath you, something I'd expect from some grumpy "I'm euphoric in my enlightenment" teenager.

According to the NT scholars Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh in their Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, "the saints who had fallen asleep" is a designation for Jesus' direct followers, so the picture painted is not swarms of dead rotting zombies rising from their graves, rather it would have been those relatively recently dead followers of Jesus (that had died within his three year ministry), placed in their rock-hewn tombs (as was the tradition in Jerusalem), who had lived within or near Jerusalem proper. And while Matthew states that there were many who were resuscitated, that word is relative in his Gospel, ranging from about a half dozen on up. A half dozen recently dead disciples of Jesus who were resuscitated after Christ's death may have been noteworthy enough for Matthew to consider penning about while his contemporaries felt a need to focus strictly on Jesus' death and resurrection itself.

Many, but not swarms, and many doesn't really mean many.

That's weak.

And what's even weaker is that only Matthew has this report, only Matthew has the earthquakes, only Matthew has a second animal, only Matthew puts "whitewashed tombs" into Jesus' lexicon. It's not just that he's an outlier, it's that he's an outlier with a penchant for histrionics. And the suggestion that a corpse from as little as a week ago is not rotting, a term you have seen fit to insert, deserves no response beyond its recitation.

There are scholars you're not mentioning here who disagree with those you've cited, and instead assert that the zombie passage is in an apocalyptic genre, and hence should not be read literally at all. One of them is the father-in-law of our brony department head.

I understand you're advocating for a position, but if you wish to make a solid case based on others' scholarship rather than your own, you need to interact with all of the scholars, including those who don't support your position. I've seen you be more fair than this.

The guards, as near as I can figure, don't go back to work in Matthew's account. ,

Looks straightforward to me.

They got paid off and told they could go back to work because they were covered. The implication is that they went back to work. That's not the kind of detail you'd include if they put down their swords and followed after Jesus after seeing an angel of God performing the mother of all miracles, the resurrection of God himself.

Which is what you'd expect, if you weren't reading about it in Matthew.

Understand I'm not interested in piercing anyone's faith here. Most of Christianity has long since come to terms with an uninspired or possibly uninspired text. Inerrancy is a minority position today, and a novel position within the history of Christianity as well. Today's canon both includes texts that were unknown to the earliest Christians and excludes others that were in common usage well into the third century. Luther felt perfectly free to remove texts that had been in the canon for over a millennium.

Independent of Jesus' theological position, he is an historical character who continues to wield vast influence, even beyond the Abrahamic faiths. I've been to a Buddhist temple in Chicago that included a statue of him amongst the Bodhisattvas. If it's worthwhile to know more about who he was, I believe Matthew detracts from that pursuit.

[Juvenal]

Jesus did not use insults often, but he seems to have thought that those unwilling to listen were fair game for them.

or being hypocrites.

He uses them far more frequently in Matthew.

By my count, the word "hypocrite" appears ...

13 times in Matthew
1 time in Mark
3 times in Luke
0 times in John

And it's not just the insults.

Earthquakes appear five times, one apiece as part of an end-times prophecy in each of the synoptics, and twice additionally as a relation of current events in Matthew. John doesn't include earthquakes.

Matthew, imho, is a gospel stuck on caps lock.

[One Bad Pig]

He uses them far more frequently in Matthew.

By my count, the word "hypocrite" appears ...

13 times in Matthew
1 time in Mark
3 times in Luke
0 times in John

And it's not just the insults.

Earthquakes appear five times, one apiece as part of an end-times prophecy in each of the synoptics, and twice additionally as a relation of current events in Matthew. John doesn't include earthquakes.

Matthew, imho, is a gospel stuck on caps lock.

All the gospels emphasize different aspects of Jesus' preaching career. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much point in accepting multiple gospels.

[Roy]

All the gospels emphasize different aspects of Jesus' preaching career.

Earthquakes were an aspect of Jesus's preaching?

[One Bad Pig]

Earthquakes were an aspect of Jesus's preaching?

Jesus said,

Source: Mark 13:8

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.

© Copyright Original Source

[Adrift]

Hello again, Adrift,

I'm not disputing Jesus' authority to bless or curse, at least so far as he's portrayed in the gospels, I'm disputing the implicit and unwarranted assumption of univocality between the gospels defended by conservative scholars such as those you've cited here.

And yes, I'm also calling out Matthew as a strident outlier.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I mention the beatitudes because you stated that part of the reason Matthew was your least favorite gospel was because of the contentious way it portrays Jesus. You might want to balance that view with Matthew's unique positive portrayal. Also, the "conservative" scholars I mention don't state anything about defending the univocality of the gospels. That's not what they're doing. They're following the evidence where it leads.

In critiques of Matthew, rhetorical excess should be excused.

I don't know what you mean by this.

Noting that Keener's review takes advantage of the time-worn tactic of simply making things up and sticking them in wherever convenient, it's clear this applies to Matthew's defenses as well.

There is absolutely no reason to believe your assertion that Keener is "simply making things up and sticking them in wherever convenient." If you're familiar with Keener's work, you know that he's incredibly thorough, and extremely careful to balance just about everything he says with caveats. Textual exegesis and historical analysis isn't an exact science. You go with the most likely solution over less likely, and Keener does that, but isn't afraid to admit that there are other plausible explanations.

More parsimoniously then, Matthew does indeed put two animals into his narrative, despite the fact the old testament prophecy whose fulfillment he was shoehorning into his gospel did not, in fact, refer to two animals. Instead, it used the poetic expanding repetition common in much of the older text, "three things God hates, four make him angry ..." or "on a donkey, the foal of a donkey."

There's just one animal there. Two descriptions, but one animal.

You're correct that Zechariah has in mind only one animal. The "poetic expanding repetition" that you mention is what Evans and Blomberg are referring to when they use the phrase "synonymous parallelism". As Evans points out, "Although some commentators have thought that Matthew has misunderstood the synonymous parallelism of Zech 9:9 in thinking that the text speaks of two animals, others rightly recognize that it is highly unlikely that the evangelist, who can work with Greek and probably Aramaic and Hebrew, would not recognize synonymous parallelism." And as Blomberg points out, "It is often alleged that Matthew has garbled the picture by speaking of Jesus astride two donkeys (Matt 21:5, 7), but v. 5 is a case of synonymous parallelism."

Many, but not swarms, and many doesn't really mean many.

That's weak.

It isn't. I can give you a number of examples where the Greek word for many (πολλά) does not imply swarms.

Matthew 3:7 - But when he saw manymany who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.

Matthew 27:19 And as he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, "Nothing to you and that righteous man; for I suffered many things in a dream today because of Him."

Matthew 27:55 - There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, 56 among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Mark 3:11-12 - And the unclean spirits, whensoever they beheld him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known.

Mark 5:23 - and he begs Him much, saying, "My little daughter is holding at the end, that having come, You would lay the hands on her, so that she might be cured, and she shall live."

Mark 5:26 - She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.

Revelation 19:12 - His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.

We're not talking about hundreds and hundreds of people or things here when the word "many" is used (though it is sometimes used that way in other passages). We're talking perhaps dozens, and probably less than a dozen in more than a few of these passages. But as I've already explained, if we are to take Matthew at his word there couldn't have been swarms of the rotting dead rising in Jerusalem. How many of Jesus' disciples, who also happened to live in Jerusalem, could have died within his three year ministry?

And what's even weaker is that only Matthew has this report, only Matthew has the earthquakes, only Matthew has a second animal, only Matthew puts "whitewashed tombs" into Jesus' lexicon. It's not just that he's an outlier, it's that he's an outlier with a penchant for histrionics.

No one is denying that Matthew's Gospel is unique in a number of ways, but he's far and away from the biggest outlier among the Gospels. That record goes to John. All of the Gospels have material unique to themselves, and that's because they're approaching the topic in different ways for different audiences.

And the suggestion that a corpse from as little as a week ago is not rotting, a term you have seen fit to insert, deserves no response beyond its recitation.

Nowhere in the Bible do you find any passage anywhere in scripture where a resuscitated corpse, one that was raised from the dead, looked anything like the stereotypical zombie we imagine in popular film and TV. To the contrary, Biblical passages that record resuscitations paint a picture of healthy and normal looking individuals.

There are scholars you're not mentioning here who disagree with those you've cited, and instead assert that the zombie passage is in an apocalyptic genre, and hence should not be read literally at all. One of them is the father-in-law of our brony department head.

It's not a zombie passage. There are no zombies in the Bible. A zombie is a Haitian invention that refers to a soulless corpse, animated and directly controlled by a voodoo witch doctor. This is quite unlike the Biblical description of resuscitation which is the reviving to life and health of a dead individual to a physical and mental state like their previous self.

If you're aware of Licona's work on the subject, it's curious that you went with the angsty teenage atheist rhetoric of swarming zombies instead of the much more measured apocalyptic imagery theory. As far as I know, Dr. Licona doesn't disagree with Malina and Rohrbaugh on the identity of the saints. I mean, he may, I don't know, but his theory doesn't necessarily disagree with theirs, at least as far as that bit is concerned.

I understand you're advocating for a position, but if you wish to make a solid case based on others' scholarship rather than your own, you need to interact with all of the scholars, including those who don't support your position. I've seen you be more fair than this.

Before offering that sort of advice, you may want to think about taking the stick out of your own eye, lao tzu. You too are advocating for a position. Instead of interacting with any scholarship at all, you went with snark. Not cool man. You're better than that.

Looks straightforward to me.

They got paid off and told they could go back to work because they were covered. The implication is that they went back to work. That's not the kind of detail you'd include if they put down their swords and followed after Jesus after seeing an angel of God performing the mother of all miracles, the resurrection of God himself.

Which is what you'd expect, if you weren't reading about it in Matthew.

I don't see that implied in that passage, but even if that is the implication, there's no reason to expect that a Roman contingent (as many commentators argue the soldiers had to be) would know anything about Jesus, his ministry, his message, anything about the Jewish religion, the concept of the Messiah, or that Jesus was to be followed (followed where? He disappeared).

Understand I'm not interested in piercing anyone's faith here.

Eh, I belive you enjoy needling. You've done it for years, and most of the Christians put up with it or ignore it, myself included, but it does get a bit irksome at times. Enough so that sometimes it's worth speaking up about it.

Most of Christianity has long since come to terms with an uninspired or possibly uninspired text. Inerrancy is a minority position today, and a novel position within the history of Christianity as well.

I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything, but okay.

Today's canon both includes texts that were unknown to the earliest Christians and excludes others that were in common usage well into the third century. Luther felt perfectly free to remove texts that had been in the canon for over a millennium.

The history of scripture's canon is far far more complex than this two sentence summary. We have early evidence from the Early Church Fathers, and from the Muratorian fragment, that most of the canon as we know it today was accepted and used by the early church. The texts Luther removed from his canon had already been seen as apocryphal by Jews for centuries, and considered Deuterocanonical by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church for some time as well. Again, I don't see what this has to do with anything.

Independent of Jesus' theological position, he is an historical character who continues to wield vast influence, even beyond the Abrahamic faiths. I've been to a Buddhist temple in Chicago that included a statue of him amongst the Bodhisattvas. If it's worthwhile to know more about who he was, I believe Matthew detracts from that pursuit.

You're free to believe whatever you like, of course, but I think plenty of NT scholars would groan at that last sentence, even a fair number of "non-conservative" scholars.