Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
So you are saying that you don't like the God/Jesus that the Bible presents, so you create a different one?
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I think he's saying that the Bible presents two narratives that don't sync, and one of them makes more sense than the other.
That argument I understand, but one has to do a close reading of the text to say, "These accounts don't match. One of them has to be off." My problem is that I'm not able to do the fine parsing of the gospels to come to the same conclusion, that these various accounts can't sit together in the same New Testament.
It's like if you have a long event, stretching over 3 years, with multiple witnesses, and multiple subsequent conversations about what the witnesses saw. And 15 years later they all write down the stories. Yes there will be discrepancies. Does that mean any of the accounts are fatally flawed? Timotheist says yes. I can't follow his argument enough to either agree or disagree.
But I don't see inaccuracies or inconsistencies in the NT as being fatal to the narrative. Nor do I see stretching the argument (if Timotheist is doing so here) to be fatal to his faith. "Let each one be persuaded in their own mind". I don't agree with him but he's not being blasphemous to the Christian faith. He's just (overly?) fixated on the differences in the gospels, and that Paul doesn't back some of them up. But I don't think it's bad to notice and point it out.