The Gospel

ceo_esq
No. The theoretical solution works if the events are hypothesized to occur in a particular order, but there is absolutely no evidentiary or probabilistic assertion involved there.
Or to put it another way, it’s mere assertion with no basis in the texts. But in order for the texts to be consistent, you have to add the assumption based on nothing more than wishful thinking that the overall text is consistent. GIGO

Why do you interpret every correction as a confirmation, and every denial as an admission?
I’ve been hanging out with too many lawyers.

Ossai
 
ceo_esq
Or to put it another way, it’s mere assertion with no basis in the texts. But in order for the texts to be consistent, you have to add the assumption based on nothing more than wishful thinking that the overall text is consistent. GIGO

Now we're getting closer. On the other hand, there's no overriding basis in the texts to reject the assumption, because the most important criterion for the assumption was that it be fully consistent with the existing text. Any way you interpret these texts, frankly, you're going to be making assumptions whether you realize it or not, and there won't necessarily be much more textual (or external) justification for one set than for another.
 
ceo_esq
Now we're getting closer. On the other hand, there's no overriding basis in the texts to reject the assumption,
Apparently you haven’t read the texts.
You’re entire basis is that they didn’t records Jesus’s last words. The faithful that would, according to the bible stories, later give their lives in service of Jesus couldn’t be bothered to records his last words as he hang dying.

because the most important criterion for the assumption was that it be fully consistent with the existing text.
Yet it’s not consistent with the existing text. You claim it is, but a casual reading of the four versions distinctly shows you’re deliberately ignoring the text itself.

Ossai
 
Yet it’s not consistent with the existing text. You claim it is, but a casual reading of the four versions distinctly shows you’re deliberately ignoring the text itself.

I'll leave aside the questions of how a casual reading of the text could demonstrate my state of mind, or why, at this stage, either of us should be content with a casual reading of the text rather than an attentive one. More to the point: where is the formal incompatibility between the texts and the hypothetical scenario I outlined? Kindly identify with reasonable precision (quoting would be a good idea) an assertion actually made in any one or more of the source texts that logically contradicts an assertion (also sufficiently identified) actually made in the hypothetical.
 
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ceo_esq
where is the formal incompatibility between the texts and the hypothetical scenario I outlined? Kindly identify with reasonable precision (quoting would be a good idea) an assertion actually made in any one or more of the source texts that logically contradicts an assertion (also sufficiently identified) actually made in the hypothetical.
Sorry, not playing that game with you. The burden of proof for all of this is firmly on your shoulders. You have to show where the texts are wrong in order to have your version be anywhere close to correct.

You’ve been trying to weasel out of this since the other thread. I called you on it there and I’m calling you on it here. I’ve already shown where your assertions don’t hold up.

I also notice you still haven’t answered the numerous other questions that were put forth. For instance ‘what was on the sign hanging above Jesus?’ You’re focusing on this one because you’ve already got a scenario that with a very liberal reading of the texts along with ignoring select bits almost makes sense.


Luke 23:46
Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Ossai
 
Sorry, not playing that game with you. The burden of proof for all of this is firmly on your shoulders. You have to show where the texts are wrong in order to have your version be anywhere close to correct.

You are making no sense. Recall that everything I've said is in response to the allegation of the presence of a logical contradiction in the texts. You were not the person initially making that allegation, but since you have chosen to adopt it, the burden of proof attached to that allegation remains.


I’ve already shown where your assertions don’t hold up.

That strikes me as an distinctly improbable scenario. But you'll have to be more specific.


I also notice you still haven’t answered the numerous other questions that were put forth. For instance ‘what was on the sign hanging above Jesus?’


Yet that's the first time such a question has been put forth, at least to me, and at least since I rejoined the conversation.

Recall that delphi_ote wrote that "It's possible to ... explain away the previously mentioned contradictions in the sign above Jesus' head by positing that each author saw only a little bit of the sign[.]" Next he suggested that I was "skipping the 'sign above Jesus' head by positing that each author saw only a little bit of the sign' example".

Later, I remarked that "I was looking the other Gospel passages up ... not to see whether they contained an inconsistency as such, but to see if delphi_ote's proposed resolution of the inconsistency (each author seeing part of the sign) was essentially the same kind of solution I identified for the 'last words'. I'm not sure that it is. I think the 'Crucifixion sign' contradiction may be real rather than illusory." Obviously, that's not strictly an answer to someone else's question since there was no question formulated, but it is a candid observation in response to someone else's statement.

The only question asked on the subject up until now (to me, anyway; I won't exclude the possibility that some related question is buried back in the numerous pages of this thread in which I did not participate) was when you asked a while back whether I had forgotten that I was going to look up the relevant passages.

That's a fairly accurate summary of what's substantively been said here on the subject of the Cruxifixion sign, at least while I've been participating. Did I somehow miss another question in all that? I doubt it. So finally, thanks to you, we have an actual question: "What was on the sign hanging above Jesus?" I don't know the answer. Do you?


You’re focusing on this one because you’ve already got a scenario that with a very liberal reading of the texts along with ignoring select bits almost makes sense.

So far as anyone has been able to specifically point out to me, I haven't ignored any bits, at least in the sense of contradicting any of them. Yet I get the impression that you're mildly upset that I'm failing to dispute certain claims (such as the implied claim that the Crucifixion sign texts present a necessary logical contradiction) which I'm simply not inclined to dispute. If so, kindly get over it.


Luke 23:46
Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

That's a start, I suppose. You were invited to identify a distinct assertion made in the text (the brief passages you've quoted actually contain quite a few distinct assertions; perhaps you can narrow them down), then to identify an assertion made in the hypothetical that contradicts the previously identified source-text assertion. Take your time.
 
ceo_esq
Recall that everything I've said is in response to the allegation of the presence of a logical contradiction in the texts. You were not the person initially making that allegation, but since you have chosen to adopt it, the burden of proof attached to that allegation remains.
Gee and I posted an example and everything.

You were invited to identify a distinct assertion made in the text (the brief passages you've quoted actually contain quite a few distinct assertions; perhaps you can narrow them down), then to identify an assertion made in the hypothetical that contradicts the previously identified source-text assertion. Take your time.
I don’t need to post source text assertions. I merely need to post the source text. Your assertions are in opposition to the source text. Therefore you must provide evidence that your assertions should be given more weight than the actual text.

You keep trying to shift the burden, yet it remains firmly on your shoulders.

Yet that's the first time such a question has been put forth, at least to me, and at least since I rejoined the conversation.
From Post 1425
delphi_ote : on page 36. Want me to go back even further and get the original question posted? I can do that as well, but I think your acknowledge here will suffice.
Look at you being all intellectually dishonest and skipping the "sign above Jesus' head by positing that each author saw only a little bit of the sign" example.
Sorry for not responding earlier. I haven't had time to consider those Gospel texts in any detail, and I'm not as familiar with them as I now am with the "last words" texts, so I'm reluctant to say whether the argument you propose is qualitatively the same thing as what I proposed for the "last words". What I did there was not to explain how a formal contradiction in the text might plausibly have arisen (which, I tend to agree, can probably be done with any conflicting texts). Rather, it was to show that there actually was no formal internal contradiction in the case of the "last words". The "crucifixion sign" passages you're now referring to may actually contain an internal contradiction, in which case even offering a practical explanation for why it's there doesn't erase the contradiction. I'll try to look the passages you cited over again when I have time.
Is your memory that bad or are you just dishonest?

Ossai
 
I don’t need to post source text assertions. I merely need to post the source text. Your assertions are in opposition to the source text. Therefore you must provide evidence that your assertions should be given more weight than the actual text.

First, if you are going to claim, as you have several times, that my assertions (from the hypothetical) are in opposition to the source text, then you have to establish it by referring also to some specific assertion in the hypothetical. Second, if you want to prove your point, you need to identify exactly what it is in the source text that you think is the problem.

Take, for example, Luke 23:46. What salient assertions/propositions are undeniably incorporated in this passage (based on NIV, anyhow)? Not necessarily in any order, I submit that they are as follows:

P1. Jesus said "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit".
P2. Jesus died.
P3. P2 did not obtain before P1 obtained.

Let's try John 19:30:

P4. Jesus received a drink.
P5. Jesus said "It is finished."
P6. P5 did not obtain before P4 obtained.
P7. Jesus bowed his head.
P8. Jesus "gave up his spirit". (Unclear, though arguably P1 and/or P2 correspond to P8.)
P9. Neither P7 nor P8 obtained before P5 obtained.

Are we in agreement that this covers the salient information explicitly or necessarily conveyed by those two texts? If not, please indicate what propositions the text demands be added. If so, then can you tell me whether any proposition on the list is in formal contradiction with any other proposition(s) on the list? And for that matter, whether any of them are contradicted by an assertion made in the hypothetical scenario?


You keep trying to shift the burden, yet it remains firmly on your shoulders.

Kindly spare us your layman's notions of onus probandi.


From Post 1425

Is your memory that bad or are you just dishonest?

Just what is it that you think you are showing here? You accuse me of not responding to a question, then point out what appears to be an example of me responding to something that was not a question.
 
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You are making no sense. Recall that everything I've said is in response to the allegation of the presence of a logical contradiction in the texts.

Perhaps if you considered that the very existence of three completely different versions of Jesus's last words (a seemingly IMPORTANT part of the story, I would imagine) as a contradiction worthy of making ANYTHING else said in the Bible suspect, you might see the point.

How can anyone who believes the Bible is the literal word of God make excuses for such horribly inconcise writing? Oh, we're CERTAIN God said these things, but these other things over here are open to (our) interpretations or excuses. Your logic sounds to me more like what magicians call "patter."
 
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Perhaps if you considered that the very existence of three completely different versions of Jesus's last words (a seemingly IMPORTANT part of the story, I would imagine) as a contradiction worthy of making ANYTHING else said in the Bible suspect, you might see the point.

How can anyone who believes the Bible is the literal word of God make excuses for such horribly inconsise writing? Oh, we're CERTAIN God said these things, but these other things over here are open to (our) interpretations or excuses. Your logic sounds to me more like what magicians call "patter."


It's obvious that John had access to the other gospels when he wrote his - yet he decided to make up totally new stuff than the previous guys had invented.

I'm pretty sure he never meant for the gospels of Matt/Mark/Luke to be read 'back to back' with his, like they way they are laid out in the bible now. He was writing a 'replacement', not an addition. I bet he'd drop a brick if he could see the way they are arranged in the cannon now... ;)
 
It's obvious that John had access to the other gospels when he wrote his - yet he decided to make up totally new stuff than the previous guys had invented.

I'm pretty sure he never meant for the gospels of Matt/Mark/Luke to be read 'back to back' with his, like they way they are laid out in the bible now. He was writing a 'replacement', not an addition. I bet he'd drop a brick if he could see the way they are arranged in the cannon now... ;)

All the more reason to suspect the accuracy of the Bible, each and every single author "tailored" his submission as he wanted. If you believe that the Bible is God's word, certainly God would have foreseen the problems multiple editors and multiple translations would cause. If God is omniscient, and omnipotent you'd think he would have seen the need to write better instructions than you find in most Chinese-made toys.

BTW - cool avatar! :)
 
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Perhaps if you considered that the very existence of three completely different versions of Jesus's last words (a seemingly IMPORTANT part of the story, I would imagine) as a contradiction worthy of making ANYTHING else said in the Bible suspect, you might see the point.

Again, the term "contradiction" is being applied here in the absence of any kind of formal showing that a contradiction, in fact, exists. The simple existence, without more, of three different accounts of an episode (and I refer here specifically to the end of the Crucifixion scene), which do not, so far as anyone has yet been able to show, technically contradict one other (and which do not contradict any external evidence about the episode), does not seem to me to carry any logical implications about anything else in the Bible. Naturally, this does not mean that everything in the Bible is not suspect, just that one cannot logically deduce its suspect character from the passages in question.


How can anyone who believes the Bible is the literal word of God make excuses for such horribly inconcise writing?

Is the difficulty really that the Bible is not concise (i.e., that it is prolix)? I'm not disputing that it is sometimes prolix, perhaps even horribly so, but I hesitate to draw too many conclusions solely on that basis.


Oh, we're CERTAIN God said these things, but these other things over here are open to (our) interpretations or excuses. Your logic sounds to me more like what magicians call "patter."

But what has this to do with the specific texts in question? For example, in the hypothetical, anything that the texts allege was said, gets said.
 
It's obvious that John had access to the other gospels when he wrote his - yet he decided to make up totally new stuff than the previous guys had invented.

I'm not exactly sure how it can be conclusively shown that John's author had access to, say, Luke's Gospel in its current form (perhaps it can be, for all I know). More importantly, though, I don't see any reason to suppose that the distinctive elements of John's Gospel date only to John's composition and were "totally new". Presumably they could have come from some extant tradition, no?
 
Again, the term "contradiction" is being applied here in the absence of any kind of formal showing that a contradiction, in fact, exists. The simple existence, without more, of three different accounts of an episode (and I refer here specifically to the end of the Crucifixion scene), which do not, so far as anyone has yet been able to show, technically contradict one other (and which do not contradict any external evidence about the episode), does not seem to me to carry any logical implications about anything else in the Bible. Naturally, this does not mean that everything in the Bible is not suspect, just that one cannot logically deduce its suspect character from the passages in question.

It's not the three passages in question where the contradiction lies, but in the overall scope of the Bible as truth. Once any "fact" is shown untrue or vague in any document, the credence of the entire document must/should be called into question.

There is no inherent contradiction in the following "last words" of a dying individual:

"OUCH!"

"Holy $hit! I'm dying!"

or

"Well, I guess this is it"

But if I were to say that these are the last words of a very famous individual who millions of people based a religion around and who had witnesses to his death, wouldn't you logically ask, "well which of those were his LAST words?"

Maybe not.
 
It's not the three passages in question where the contradiction lies, but in the overall scope of the Bible as truth. Once any "fact" is shown untrue or vague in any document, the credence of the entire document must/should be called into question.

There is no inherent contradiction in the following "last words" of a dying individual:

"OUCH!"

"Holy $hit! I'm dying!"

or

"Well, I guess this is it"

But if I were to say that these are the last words of a very famous individual who millions of people based a religion around and who had witnesses to his death, wouldn't you logically ask, "well which of those were his LAST words?"

Maybe not.



In a technical way, you could say that his 'last words' were every word printed in the bible... See? No contradiction! ;)
 
It's not the three passages in question where the contradiction lies, but in the overall scope of the Bible as truth. Once any "fact" is shown untrue or vague in any document, the credence of the entire document must/should be called into question.

I agree with you as to untruth, though I'm less certain about how your vagueness argument works. At any rate, there would appear to be only two potential ways to establish untruth with respect to the "last words" texts: by logical deduction or by empirical induction. The first hasn't led us anywhere.


There is no inherent contradiction in the following "last words" of a dying individual:

"OUCH!"

"Holy $hit! I'm dying!"

or

"Well, I guess this is it"

There would be no formal contradiction, I agree, if each of three different accounts mentioned one of those phrases as being uttered by the person shortly before his death, so long as the accounts were not accompanied by an explicit assertion that the person did not say any subsequent words prior to death. Otherwise, there would be a formal contradiction. Again, there is a logical difference between "Ouch" being the last word technically reported by a source, and a source reporting that "Ouch" was technically the last word.


But if I were to say that these are the last words of a very famous individual who millions of people based a religion around and who had witnesses to his death, wouldn't you logically ask, "well which of those were his LAST words?"

Maybe not.

You might well ask that, but the answer might be impossible to deduce from the accounts, even assuming each statement to be technically correct. On the other hand, it might be possible - depending on the content of the reports - to deduce which words must have been spoken last in time by proceeding, for example, via reductio ad absurdum.

It reminds me a bit of the sort of logical puzzle featured prominently on the LSAT requiring one to deduce the order in which people are seated around a table, or the age order of a group of persons, etc., on the basis of a partial and/or fragmented series of premises.

geetarmoore said:
In a technical way, you could say that his 'last words' were every word printed in the bible...

Now that you mention it, I suppose that even within the Gospels he was reported to have spoken words after the Crucifixion.
 
You might well ask that, but the answer might be impossible to deduce from the accounts, even assuming each statement to be technically correct. On the other hand, it might be possible - depending on the content of the reports - to deduce which words must have been spoken last in time by proceeding, for example, via reductio ad absurdum.

I still think you're splitting hairs, ceo. I will say this in your defense, I've caught a smattering of ridicule here and there regarding your posts, but you've maintained your composure and remain cordial. I also think *putting on my best Slim Pickens imitation* "you sure do have a pretty mouth." :)
 

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