Must Catholics believe the N.T. is historical?

[polonius]

PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE (1893)

"For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican."

Gospel of Matthew: Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod who died in 4 B.C.
Gospel of Luke: Jesus was born during the 6 AD census of Judea.

So Jesus was born twice,

1 Corinthians 15 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters[c] at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.

Note: This was written to a town 800 miles from were the evident took place by Paul a non witness. None of the witnesses nor the hundreds more they would have told left any writing confirming the story. The event is not reported I any of the Gospels.

Matt 27:52 tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised .53 And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

Note: None of the many left any written records and the four authors of the Gospels say nothing about this.

[William]

[Replying to post 9 by Elijah John]

Do you discount the possibility that the Bible is inspired by God, but imperfect humans contaminated the pure, Divine inspiration with their own prmitive and cultural bias? So what we have is an amalgum of Divine perfection and human blunder, all in one book?

And as such it is up to we humans to sort it out. (As Jefferson did, for example) With our God-given gift of Reason. Speaking as a Deistic Christian here, and no longer an orthodox, unquestioning Catholic.

I guess what I am getting at is why does it have to be an "all or nothing" proposition? Seems to me that Fundamentalists and Atheists make the same mistake by engaging in categorical thinking, and the two are actually flip sides of the same dogmatic coin.

This of course leads to other things. One is left with ones subjective interpretation but also can glean from other writ, as well as from other things not written 'the divinely inspired'.

[marco]

It can be easily demonstrated that the Bible contains contradictions and errors. Unless it is admitted that God made such errors, then the Bible is not inspired by God.
..........QED

As regards your "Quod erat demonstrandum", what was to be demonstrated is that God made errors. You've demonstrated some things that are wrong in the Bible. You have a little way to go to show God is wrong. We have many instances where God issued instructions and these were imperfectly carried out by his human servants. God provided the substance and man expressed it imperfectly,as only man can.


So why did God not publish errata? That is another question but you have not shown that God erred. You assume that because God did not correct his script writers then somehow God was wrong. That's not a valid assumption, Polonius.


But I agree with you that having errors in the first place causes us to wonder why they are there at all, and how one is expected to differentiate between error and truth. Those with faith will perhaps say that divine guidance is always on the side of the truth seeker: Seek and ye shall find.

[polonius]

Marcos posted:

But I agree with you that having errors in the first place causes us to wonder why they are there at all, and how one is expected to differentiate between error and truth. Those with faith will perhaps say that divine guidance is always on the side of the truth seeker: Seek and ye shall find.

RESPONSE: Not always. Perhaps you are beginning with the belief that the Bible is divinely inspired? The Old Testament was probably written during the Babylonian Captivity as a founding story for the Jews. The gospels were written between 70 and 85 AD by non-witnesses to the events described with the goal of convincing people that Jesus was the Messiah, and starting about 82 AD that he divine himself (although Peter in Acts say otherwise).

Two of the most famous God breathed blunders are:

Psalm 104:5 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):
5 You set the earth on its foundations,
so that it shall never be shaken.

Another passage is Joshua 10:13 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.

Once the church told us thatof having believed and held the doctrine"which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures"that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west and that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world; and that an opinion may be held and defended as probably after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to the Holy Scripture.

Is divine guidance" is always on the side of the truth seeker?

[RightReason]

[Replying to post 8 by polonius]

RESPONSE: It can be easily demonstrated that the Bible contains contradictions and errors.

Then why have you yet to do so? I have not found one of posts demonstrating contradiction " only misinterpretation.

Actually, it is the work of man which began to be written around the time of the Babylonian captivity.

No one denies the Bible was written by men. However, Christians believe those men were inspired by the Holy Spirit and what they wrote was exactly what God intended us to hear.

We now know that the Jews were not in Egypt, there was no Exodus, and Jesus wasn't born both during the reign of King Herod the Great who died in 4 BC (according to Matthew) and for a second time during the 6 AD census of Judea (according to Luke).

You clearly did not read my link. It explains this supposed quandary and clears up the suspicion of contradiction.

[polonius]

[Replying to post 8 by polonius]

You clearly did not read my link. It explains this supposed quandary and clears up the suspicion of contradiction.

RESPONSE: I've read this argument before. I concluded that it is nonsense.

Let's review a part of it:


Wrights Solution

Wright then explains how this can relate to the enrollment of Quirinius:
I suggest, therefore, that actually the most natural reading of the verse is: This census took place before the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

He also notes:
This solves an otherwise odd problem: why should Luke say that Quirinius census was the first? Which later ones was he thinking of?
This reading, of course, does not resolve all the difficulties. We dont know, from other sources, of a census earlier than Quirinius. But there are a great many things that we dont know in ancient history.

There are huge gaps in our records all over the place. Only those who imagine that one can study history by looking up back copies of the London Times or the Washington Post in a convenient library can make the mistake of arguing from silence in matters relating to the first century.

My guess is that Luke knew a tradition in which Jesus was born during some sort of census, and that Luke knew as well as we do that it couldnt have been the one conducted under Quirinius, because by then Jesus was about ten years old. That is why he wrote that the census was the one before that conducted by Quirinius.

To be continued refuting a claim at a time.

[polonius]

Wrights Solution

Wright then explains how this can relate to the enrollment of Quirinius:
I suggest, therefore, that actually the most natural reading of the verse is: This census took place before the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

RESPONSE: Nope. Not before That is an obviously incorrect translation.


Strongs Lexicon: [fn]This was the first G4413 census taken while [fn]Quirinius was governor of Syria.

2 1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3

English Standard Version
This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

New American Standard Bible
This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

International Standard Version
This was the first registration taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

English Revised Version
This was the first enrollment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

World English Bible
This was the first enrollment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

(to be continued)

[RightReason]

[Replying to post 14 by polonius]

RESPONSE: I've read this argument before. I concluded that it is nonsense.

Ha, ha, ha . . . Im sure you do. And yet as the author pointed out this is one of several reasonable explanations. Soooooo . . . . instead of narrowly thinking there couldnt possibly be anything to explain this supposed contradiction, I have demonstrated that in fact there are several explanations. And it perhaps isnt even any of those, rather a different explanation that we havent even considered.

[marco]

I've read this argument before. I concluded that it is nonsense.

Augustus was shrewd and established a strong empire. The last thing he would have wanted would be thousands of natives wandering back to their old birth towns; it would be a nightmare for Rome. All that was needed was a head-count - the number living in any place so that taxes could be levied.

It was necessary for the excited evangelist somehow to get Jesus born in Bethlehem so that he could say: "Hey, presto! A prediction!" Add to this rubbish accounts of Indian Maharajahs acting as amateur astronomers, an angel escaping Earth's gravitational pull and returning to orbit Jupiter after announcing "good news" for Mary, and disaster for Joe; glorious infanticide to ward off some superstitious claim and we might as well drop Hans Andersen from the Bethlehem skies and give us some more colour, with rabbits and frogs perhaps joining the oxen and donkeys with Jesus in the straw. Reality check - we are in the 21st century.

Should Catholics believe all this? Let them study history and keep away from the fiction section of the library.


.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 17 by marco]

I think they were Persian, Zoroastrian wise men. By tradition, anyway.

And regarding the NT "slaughter of the innocents" it was a literary fabrication designed to paint Jesus as the 2nd Moses, who survived the slaughter of his infant contemporaries..

[RightReason]

[Replying to marco]

Should Catholics believe all this? Let them study history and keep away from the fiction section of the library.

Truth is often stranger than fiction. Why someone may think it creative and mysterious to create hobbits and carriages made out of pumpkins, however the more astute will recognize far more mysterious and fantastical things occur in real life.















Who needs Fairy Tales and Star Wars. Our own little earth seems to have much more to marvel at. Java the Hut has nothing on the hippopotamus. Its very odd to me that anyone would think a beast with tails and horns is too fantastical to be taken seriously. They might need to expand their worldview a little.