And yes, I do think liberals and conservatives should be better able to communicate. On theological issues, unfortunately, the conservatives brand the liberals as heretics and the liberals assume the conservatives are unthinkingly dogmatic, and very little common ground is ever found.

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And getting back to the point of this thread (and conceding a point to you): how much progress could be made if liberals and conservatives would actually get together communicate? If sound doctrine was actually coupled with social concerns … well, who knows?!?

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The Quirinius solution seems speculative to me still though … the evidence that he was actually governor twice, and that the earlier time was in the right time frame, seems possible but hardly certain. But maybe so.

I do still think that the two authors have different ideas about the family’s original place of residence. But there’s no sure proof either way.

I suppose the resolution of the timing problem also makes it less important that Luke doesn’t talk about the Egypt sojourn. My mistake was assuming they were both talking about the time immediately around Jesus’s birth, when in fact Matthew was talking about two years later. (If they were telling the same story with two such different ideas about what facts are important and which could be safely omitted, it would be a problem; as it is, it no longer seems to be.)

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Complementary harmonization can be seen in each of the links I posted. As I said, you don’t have to actually agree (I really don’t expect you to), but admitting that such harmonizations are plausible is the honorable thing to do.

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But the birth narratives don’t fall into that category for most modern inerrantists, do they? You yourself speak of the need to harmonize them, so clearly you think they are intended to be factual accounts, no?

If Matthew said that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great and Luke said He was not, that would be a contradiction.

And that is just the case! Matthew says Herod the Great tried to kill Jesus by ordering the slaughter of all boys two and under. Herod died in 4 B.C. Luke says the family traveled to Bethlehem to take part in the census ordered by Quirinius. That took place in 6 AD, eight years after the death of Herod.

One must be wrong. Both may be wrong, but both cannot be right.

If Matthew said that Jesus was born in Nazareth and Luke said Bethlehem, that would seem to be contradictory (from your comments, one of your alleged contradiction seems to suggest that Matthew has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth, but that is not so; Matthew 2:1 simply says, “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem…”; there is not prior mention of Nazareth, but to call that a contradiction is an enormous stretch).

Matthew strongly suggests that the family lived in Bethlehem because after they return from Egypt, that is where they first seek to return to. If Nazareth was home and Bethlehem just a place they had traveled to, they would have just gone back to Nazareth … which is indeed what happens in Luke’s account.

Let me use an historical example to show when a seeming discrepancy is not a contradiction. Suppose I have a history textbook on my shelf that tells me that James I became King of England in 1603 while another tells me it was James VI of Scotland. Is that a contradiction? Of course not. Both would be correct and complementary, since both refer to the same man, known by different titles.

True, and when I read someone calling Jesus Son of Man and someone else calls him Son of God, the same thing is happening and does not present a problem.

On the other hand, though, if you read one history that said James traveled peacefully from Glasgow to London, and another that said he fled Glasgow pursued by a Scottish army and hid in the forest for three weeks before sneaking back to London traveling only at night, you’d rightly wonder why the other historian had mentioned none of this, and therefore how reliable you should consider it to be.

Wouldn’t you?

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Of course, you haven’t really shown a contradiction per se, simply elements that need harmonization. If Matthew said that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great and Luke said He was not, that would be a contradiction. If Matthew said that Jesus was born in Nazareth and Luke said Bethlehem, that would seem to be contradictory (from your comments, one of your alleged contradiction seems to suggest that Matthew has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth, but that is not so; Matthew 2:1 simply says, “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem…”; there is not prior mention of Nazareth, but to call that a contradiction is an enormous stretch). But, of course, nothing like that has been shown. It is an interesting rabbit trail to venture down, and it distracts from the weak analogies pertaining to oral tradition. However, many would probably find it incredibly absurd (as well as arrogant) to assume that somehow, for roughly 2000 years, no one noticed such “obvious” contradictions in the biblical texts. It might make good fodder for skeptical websites to preach to the proverbial choir and generate lots of hits, but it doesn’t really address the issues mentioned above. At any rate, I would not wish to peg you in this way and would give you a lot more credit that simply having such an ideological ax to grind.

Let me use an historical example to show when a seeming discrepancy is not a contradiction. Suppose I have a history textbook on my shelf that tells me that James I became King of England in 1603 while another tells me it was James VI of Scotland. Is that a contradiction? Of course not. Both would be correct and complementary, since both refer to the same man, known by different titles. But, using the same methodology that skeptic often employ, this would be a contradiction that could be reconciled.

As I don’t wish you to think I’ve avoided your observations, I’ve included a couple of links at the bottom to address your concerns (the first of these has a link within it to address the census issue; the second also has a link to a discourse by Augustine on the narratives). But, I suppose at this point, one might ask what would be enough for you to conclude that there is not actually a contradiction in the passage. Logically speaking if one provided a reasonable harmonization, that should be enough (i.e., one counter-example should suffice to negate the original argument). But if such a defense is presented, and there are still objections, then there are deeper problems that exist. These are not with the biblical text itself, mind you, but with the presuppositions of the objector. And if plausible evidence is continually offered but persistently rejected, then one does really begin to question whether the other party is truly being reasonable. But, as I hinted above, I do think you generally to be a reasonable fellow, so I hope and trust the above comments do not fall upon you. You may not agree with the conclusions, but a response that admits that such accounts can indeed be reconciled/harmonized, even if you do not necessarily agree with them, is a respectable one.

http://tinyurl.com/69aq3z
http://tinyurl.com/6foawh

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I do think for myself, that’s why I believe what the Word of GOD says.

Making up a designer religion as ’some’ do, isn’t thinking for oneself, its making a religion that allows them the freedom to do as they choose, whatever that might be.

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I think on the point of the birth accounts it certainly does.

Consider: In Luke, the family live in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. They journey to Bethlehem to take part in the census, and Jesus is born there. They stay long enough to fulfill their religious obligations for the newborn — about 40 days — and come home to Nazareth after passing through Jersualem to present the boy to the Lord, which is where they encountered Simeon.

There is not, in that story, any whisper of Herod’s persecution, an escape to Egypt, or danger in Bethlehem when they return. Nor is there any time for those things to have happened. Luke very clearly says (1) They stayed in Bethlehem for the time of ritual purification; (2) They then went to Jerusalem; (3) Then they went home to Nazareth.

Matthew has them fleeing Bethlehem directly for Egypt and staying there until Herod dies (no telling exactly how long that was, but Herod is believed to have died in 4 B.C.). Then they try to come home — Bethlehem is home in Matthew’s account — but finding it ruled by Herod’s son, they go to Galilee instead and settle in Nazareth.

Not to mention that the census under Quirinius, which Luke uses as a reference, took place in 6 AD, and Herod the Great, Matthew’s historical touchpoint, died in 4 BC. Clearly at least one of them has the timing wrong.

These are entirely different stories, TJ.

There is another logical failing (either pointed out on this or another thread): if the accounts were so dissimilar as is sometimes alleged, it seems a stretch that a) no copyists decided to excise one or the other account since they didn’t jive or b) this was somehow overlooked by nearly 20 centuries of theologians who were very good at dealing the text (not the armchair skeptic that we often see selling books today).

I think it was considered not important because the idea that the Bible is supposed to be taken literally in every detail is a relatively new approach. The stories both make the point that Jesus was the Son of God in a supernatural way, and that is what is most important to the evangelists.

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Your comments to Roger concerning the gospel accounts is also inaccurate. You would need to show a logical contradiction (e.g., a and ~a) in order to prove your point, and simply detailing two separate accounts does not do this. There is another logical failing (either pointed out on this or another thread): if the accounts were so dissimilar as is sometimes alleged, it seems a stretch that a) no copyists decided to excise one or the other account since they didn’t jive or b) this was somehow overlooked by nearly 20 centuries of theologians who were very good at dealing the text (not the armchair skeptic that we often see selling books today). Also, the comment about “the gospel writers didn’t know that their work would be read alongside aother accounts” is also inaccurate; even somewhat liberal scholars will claim that the Synoptics were interdependent as source material. Furthermore, a serious reading of John shows that it was meant to read as a companion text to Mark — i.e., it fills in certain details with personal accounts.

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