Ask a Theologian III

[Plotinus]

Probably partly what I was taught. But I don't think that the apostles didn't have disagreements. I think that the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture, and so they COULD NOT write anything that was false while under the Spirit's inspiration.

Fine, but you asked me how one might think that Christianity is true and yet think that the different New Testament authors had different understandings of Christian theology. A Christian who does not share your beliefs about the nature of the Bible could easily hold such a position.

The assumption here is that what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Or their writers if they weren't the same) wrote that he said... he actually said.

That may be your assumption (and you're right that it is just an assumption, and I would add, one that is not supported by the evidence), but again, you were asking me whether what Jesus and Paul believed was in agreement - and I can only answer that on the basis of what the evidence suggests, not on the basis of dogmatic assumptions that I don't hold (irrespective of whether those assumptions are true or not).

According to Christianity, he did in Acts 9. (Or do you mean before the ascension?)

I took timtofly's question to refer to Jesus during his lifetime. Since he said "in the flesh", that would in any case rule out the various versions of the story of Paul's experience that appear in the book of Acts, since they all agree that Paul did not meet Jesus in the flesh. (Paul himself, in 1 Corinthians, makes no distinction between his experience and the appearances of the resurrected Jesus to his followers - but whether he thought that any or all of these were meetings with Jesus "in the flesh" is hard to ascertain.)

Well for starters a human brain is physically capable of storing only a finite amount of knowledge. So much space, so much data, a brain storing all knowledge would require either a vastly larger amount of space, or a vastly different structure that allows it to store data more efficiently, both of which seem to be straying from a human mind.

I think this is correct and in fact I've argued this myself elsewhere. But there could be ways around it. What this rules out is a human mind being omniscient if that omniscience is based upon the storage capabilities of the human brain. However, that assumes two things: first, a particular understanding of the relation of the mind to the brain, and second, a particular understanding of what the incarnation involved.

On the first issue, you're assuming that a mind's knowledge is (or must be) encoded in the brain. But a substance dualist could deny that. Such a dualist might even agree that, in the normal run of things, the mind's knowledge is physically stored in the brain, but say that this is just a contingent state of affairs. In that case, a dualist could hold that, in the incarnation, the divine mind was related to a body (including a brain) in the same way as ours, but think that this mind also had access to infinite knowledge not stored in that brain. That wouldn't necessarily impinge upon his humanity, because his relation to his brain would be the same as ours to our brains.

On the second issue, it seems to me that on a two-minds christology, one could indeed envisage a situation where the human mind is at least operationally omniscient, if the divine mind habitually gives it knowledge as and when it's needed. But I need to think more about this. (Maybe there could be an article in the offing!)

It seems to me that the very processes of human mind seem to obscure knowledge as much as reveal it. Comfirmation Bias, and so forth.

That is perhaps a different issue. Must a human being suffer from confirmation bias and the like? Wouldn't a perfect human mind (in the sense of the best possible human mind) lack such imperfections? I don't know - at least, it doesn't seem obvious to me that things such as these are essential to humanity, even if they are universal to humanity.

Except that I never really did that, I was under the impression Plotinus was responding based on the Bible (Correct me if I'm wrong Plot.)

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I was just saying how things seem to me. In the case of questions about what people like Jesus and Paul believed, the only evidence of note that we have is contained in the Bible, so answers to such questions must draw primarily on that evidence. But it can be interpreted in various ways, so these answers can't just be pulled out of the Bible without any interpretation. And one can't assume that something is the case just because a biblical author says it is, unless one is working on the assumption that everything in the Bible is true - which I'm not.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Fine, but you asked me how one might think that Christianity is true and yet think that the different New Testament authors had different understandings of Christian theology. A Christian who does not share your beliefs about the nature of the Bible could easily hold such a position.

OK that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying...

That may be your assumption (and you're right that it is just an assumption, and I would add, one that is not supported by the evidence),

What evidence contradicts it?

but again, you were asking me whether what Jesus and Paul believed was in agreement - and I can only answer that on the basis of what the evidence suggests, not on the basis of dogmatic assumptions that I don't hold (irrespective of whether those assumptions are true or not).

My point was, since that's all we know about Christ's life, doesn't it make sense to assume (For the sake of discussing beliefs) that they got it correct? How do we know what they got wrong?

I took timtofly's question to refer to Jesus during his lifetime. Since he said "in the flesh", that would in any case rule out the various versions of the story of Paul's experience that appear in the book of Acts, since they all agree that Paul did not meet Jesus in the flesh. (Paul himself, in 1 Corinthians, makes no distinction between his experience and the appearances of the resurrected Jesus to his followers - but whether he thought that any or all of these were meetings with Jesus "in the flesh" is hard to ascertain.)

OK, that makes sense.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I was just saying how things seem to me. In the case of questions about what people like Jesus and Paul believed, the only evidence of note that we have is contained in the Bible, so answers to such questions must draw primarily on that evidence. But it can be interpreted in various ways, so these answers can't just be pulled out of the Bible without any interpretation. And one can't assume that something is the case just because a biblical author says it is, unless one is working on the assumption that everything in the Bible is true - which I'm not.

OK that also makes sense. How do you interpret it?

 

[Plotinus]

What evidence contradicts it?

Obviously cases where the Gospels disagree regarding what Jesus said on particular occasions (e.g., did he forbid divorce and remarriage altogether, as in Mark, or permit it in the case of infidelity, as in Matthew? and what did he really say over the bread and wine at the Last Supper - if anything?). Where they disagree, they can't all be right. Less obviously, there is the fact that John presents Jesus as teaching (and doing) quite different sorts of things from in the Synoptics; it's implausible to suppose both that Jesus really did deliver two entirely different sets of teaching, and deliver them in entirely different styles of speaking, and that one set of texts should report solely the one and that another text should report solely the other. It is more plausible to suppose that either the Synoptics or John, or perhaps both (but more probably mainly John), report things that he didn't really say. And less obviously still there is the evidence that the sayings attributed to Jesus were moulded by the oral tradition, as one can tell by examining their form and the settings in which they are presented. Some of these settings are rather implausible, such as Mark 2:23-24, which has Jesus challenged by the Pharisees in the middle of a cornfield; it's more likely that the author or his source has invented the setting in which to place the saying. (It doesn't follow that the saying itself is invented, but this is still an example of the tradition being moulded by its transmission.) An example of the words themselves apparently being shaped by the oral transmission is the words of institution from the Last Supper, which are variously reported by the Synoptic authors and by Paul (but not by John), and where the cadences of the words probably reflect their repetition and alteration in a liturgical context.

Things like this and many others suggest that the words (and actions) of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels are not perfectly accurate, although of course they don't mean that they're entirely inaccurate either; as is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

My point was, since that's all we know about Christ's life, doesn't it make sense to assume (For the sake of discussing beliefs) that they got it correct? How do we know what they got wrong?

Just because something is the only source you've got, that doesn't give you licence to assume it's correct. It just makes it that much harder to evaluate how correct it is, when you have nothing to compare it to. If our sole source for Socrates' philosophy were Plato, that wouldn't mean we should assume that Plato reports Socrates perfectly accurately; it would just make it much harder to establish what is accurate and what isn't.

We shouldn't make assumptions one way or the other, or at least not assumptions that aren't reasonable. If we have good reason for thinking that the Gospel authors got it all correct, then that might be a reasonable assumption to make - but we don't have good reason for thinking that.

Besides, in the case of Jesus, we aren't reliant upon just one source. We have the four Gospels, which don't represent four completely independent sources (since at least Matthew and Luke are based partly upon Mark), but nevertheless they do represent some plurality of sources (Matthew and Luke both use Q, which is a quite distinct source from Mark; plus they both have sources unique to them; plus John is apparently quite independent of the Synoptics or at the very least has access to different material). So we're not stuck with just a single source which we can't compare with anything else (as we are for the story of the first decade of Christianity after Jesus' death, where the only source is Acts). We can compare the Gospels' accounts with each other, and if we do that we find that the differences between them show that they can't all be totally accurate, because they contradict each other.

So we can be confident at least that the Gospel authors got some things wrong, to at least some extent. Establishing precisely what they got wrong, and to what extent, and why, is entirely another matter, and obviously that's the sort of thing that scholars disagree about. The answers are to be found by studying the texts very carefully, by examining the forms of the stories and their probable transmission before the Gospel authors wrote them down, by analysing the particular emphases of the individual authors and seeing how they might have manipulated the material themselves, and so on. Plus, of course, comparing the material to other early Christian writings as well as to ancient Jewish sources, to see how it relates to both Jewish and Christian beliefs.

OK that also makes sense. How do you interpret it?

That's a very big question, if you're talking about the Gospels and Paul. I've tried to give some answers to that throughout these threads, I suppose. But I am very much not an expert on these topics.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Obviously cases where the Gospels disagree regarding what Jesus said on particular occasions (e.g., did he forbid divorce and remarriage altogether, as in Mark, or permit it in the case of infidelity, as in Matthew? and what did he really say over the bread and wine at the Last Supper - if anything?). Where they disagree, they can't all be right. Less obviously, there is the fact that John presents Jesus as teaching (and doing) quite different sorts of things from in the Synoptics; it's implausible to suppose both that Jesus really did deliver two entirely different sets of teaching, and deliver them in entirely different styles of speaking, and that one set of texts should report solely the one and that another text should report solely the other. It is more plausible to suppose that either the Synoptics or John, or perhaps both (but more probably mainly John), report things that he didn't really say. And less obviously still there is the evidence that the sayings attributed to Jesus were moulded by the oral tradition, as one can tell by examining their form and the settings in which they are presented. Some of these settings are rather implausible, such as Mark 2:23-24, which has Jesus challenged by the Pharisees in the middle of a cornfield; it's more likely that the author or his source has invented the setting in which to place the saying. (It doesn't follow that the saying itself is invented, but this is still an example of the tradition being moulded by its transmission.) An example of the words themselves apparently being shaped by the oral transmission is the words of institution from the Last Supper, which are variously reported by the Synoptic authors and by Paul (but not by John), and where the cadences of the words probably reflect their repetition and alteration in a liturgical context.

Things like this and many others suggest that the words (and actions) of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels are not perfectly accurate, although of course they don't mean that they're entirely inaccurate either; as is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Obviously, I can't agree, being a proponent of Biblical inerrancy, but I can understand where you come from.

That said, the divorce problem is easily solved. He allowed it in cases of infidelity. However, Mark neglected to write that detail. Its like saying "I watched the Yankees play their home games this year" and "I went to every Yankees home game except two."

Or a better example: Two critics who have the same exact opinions on food critique a restaurant. One says "The food at that restaurant is good." The other one says "All the food was good, except the fish." Now, unless that was a fish restaurant, they aren't contradicting each other. IN GENERAL the food was good, but the fish isn't. Both statements are accurate, but the first statement neglects to add a detail.

 

[Plotinus]

I know that's a standard conservative evangelical response to such cases, but it doesn't seem very convincing to me. If I say "All the food was good apart from the fish" and someone reports me as saying "All the food was good", then that is an inaccurate report, even though it may be word-perfect (as far as it goes), because it gives a misleading impression. Someone reading it will think that I endorse all the food at the restaurant when in fact I don't. Similarly, if Jesus really said that divorce and remarriage is wrong in all cases except for infidelity, and Mark reported the first part of this but omitted the exception, then he reported Jesus' teaching inaccurately even if he attributed no words to Jesus that he didn't actually say. Someone reading Mark's report would get the wrong impression of what Jesus taught. Now perhaps this isn't a problem for a biblical inerrantist if that person wishes only to preserve the claim that the Gospels attribute to Jesus no words that he didn't actually say. But it surely misses the spirit of it. I don't see the value in believing such a thing. What reason could there be to believe this? Why believe that God would act to ensure that everything in the Bible was technically true, yet fail to ensure that everything in it was actually reliable and useful to readers?

(In fact I think it much more likely, in this case, that Mark gives the authentic saying and that Matthew tones it down by adding the clause about infidelity; this seems intrinsically more probable than the alternative, that Mark makes the saying harsher, quite apart from the fact that Matthew based his version upon Mark's.)

 

[El_Machinae]

Which of those two gospels tends to be 'harsher'?

 

[Atticus]

Obviously, I can't agree, being a proponent of Biblical inerrancy, but I can understand where you come from.

Aren't you thinking in wrong direction here? Shouldn't you be proponent of a doctrine according to your beliefs rather than the other way round?

It's like you'd say you believe in Jesus' resurrection because you are a Christian, although that belief is the thing that makes you one. (Give or take the definition of a Christian).

 

[GhostWriter16]

I know that's a standard conservative evangelical response to such cases, but it doesn't seem very convincing to me. If I say "All the food was good apart from the fish" and someone reports me as saying "All the food was good", then that is an inaccurate report, even though it may be word-perfect (as far as it goes), because it gives a misleading impression. Someone reading it will think that I endorse all the food at the restaurant when in fact I don't. Similarly, if Jesus really said that divorce and remarriage is wrong in all cases except for infidelity, and Mark reported the first part of this but omitted the exception, then he reported Jesus' teaching inaccurately even if he attributed no words to Jesus that he didn't actually say. Someone reading Mark's report would get the wrong impression of what Jesus taught. Now perhaps this isn't a problem for a biblical inerrantist if that person wishes only to preserve the claim that the Gospels attribute to Jesus no words that he didn't actually say. But it surely misses the spirit of it. I don't see the value in believing such a thing. What reason could there be to believe this? Why believe that God would act to ensure that everything in the Bible was technically true, yet fail to ensure that everything in it was actually reliable and useful to readers?

(In fact I think it much more likely, in this case, that Mark gives the authentic saying and that Matthew tones it down by adding the clause about infidelity; this seems intrinsically more probable than the alternative, that Mark makes the saying harsher, quite apart from the fact that Matthew based his version upon Mark's.)

I don't agree though. Mark wasn't an eyewitness, so its conceivable that Mark didn't actually know EXACTLY what Jesus said, even though he knew what Christ taught, he did NOT know about the exception. Perhaps Peter had forgotten? Is it impossible that Peter MIGHT have forgotten the exact detail, but Matthew did not?

Think of it this way, let's say I hadn't eaten at a restaurant in years, and neither had my brother, and while we had the same tastes, his memory was better than mine. I say "It was a good restaurant with good food," and he says "It was a good restaurant with good food, everything was good except the pasta" we don't contradict each other, I simply forgot my negative experience with the pasta, and just remember that, in general, I liked the food.

The thing is, Matthew is more specific. Mark says (In paraphrase) "Don't divorce." And we aren't supposed to. Matthew gives one situation where you can divorce, but still, I do see the value in the distinction. Jesus wasn't commanding divorce in cases of sexual immorality, since he prefers that divorce doesn't happen, but its not outright forbidden in that one case.

 

[Plotinus]

I don't agree though. Mark wasn't an eyewitness, so its conceivable that Mark didn't actually know EXACTLY what Jesus said, even though he knew what Christ taught, he did NOT know about the exception. Perhaps Peter had forgotten? Is it impossible that Peter MIGHT have forgotten the exact detail, but Matthew did not?

But neither of them were eyewitnesses. Matthew's Gospel was certainly not written by an eyewitness, because it depends, to a large extent, upon Mark's Gospel - and what eyewitness would base his memoirs upon someone else's work instead of his own memories? Both Mark's Gospel and Matthew's are the end result of long processes of oral transmission and reflection and they incorporate earlier sources which are now lost to us.

Think of it this way, let's say I hadn't eaten at a restaurant in years, and neither had my brother, and while we had the same tastes, his memory was better than mine. I say "It was a good restaurant with good food," and he says "It was a good restaurant with good food, everything was good except the pasta" we don't contradict each other, I simply forgot my negative experience with the pasta, and just remember that, in general, I liked the food.

But of course that's a contradiction, at least if we take the two statements at the same level. If you think that all of the food was good and your brother thinks that some of it was bad, then you disagree with each other over at least some of the food.

Now I understand the point you're trying to make: your memory is at the general level while your brother's is more detailed. And I can see that one could argue that your memory is actually correct as far as it goes. But still, if your brother's recollection is correct, then yours is only partially correct.

The thing is, Matthew is more specific. Mark says (In paraphrase) "Don't divorce." And we aren't supposed to. Matthew gives one situation where you can divorce, but still, I do see the value in the distinction. Jesus wasn't commanding divorce in cases of sexual immorality, since he prefers that divorce doesn't happen, but its not outright forbidden in that one case.

I just don't see how this view is defensible. What's the evidence that Mark is more general and Matthew is more specific? Why is this view to be preferred to the more common-sense one that they disagree with each other, and that Matthew toned down the more severe teaching that he found in Mark? (Or even, if you prefer to think that Mark wrote later, that Mark harshened up the unacceptably lax teaching that he found in Matthew?) Indeed, Mark typically gives more details than Matthew, not fewer. Compare almost any story that appears in both Gospels (and virtually all of Mark's stories appear in Matthew) and you will find that Mark's version is longer and has more details. Matthew generally shortened the material that he took from Mark - perfectly reasonably, since he had plenty of other material from other sources that he wanted to include. It therefore goes against the grain to suppose that he expanded elements like the teaching on divorce.

The basic problem with your argument is that there's nothing in Mark's text to suggest that he regards the proscription on divorce as in any way vaguely general or open to exceptions. So claiming that it is just seems like special pleading. I don't think that anyone who read Mark's Gospel and didn't have access to Matthew would suppose for a moment that Jesus meant there to be cases when divorce was permissible. Matthew contradicts that.

An even better example is the Beatitudes. According to Luke 6:20, Jesus said "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." But according to Matthew 5:3, he said "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Now here you have a case where the extra words "in spirit" completely change the meaning of the saying. Luke's version suggests that the literally poverty-stricken are intended, and there is no indication at all that this is meant to be taken non-literally ("the poor" elsewhere in the Gospels always means literally that). Matthew, however, interprets the verse non-literally, making it refer to an inner attitude, not to an external lack of money. The material originally comes from Q (it is found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark), and it's generally thought that Luke preserves the original form and order of the material from Q more closely than Matthew does, who is happier to change it and rearrange it to fit in better with his other material. (I think in general Matthew was a brilliant writer who was extremely good at reworking his sources to create a coherent whole.) So here again it looks like Matthew has altered a saying, and again, he has made it less harsh - Jesus' commendation of the poverty-stricken is re-interpreted so that it can apply to anyone if they have the right attitude. (And that addresses El_Machinae's question too.) But here there's no way that you can reconcile the two by saying that Matthew just adds a little clarifying detail to the saying as it appears in Luke, because the meaning of the two is just totally different.

Also, you'll notice that the form of the words differs as well. According to Luke, Jesus spoke about the poor in the second person, addressing them directly. According to Matthew, Jesus spoke about the poor in spirit in the third person, referring to them as if distinct from his hearers. That is not at all an important difference in the grand scheme of things. But if you're really going to hold to biblical inerrancy, it's still an insuperable difference, because they can't both be right.

And I don't see what value is gained by trying to reconcile these things in the first place. There's nothing in the texts themselves to suggest that they are supernaturally prevented from including anything that's not true; why believe that they are, when you have to tie yourself in knots to reconcile the differences? Isn't it more reasonable to suppose that, in fact, there is no such supernatural preventative at work, and that these texts were - as they appear to be - composed by normal people following normal methods, just like all other texts? Why would God cause these texts to appear to be subject to normal human fallibility whilst also ensuring that they're not really subject to it? Why suppose that he did that at all?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Plotinus, do you know anything about these?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12888421

 

[ParkCungHee]

But neither of them were eyewitnesses. Matthew's Gospel was certainly not written by an eyewitness, because it depends, to a large extent, upon Mark's Gospel - and what eyewitness would base his memoirs upon someone else's work instead of his own memories?

To be fair, there have been some very lazy autobiographies that do this.

 

[GhostWriter16]

But neither of them were eyewitnesses. Matthew's Gospel was certainly not written by an eyewitness, because it depends, to a large extent, upon Mark's Gospel - and what eyewitness would base his memoirs upon someone else's work instead of his own memories? Both Mark's Gospel and Matthew's are the end result of long processes of oral transmission and reflection and they incorporate earlier sources which are now lost to us.

I remember reading an argument by John Macarthur that Matthew was written first that was, at very minimum, interesting. I don't want to repost his argument tonight, but I will do so sometime down the road.

 

[Plotinus]

Plotinus, do you know anything about these?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12888421

There's not really much to say about those, because so little is known. Scholars have only glanced at the covers and a couple of pages. The contents of the books have not been published, let alone translated. It's not yet known when they date from or whether they are Jewish or Christian. At best, there is circumstantial evidence that they're Christian. So they could turn out to revolutionise our understanding of early Christianity, in the same way that they could turn out to confirm it, or could turn out to have nothing to do with it. Anything more is pure speculation.

To be fair, there have been some very lazy autobiographies that do this.

Perhaps; but have there been any that relied almost exclusively upon other sources? That would be a pretty weird autobiography. It's also worth noting that in Matthew's Gospel, even the story of Matthew's calling by Jesus is taken from Mark. If Matthew's Gospel were actually written by Matthew himself, you'd think that would be one bit where he'd have something original to say about it.

I remember reading an argument by John Macarthur that Matthew was written first that was, at very minimum, interesting. I don't want to repost his argument tonight, but I will do so sometime down the road.

Feel free. That would be interesting.

It's not impossible that Mark was written partly on the basis of Matthew, rather than vice versa. This is known as the Griesbach hypothesis, after the scholar who argued for it: he suggested that Matthew was written first, Luke was written using Matthew as a source, and then Mark was written using both Matthew and Luke. A strength of this hypothesis is that it explains why there are some passages where Matthew and Luke agree with each other but disagree with Mark. Passages of that kind are harder to explain on the hypothesis that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark. However, most scholars reject the Griesbach hypothesis, since although it does explain some things, it is scuppered by really big difficulties that the theory of Markan priority explains better.

Moreover, points where Matthew and Luke agree with each other but disagree with Mark can be explained in other ways. For example, a lot of these cases are simple grammatical corrections or improvements, which it is reasonable to think both Matthew and Luke would make independently of each other. Some cannot be explained in this way. One possible explanation is that there were different editions of Mark's Gospel floating around, and that Matthew and Luke both used a slightly different version from the one that made it into the New Testament canon. In fact, we know that there were different editions of Mark's Gospel, since Clement of Alexandria testifies to the existence of a version known as "Secret Mark" which contained passages missing from the canonical Mark (Clement repeats a couple of these passages). Scholars are uncertain what relation Secret Mark bore to canonical Mark or when it was written. But it indicates that it's quite possible that there were different versions even in the first century. John's Gospel, also, seems to have gone through different editions - this is known from internal evidence rather than external.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Feel free. That would be interesting.

I will sometime this week. I'll try to do it today later.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Which Church do you think is doctrinally correct? Don't misinterpret this question, I am not asking about your personal beliefs (Which IIRC you are an agnostic, and so don't have any, or at least not any strong ones) I'm asking which church you think most closely follows Ancient Christianity, and ultimately Christ's teachings (Or what we know of them.)

I just realized I was the last person to post here, and I still haven't looked up the Matthew thing. Oh well, I'll get to it eventually. Forgive me for having been busy...

 

[ParkCungHee]

Perhaps; but have there been any that relied almost exclusively upon other sources? That would be a pretty weird autobiography. It's also worth noting that in Matthew's Gospel, even the story of Matthew's calling by Jesus is taken from Mark. If Matthew's Gospel were actually written by Matthew himself, you'd think that would be one bit where he'd have something original to say about it.

Well yes, because Matthew isn't someone people are interested in except for what he says in his gospel. Autobiographies that are written using other people's sources tend to be from people who are already famous, and decide to write an Autobiography without bothering with the writing.

 

[El_Machinae]

Hey! I heard a new interpretation of Luke 10:18!
"He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."

Historically, my church would've tied that with Lucifer's fall, and Jesus's claim to being older than Abraham (in John). However, what the priest said was that this was in context.

"The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name."

He was saying as if it was in real-time. They bragged about casting out demons and he saw Satan fleeing heaven.

It would be like if my hockey team came to me and said "hey, we scored" and I said "I know! I saw their coach clutch his head in frustration"

It seems this verse is unique to Luke, too. Have you heard that priest's version before?

 

[timtofly]

Hey! I heard a new interpretation of Luke 10:18!
"He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."

Historically, my church would've tied that with Lucifer's fall, and Jesus's claim to being older than Abraham (in John). However, what the priest said was that this was in context.

"The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name."

He was saying as if it was in real-time. They bragged about casting out demons and he saw Satan fleeing heaven.

It would be like if my hockey team came to me and said "hey, we scored" and I said "I know! I saw their coach clutch his head in frustration"

It seems this verse is unique to Luke, too. Have you heard that priest's version before?

Slightly related: in Luke 4:5 the devil "carried" Jesus to the top of a mountain and then to the top of the temple. The air is satan's alleged domain. He was fleeing the scene so fast it looked like lightening that only Jesus could see, or does the word fall describe the action of lightning and the metaphor of the lightening describe how fast satan fled?

 

[Moss]

I feel like this has been discussed somewhere before by you, but I couldn't find it in the index so here it goes:

What evidence (for and against) in the NT is there for the idea that every soul will eventually be reconciled with God?

 

[El_Machinae]

Two more questions!

Academics use their publishing record as a portion of their resume, and they also use their teaching record as a portion of their resume. It strikes me that threads like these are incredibly useful in a social sense. Are you able to use these threads to benefit your academic career?

And, in the Bible, "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." is in the Gospel of Mark. Is it the Pauline books that begin (?) the tradition of teaching the gentiles? If so, is there a chance that there were different traditions in Christianity (i.e., it's only for the Jews or it's for everyone) and that this difference is recorded in the Bible in this text?

I clicked on the Concordance for 'creature'. In many ways, its usage seem to be the same as ours for 'creature', but it also seems to imply "people who've converted into Judaism" too (after a rabbinical usage). So, unless the author is suggesting we preach to our goats and dogs, is it possible that he meant "other Jews"? And this would contradict the branching out into the gentiles we see with (I think) Paul? Or is this commandment (to preach the gospel) part of Mark that was added later, by (putatively) Christians who'd already accepted teaching to gentiles?