I was thinking about textual criticism the other day (the way people determine which readings of the many manuscripts we have are most-likely original, yes I’m a dork), and I realized something. Namely, I’m thankful to be living in a time when we have a sufficient base of manuscripts so that we can almost be certain of having the original text. Now, I could make up a super-spiritual reason for rejoicing over this (which I have, previously, I think on my old blog), but that would be lying this time. The real reason I’m thankful at the moment? A lot of textual variations were the incorporation of scribal notes in the margins. I just remembered that I have several older bibles with lots of really, really bad notes. I would hate for someone to dig up some “english manuscripts” in 2,000 years with my notes on them and think they might have been original.

Of course, even if that wasn’t the case, my notes would be rejected by means of spelling errors I’m sure.

This was previously posted at my old blog. I had mentioned that I would post it again earlier and am finally getting around to it. This is part 2 of a 2 part series.

In the last post on Luke and Matthew’s account of the death of Judas, I looked at the differing accounts to see if there was a contradiction. I showed that there was not a contradiction for several reasons: The first reason is that Luke’s account of Judas falling presupposes that Judas was at some height in order to fall. This is confirmed by Matthew’s account of Judas hanging himself. Because one account does not exclude the possibility of the other, there is no contradiction. The second reason is that while we can (and, I believe should) take both as historically correct, we can also see possible typological allusions to the Old Testament in Matthew. While I definitely think Matthew uses some typology, I think we should take both accounts as historically accurate because 1)both authors include other details, which seem to point to a historical reality, and 2) both books are written in genres with a historical bent.

In this post, I want to look at some other details that both authors include that also appear at first glance to be contradictory: Who actually bought the field, and who prophesied the events. Here are the two accounts:
Read the rest of this entry

This was previously posted at my old blog. I had mentioned that I would post it again earlier and am finally getting around to it. This is part 1 of a 2 part series.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the apparent contradiction between Luke and Matthew’s accounts of the death of Judas. This discrepancy has long been one of the main issues involved in the debate on the doctrine of inerrancy- the belief that the Bible, in the original writings, are without error due to the superintendence by the Holy Spirit. On a superficial look, it seems that these differences would be contradictory and that the idea of inerrancy is defeated. Here are the accounts:

“And throwing the money down into the temple, Judas left and hanged himself.”
Matthew 27.5

“Judas bought a field a field with the reward he got from his wrong-doing, and falling head-first, his body burst open in the middle and his intestines spilled out.”
Acts 1.18

Read the rest of this entry