Your face is a heretic.

😂

Took the words from my mouth

Do you think ‘Matthew’ was using ‘Mark’ as a source, or that he wrote his gospel independently?

@@endofscene Mark was likely one of his sources. [I say it cautiously because for a long time Matthew was considered to be first and Mark was thought to be an abridgment of Matthew. Scholarly consensus changes.] But Matthew clearly had other sources. Those that think the author of Matthew may have been an eyewitness, would say that Matthew copied some things from Mark as a matter of convenience or as a starting point. There is also an argument that both Matthew and Luke recognize some kind of "authority" (for lack of a better word) behind Mark. The tradition is that Peter was that authority behind Mark. So, they do not contradict, but only expand upon.

The question at hand is whether Jairus' daughter was dead when he approached Jesus. Yes and no, depending on which Gospel you read. Bart Ehrman's decision to highlight such an insignificant contradiction in the Bible is strategic. He understands that for those who are psychologically incapable of acknowledging the myriad contradictions within the Bible, presenting a clear yet minor one might just be the key to open their eyes. However, most of the time it does not work, and the person resorts to forgetting or to any rationalization.

@@vejekeIf you are going to make a semantic argument, which is what you are doing, then be more precise in your semantics. We can be fairly confident (from both accounts) that Jairus' daughter was indeed dead when Jairus approached Jesus. The question is "Did Jairus know that his daughter was dead when he first approached Jesus?" The answer I gave above is that he did not know with certainty, but suspected/worried that she was. In Matthew he expresses it with certainty and in Mark he expresses it with initial uncertainty (that becomes confirmed shortly after their initial meeting). Ehrman contradicted Mark (using your reasoning) when he reports that Mark says Jairus' daughter was ill. This not only is not what Mark says, it is a guess at what caused the daughters death. [Her death could have been caused by an injury rather than an illness.] Now I do not know how far Jairus travelled to get to Jesus, but to say "my daughter is at the point of death" would have a very different meaning if he only travelled 5 minutes than if he had to travel for 5 hours. But neither gospel gives that distance traveled. But given that they did not have motor vehicles back then I suspect it would be more likely 5 hours than it would be 5 minutes. The gospels do not, nor any of the New Testament, pretend to be an exhaustive verbatim account of every event or every dialogue that its books describe. No one, not even conservative Christians, believe that is what the New Testament writer's claim. Only skeptics present the New Testament in such a stilted way in making their straw man arguments.

@@skiamach6208 I'm not making the point you think I am. I'm actually saying that Ehrman points out a clear but minor contradiction because he understands that those who struggle to accept any contradictions in the Bible are less likely to engage in the kind of rationalization you're doing now, especially over something that's ultimately trivial. "dying", "at death’s door", "at the point of death", "at the last extremity", etc. Those, and the Greek text on which they are based, are expressions said about someone who is still alive, not about someone who has already died. So clearly depending on which gospel you read the daughter of Jairus was either alive or dead when he came to Jesus. People who are willing to accept that fact may come to realize the many, many other contradictions in the Bible. People who are not willing to accept that fact will most likely not see any other contradictions whatsoever, nor will they come to be able to do so. That's the reason why Bart is so nitpicky in this case.

Uh! If only you could do the sound for all you tube videos! Oh well.

@@tulpas93 I'm not a sound engineer. But they needed one

@ellie698 Sounded just fine to me (considering what I paid to listen to it), and it seems to me you have more of an ear for this kind of thing! Sounds engineering might be great for you! Good luck in whatever you do!

Not on youtube, but you can find it on our podcast here: soundcloud.com/acadiadiv/immanuel-god-with-us-dr-john-walton

I think he's said Jesus himself does not claim to be God in Mark, not that the author does not perceive him as God.