From: scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (scharle)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Galileo and Infallibility
Date: 6 Nov 92 21:06:34 GMT
Reply-To: scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (scharle)
Organization: Univ. of Notre Dame

In article <1992Nov5.171845.1@cua.edu>, 75furlong@cua.edu writes:
    [...deletions...]
|> As long as we're discussing Bible inerrancy (also in another post): there are a
|> number of areas where the Bible contradicts itself. It may have been divinely
|> inspired, but it was nonetheless written by men who were (as all humans)
|> flawed, and influenced by the society in which they lived. I don't mean this to
|> sound sarcastic, but if God appeared to me, the last thing I would be worried
|> about would be taking accurate notes. Plus, there is also the issue of
|> translation - for instance, in Hebrew, the word Adham (I'm not sure I have the
|> spelling right on this, it's been a while) means "person." It is a completely
|> genderless term which was translated into the name "Adam" and the word "man" in
|> Genesis. I don't have other examples off the top of my head, but I know that
|> people have done research on this.
    [...more deleted...]
|> -Alison
|>  75furlong@cua.edu
  
    There are books by some of the more single-minded atheists which
list all sorts of Biblical problems.  On the other hand, there are
books by Biblical fundamentalists which give supposed resolutions of
all of the problems.  It is very difficult to find a passage which
can't be contorted around to mean whatever you want, and thus it is
very difficult to prove these contradictions.  I generally find both
kinds of books boring, and the problems easily explained by anyone
who is not hung up on hyper-literal readings. 

    However, in the Letter to Titus, where Paul quotes Epimenides 
the Cretan thus: a prophet of their own says that Cretans are always 
liars ... and this prophesy is true [this is quoted from memory, so 
please feel free to correct me].  This is a statement of the "liar 
paradox", which has some interest in logical theory.  If this 
prophesy is true, then Epimenides, being a Cretan, lied when he said 
it.  Thus, we have a statement which is both a lie and is true.  I 
don't think that this paradox has any importance to Christianity, 
however, only interest as a logical puzzle.
  
    Some of the more widely discussed problems with the Bible are
what gave rise to the "Documentary Hypothesis" -- that there were
four distinct sources for the early books of the Hebrew Bible,
these sources being called J, P, E, D.  Thus these conflicts have 
some importance in Biblical studies.  The multiple sources 
supposedly result in two tellings of the same story being conflated, 
producing contradictions.  For example, in the story of Noah and 
the Ark, at one point Noah is ordered to take two of each kind, and 
at another he is ordered to take seven pairs of the clean kinds; at 
one point the Flood lasts forty days and forty nights, at another, 
one year.  There are also two stories of Creation: that given in 
Genesis 1 and that given in Genesis 2.  Any good commentary on the 
early books will explain this hypothesis.

-- 
Tom Scharle                |cm65n6@irishmvs(Bitnet)
Room G003 Computing Center |scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu(Internet)
University of Notre Dame  Notre Dame, IN 46556-0539 USA
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic