From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: _Jesus: A Life_ by A.N. Wilson
Date: 4 Jan 93 20:59:37 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1993Jan02.042224.5134@jcnpc.cmhnet.org> mam@jcnpc.cmhnet.org (Mike A. McAngus) writes:
>Thomas Price (tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu) wrote:
>: >Some quotes from Larry Stammer, ``Not the Stuff of Sermons'', Los
>: >Angeles Times Book Review, Sunday, December 20, 1992, pp. 2,4. The
>: >article is a review of the book _Jesus: A Life_ by A.N. Wilson (W.W.
>: >Norton: $22.95; 256 pp.).
>
>[all except the following deleted]
>
>: >   "+ Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking God to spare
>: >      him from the cup of death but nonetheless bowing to God's will,
>: >      is a literary creation. If Jesus prayed while his disciples
>: >      slept, who jotted down a transcript of the conversation?"
>:
>: An alternative explanation is divine inspiration, which is supposedly the
>: method of composition of the book. Consequently, this observation is
>: not independently significant: it is subordinate to the result of inquiry
>: about inspiration, and can add nothing nor take anything away from
>: that debate.
>
>Ah yes, devine inspiration.  The method where people can expound with authority
>concerning events about which they know nothing.  The NT is full of them.
>-- 
>Mike McAngus                    |You are a fluke of the Universe.  You have no 
>mam@jcnpc.cmhnet.org            |right to be here, and whether you can hear it
>The Truth is still the Truth    |or not the Universe is laughing behind your 
>Even if you choose to ignore it.|back.  -- National Lampoon, Deteriorata

Instead of "divine inspiration", consider the possibility of supersensible
or clairvoyant vision.  The question then becomes, not whether it was possible
for the event to have been observed, but rather the purity and veracity of
both the experience and the account of it.  John speaks of this kind of
experience directly, as being "in the spirit". when the visions of the
Apocalypse were revealed to him.  He then had to write them down in 
words.

Add to this the possibility that Christ himself related the events of
Gethsemane to the disciples after the resurrection.  He, after all, was
awake.   He appeared to the disciples and taught them many things for forty
days.  The Gospels never claimed to record everything that he said and
did, and John even indicates that if it were all written down the world
would not be big enough for all the books that would have to be written.
The Gospels never claim to be a compendium of all knowledge about Christ,
nor do they attempt to be self proving.  

The point is that there are other alternatives to the two
presented by Wilson - either a physical eyewitness testimony or a
literary fabrication.  Unfortunately, both skeptics and fundamentalists
have put themselves into materialistic straitjackets in trying to
imagine how these things could be.

In this endless debate about the inspiration of the Bible, inspiration
suffers at the outset from a conception of it that is narrow and
materialistic.  First, it is imagined that inspiration is some kind
of stenographic dictation where a voice from heaven tells the
prophet or evangelist word for word what to write down.  Second,
inspiration has become too tightly coupled with the concept of
letter for letter inerrancy.

At least it should be considered that there are many different
states of consciousness, both above and below that which we call
everyday waking consciousness. To reduce the possibilities to our
own modern everyday experience is to put blinders on and limit
the possibilities for new understanding.

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy