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TB wrote:

resedit wrote:

The post resurrection appearances of Jesus in Luke could be put into a small time frame. It's as if the author of the gospel had taken the immediacy of Mark's gospel and transferred it to this part of his story.

The end of Luke does not demand a time frame smaller than 40 days.
You are inventing a contradiction where there is none.

I'm inventing nothing. I'm just a reader taking to task a writer who sets high standards for himself and fails to meet them.

A) Luke was not eye witness. He used sources.
B) The details given in Acts add nothing but bloat to the Luke story, the primary purpose of Luke was to document the birth of Christ, the life and ministry of Christ, the death and resurrection of Christ. It was not to document the beginning of the Church.

Luke used Matthew and Mark as sources, yet there are many details in those accounts he does not include.
Take the Sermon on the Mount - he includes very little of it, and most of what he does include from it is scattered through the gospel where it served a purpose to the point he was making.

The details given in Acts, even if he did know them when he wrote Luke (which has not been established but he might have) do not add to the story he was conveying.

There is no contradiction.

Last edited by resedit (2008-11-21 9:41 pm)

resedit wrote:

ukimalefu wrote:

the Camel fitting through the eye of a needle?

There was a small door, built into a bigger door in one of those bible cities. The small door was known as "the eye of the needle". Or so some people say. It was very difficult for a camel to go trough it, but not impossible. Rich people can be good and go to heaven.

I like that theory.

The problem with that  theory is that there is no physical evidence it ever existed and that explanation doesn't start showing up in writings about the passage until well over 1000 years after Christ, so it probably is not accurate.

Its a story invented by rich people.

His words must at the very least mean this — that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy.

There's a proverb - the Love of Money is the root of all evil.
Whether or not you agree with the existence of "evil" in a biblical sense, I think it is quite clear that the pursuit of riches has caused more immoral actions against humanity than almost anything else.

Banks are hurting right now. So, what are they doing to increase their profits?
They are raising the fees on bounced checks, overdrawn accounts, bank accounts with smaller balance, etc.
They are increasing their profits by taking from those who already have less.

They are hurting because their own greed with the subprime loan market got them into trouble, and now those that are hurt the most by the crashed economy - those who are out of their job, out of their home, may no longer be able to afford to send their kids to college, etc. are the ones that are paying higher fees because of the results of the banks greedy blunder.

I'm republican, but sometimes I think we do need to stick it to the man - stick it up his hiney and twist.

Last edited by resedit (2008-11-23 8:30 pm)

Tallgeese wrote:

Metacell wrote:

resedit wrote:

The problem with that  theory is that there is no physical evidence it ever existed and that explanation doesn't start showing up in writings about the passage until well over 1000 years after Christ, so it probably is not accurate.

Its a story invented by rich people.

Chesterton wrote:

The Church has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest — if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this — that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor.

As usual, Chesterton has a wonderful way with words. But I have to trust the "morally untrustworthy, bribed" rich man for my pay cheque at regular intervals, and I don't know if modern society "boiled down to rags" would be a livable (for lack of a better word) society. I'll have to trust the rich for now, however un-Christian that makes me.

resedit wrote:

His words must at the very least mean this — that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy.

There's a proverb - the Love of Money is the root of all evil.

The "proverb" occurs in the 1st letter to Timothy, sometimes attributed to Paul. I say attributed because the "Paul" presented in there is about as interesting as the "Paul" Luke writes about in Acts.

TB wrote:

I don't know if modern society "boiled down to rags" would be a livable (for lack of a better word) society.

It might have to be a society running off of barters rather than money.  I don't know, I think that's pretty manageable and not at all an impediment to being happy.

Sure, I know what you mean about Chesterton.  I was just responding to your point about what he was possibly getting at, and whether such a society is livable.  I've just been thinking about barter systems lately so I wanted to throw my two cents in.

Well, that *is* the answer to your own question, "What about those who have nothing to barter for whatever reason?"  The answer is, if society as a whole were truly living by the Word, they'd help each other willingly when someone was going through a rough time.

Don't interpret that as saying, "Hey, kids, socialism's the way to go!  Keep evening out those salaries and belongings!"  It's just one of a couple verses  can think of where the early Christians helped each other out to enable each other to worship God.  In both cases, the context is that the congregations are getting started and being extra zealous because they're so happy about the good news they've received.  In this case, they're spending days at the temple.  As today, many people couldn't afford to spend days at a temple glorifying God (it doesn't pay the bills), so the wealthier Christians helped out the ones who couldn't afford it.

So if someone, say, lost much of their barter resource to a natural disaster, and were trying to get back on their feet, we'd help 'em out, sure, but eventually we'd rightly expect them to get back on their feet.  God doesn't like a lazybones.