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#764598
conservativevoice
Your 'explanation' stems from several very odd premises for a biblical literalist:
1. You are assuming that NEITHER story actually in the bible is completely accurate. The somehow both authors forgot VERY IMPORTANT details.
2. You are ASSUMING that what actually happened is actually quite different than what the bible says.
Keep thinking like that and you won't be a fundy much longer...
11/12/2008 5:38:13 PM
#764600
Ken
Or, "There is a contradiction but I'm going to mash the two versions together and claim it doesn't exists so nyeah!"
11/12/2008 5:39:01 PM
#764608
Mortok
Wouldn't it have to be a really high tree? Or did he land on a sharp rock? I've fallen on the ground from a height several times, and not once have my intestines spilled out. I'm sure I'd remember if they had.
11/12/2008 5:42:10 PM
#764611
Malkavian Jeff
Recite the verses that says the rope snapped, then I'll believe ya.
11/12/2008 5:43:12 PM
#764612
Pagnostic
Fundies seem to think that if there is any possible way in which two conflicting Bible passages may be reconciled, then it must have happened that way.
Funny that they don't apply this standard to oh, say, the theory of evolution.
11/12/2008 5:43:18 PM
#764617
Aethernaut
I see. So Biblical contradictions are thwarted just by making shit up! That's awesome. That means you can pretty much define Xian doctrine any way you want with "facts" pulled out of your ass. No wonder these people lie so much and pretend that they're not.
11/12/2008 5:44:21 PM
#764627
Slayer
I like how he says he is unsure if this is what really happened, and then absolutely states "There is no contradiction."
Don't you mean "It is possible and probable that there is no contradiction."?
If you assume something is true from the start, you will be able to twist it and fill in the blanks to make it true. I could do the same thing with that Green Eggs and Ham book.
11/12/2008 5:48:30 PM
#764628
TheOutsider
I'm thinking that you have no idea what the word "contradiction" means.
11/12/2008 5:48:47 PM
#764639
a mind far far away
I thought he was being polite, until he said "there is no contradiction". He's right though, this is a distinct possibility, and one of the easier explainable contradictions in the bible. However, Luke, according to the bible, was a doctor, and also an avid historian. Here's the problem. Reading Acts, we learn that Luke was VERY detailed in his discriptions of people, places, and events. So for Luke to say that Judas "fell headlong and burst open" would be difficult to explain away as simply a more vivid picture of someone who hung himself falling to the ground. I could pick it apart with the Greek, but I won't bore everyone here with the details, other than the seemingly easy answer to a supposed contradiction isn't really that easy when one takes a good look at it.
11/12/2008 5:51:59 PM
#764640
Bored One-time Poster
Eh, it's an explanation, but a pretty unsatisfactory one.
Even if Judas had been hanging there dead for quite a long time, I'm not sure he'd be able to drop with enough force to make his intestines gush out. Considering the corpse would probably land on its feet, then topple.
11/12/2008 5:52:23 PM
#764645
Zap
He admitted that he's unsure it's exactly what happened. Not fundie.
11/12/2008 5:54:03 PM
#764650
John
There would never be a contradiction if you can just invent stuff out of thin air. That's how seven year olds try to get out of being punished for breaking the window (e.g., "maybe an alien zapped it with his death ray"). How about:
"he was walking along carrying a rope, he tripped and burst open and strangled himself at the same time"? Or
"he hanged himself, but he didn't know how to do it right and tied the rope around his belly instead of his neck, and when he fell headlong off the barrel he was standing on, it made him burst open"? Or
"He hanged himself by standing on a horse and then smacking the horse to bolt out from under him. But his foot caught in the saddle and he was thrown under the horse and burst open"? or
"the Greek word translated as 'hanging' really meant 'committing suicide', and the most popular way to do that was to fall on the sword" or
"he hanged himself, then the corpse rotted and eventually fell and split open".
(the latter two are actual fundie proposals - none of these address the question of whether he kept the money and bought a field with it (Acts) or threw it on the ground and the Pharisees bought a field with it(Matthew)).
11/12/2008 5:55:23 PM
#764655
Mister Spak
Another explanation is that the bible is a myth.
11/12/2008 5:56:35 PM
#764676
SteelyDanorak
The Bible is God's word, OK? But God's getting on a bit, and you know how it is with old folks, their memories play tricks on them. So here's what really happened. God dictated one account to Matthew and another one to Luke, with both writers transcribing infallibly what had been said to them. But in one case, can't be sure which but it doesn't matter, God wasn't thinking of Judas, but of some other guy who hanged himself. Or whose intestines spilled out.
He should have checked his notes, yeah yeah. But God is God, so both accounts are true. Don't ask me how. His ways are not our ways.
Non-ironic footnote to this: sone Jewish scholars claim that Judas is an invention of the Christian community, generated by the aplogetic need to deflect blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews. Nasty if true; it means that here are the seeds of the anti-Semitism which eventually led to the holocaust. I think that Jesus existed, probably, but did Judas? If he didn't then neither Matthew nor Acts can be trusted in their desriptions of his death!
11/12/2008 6:03:12 PM
#764698
Carbonated Margarine
I gotta admit, that would be cool to see in a movie. You know what would look even more awesome? [*Starts munching popcorn.*] A combination of Halston's demise in Tales From the Darkside: The Movie and Tim Messenger's in Hot Fuzz. [*Spits out burnt kernel.*] Best... (potentially... biblical...) movie... deaths... EVER.
11/12/2008 6:09:10 PM
#764709
Quantum Mechanic
" There is no contradiction. "
Yup
Both are bullshit.
11/12/2008 6:13:10 PM
#764725
Senator
I like the part where he just makes shit up.
11/12/2008 6:17:43 PM
#764731
Kris
My dad "explained" this same contradiction by saying someone used "poetic license", that Judas really hung himself but the midsection bursting open bit was a metaphor.
Meh.
Senator: So, you liked the entire post?
11/12/2008 6:19:25 PM
#764752
Actually, allow me to offer a better explanation for this guy.
First of all, desert area means hot air. Hot air + corpse means a buildup of corpse gasses over time. Touching a corpse was considered ritually unclean, so people left it alone.
The rope breaks, either from the amount of time that passed or the weight of the gasses, the corpse falls, and basically literally explodes from the corpse gasses that had filled its stomach. Such an explosion would most certainly gush his intestines out.
11/12/2008 6:30:14 PM
#764753
Brain_In_A_Jar
If that were true, each gospel would give only a partial account of that story - the authors couldn't do better if they were deliberately trying not to corroborate each other. And you can hardly pull that same defence when we point out that one gospel that describes a goddamn army of the dead rising from their graves and shambling on into town, and none of the others (or any other historical text) even mentioning this astounding and somewhat disgusting miracle.
11/12/2008 6:30:26 PM
#764786
Tom S. Fox
Just as a note, the two accounts are also different in as much that in one he throws away the money he got for betraying Jesus and goes on to hang himself while in the other he keeps the money and buys himself a field where he stumbles and his intestines gush out.
More on this
here and
here.
11/12/2008 6:40:53 PM
#764789
GigaGuess
Except they are both rather clear about completely different causes of death.
11/12/2008 6:41:33 PM
#764834
aaa
That sort of dodging is almost art.
11/12/2008 6:58:18 PM
#764840
Tomby Stone
@ Tom S. Fox.
Clearly Judas was so disgusted with himself that he threw away the money but by chance the money landed in the lap of a man who was selling a field.
In other news, Evolution is just a theory.
11/12/2008 7:00:38 PM
#764884
Actually all you did was create a third contadictory version.
11/12/2008 7:23:43 PM
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