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Turkel:
That the events framed by [bold print] are not found in any other Gospel is the root of the argument encapsulated above. Surely if this had happened, Mark, Luke and John would have written it down in their record? We reply that this is no more than a badly-informed argument from silence. Ahistoricity of the quake and saints may be suggested on other grounds, but we shall see that the silence of the other writers is not one of them. Till: Let's suppose that a document should be found that purported to be a firsthand account of events that happened in Sainte-Mère-Église, France, on June 6, 1944, but made no mention of the allied assault on the Normandie beaches or of the liberation of Sainte-Mère-Église, which was the first town to be liberated by American forces, or of any other events related to the D-Day invasion. Would Turkel think that it was authentic? Would he try to explain the silence of the document on these events by rationalizing that it just may not have been within the scope of the author's purpose to mention anything related to D-Day or that the assault on the Normandie beaches and the fierce fighting that followed in the town, when 82nd Airborne paratroopers landed in and around it and drove the Germans out, just may have passed unnoticed by the author of the document or that the author's supply of paper could have been so limited that he had to leave out these details? Such speculations would be soundly rejected by sensible people. After all, how could anyone write a firsthand historical account of what happened in Sainte-Mère-Église on June 6, 1944, and not mention events related to D-Day? I have entitled this reply to Turkel "Crimes of Speculation," and as readers go on
beyond this point, they will see why I gave it this title.
Central to this assumption is that such an event as the QS could not have been missed by the other Gospels if it had really happened. But this is utterly presumptuous. There is far too much we do not know about the QS to assume that it could not possibly have been missed. Glenn Miller has made some of these points, and we add some of our own: Till: Turkel: How strong the quake was. We are only told that it caused rocks to split, but rocks may split under any degree of pressure depending upon such factors as mineral composition, previous stresses (water, previous quakes, etc), original formation, and location relative to the epicenter. We also do not know how many rocks were split and where they were located. Near Jerusalem? Out in the country? Minor quakes can be missed easily be [sic] those who are outdoors,[sic] As most people would have been at the Passover festival during the day. Till: There have been strong earthquakes along the New Madrid fault since then but nothing like those in 1811-1812. This area of the country experiences 150 or more minor to moderate earthquakes each year, so as I was growing up just 40 miles from New Madrid and about 30 miles from present-day Marston (Missouri), located by the epicenter of the 1811-1812 quakes, the moving and shaking of the earth became a routine fact of life that we thought nothing of. It was fairly commonplace to be sitting at home when dishes and windows would rattle or to be in school when desks would quiver and feet pressed against the concrete floor would tingle. These were very minor quakes, but I can assure Mr. Turkel that people living in the area were aware of even the minor ones. I now live in Central Illinois, about 320 miles north of New Madrid, Missouri, but there are times when the earth will quiver and shake here. When it happens in day time when people are awake, they are aware of it, so all of Turkel's quibbling above did nothing but demonstrate his ignorance of the science of earthquakes. As I read though his quibbles above, I wondered if he had even read Matthew's account of this earthquake, for if he had, I don't see how he could have quibbled that the quake was so slight that others didn't notice it. Here is Matthew's description of that alleged quake. Notice the expressions in bold print.
Any reasonable person reading this can see the description of what was allegedly a very noticeable earthquake. The text plainly says that the centurion and those with him saw the earthquake and what took place. If they saw it, then they must have seen the effects that earthquakes produce, such as swaying trees and buildings and movements in the earth (such as splitting rocks), so what is Turkel's rationale for claiming that the quake was so slight that the others, besides Matthew, probably didn't notice it. Would the centurion and the other Romans assigned to watch Jesus have been terrified by a little bitty quake so slight that most people there didn't even notice it? No, folks, you are seeing an example of the desperate extremes that some biblicists will go to in order to find inerrancy in the Bible. They allow allegiance to an untenable belief suppress their common sense. In his quibbling, Turkel asked where the rocks were located that had split during the quake. Were the rocks in Jerusalem or out in the country? Well, I will remind him again that Matthew's text plainly says that the centurion and those with him "saw the earthquake and what took place." So if they saw what took place during the quake and if the splitting of rocks was part of what took place, why wouldn't that bit of information have located the quake close enough to the site of the crucifixion for the Roman soldiers to see the results of it. Are we supposed to believe that they had telescopic vision that enabled them to see rocks splitting somewhere out in the country? No, Turkel is just trying to quibble his way around a serious problem in the biblical text. Reasonable readers will also see that the description of the quake said that the rocks split and "the tombs were opened," so clearly the intention of "Matthew" was to present this as some kind of intervention from God that ripped the veil in the temple, split the rocks, and opened the tombs. Notice that the passive voice was used in reference to the tombs: the tombs were opened. It does not say that the tombs opened; it says that the tombs were opened, so if they were opened, they had to have been opened by something, and the clear intention of the writer was to convey that they were opened by the earthquake. Does Turkel seriously expect reasonable readers to think that these tombs were opened by the jarring of an earthquake so slight that most people present didn't even notice it? No, folks, this guy is flagrantly quibbling. I will have more to say about the tombs as I go through Turkel's quibbling efforts to make the resurrection of the "many" saints something so uneventful that it also passed unnoticed by most people present. Turkel: Till: Turkel: Till: Turkel: Till:
Most of these articles were posted at 11:53 AM on Sunday, February 20, 2005, but some were posted in May and one on August 31, 2005. 11:53 AM on Sunday! Golly, did Bobby skip church that day? At any rate, these quotations from his articles show that misspelling gist wasn't just a one time incident. He who constantly tries to dupe his readers into believing that he is an expert in biblical languages doesn't even know how to spell a very common English word. I could fill a book with examples like these from Turkel's website. His understanding of English punctuation rules, for example, is nothing short of appalling for someone who considers himself a "writer." The irony in the problems that he has with his own native language is that he seems to think that readers should believe that he knows what he is talking about when he says such things as, "The Greek word here is..." or, "The Hebrew word here is...." Now as for Turkel's question about what "great mourning" meant in Matthew 2:18, whether in time or "level," if I had to guess, I would say that in this case it referred to the intensity of the grief that would have been expressed by crying and wailing, but the best way to nip this quibble in the bud is to show how polus was used in several New Testament examples, but first we should let experts in Greek tell us what this word polus meant rather than an amateur like Turkel who, as the quotation below shows, once thought that "rise again" in Greek was expressed by using the word anestimi twice. Notice the part that I have emphasized in bold print.
When I exposed this as a colossal error that not even a first-year student of Greek would have made, Turkel immediately edited the mistake out of his article, when he saw my exposure of it, and made the paragraph above read like this:
Then when Turkel "replied" to my reply, he tried to put the blame for the mistake on his QuickVerse software package, but there was no mistake in the package, which I also have installed in my computer. Turkel simply misunderstood what the program said about the meaning of anistemi, but that is so typical of Turkel. When he is caught in a mistake, he will rework his article to eliminate it and then try to deny that he is to blame for the error. I can't link to specific sections in Turkel's articles, as I do to my own, but if readers will click the link above and scroll down to the third paragraph, they will see the section where Turkel tried to put the blame for his mistake onto his software program, or they can link to this section of my reply to Turkel's first article and go directly to where I exposed his amateurish appeal to Greek. Hence, readers can be assured that Turkel is no expert in Greek, so that is why I am going to appeal to Arndt & Gingrich's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament to give readers a more authoritative view of how polus was used in the New Testament. This lexicon defines polus as "many, numerous" and "many, large, great, extensive, plentiful" (University of Chicago Press, 1957, pp. 694-695), so it immediately appears rather inconceivable that Matthew would have used this word to refer to those who were resurrected from the shaken tombs if there had been only one or two or three or four of them. Turkel's quibble can be made even more inconceivable by looking at some actual usages of this word in situations were numerous people were obviously being referred to. This word was used twice in Matthew 7:21-23.
Are we supposed to believe that in a situation where Jesus was trying to warn his audience that not everyone who said to him Lord, Lord would enter the kingdom of heaven, he used an example of "many" in the sense of just one or two or three or four being turned away from the kingdom while claiming that they had prophesied in his name, cast out demons in his name, and done many powerful deeds in his name? Are we supposed to believe that those on this occasion who claim that they had done "many deeds of power" in the name of Jesus were really claiming that they had done only one or two such deeds? It was used in Matthew 8:30.
Are we supposed to believe that these "many swine" {KJV, ASV, NASV] that Jesus sent crashing into the sea were only two or three pigs? Would the writer have called just one or two or even ten swine a "whole herd"? It was used in Matthew 13:17.
We know, of course, that Jesus meant that only two or three prophets and a couple of righteous people had longed to see what the people of Jesus's time were witnessing. We have Turkel's assurance of that. It was used in Matthew 24:11.
Of course, we know now--thanks to Turkel--that Jesus was telling his disciples that only three or four false prophets would arise to lead his disciples astray. It was used in Matthew 20:28.
Gee, I had always thought that the New Testament taught that Jesus had given himself a ransom for everyone, but now I find out--thanks to Turkel--that he had given himself a ransom for just two or three or three or four or five or six or ten at the most. You learn something new every day, don't you? And, what do you know, it was also used in Matthew 4:25.
Silly me, I had always thought that Jesus had preached the sermon on the mount to a large audience, but--thanks to Turkel--I now know that he preached to only two or three or six or seven or ten at the most. It was also used in Matthew 14:14.
I had always thought that wherever Jesus went huge crowds followed him, but now I know--thanks to Turkel--that this wasn't the case. Only a couple or three stragglers were tailing along behind him. As this story continued, we find that this was the occasion when Jesus fed the "great multitude" with just five loaves and two fish. I had always thought that this was quite a miracle, but now I know that it wasn't, because only a handful of people were fed, and five loaves and two fish would have been plenty enough to feed them. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I forgot! I forgot! Verse 21 says that this "great multitude" was about five thousand men, besides women and children. I guess that means that polus in this context meant several thousand people, so is it possible that the "many saints" in Matthew 27:52 also numbered in the thousands or at least the hundreds? Nah, that just couldn't be. We have Turkel's word for that. Another "great [polus] multitude" followed Jesus in Matthew 15:30, and they turned out to number more than four thousand.
Jesus pulled an encore here and fed this "great crowd" too with just seven loaves and "a few fish," and v:38 claims that this "great [polus] crowd" numbered four thousand men, besides the women and children, so the longer we go, the more we are seeing that "many" [polus in Greek] really meant many, so could the "many saints" in Matthew 27 have been... well, many saints? I had always thought that Jesus had performed another great miracle when he told the disciples, who had fished all night without success, to go out to the deep water and cast their nets into the sea, which afterwards brought in a "great [polus] multitude of fish," which was so heavy that the nets were breaking Luke 5:3-7, but now I know that the disciples had only had some more slim pickings on that day, because many or great didn't really mean "many" or "great." But what about the nets breaking? Wouldn't that indicate that hundreds or thousands of fish had been caught? Nah, not at all. There is an easy, à la Turkel way to explain that. What undoubtedly happened was that the disciples snagged just a couple of whoppers on that day, which were heavy enough to break their nets. The book of Acts speaks of "a great [polus] number" who believed (Acts 11:21) and "a great [polus] multitude of both Jews and Greeks" who believed (Acts 14:1), and, stupid little me, I had always thought that this meant that the church back then was growing with leaps and bounds but now--thanks to Turkel--I know better. Only a handful here and there were converting. I just have to call attention to how polus was used in the book of Revelation.
I suspect that even Turkel could count a "multitude" of only nine or ten, so if this was a multitude that "no one could count," the word polus had to signify thousands or even millions or more. Well, why continue this? The point has been made. As his quibbles usually do, this one has also backfired in Turkel's face. Matthew said that "many" saints were resurrected and went into the city and appeared to "many," and we have just seen that this word [polus] was consistently used in the New Testament to signify large numbers. What Turkel needs to do now is produce some examples from the New Testament where the word was used to signify just a handful of people. Common sense would tell most readers that Matthew's motive in relating this story about the earthquake and the resurrection of the many saints was to claim that the hand of God was in the events of that day. Otherwise, why would he have bothered to relate it? The effect that he wanted to achieve was the one that he claimed for the centurion and his troop, who saw the earthquake and the things that "took place" and then said, "Surely, this was the Son of God." That effect would not have been achieved by an earthquake so slight that most people on the scene didn't recognize it and a resurrection of saints who were so few in number that their rising from their tombs had gone unnoticed by everyone but "Matthew." Turkel's quibbling continued. Turkel: Till: Turkel Till: Turkel: Till: Now Turkel's crimes of speculation turned to quibbling about what kind of bodies the resurrected saints had. Turkel: Till: According to the tales about the alleged postresurrection appearances of Jesus, he claimed that his body bore the signs of his crucifixion.
If these passages do not mean that the writers thought that the [snicker, snicker] resurrected body of Jesus was the physical body that had been crucified, then I would like to know what they mean. All of Turkel's talk about what kind of bodies the resurrected saints had is just a smokescreen to distract attention from the problem posed by the silence of the other gospels on the alleged resurrection of the "many saints," because whatever kind of bodies they presumably had, they were bodies that could be seen and recognized, because verse 53 says that these "many saints" went into "the holy city and appeared to many." How could they have appeared to many, whether these "many" were many or just Turkel's speculative ten, unless they were in bodies that could be seen? The kind of bodies that the saints had when they were resurrected is therefore irrelevant to the issue of why John, who was presumably an eyewitness to the events of that day, did not mention an earthquake that shook open tombs of dead "saints," who were then resurrected. Besides all of these problems in Turkel's quibbles, there is one very clear statement in Matthew 27:52 that kicks the props right out from under his quibbles about what kind of bodies these "many saints" had after they were resurrected. The verse just cited clearly says that "many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised," so the inspired, inerrant "word of God" says that the bodies were resurrected. If the bodies were resurrected, then that which the spirits [snicker, snicker] of these saints were living in when they died, was resurrected. If not, why not? Turkel's crimes of speculation continued. Turkel: Till: Turkel: Till: Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to comment on nonsense about postresurrection, postascension, glorified bodies, when those who talk of such things have no real evidence that they even exist. I will leave this point with a challenge for Turkel to describe to us what postresurrection, preascension, postascension, and glorified bodies look like. Has he ever seen any such bodies? Of course, he hasn't, but he believes in them because he believes in the theological nonsense that has been written about vague New Testament passages that are used to prove the existence of such bodies. Turkel: Till: This is another part of the smokescreen that Turkel is laying down to try to hide the fact that he has no sensible explanation for silence about extraordinary events in an allegedly eyewitness account of events on crucifixion day. Just look at what Turkel expects us to believe.
I am sure that any sensible person can see that if John really was wanting people to believe that Jesus was the Christ, as he claimed he wanted, none of these events just listed would have compared in importance to the three extraordinary events (the midday darkness, the earthquake, and the resurrection of the saints) that he completely omitted. The Roman soldiers saw the earthquaked and what took place and then declared that this man [Jesus] was surely the son of God, but does Turkel think that anyone present on that day saw the sign on the cross and said, "Surely this man was the son of God," or saw the soldiers casting lots for Jesus's coat, and said, "Surely this man was the son of God." Turkel obviously has no sensible explanation for why an eyewitness to events of that day would have omitted all references to these extraordinary events, which, according to "Matthew" had accomplished the very thing that "John" said that he was writing to achieve. The final sentence of my article "The Absence of Evidence" said, "Sometimes the silence of secular history screams, but biblicists just can't seem to hear it." The same is true of silence in parallel biblical accounts, which omit references to extraordinary events included in some of the other parallels, and in Turkel's quibbling, we are seeing that he can't hear the screaming. Turkel: Till:
We see in these examples something that I have often said about Turkel: inconsistency is about his only consistency. He plays both sides of the street, so when he needs to argue that the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus is supported by "witnesses" who saw him after he had risen, he will cite the 500 unknown brethren with no reservations about appealing to witnesses whose identities were unknown, but when faced with the problem of explaining why John didn't mention many resurrected saints who were seen by many, he will scream, "Hey, how can we talk of witnesses if we do not know who they are?" Yes, indeed, inconsistency is about the only consistency in Turkel's articles. The position that he takes in any given situation will depend on what direction the winds of controversy are blowing. Here is a problem for Turkel to deal with. Well, let me reword that. He won't "deal" with the problem; he will just ignore it, but if this resurrection of "many"--or even just ten--saints really happened, it had to have happened because of divine intervention, so let Turkel give us a logical reason why "God" would have caused this extraordinary event if it wasn't done to let the people present that day know that he had caused it. In other words, as I noted above, why would "God" have caused this event except for the purpose of demonstrating to the people present what the Roman soldiers allegedly came to realize, i. e., this man [Jesus] was the son of God. Why, then, would God have intervened to cause a puny little earthquake that most people present were not even aware of and why would he have resurrected "many"--or just ten--saints if he was going to keep the event so unobtrusive that for all intents and purposes it amounted to a nonevent? This is the kind of silliness that would-be apologists like Turkel have to resort to in trying to defend their untenable belief in biblical inerrancy. Turkel; Till: This rambling nonsense, folks, is typical of the desperate extremes that Turkel will go to in order to defend his untenable belief in biblical inerrancy. He talks often about "bottom lines," so here is a bottom line for him to deal with. Three very extraordinary events on crucifixion day were not mentioned by the apostle John in his gospel, and two of the events were not mentioned by Mark or Luke. Those omissions are serious enough to cast doubts on the claims about "eyewitness accounts" and divine "inspiration" of those who wrote the gospels. We have seen enough from Turkel to know that he has no plausible explanations for these omissions. And if he screams again that Till is upset because "God" didn't kiss his patoot, as he has been known to do, that may be emotionally satisfying to him and may tickle the fancy of his gullible choir members, but it will not be an adequate response to this problem. At this point, all that Turkel could do was quibble endlessly, as his crimes by speculation continued below. Turkel: Till: Turkel, of course, is not going to agree to do this, because he doesn't want his choir members to see how easily he can be taken to the cleaners by informed opposition. Turkel: Till:
From all this, one can reasonably conclude that "Matthew" meant for his readers to understand that the resurrection of these "saints" happened somewhere outside the city, presumably close enough to the crucifixion site for spectators to witness the miracles that made the Roman soldiers declare that this man [Jesus] was surely the son of God. Why would God have wasted a miracle as extraordinary as the resurrection of "many saints" in a place located on another side of the city where those who might see it wouldn't recognize its significance? At any rate, the where and when they were raised are irrelevant, because if "many"--or ten--were raised and if these "many"--or ten--went into the city where they were seen by "many"--or ten--this would have created a furor that would surely have attracted enough attention to bring more than just one brief mention in one of the gospels. Is Turkel really so ignorant that he actually believes that if ten people known to have been dead should suddenly appear to ten people, they wouldn't have excitedly told others, "I saw Joe and Bill and Mary and Jane walking about alive in the city"? Turkel's mission, should he accept it, is to explain why "John" who was present at that place and time would have omitted such events as this from his account of what happened that day so that he would have enough space on his scroll to report such trivial things as the location of the crucifixion site somewhere "near the city." And he should keep in mind that yelling, "Till is upset because God didn't kiss is patoot," is still an unsatisfactory explanation for this inconceivable silence. As for what form the "saints" were in, I showed above that Matthew's text clearly said that the bodies of many of the saints were raised, so their "form" would have been... well, their bodies, just as the New Testament seemed clear in communicating that the body of Jesus and not his spirit was resurrected (Luke 24:39). Turkel might spare himself embarrassment if he would spend a little more time reading the Bible to try to learn what is in it rather than cutting and pasting from DeMar, Keener, McComiskey, Stuart et al, who like Turkel have obvious agendas to pursue. Turkel: Till: If Turkel is going to argue that Matthew wasn't present but got his information from who knows where or whom, he will reduce the gospel of Matthew to just another ancient document that is worth no more than anything else written in that time. Turkel is arguing that he doesn't know where or from whom Matthew got his information but that somehow he knows that the information is inerrant. At the same time, he claims that "inspiration" in biblical times meant no more than we mean when we talk about an inspired "work of art."
If, however, that is all that divine inspiration was, Turkel, as I noted in the article linked to above, has reduced all biblical books to a collection of ancient writings worth no more than the "works of art" that he referred to.
As shown by the quotation above taken from Turkel's article, he likes to talk about "robotic dictation" as if the use of this term discredits those who refer to the biblical doctrine of verbal spiration, but if this guy knew diddly squat about the Bible, he would know that the Bible clearly teaches that "inspiration" by God meant to biblical writers that the very words that they wrote were the words of God. Turkel cannot remove the fact that the Bible teaches the doctrine of verbal inspiration by disparagingly using the term "robotic dictation." Has Turkel never read the tale about the scroll that Jeremiah wrote "from the mouth of Yahweh" and the way that it was replaced after king Jehoiakim had burned it? As I go through the relevant verses in the biblical text, please notice the expressions emphasized in bold print. I will quote from Turkel's beloved KJV.
Notice how the text constantly spoke of "words" that Jeremiah was to write, which words were identified as words that had been spoken by Yahweh. Notice that Jeremiah himself didn't write the words but called for the scribe Baruch, who "wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of Yahweh." That certainly sounds like what Turkel disparagingly refers to as "robotic dictation." In fact, the NIV, which Turkel will often appeal to when he finds in it something supportive of whatever doctrine du jour he is defending, says in verse 4 that "Jeremiah dictated all the words the LORD had spoken to him" and that "Baruch wrote them on the scroll." Notice too that the final verse quoted about says that what was in the scroll was "written from [Jeremiah's] mouth" and that these were "the words of Yahweh." The NIV says that these were the words of [Yahweh], which Baruch had written as "I [Jeremiah] dictated." But the story of this scroll gets worse for Turkel's disparaging comment about "robotic dictation." Baruch took the scroll into the temple and read "the words of Jeremiah" (36:10). One of the people present, Micaiah the son of Gemariah, then went to where the princes were gathered and told them about the scroll, and they sent a messenger to bring Baruch to them. When Baruch read the scroll to them, their reaction brought a comment from Baruch that again supports the "robotic dictation" view of inspiration, which Turkel seems to think that he can make vanish from the Bible by insulting it.
This sounds again like the "robotic dictation" that Turkel speaks so disparagingly of, doesn't it? The NIV, which is Turkel's second favorite version, has Baruch telling the princes that "he [Jeremiah] dictated all these words to me, and I wrote them in ink on the scroll." After Turkel has banged his head against these biblical claims about divine inspiration, he can take two aspirins and call an ambulance.But the beat goes on. The princes did take the scroll to the king, who interrupted the reading of it, cut it with a knife, and threw it into a fire (36:20-23). Yahweh reacted with a command for Jeremiah to reproduce the destroyed scroll and add to it some choice words about Jehoiakim.
The NIV, which I suspect that Turkel won't be appealing to in any matter pertaining to the inspiration of Jeremiah, says in the verse quoted above that "as Jeremiah dictated, Baruch wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire." As I have noted before, the Bible clearly teaches verbal inspiration, a doctrine that Turkel cannot accept without having to surrender his quibbles about paper shortages, oral tradition, strict consistency not mattering to those in biblical times, being right if the people of the time thought it was right, etc., etc., etc., and so he choses to disregard what the Bible clearly says about the "inspiration" process. Once Turkel rejects the biblical doctrine of verbal inspiration, however, he puts himself into a predicament that leaves him with no satisfactory answers to the questions I asked in my reply to his "robotic dictation" comment above. If Matthew wasn't present on the day of the crucifixion and if he was "inspired" only in the sense of those who produce "works of art" were inspired, Turkel can give no logical reason why we should think that Matthew's gospel is inerrant. I have said it before, and I will say it again: when Bible believers reject the doctrine of verbal inspiration, as Turkel has, they are left with no basis at all to claim biblical inerrancy or even any degree of biblical authority. This is another "bottom line" that he will ignore. Turkel: Till:
Hammurabi obvious thought that he had been chosen by his gods. He also thought that Babylon would be an "everlasting kingdom," which is reminiscent of biblical claims that the kingdom of David would last forever 2 Sam. 7:12-16; Psalm 89:36; 1 Chron. 22:10). Babylon did not become an everlasting kingdom, just as David's kingdom did not endure forever. The similarity in these two claims should convince sensible people--which would, of course, exclude Turkel--that the Bible simply expressed the views of the time, and by surrendering the biblical view of verbal inspiration, Turkel has surrendered any right to claim that what the Bible says is any more true and authoritative than what... well, the Code of Hammurabi says. Let's go now to the epilogue of the code to look at more of Hammurabi's beliefs about his divine mission.
There are many more references in this ancient Babylonian document to gods and the favors that they had bestowed on Hammurabi. If one should rewrite this code and substitute Yahweh wherever a Babylonian god was mentioned and substitute David for Hammurabi, one would think that he was reading pages from the Bible. Those who refuse to accept the biblical claims of verbal inspiration and teach instead that the biblical writers received their information from oral tradition and people and other sources that they had contact with, as Turkel repeatedly does in his articles, cannot give any logical reasons why the Bible should be considered any more true and authoritative than the Code of Hammurabi and other ancient documents such as those mentioned above. If Turkel says, "Well, those are obviously tributes to false religions unlike the Bible's advocacy of true religion," he will be caught engaging in special pleading again. If he quibbles that the endurance of the Bible proves that it is true, he will then have to explain why the Bhagavad-Gita and the Zoroastrian Avesta, which are both older than the Bible, are not true. Those who claim that the Bible is true because it was verbally inspired of God have legs to stand on; those who reject the doctrine of verbal inspiration don't. The matter is that simple. Turkel: Till: If we can't conceive of reliable historians omitting references to extraordinary natural events like those above, how much more inconceivable is it that an eyewitness to the events on crucifixion day would have omitted references to miraculous events like a three-hour period of midday darkness and a resurrection of "many saints" whose tombs were shaken open by an earthquake? This would be so inconceivable that any sensible person will see very good reasons to doubt that "John" was an actual eyewitness of what happened on that day. Furthermore, the very nature of these claims makes Matthew's account of them suspect, because it is infinitely more probable that an ancient author writing decades after the alleged facts about darkness at midday and resurrections from the dead was superstitiously exaggerating, transmitting unconfirmed hearsay/legend, or outright lying than that such remarkable events as these actually happened. In a word, Turkel is living in a dream world if he thinks that he can make rational people think that such tales as these are historically reliable. Likewise, by claiming that "Matthew" and "John" were "inspired" only in the sense that those who have produced "works of art" were inspired, Turkel further weakens his claim that these gospel accounts are historically reliable. Turkel: Till: At this point, Turkel turned to another quibble, so I will drive the final nail on this point into Turkel's hide dangling on the wall by recommending "What Happened to the Resurrected Saints?" an article in which Ed Babinski showed in detail the folly of believing in this ridiculous claim, and also "More About the Resurrected Saints," a follow-up article that I wrote on the subject. These articles and my point-by-point replies to Turkel above have hammered him flatter than a cow patty. Now prepare yourselves for another effort by Turkel to defend his paper-shortage quibble. Turkel:
It does not take much to see that each Gospel writer does include things that are unique. Some of these are non-spectacular [sic] events, but both Luke and John are alone in reporting certain miraculous events, especially John. Till: That is the way that Turkel would quibble, but I am not going to play that game. I have shown above that polus was a word used to signify "numerous" of whatever was being reported, so there is no reason to think that it didn't mean that in the verse that Turkel quoted above. Obviously, then, "John" was claiming here that Jesus had done numerous things that weren't included in this gospel account. A more sensible reply to this "argument" would be, to adapt a phrase from Turkel, "Yeah, so what?" After all, what person would be naive enough to think that a biographical account of a person's life would include every piddling little thing that he had done? With this concession, what Turkel needs to do now is prove that those "many" other things that Jesus did, which "John" didn't mention were anywhere comparable to a three-hour period of midday darkness and a resurrection of "many" saints who appeared to "many" and that they were deeds that would have contributed to his purpose of wanting to write the things about Jesus that would cause readers to believe that he was "the Christ" (20:31). There are a couple of other points to consider about John 21:35, which Turkel quoted above in support of his so-what attitude about "John"s" omission of references to extraordinary miracles that allegedly happened on the day of the crucifixion. First, we have been talking about why "John," who was presumably an eyewitness to the events of that day, would not have mentioned the three hours of midday darkness, the earthquake that shook the tombs open, and the subsequent resurrection of the "many" saints who went into the city and appeared to "many." None of these were "things" that Jesus did; they were miracles that happened independently of anything that Jesus, who was hanging between life and death, did that day. In other words, these three extraordinary events that "John" omitted in his gospel were not "things" that Jesus had done in the sense of healing the deaf, the blind, and the lame or changing water into wine or walking on water or calming storms. "John" said that Jesus had done many other "things" that were not written in his book, so what would "things" be? Would they necessarily have been extraordinary events like a three-hour period of darkness at midday or a resurrection of "many" saints who were seen by "many"? An examination of the book of John will show that its author used some of the scarce space on his scroll--which Turkel is always talking about--to record just ordinary things, like those below, that Jesus had done.
I will ask readers to bear with me, because the purpose of this listing of ordinary events that "John" recorded in the life of Jesus will become obvious when I come to where Turkel recycled his paper-shortage quibble, so let's look at some more ordinary "things" that "John" recorded in the life of Jesus.
I could continue through the rest of "John" to list all of the "things" that Jesus had done (according to John), but these are enough to make my point. Those who take the time to analyze all of the deeds that "John" claimed that Jesus did will find that most of them, like those above, were unmiracuous, ordinary events. The list above takes readers through the first six chapters of John, and in all of those chapters only four miracles had been recorded: (1) changing the water to wine [2:6-11] at the wedding in Cana (2) healing the nobleman's son [4:46-54] in Capernaum (3) healing the lame man [5:6-9] by the pool of Bethesda (4) feeding the five thousand [6:8-13] with five loaves and two fish. So consider what we have here. "John," who according to Turkel's quibbling below, just couldn't spare the space to mention the midday darkness, the earthquake, and the resurrection of "many saints" on the day of the crucifixion, nevertheless had plenty of space to tell all of the ordinary events related above--and many others that were told in chapters 7-21. Just think about it. Turkel expects rational people to believe that "John" didn't mention the three miracles we have been talking about because he just couldn't squeeze them into the limited space on his scroll, but he had plenty of room to tell his readers that Jesus went up on a mountain and sat there with his disciples, and he also had enough space to tell about the feeding of the five thousand, which all three of the synoptic gospels (written before "John") had already recorded. Before Turkel comes back with a citation of John 20:30-31, which says that Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that were not written in this book, I will head that quibble off at the pass too. "Signs" would have been miracles, and as Turkel himself noted in his "Come Again" attempt to prove preterism, "(t)he word here [Matt. 24:30] is semeion, used by John often to refer to Jesus' miracles; the word itself denotes a token of identification or verification," so let's just take Turkel's own explication of this word and run with it. In 20:30, "John" used semaino, the root word from which semeion was derived, so if Turkel was right about how John used this word, "John" meant that Jesus had performed many "tokens of verification" in the presence of his disciples that were not included in this gospel. That would mean that "John" was saying that many "tokens of verification" that Jesus had done in the presence of his disciples had been omitted from this gospel but that these--the "tokens of verification" that were included in this gospel--were written so that "you may believe that Jesus is the Christ," so we are right back to square one. Turkel must explain to us why "John," if his purpose in writing his gospel was to report the "tokens of verification" that would instill belief that Jesus was "the Christ," omitted all references to the midday darkness, the earthquake, and the resurrection of the many saints, which, according to "Matthew," were proven "tokens of verification," which had caused the Roman soldiers to declare that "this [man] was surely the son of God." Turkel: Till: In addition to this tip-off to multiple scholarship, scholarly consensus--which again does not include fundamentalists--is that chapter 21 shows a style in Greek that is too different from the rest of the book to have been written by the same author. (I lay no claim to enough expertise in Greek to make this judgment about stylistic difference; I am just reporting what the scholarly consensus is.) The author of this 21st-chapter addition inadvertently betrayed the multiple authorship in verse 24--"This is the disciple [singular] who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we [plural] know that his testimony is true." We is plural, but the writer of this gospel, who first referred to himself in the singular, had also referred to himself elsewhere in the third-person singular: "He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth" (19:35). This may not impress Turkel, who will we-we-we-we himself into the ground in his articles, but the plural reference to the writer of John in 21:24 will give others pause to wonder if there may be some merit to the belief of many scholars that this chapter was a later edition to the gospel. I have only scratched the surface of reasons why so many scholars doubt that the apostle John was the author of the fourth gospel, but since the authorship is in doubt, I can dump one of Turkel's comments about Matthew back into his lap. If, as Turkel said above, "we do not know when Matthew received this information, or how, and from whom," we likewise don't know when "John" received his information, or how, or from whom. How then can Turkel be so cocksure that the gospel of John is inerrant? If he answers this, we can expect to see a lot of sarcasm and insults, but one thing that we won't see is a logical explanation for how he can know that "John" is inerrant if he doesn't know where or from whom John received his information. I dare him to say that he can know that "John" is inerrant because the author was "inspired" of God. Turkel: Till: Question begging, special pleading, and argumentation by assertion--where would Turkel and his inerrantist cohorts be if they didn't have these logical fallacies to fall back on? At any rate, I will gladly answer the question that Turkel asked above. "John" could have "missed out on the raising of Jairus's daughter" because he was unaware that this miracle was supposed to have happened. See the predicament that inerrantists put themselves into when they deny the biblical doctrine of verbal inspiration? Turkel: Till: Turkel: Till: Turkel: The nature of composition of ancient books Till: As we go into part three, readers are going to see Turkel's "crimes of speculation" multiply as he recycles his ridiculous paper-shortage quibble, which I demolished in the article just linked to, so I will be able to reply to most of Turkel's quibbles in part three by just linking readers to the specific section of the article where whatever speculative point he is now recycling was previously answered. At the end of the next part, we will see that Turkel claims that he answered my reply to his paper-shortage quibble, but I will reserve comment about that until we come to his claim. |