The readers have surely recognized by now that they are witnessing the desperation of a defeated man. With no logical counterarguments to rebut the contradictions I have identified in the Bible text, all Mr. Jackson can do is evade issues; set up straw men; grasp at far-fetched, speculative "explanations"; and--foremost and always--continue the ad hominem harangues against his sinister, perfidious, agnostic opponent, who had the unmitigated gall to cast off his belief in Bible inerrancy and, even worse, to quit the Church of Christ. If the propositions under discussion had not been stated and defined in the opening affirmative manuscripts, our readers could easily forget during Mr. Jackson's incoherent ramblings that the issue we are supposed to be debating is the inerrancy doctrine and not Farrell Till's personal character and present philosophical beliefs. Is this the best the inerrancy proponents have to offer in defense of their belief?
Jackson has quibbled that the syllogism on which I based the defense of my proposition requires me to prove that "the Bible possesses properties so obviously erroneous as to exclude all possibility of omniscient participation in its authorship," yet all I have been able to do, he contends, is base arguments on "whether David had men with him at a certain time in his life, whether Paul ever went to Arabia, etc." Is Jackson trying to suggest that "little mistakes" in the Bible don't matter? If so, I have to remind him that the inerrancy doctrine will not allow room for even "little mistakes." If an omniscient deity verbally inspired the authorship of the Bible, as Jackson claims, then it would have to be free of even trivial mistakes. Therefore, if I should establish the existence of even one mistake in the Bible text, no matter how insignificant it may be, I will prove that "the Bible possesses properties so obviously erroneous as to exclude all possibility of omniscient participation in its authorship." I will ask him directly if that is not true, so please tell us, Mr. Jackson: would the existence of just one trivial mistake in the Bible be enough to exclude all possibility of verbal inspiration? If not, please explain why not. How could an omniscient deity make even one little mistake?
At great lengths, Jackson harped about the triviality of the contradictions I have thus far identified, because, of course, he would like to sweep them aside and go on to other matters that might be less difficult for him to deal with. But I won't let him do that. I purposefully avoided introducing new materials in my second affirmation, as I will in this one, because I obviously had him pinned down on the very first arguments I used, and I don't intend to let him off the mat until he has dealt honorably with those issues. He would like to pooh-pooh them and pretend that they are of no consequence, but I remind him that a contradiction is a contradiction. The most trivial one imaginable is enough to disprove his claim of a verbally inspired, inerrant Bible text.
He has made two unsuccessful attempts to explain how Jehoram, who was "thirty and two years old when he began to reign" and who "reigned in Jerusalem eight years" (2 Chron. 21:20) could have had a son (Ahaziah) who was "made... king in his (Jehoram's) stead" and yet was somehow "forty and two years old... when he began to reign" (2 Chron. 22:2). The mathematics in this passage obviously add up to an age of 40 years for Jehoram at the time of his death, and Mr. Jackson didn't even try to explain how a 40-year-old man could have had a 42-year-old son who was, by an even stranger quirk, the youngest of his sons, (2 Chron. 22:1). Jackson can pooh-pooh this argument all he wants to, but the fact still remains that an absurd discrepancy is in the Bible text.
The best "explanation" Jackson could offer was an undocumented theory that "the year of accession to the throne was sometimes counted, sometimes not" and that "the part-year of a reign sometimes was counted, sometimes not" (p. 29). Okay, let's give Mr. Jackson every benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that the year of Jehoram's accession to the throne was not included in his eight-year reign and let's also assume that his last year was a part-year that was not included either. The most this would do is add two years to Jehoram's age so that he would have been no more than 42 at the time of his death, the same age as his son Ahaziah who was made "king in his (Jehoram's) stead." I'll be more than satisfied if Mr. Jackson will explain just how Jehoram could have had a son the same age as he was. For the record, he should also explain how the 42-year-old Jehoram could have had other sons who were older than his 42-year-old son (22:1), and he might also want to explain why there is no contradiction between 2 Kings 8:26, which states that Ahaziah was 22 "when he began to reign," and 2 Chronicles 22:2, which says that Ahaziah was 42 "when he began to reign." The readers will please notice that he didn't even attempt to explain this in either of his rebuttals. Although he wants us to believe that it is ridiculously easy to explain any and all "alleged contradictions" in the Bible, quite probably Jackson is keenly aware that he has a real problem here and is playing a duck-and-dodge game.
At no time did I imply that if David had men with him in his flight from Saul's wrath he would have had to have had them with him from the first day. I merely retraced David's steps from the beginning of his flight until the end to show that the story in complete context doesn't allow for the men whom Mark (2:25-26) put in David's company. David told Ahimelech that he was on a secret mission for the king (1 Sam. 21:2), and that was clearly a fabrication; he was fleeing from the king in order to save his life. But if he had really been on a secret mission for the king, he would have had men with him and would have known that Ahimelech would expect to see men in his company. Ahimelech, in fact, had already asked why no men were with him (v:1). To make his story plausible to the priest, David added to his lie a company of young men that he had "appointed... to such and such a place" (v:2). The fact that Ahimelech asked if the young men had "kept themselves from women" (v:4) in no way proves that David really did have men with him, as Jackson would like for us to believe; it shows only that the priest believed David's lie.
Is this merely the interpretation of an agnostic reprobate seeking to discredit the Bible? Certainly not. It is an interpretation that has wide scholarly acceptance. The Interpreter's Bible says this about David's claim of a secret mission:
In answer to the priest's query David invents an excuse to explain his apparent lack of preparation. He is on a mission so secret that he must not draw attention to it by traveling with a large retinue; his escort is to wait for him at a rendezvous. By this tale he not only allays the suspicions of the priest but secures for himself enough bread for a troop. This is a third example in the early source of a manifest untruth on the lips of one of the characters (vol. 2, p. 996).
In explicating verses four and five, where Ahimelech expressed concern about the sexual purity of the company of men that David claimed to have in hiding, the same commentator plainly recognizes that the priest's reaction meant only that he had believed David's lie:
David is clearly thinking out his tale as he speaks, and he nearly gets into difficulties. First he claims that his men always observe the sexual taboo before a military expedition; then he has to explain that the same precautions have been kept, although this is not a military expedition (vol. 2, p. 997).
The evidence simply will not support Jackson's far-fetched attempt to find "young men" in David's company during his flight from Saul. To find them, Jackson must twist and stretch a lie fabricated by a fugitive who was desperate for help, but Jackson can offer no logical principle of literary interpretation that would warrant concluding that David's statement that began with a lie didn't also end with a lie. If there is such a principle, I challenge him to present it to us. If he can't do that, he must find elsewhere in the context of the story the men that Mark 2:25-26 put in David's company, and he will never be able to do that. He is still pinned to the mat.
Mr. Jackson said that I should read the Bible more carefully, but he would do well to heed his own advice. In response to my argument that, had there been a three-year delay between Paul's escape from Damascus and his first trip to Jerusalem, his conversion would have been known by the disciples in Jerusalem, Jackson asked, "Which disciples (didn't know of the conversion)? How many?" Well, if he will read the Bible more carefully, he'll find the answer. "And when he (Paul) was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple" (Acts 9:26). This verse says that the disciples were all afraid of Paul. Is Mr. Jackson going to dispute his own inerrant Bible?
He wants us to believe that three years had passed and somehow news of the great persecutor's conversion had not yet traveled from Damascus to Jerusalem, a distance of only some 200 miles. Word of Paul's reputation as a persecutor had preceded him to Damascus, because the people there were amazed to see him preaching the faith he had once persecuted: "Is not this he that in Jerusalem made havoc of them that called on this name?" they asked (Acts 9:21). Yet Jackson would have us believe that three years wasn't long enough for news of this most unusual conversion to get back to Jerusalem. Furthermore, Jackson's "solution" to this problem would require us to believe that even the apostles, who through special gifts given to them by the Holy Spirit could see into people's minds and tell when they were lying (Acts 5:1-11), somehow didn't know after three years that Paul had been converted (Acts 9:27). Quite probably, these facts pose a serious problem for Mr. Jackson.
In Paul's defense before king Agrippa, he related the circumstances of his conversion at Damascus, after which he said this of his preaching itinerary:
Wherefore, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but declared at Jerusalem, and through all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance (Acts 26:19-20).
In another sermon recorded in Acts 22, Paul, again recounting the circumstances of his conversion, gave himself an early preaching itinerary that agreed with what he said to king Agrippa: Damascus first, then Jerusalem, Judea, and the Gentiles (no reference at all to Arabia). In one verse, he had himself in Damascus and then in Jerusalem in the next (Acts 22:16-21). Furthermore, he recounted the same situation described in Acts 9: the Jerusalem Christians had no idea he had been converted. After three years they didn't know that their former persecutor had been converted! Jackson has a lot of explaining to do.
He has constantly challenged me to bring out my "big gun." "Where is that 'big gun' promised so long ago," he wants to know, "when he (Till) would just slay our position with archaeological evidence?" Well, what I want to know is just when did I promise to do this. I made no such promise; he is the one who keeps irrelevantly dragging the matter up. In a personal letter to him, I mentioned my belief that archaeology offers a strong external argument against the inerrancy doctrine (p. 8) and stated my desire to work it into the debate later, but that was in a private letter; I have said nowhere in the debate proper that I intended to base any of my arguments on archaeological evidence except to promise that I would gladly "zap him with my evidence" if he would present some kind--any kind--of supporting evidence for his claim that "archaeologists have yet to find a single fact in contradiction to what the Bible has said" (p. 11). In the same context, I explained why I had left archaeology out of the debate: the subject is too complex to present and document in the short format that he suggested and I agreed to for this debate.
Now someone like Mr. Jackson, whose debating "skills" seem limited to question begging, ad hominem tirades, wild assertions, and fanciful speculations, may not understand the importance of documentation in debating, but I do and so will many of our readers. If he is aching so badly to see my "big gun," I'll tell how he can at last get his wish. If he will dispense with his sarcasm and ad hominem tirades and make a serious, documented effort to answer my initial arguments so that we can can then go on to other issues, I will base my next argument on archaeological discoveries that dispute the Bible record. Now we will find out just how serious he is about wanting to see my "big gun."
Go to Jackson's Third Rebuttal.
