Mr. McDonald complained because I said that his manuscripts are frustrating to read. He then speculated that the reason why the manuscripts have frustrated me is "because he (Till) has not been able to defeat the arguments therein" (fifth affirmative, p. 29). My reaction to that is, "What arguments?" All he has done from the beginning of the debate until now is to load his manuscripts with hidden assumptions, ifs, maybes, could-have-beens, and, most obvious of all, question-begging syllogisms. So in exposing these fallacies, I have certainly defeated his "arguments." While reading his third affirmative, my wife commented that it would be more appropriate to call his syllogisms "silly-gisms," and I have to agree. Readers with any sense of logic at all will see right through them. In a syllogism that required proof that the Bible was inspired of God, he merely cited passages where the Bible claims that it was inspired. In a syllogism that required proof that the Bible was authoritative, he merely cited passages where the Bible claims that it is authoritative. This has been his tactic throughout the debate. He has consistently asked us to assume the very points he is obligated to prove. In a debate with a Moslem or a Mormon about the inspiration of their sacred books, he would never accept unsubstantiated quotations from the books in question as proof of anything, yet he expects us to swoon in amazement at Bible quotations that say the very things he is supposed to be proving about the Bible. He calls this debating?
I had good reasons for saying that his manuscripts were frustrating to read, so at this point, perhaps I should say something about my qualifications to make such a statement. Since quitting the ministry in 1963, I have spent 28 years teaching English. The last 26 of those years have involved teaching freshman composition on the college level, sometimes as many as five sections per semester. I have spent no telling how many hours lecturing on principles of critical thinking and sound writing and even more hours evaluating the thousands of student essays written in my classes. Each year, I review numerous writing textbooks that publishers send to teachers hoping that they will be selected for classroom use. Practically all of these books contain extensive discussions of the logical principles that good writers will respect. If in all of this experience I haven't learned anything about effective writing and logical thinking, then I should be ashamed of myself. But I'm not ashamed, because I consider myself just as expert in my field as any competent professional who has conscientiously put time and effort into learning his trade.
On the basis of my professional credentials, I said that I find Mr. McDonald's manuscripts frustrating to read. They are filled with mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax, and their content is often illogical and incoherent. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax can be corrected before publication, something Mr. McDonald has indicated he intends to do, but he apparently has no desire to do anything about the illogical, superficial thinking that has gone into his writing. I have patiently pointed out to him that if the inspiration of the Bible is in doubt (as it certainly is in this debate), he cannot logically expect to settle the matter by simply quoting where the Bible says that it was inspired. And what has been his response? He does it again! To show the fallacy in his thinking, I have taken his illogical silly-gisms and applied them to other "inspired" books like the Koran and Book of Mormon to demonstrate that if his arguments prove the Bible was inspired of God, they prove equally as well that the Koran and Book of Mormon were also inspired of God. What has been his response to these analogies? He does it again! Is it any wonder then that I have found his manuscripts frustrating?
In my debates with inerrancy believers, I have often mentioned the absurd, how-it-could-have-been scenarios that they invariably resort to to "explain" discrepancies in the Bible text. McDonald's "resolution" of the discrepant statements concerning Ahaziah's age when he succeeded his father as king of Judah illustrates the extremes that these people are willing to go to in their quest for "solutions" to Bible contradictions. Ahaziah's father (Jehoram) was 32 when he began to reign as king of Judah, and he reigned for eight years (2 Kings 8:18; 2 Chron. 21:5). So simple math is all we need to determine that Jehoram was 40 years old when he died. Ahaziah, Jehoram's youngest son, was made king in his father's stead (2 Chron. 22:1). One "inspired" writer (2 Kings 8:26) said that Ahaziah was 22 "when he began to reign," but another "inspired" writer said that he was 42 "when he began to reign" (2 Chron. 22:2). Which inspired writer was right? Both could not be right. If Ahaziah was 42 when he began to reign, then he would have been two years older than his father, a problem made even more absurd by the fact that Ahaziah was the youngest of Jehoram's sons (2 Chron. 22:1). So Jehoram had a son who was two years older than he, and this son by some strange happenstance had had brothers who were even older. As I said in my debate with Bill Jackson, this could happen only in the Bible.
But does Jerry McDonald see a problem in these discrepant Bible records? No, not at all. Look at how he was able to find perfect harmony in them:
When Ahaziah was 22 years old, he could have begun to co-reign with his father, Jehoram. During that time he may have co-reigned for 20 years, then when he was 42 years old his father died and he took complete control of the reign (fifth defense, p. 15, emphasis added).
In his last affirmative (p. 8), he took offense at my accusing him of relying on ifs, maybes, and could-haves as the bases of his arguments, but look at the parts that I have underlined in this direct quotation from his manuscript. Could-haves and may-have-beens! These have been his chief line of defense. It's a familiar fundamentalist tactic, and he has been doing it throughout this debate. And this from a preacher whose church routinely insists upon a "thus saith the Lord" to justify every doctrinal point proclaimed from its pulpits!
I really don't object to hypothetical counterarguments as long as likeliness and plausibility for them are established, but when a debater presumes to rebut an argument by simply saying, "It could have happened this way; now let me see you prove that it did not so happen," that is when it's time to question his methods. In the case of McDonald's theory of a Jehoram-Ahaziah co-regency, all he did to establish "plausibility" for it was to cite 1 Chronicles 29:23,26 to show that before his death David made Solomon his co-regent. "If Solomon could co-reign with his father David," McDonald speculated, "then Ahaziah could have co-reigned with his father Jehoram." Yes, a lot of things could have happened, but did they happen? That's the problem McDonald has to deal with. In the case of Solomon's co-regency, we don't have to rely on could-have speculation; there is a direct statement in the Bible text informing us that before he died David made Solomon king over Israel. That statement, by the way, is not in the passage McDonald cited. Try as he may, he won't find in 1 Chronicles 29:23,26 any indication of a David-Solomon co-reign. He will have to look for it in 1 Chronicles 23:1; 29:22. Even then, the ceremony that installed Solomon as king seemed more like the abdication of an aged king than the promotion of a prince to co-regent. The ceremony took place in the final year of David's forty-year reign (1 Chron. 26:31) when David was said to be "old and full of days" (23:1), and according to the first chapter of 1 Kings, the decision to make Solomon king didn't occur until David was lying on his death bed. Even then it took the direct intervention of Bathsheba (David's favorite wife and Solomon's mother) and Nathan the prophet to get David to declare Solomon his chosen successor. The point is that Solomon's co-regency with David, if that was what it was, was of short duration, only a few months at best in the final year of David's life. Certainly, it didn't last anywhere near the 20-year "co-reign" that McDonald had to speculate for Jehoram and Ahaziah in order to harmonize the figures Yahweh's inspired writers left him with. If such a lengthy co-reign took place, there was surely a reason for it (Jehoram's health or some political expediency) that would have been important enough to warrant mentioning in Yahweh's inspired history of his people. So just where is the record of it? Surely McDonald can see that a 20-year co-reign needs more than a could-have-been, if he expects us to accept it as a plausible explanation of a discrepancy as glaring as this one. If a twenty-year co-reign did occur during Jehoram's tenure on the throne, at the very least, McDonald should be able to point to some textual indication, either biblical or extrabiblical, that it did happen. It seems rather careless of the omniscient Yahweh that he did not foresee that skeptics would notice this discrepancy in his inspired text, and head off their criticisms by inserting into his holy word a statement about the Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign. But no such statement is in the inspired text. Yahweh chose instead to tell about Solomon's co-regency with David, information that is not needed to resolve any textual discrepancy.
McDonald knew this counterargument was in trouble before he was even halfway through it, because he himself cited the problem that his 20-year-co-reign theory encounters in the direct statement made, not once but three times, that Jehoram reigned for eight years (2 Kings 8:17; 2 Chron. 21:5,20) and twice made that Ahaziah reigned for one year (2 Kings 8:26; 2 Chron. 22:2). Ah, yes, McDonald exuded, but the Bible didn't say that they reigned for only eight and one years. Just look at how he tried to tiptoe around this problem.
The Bible says that Jehoram reigned in Jerusalem for eight years and Ahaziah reigned in Jerusalem for one year. One explanation of this would be Jehoram reigned only eight years in Jerusalem and reigned longer elsewhere. When one counts the years for the kings [sic] reigns and then counts the years of the split, it can be seen that there are more years in the kings [sic] reigns (393.3) than there were in the split (345). Now at first glance one notices that we have a discrepancy here. A logical solution would be that there were more years of the split than we know of. If this is true, then how can we say that Jehoram reigned only eight years and Ahaziah only one year? If the dates that we have of the split are in error, then the idea of Ahaziah co-reigning with Jehoram is a valid point (fifth defense, p. 15).
So not content just to speculate that there was a 20-year co-reign with Ahaziah during Jehoram's tenure as king, McDonald now wants us to imagine that Jehoram's total reign was "split" between an eight-year solitary reign in Jerusalem and a 20-year co-reign with Ahaziah "elsewhere" in some location not named in the Bible. How does McDonald propose to make this "split reign" plausible? He doesn't tell us. He just says that it could have happened and then expects us to buy it. Does the Bible mention a split reign during Jehoram's tenure? No, it doesn't. Jehoram's reign is described in 2 Kings 8:16-24 and 2 Chronicles 21, and neither passage even hints that his reign was divided between two locations. Such a division in Jehoram's reign is nothing but pure speculation that McDonald supported only by a quotation from Gill's Commentary (fifth defense, p. 16), which itself offered no proof of a divided reign except to say that the theory was a "solution" that had been taken from Kimchi and Abarbinel. When bibliolaters look for "solutions" to Bible discrepancies, they are almost always long on speculation but short on proof. If Kimchi and Abarbinel have any proof that supports their "solution" to this discrepancy, let's see it. It isn't enough just to tell us that Kimchi and Abarbinel have offered this as a solution. Offering solutions to Bible discrepancies is easy, but proving them is something else.
[Editor's Note: The note inserted earlier in McDonald's reference to John Gill in his fifth affirmative warrants repeating here. This is an argument that McDonald appropriated from Bill Jackson's part of the Jackson-Till Debate, apparently without checking it for accuracy. Readers interested in seeing how both Jackson and McDonald distorted Gill's comments about a theoretical Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign can read the link above to 2 Chronicles 22 in Gill's commentary and read also the editorial note inserted after Jackson's appeal to Gill. That note points out that Gill only mentioned the solution of Kimchi and Abarbinel as just one of many that have been proposed but went on to reject it and the other proposals as too unlikely to accept. He concluded by saying that it was far more likely that this age discrepancy was the result of a scribal mistake that was made in copying Ahaziah's age in the second account.]
McDonald thinks it is "implied" in 2 Chronicles 21:11 that Jehoram spent part of his reign elsewhere (than Jerusalem). What does this verse say? "Moreover he (Jehoram) made high places in the mountains of Judah, and made the inhabitants of Jerusalem to play the harlot, and led Judah astray." If I had not read this with my own eyes, I would never have believed that a bibliolater could be driven to such an extreme in his hunt for "solutions" to Bible discrepancies. What does he want us to see in this verse? Are we to think that the "high places" Jehoram made in the mountains of Judah were palaces or headquarters from which he reigned in addition to the time he spent reigning in Jerusalem? As the following quotation from Eerdmans Bible Dictionary will show, "high places" in the Old Testament were sites of pagan worship:
High Places: A place of worship, located on hilltops or man-made platforms. Old Testament accounts usually associate high places with pagan religious practices.
High places were a common fixture of Canaanite religion when the Israelites entered Palestine. The common ancient Near Eastern cosmology held that the earth was flat, and that the gods dwelt in the heavens above. Consequently, a worship center located on an elevation had a better chance of gaining their attention (1987, p. 486).
The existence of these "high places" was a problem throughout the reigns of the Judean kings. Some of the kings encouraged the high places; others worked to destroy them. References to these pagan sites were made in such places as 1 Kings 13:22,32-33; 14:23; 15:14; 22:43; 2 Kings 12:3; 14:4; 15:4 and many others. So when the Chronicle writer said that Jehoram "made high places in the mountains of Judah," he meant only that Jehoram built pagan worship sites, not that he divided his reign between Jerusalem and other locations in the Judean mountains. When a debater can offer no better counterargument than this, you know that his position is in serious trouble.
Even McDonald saw a major flaw in his argument. "Someone might point out that every Judean king was said to have reigned in Jerusalem," he said. And he had better believe that someone might point this out, because I am pointing it out right now. We are told that David reigned over Israel for 40 years, seven years in Hebron and 33 years in Jerusalem (2 Sam. 5:5; 2 Kings 2:11; 1 Chron. 29:27). His reign was split between Hebron and Jerusalem, because Jerusalem was a Jebusite stronghold that David didn't capture until the eighth year of his kingship (2 Sam. 5:6-9; 1 Chron. 11:4-7). Thereafter, he named it the "city of David," and it became the religious and political capital of a united Israel. The united kingdom split into a northern division (Israel) and a southern division (Judah) after the reign of Solomon (1 Kings 11:29-43; 12:1), but Jerusalem remained the capital of Judah throughout the reigns of the Judean kings. David's reign had to be split between Jerusalem and another location for the simple reason that Jerusalem had not yet been assimilated into the kingdom when he began to reign. This was not true of the Judean kings. They retained political control of it until it fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. during the reign of Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:8-11; 2 Chron. 36:6-20), so there was never any need for a Judean King from Rehoboam to Zedekiah to "split" his reign between Jerusalem and some other location. Beginning with Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:21) and ending with Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:18), Bible records tell us that So-And-So was however many years old when he began to reign and that he reigned in Jerusalem for X number of years. As McDonald knows and admitted, this was said of all the Judean kings. There was never a hint or suggestion that the reigns of any of them were divided between two headquarters. If there was any such hint, let him show it to us.
The best he could come up with to support his split-reign theory was the reference to Jehoram's construction of "high places" in the mountains of Judah, which, as we have already noted, had nothing at all to do with the place where Jehoram reigned. McDonald said too that "it is specifically stated that Ahaziah spent part of his (reign) elsewhere (2 Chronicles 22:6-9)." Well, let's just look at this passage and see if it says that Ahaziah reigned from a place other than Jerusalem:
And he (Jehoram of Israel) returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which they (the Syrians) had given him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Syria. And Azariah (Ahaziah) the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see Jehoram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick.
Now the destruction of Ahaziah was of God, in that he went unto Joram (Jehoram): for when he was come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu the son of Nimshi, whom Yahweh had anointed to cut off the house of Ahab. And it came to pass, when Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Ahab, that he found the princes of Judah, and the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah, ministering to Ahaziah, and slew them. And he sought Ahaziah, and they caught him (now he was hiding in Samaria), and they brought him to Jehu, and slew him; and they buried him, for they said, He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought Yahweh with all his heart. And the house of Ahaziah had no power to hold the kingdom (ASV with Yahweh substituted for Jehovah).
This account of Jehu's murder of Ahaziah is parallel to 2 Kings 9:22-27, and both accounts state only that Ahaziah had gone to visit Jehoram of Israel who had been wounded in battle and that while he was on this visit Jehu killed him. They do not even imply that Ahaziah reigned in any official capacity while he was in Jezreel. How could he have done that without a fight if Jehoram, the uncle he had gone to visit, was the king of Israel reigning in Jezreel? McDonald's attempt to make this short trip of a Judean king who went to visit a sick relative into a case that will prove his groundless split-reign theory is just another example of the ridiculous extremes that bibliolaters will go to to keep from admitting that there are discrepancies in the Bible text.
If McDonald still isn't convinced that his theory is full of holes, then let him consider these facts. Jehoram the son of Ahab, whom Jehu murdered at Jezreel along with Ahaziah, reigned over Israel for twelve years (2 Kings 3:1). Jehoram (of Judah), the father of Ahaziah and the center of the controversy we are now discussing, began to reign in the fifth year of Joram or Jehoram of Israel (2 Kings 8:16). Jehoram of Judah was 32 when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem (2 Kings 8:17). Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram of Judah, was made king in his father's stead (2 Kings 8:24; 2 Chron. 22:1). But Ahaziah began to reign in the twelfth year of Joram or Jehoram of Israel (2 Kings 8:25). According to 2 Kings 9:29, Ahaziah began to reign in the eleventh year of Joram of Israel, but that's just another discrepancy we will leave to Mr. McDonald and his inerrancy cohorts to work out. I'm sure they won't have any trouble explaining it. The point is that whether Ahaziah began to reign in the eleventh or the twelfth year of Jehoram of Israel doesn't matter. If Ahaziah's father began to reign in the fifth year of Jehoram of Israel and if Ahaziah began to reign in the twelfth (or eleventh) year of Jehoram of Israel and if Jehoram of Israel reigned only twelve years, there just isn't any room for the 20-year co-regency of Jehoram and Ahaziah that McDonald has conjured up to "explain" the textual discrepancy we are discussing. Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah were both killed at the same time (in the first year of Ahaziah's reign). So if Jehoram of Israel reigned for only twelve years (as noted) and if Ahaziah of Judah began to reign in the twelfth year of Jehoram of Israel and if both Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah died in Jehu's massacre at Jezreel in the first year of Ahaziah's reign, where is the room for this 20-year co-reign of Jehoram (of Judah) and Ahaziah that McDonald has conjured up from nowhere? It just isn't there. If he can't see that, he needs more help than I can ever give him.
That Jerusalem was under the political control of the Judean kings until it fell to Nebuchadnezzar (as noted earlier) is repeatedly attested to in 1 and 2 Kings. When the united kingdom split at the end of Solomon's reign, Yahweh promised that all the tribes would not be taken away from the house of David. One tribe (Judah) would always be kept for David, who had been promised an eternal throne in 2 Samuel 7:12-16. The prophet Ahijah stated this intention of Yahweh when the split was announced to Jeroboam, who became the first king of the northern tribes:
For thus saith Yahweh, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee (but he shall have one tribe, for my servant David's sake and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel); because that they have forsaken me, and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon; and they have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and mine ordinances, as did David his father. Howbeit I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand; but I will make him prince all the days of his life, for David my servant's sake whom I chose, who kept my commandments and my statutes; but I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand, and will give it unto thee (Jeroboam), even ten tribes. And unto his son I will give one tribe, that David my servant may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen to put my name there (1 Kings 11:31-36, ASV, Yahweh substituted for Jehovah).
Time and time again, as he recorded the reigns of the Judean kings, the author of Kings cited this promise as the reason why Yahweh allowed Judah to continue existing even during the reigns of evil kings. Rehoboam's son Abijam "walked in all the sins of his father" and "his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God," yet "for David's sake did Yahweh his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem" (1 Kings 15:3-4). When Jerusalem was sieged by Sennacherib of Assyria, the prophet Isaiah assured Hezekiah that Yahweh had said, "I will defend this city to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake" (2 Kings 19:34). The promise was repeated in the next chapter: "I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake" (20:6). And please notice that the same was said of the reign of Jehoram of Judah (Ahaziah's father). Even though Jehoram "walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab: for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife; and he did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh" (2 Kings 8:18), Yahweh would not take the kingdom from him: "Howbeit Yahweh would not destroy Judah, for David his servant's sake, as he promised him to give unto him a lamp for his children always" (v:19).
This is about as clear as anything Mr. McDonald will find stated in his "inerrant" Bible. Jewish history as written by the author(s) of Kings plainly said that Yahweh kept the kingdom of Judah, and Jerusalem in particular, under the political control of its kings from the reign of Rehoboam until its fall to Nebuchadnezzar under Zedekiah. Jerusalem was "the city of David," the pride of the nation. It was repeatedly said in the Bible that this was "the city which I (Yahweh) have chosen to put my name there" (1 Kings 11:36; 14:21; 2 Kings 21:4; 23:27). Having that attitude of sacredness about this city, the Judean kings would not have "split" their reigns between Jerusalem and some other town unless forced to do so by political circumstances. The Bible records no such circumstances. It even specifically states that Yahweh kept the kingdom intact during Jehoram of Judah's reign for David's sake. Where then is the evidence of this "split reign" of Jehoram that McDonald has conjured up in a desperate attempt to explain away a glaring discrepancy in the Bible text? It isn't there.
In reading the McDonald-Swindler Debate on the resurrection (which is yet unpublished), I have noticed that Mr. McDonald likes to quote Josephus, so now I'm going to turn his respected authority back on him. After describing the exploits of Jehoram, king of Jerusalem, Josephus said this about the ignominious end of this Judean king's life:
Accordingly, they (the inhabitants of Jerusalem) neither buried him in the sepulchres of his fathers, nor vouchsafed him any honors, but buried him like a private man, and this when he had lived forty years, and reigned eight; and the people of Jerusalem delivered the government to his son Ahaziah (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 9, 5:3, emphasis added).
McDonald would have us believe Jehoram of Judah lived to be 60, an age he arrives at by adding a purely theoretical 20-year co-reign to what the Bible says about Jehoram's age and the length of his reign. Now we see that Josephus flatly stated that Jehoram "lived forty years and reigned eight." McDonald will no doubt say that he doesn't accept everything Josephus said. (We know that, of course. He accepts only what will support his cause and rejects all else.) Nevertheless, the facts in this matter seem clear enough. The Bible record states that Jehoram of Judah was thirty-two when he began to reign and that he reigned for eight years (2 Kings 8:17). The simple math I have mentioned is sufficient to show that he was forty years old when he died. This is exactly what Josephus, a respected Jewish historian, said in his history of the Jews! This is what Mr. McDonald would say too if he didn't have to explain how a 40-year-old man could have had a 42-year-old son. This problem is still staring McDonald in the face. He has said nothing--absolutely nothing--to resolve it. If he has any respect at all for truth, he will admit that he was wrong and retreat to the "copyist-error" explanation or some of the other far-fetched interpretations inerrancy defenders have resorted to in trying to circumvent the embarrassment of this Bible discrepancy. Perhaps he will even resort to Bill Jackson's unsubstantiated mumbo jumbo about writers using "different methods of calculation" (Jackson-Till Debate, p. 51) to record the duration of reigns.
One thing is sure: this discrepancy was presented to Bill Jackson in my debate with him, and now it has been presented to Jerry McDonald in this one. Neither one of them could explain it. Neither one could offer an iota of textual proof from the Bible or any extrabiblical source to give even a speck of credibility to their far-fetched explanations. On this point, it's beginning to look bad for the home team. There is a glaring discrepancy in their "inerrant" Bible.
I presented McDonald with the Septuagint-Masoretic dilemma as it applies to the book of Jeremiah. The version of Jeremiah in most English translations was derived from the Masoretic text, which most bibliolaters will say lower criticism has proven to be so parallel to the "original autographs" as to make variations inconsequential. But if this is true, why is the book of Jeremiah in the Septuagint Bible, the earliest known translation (third century B.C.) of the Hebrew scriptures, so radically different from the Masoretic text? The Septuagint version is about 15% shorter than the Masoretic and has over 30 different organizational variations. These variations become extremely important in view of the claim that the Holy Spirit often "inspired" the New Testament writers to quote the Septuagint text. I expected Mr. McDonald to present some insightful explanation for the variations in the two versions, but instead he gave us an astonishingly damaging admission from chief inerrancy apostle Gleason Archer. Apparently, McDonald didn't even notice the havoc that Archer's statement plays with his theory of "inerrant original autographs." I want to put the statement before the readers again so that they can review it in the context of my comments without having to turn back:
There is good evidence to believe that even apart from the original edition of Jeremiah's prophecy, which was destroyed by Jehoiakim, there was a later edition which preceded the final form of the text as we have it in the Masoretic tradition. At least this is a reasonable deduction to draw from the LXX (Septuagint), since it appears to be about one-eighth shorter than that of the MT. It differs also in arrangement of the chapters, for chapters 46-51 of the MT are placed after chapter 25 in the LXX, and they are arranged in a somewhat different sequence. Jeremiah 33:14-26 of the MT is altogether missing in the LXX. It would seem that this earlier edition was published in the prophet's own lifetime and first disseminated in Egypt. Later, after Jeremiah's death, it appears that Baruch made a more comprehensive collection of his master's sermons and rearranged the material in more logical order. The MT undoubtedly preserves this posthumous edition of Baruch. In this connection, note that 36:32 indicates that a second preliminary edition was published in the reign of Jehoiakim, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that Jeremiah kept adding to these earlier sermons the messages the Lord gave him in the reign of Zedekiah and in the period subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem" (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, pp. 361-362, emphasis added).
Can you believe it? Throughout the debate McDonald has been "affirming" that "the Bible in its original autographs was verbally and fully inspired by Jehovah God and is therefore completely inerrant," and now, near the end, he has called upon one of the leading inerrancy "scholars" to tell us that the original autograph of Jeremiah was tampered with and substantially altered after the "inspired" author's death. Please look carefully at the statements in the quotation that I have emphasized. The first one states that the "original edition" of Jeremiah was destroyed. Well, okay, we will grant that much. Even an inspired writer can't be blamed if an enemy of Yahweh seeks to destroy his revealed word, although we can't help wondering why, if Yahweh went to the trouble to inspire the original edition, he didn't use a little of his omnipotence to keep Jehoiakim from destroying such a valuable work. But what is this about a "later edition which preceded the final form of the text as we have it in the Masoretic tradition"? I thought the Masoretic text was a duplicate of the original or at least a copy so close to the original that variations become inconsequential! Now along comes chief inerrancy apostle Gleason Archer to brazenly tell us that there was an edition that "preceded the form of the text as we have it in the Masoretic tradition." Mr. McDonald has a lot of explaining to do.
Then Mr. Archer informs us that this "earlier edition was published in the prophet's own lifetime" but that "after Jeremiah's death," the scribe Baruch "made a more comprehensive collection of his master's sermons and rearranged the material in more logical order." What! Baruch arranged the material in a more logical order than the omniscient, omnipotent Yahweh Elohim had inspired Jeremiah to arrange it? But I thought the "original autographs" were "completely inerrant." If Jeremiah's original autograph was completely inerrant, how could it have possibly been arranged in a "more logical order"? Furthermore, we are left wondering if the scribe Baruch was also "verbally inspired" when he edited the version that Jeremiah left behind at his death. If so, are we to understand that this was Yahweh Elohim's way of saying, "Uh-oh, I goofed when I inspired Jeremiah to write this book; I should have had him say this-and-that and to arrange the material in a more logical order"? If not, then are we to assume that only Jeremiah's original edition (as preserved in the Septuagint version) was inspired and that the Masoretic text (the basis for most English versions) contains spurious, uninspired materials? These are questions Mr. McDonald needs to answer. One thing should be certain: he surely won't have the brazen-faced gall ever again to say that I have made "damaging admissions." In the admission he has made here in citing Gleason Archer's statement, he has completely conceded his position. If he endorses Archer's theory of a posthumously edited version of Jeremiah's book, he can't possibly believe that the original autographs of the Bible were completely inerrant.
Mr. McDonald owes us an explanation. If he really believes (as his endorsement of Archer's statement certainly indicates) that the book of Jeremiah was expanded and reorganized after Jeremiah's death, then he should let us know just how extensive such editing as this was while the Bible was being compiled. Is Jeremiah the only book to undergo expansion and reorganization, or was it done to others too, say, Isaiah, Exodus, Ezekiel, and Joshua? Is the extant version of Ecclesiastes essentially true to the original copy that Solomon (presumably) wrote or did some "Baruch" after Solomon's death take it upon himself to "make a more comprehensive collection of his master's sermons and rearrange the material in more logical order"? Mr. McDonald needs to clear up the confusion that Archer's statement quite naturally leaves in the minds of serious Bible students.
In winding down his last hurrah, Mr. McDonald returned to his "total situation" argument (to which I loosely apply the term argument):
Major Premise: All total situations, the constituent elements of which are factual are total situations which are true.
Minor Premise: The total situation described by my proposition is a total situation the constituent elements of which are factual.
Conclusion: Therefore, the total situation described by my proposition is a total situation which is true.
He then claimed that he had "proven" the following elements of that argument: (1) God does exist, (2) the Bible is of divine origin, (3) the Bible is inerrant, (4) the Bible is authoritative, (5) the Bible is all-sufficient, (6) the Canon that we have is the correct cannon, and (7) the Bible is historically a reliable document.
[Editor's Note: The link here will take readers to exact locations where Till replied to the six "elements" in McDonald's "total situation."]
The best response I know to make to this is that Mr. McDonald certainly seems to hold himself in high regard. He thinks he has "proven" things that some of the best intellects in history have been unable to prove. He claims, for example, that he has proven that God exists. I must have missed something along the way, however, because I have read nothing from him that even comes close to proving the existence of God. As I have already pointed out, volumes and volumes have been written (by people far more intellectually competent to discuss this subject than Mr. McDonald) to try to prove the existence of God, but none of them succeeded. The issue is still very much in doubt. In my second rebuttal (p. 4), I pointed out that "(a)ll demonstrable truths are accepted by intelligent people regardless of their races or geographic locations." No educated Russian, Arab, Swede, or person of any nationality will dispute that the moon is an earth satellite or that the sun is the center of our solar system, because these are all demonstrable truths. There are no public debates being held to discuss whether 3 + 2 = 5 in a base-ten math, because every intelligent, educated person knows that this is a demonstrable fact. When truths and facts can be proven, there is no disagreement about them in educated circles. The mere existence of widespread disagreement on a point, regardless of what it may be, is evidence that the truth of the point cannot be unequivocally established.
But now along comes McDonald to tell us he has proven that God exists. Well, what can I say about that except to suggest to our readers that before they swoon over this marvelous feat Jerry McDonald claims to have accomplished they first take note of the fact that he is hopelessly predisposed to accept the incredible on nothing even remotely resembling hard evidence? He believes that a man died and returned to life after three days (one day and two nights actually). What is his evidence? The Bible tells him so! He believes that a man once "made the sun stand still" so that his army could win a battle. What is his evidence? The Bible tells him so! He believes that a man once turned all of the water in an entire nation, even the water in vessels of wood and stone, into blood. What is his evidence? The Bible tells him so! Yes, if it is written within the pages of a book called the Bible, it can't be too fantastic or incredible for Jerry McDonald to believe on no more evidence than that the book says that it happened. So I'm not at all surprised that Mr. McDonald believes he has done what hundreds of intellectuals before him have failed to do, i. e., prove the existence of God. He is a man who just doesn't need much evidence to prove the unprovable.
He claims that he has proven that "(t)he Bible is of divine origin." Oh? Just where did he do that? Did he do it on pages 12-13 of his first affirmative where he presented his syllogism (silly-gism?) for the divine origin of the Bible? This was where he tried to "prove" the minor premise of the syllogism with his bad-men/good-men argument. You remember how the argument went, don't you? The Bible cannot be of human origin, he reasoned, because it condemns the evil-doings of bad men, and bad men would not have written a book that condemns their evil-doings. So if the Bible is of human origin and bad men couldn't have written it, he further reasoned in his simplistic, black-or-white way of thinking, it had to have been written by good men. Unless the Bible is inspired, however, good men could not have written it either, so the argument goes, because it claims to be inspired, so if it isn't inspired, then its authors lied, and good men do not lie. And, presto, just like that, McDonald thinks he has proven that the Bible cannot be of human origin.
In my first rebuttal (p. 17), I pointed out that McDonald's black-or-white reasoning disregards the "possibility of honest but mistaken sincerity." If a Bible writer honestly believed that he was inspired of Yahweh-Elohim, he could not be properly accused of lying, because a lie is "a false statement or piece of information deliberately presented as being true" (The American Heritage Dictionary, 1975, p. 754, emphasis added). If I should encounter bright lights overhead while walking alone at night and honestly believe that the lights were coming through the windows of a flying saucer when in reality it was only the atmospheric refraction of distant airport lights, I would not be a "bad man" telling a lie if I later ran home or to the police station and reported that I had had a close encounter with an alien spaceship. Naivety and gullibility would be the most that I could be accused of, but certainly not the immorality of lying. How does McDonald know that Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, the prophets Zoroaster and Mohammed, and the many other religious leaders who claimed divine inspiration didn't really believe that they were being divinely guided in what they wrote? And if they were sincere believers in their divine guidance, they could not properly be called "bad" people. McDonald would make a liar out of every person who ever mistakenly wrote or said something that wasn't factual.
I have repeatedly demonstrated that McDonald's simplistic arguments can be applied with equal validity to prove the divine origin of any book that claims to be inspired. McDonald accuses me of ignoring his arguments, but in both my third (pp. 12-13) and fourth (pp. 10-11) rebuttals, I showed that his bad-men/good-men argument would be especially applicable to the sacred books of other religions, because they all uphold morality and condemn evil. If bad men would not write a book that condemns their evil-doings, then bad men could not have written either the Koran or the Book of Mormon, because they both condemn evil. Both books also claim divine inspiration, so if they are not inspired--and McDonald certainly doesn't believe they are--they could not have been written by good men either (according to his reasoning), because good men do not lie. If then McDonald's logic is as impeccable as he seems to believe, the Koran and Book of Mormon would both have to be divine in origin. I suspect, however, that our readers will have no difficulty seeing that there is a hole in his logic big enough to drive a Mack truck through. An axiom of logic states that what proves too much proves nothing at all. McDonald should think about that axiom before he fires off his next syllogism.
Another element of his "total situation" that McDonald claims he has proven is that "(t)he Bible is inerrant." Well, I just spent ten pages in this rebuttal completely demolishing his theory of an unmentioned twenty-year co-reign of Jehoram and Ahaziah as an explanation for the age discrepancies in 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2 and another five pages doing the same to his "explanation" of the extensive variations between the Septuagint and Masoretic versions of the book of Jeremiah, so I will just leave it to the judgment of our readers to decide if Mr. McDonald has proven that "the Bible is inerrant."
The fourth element in his "total-situation" argument was his claim that he has proven that "(t)he Bible is authoritative." This was done in his first manuscript, he believes, when he presented his "authority-of-the-Bible" syllogism (silly-gism?):
Major Premise: If the Bible shows man how to live, and if it is to be man's judge, and if it may not be added to or subtracted from, then it is authoritative.
Minor Premise: The Bible does show man how to live, and it will be our judge, and it may not be added to or subtracted from.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Bible is authoritative.
Stuff like this is so embarrassingly simplistic that it is hard to believe an intelligent person would offer it as proof of a proposition as complex and controversial as the one McDonald is affirming. Many books have tried to show man how to live, but that proves exactly nothing about their having the authority to do so. Why should the Bible be considered any different? Certainly, the Koran and the Book of Mormon try to show man how to live, but that in no way makes them authoritative. With this, Mr. McDonald will agree, yet he can't logically explain why we should view the Bible's attempt to "show man how to live" any differently from the attempts other books have made to show us how to live. It's just something that he believes without really knowing why he believes it except for some vague feeling that tells him it is something he should believe. That may be good enough for gullible fundamentalists, but it's not good enough for rational thinkers.
To prove that the Bible cannot be "added to or subtracted from," what did Mr. McDonald do? He quoted where the Bible says that nothing should be added to or subtracted from it. He simply cannot see that if the Bible itself is in question it cannot be quoted to prove the very things about it that are in dispute. He would not accept a quotation from the Koran as proof that the Koran was inspired by God. He would not accept a quotation from the Koran as proof that nothing should be added to or subtracted from it. He would not accept a quotation from the Koran as proof of anything except that the Koran does in fact say whatever was being quoted. On what grounds, then, does he expect us to accept mere quotations from the Bible as proof of the points he must establish before we can even begin to take his syllogisms seriously?
In a debate on the inerrancy issue, no one would object to quoting the Bible properly. So let him quote it to try to establish such fundamentalist claims as its perfect harmony, its unity of theme, its scientific foreknowledge, and such like. If he wants to take any of these routes, I will be happy to examine his quotations and show that they do not establish what he claims for them, but he cannot appeal to the Bible to prove the ifs of his modus ponens syllogisms. That is simply an improper approach to logic. The antecedent of his major premise in this syllogism contains three big ifs: If the Bible shows man how to live, if the Bible is to be man's judge, and if the Bible cannot be added to or subtracted from. To prove these ifs, he cannot say, "Well, the Bible will be man's judge, because it says that it will judge us." After all, what does the scripture he cited as proof (John 12:48) say? It merely tells us that Jesus presumably said, "He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my sayings hath one that judgeth him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day." To use this as evidence that the Bible will judge us is flagrant question-begging. For one thing, such an argument assumes that Jesus really said this when in reality we have only John's word (assuming that he even wrote the book) that Jesus said it. Secondly, it assumes that if Jesus did say it he had the authority to say it, an assumption that is based on the assumption that Jesus was God the son and thereby had the right to enjoin the statement on us. Both assumptions need to be proven before they can carry any weight. Thirdly, it assumes that the Bible is "the word that I (Jesus) spake," but this too is an assumption that must be proven for his argument to have any credibility. And how is he going to prove that? Will we, for example, be judged by what is written in 1 Corinthians? If so, we will be judged by more than what Jesus spoke, because one would have to be very simplistic to believe that Jesus himself actually spoke everything written in this book. Did Jesus, for example, ever tell women to keep silence in the churches (1 Cor. 14:34)? Yet Mr. McDonald very definitely believes that we will be judged on the last day by the words of this verse. Women who assume teaching roles in the general assembly of the church will have to answer for it on the day of judgment. That's exactly what McDonald believes.
The fifth element in McDonald's "total-situation" argument is his claim that "(t)he Bible is all sufficient," but an examination of his "syllogism" (first affirmative, pp. 19-20) shows the same fallacy that is in all of his other arguments. He "proved" the all-sufficiency of the Bible by simply quoting where it says that the scriptures are "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17). In other words, he is arguing that the Bible is all-sufficient because it says that it is all-sufficient. As I have pointed out time and time again--until I am weary of pointing it out--he is begging the question.
The sixth element in his "total-situation" argument is his claim that he has proven "(t)he canon we have is the correct canon." What was his proof? Another syllogism (silly-gism?), of course (second affirmative, pp. 18-20):
Major Premise: If the O.T. Canon that we have in the KJV and the ASV is the same Canon as that which was spoken of by Jesus, then we have the correct O.T. Canon.
Minor Premise: The O. T. Canon that we have in the KJV and the ASV is the same Canon as that which was spoken of by Jesus.
Conclusion: Therefore, we have the correct O.T. Canon.
McDonald has never explained why the antecedent of his major premise (the "if" statement) necessitates the consequent (the conclusion reached from the antecedent). How exactly would we know that we have the "correct" Old Testament canon in the KJV and the ASV canons if they could be proven to be "the same canon as that which was spoken of by Jesus"? How would one even go about proving what canon Jesus spoke of? Did Jesus ever quote the book of Esther? Ruth? Song of Solomon? Joshua? Not that I know of. So how do we know that Jesus personally considered these books to be canonical? To this, McDonald has said that Jesus spoke of the things that had been written of him in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44; second affirmative, p. 19). But how does McDonald even know that Jesus actually said this? Jesus himself never wrote a book that contains this statement. All that McDonald has is Luke's word that Jesus said it. In other words, Luke said that Jesus said it. I wonder, however, if Mr. McDonald knows what hearsay evidence is and how unreliable it is considered in modern courts of law. I'm sure he does know, but, of course, he wants to exempt the Bible from all forensic standards. If the Bible says that such-and-such happened or that so-and-so said whatever, he expects us to accept it without question regardless of how many informants or sources the information was filtered through before finally being passed down to us. In short, he wants us to concede that whatever the Bible says is true and does not require proof of authenticity. What do I have to say to convince him that this is a concession no rational thinker is willing to make?
Even if we assume that Jesus did personally endorse the same canon that is in the KJV and the ASV, how would we know that the texts of his generation paralleled the MT as it exists today? I have already shown that the MT of Jeremiah differs radically from the version that apparently existed in the time of Jesus, so how do we know that the same is not true of the other books in "the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms"? What evidence can McDonald give to assure us that the text of the KJV and ASV is essentially the same as the text of the canon that Jesus endorsed? This is the very least that he must do before he can talk about the KJV and ASV having the "correct canon."
Furthermore, we must ask McDonald to explain exactly how he has determined that the KJV and the ASV should be the standard by which the "correct O. T. canon" is to be determined? Why not make the Ethiopic Version the standard? It contains the books of Enoch, which the writer of Jude gave "inspired" approval to in citing the "prophecy" made by Enoch, "the seventh from Adam": "Behold the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all..." (Jude 14-15; 1 Enoch 1:9). With that kind of divine endorsement, what is McDonald's reason for using a canon that excludes 1 Enoch? In the introduction to his translation of this book, E. Isaac attested to its widespread influence on New Testament concepts and the high respect that the early Church Fathers had for it:
It was used by the authors of Jubilees, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Assumption of Moses, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra. Some new Testament authors seem to have been acquainted with the work, and were influenced by it, including Jude, who quotes it explicitly (1:14f.). At any rate, it is clear that Enochic concepts are found in various New Testament books, including the Gospels and Revelation.... Many Church Fathers, including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, either knew 1 Enoch or were inspired by it. Among those who were familiar with 1 Enoch, Tertullian had an exceptionally high regard for it.... (F)ew other apocryphal books so indelibly marked the religious history and thought of the time of Jesus (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, p. 8).
In his third affirmative, McDonald argued that the inspiration of the New Testament "can be shown by the value that the early Christians placed on these books" (p. 10). He went on to list Justin Martyr, Iraeneus, Tertullian, and Origen as early church leaders who "quoted from these books and considered them to be inspired of God." So if their high regard for and acts of quoting Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etc. prove the inspiration of the New Testament books, why wouldn't the same criteria, especially when coupled with Jude's act of quoting it, prove the inspiration of 1 Enoch? Maybe Mr. McDonald can explain this to us.
After explaining that 1 Enoch began to lose favor in the western church when fourth-century leaders like Augustine, Hilary, and Jerome gave it negative reviews, Isaac said this about the general esteem that the book enjoyed during the formation and early centuries of Christianity:
(E)ven though Charles may have exaggerated when he claimed that "nearly all" the writers of the New Testament were familiar with 1 Enoch, there is no doubt that the New Testament world was influenced by its language and thought. It influenced Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 John, Jude (which quotes it directly), and Revelation (with numerous points of contact). There is little doubt that 1 Enoch was influential in molding New Testament doctrines concerning the nature of the Messiah, the Son of Man, the messianic kingdom, demonology, the future, resurrection, final judgment, the whole eschatological theater, and symbolism. No wonder, therefore, that the book was highly regarded by many of the earliest apostolic and Church Fathers (Ibid., p. 10).
If high regard can in any way be considered proof of inspiration, McDonald must recognize the force of overwhelming evidence that justifies the inclusion of 1 Enoch in the Old Testament canon. But it isn't there. Why? Neither is there any indication that Jesus considered the book canonical. Why? If the Holy Spirit esteemed the book highly enough to direct Jude to quote it in his inspired epistle and to assert that 1 Enoch 1:9 was an authentic prophecy of events yet to come, by what logic has the book been excluded from the canon? As Mr. McDonald seeks to tell us how we can know what the "correct canon" is, he needs to explain this to us.
He might also explain why the Septuagint Bible should not be the standard for determining canonicity rather than the KJV and ASV. After all, his argument is that Jesus's opinion on this is a valid standard for deciding what the canon should be, but if the gospel accounts are accurate representations in Greek of what Jesus said in Aramaic during the three years of his personal ministry, then obviously he thought that the Septuagint contained the "correct canon." Isaiah 29:13, for example, which Jesus quoted in Matthew 15:8-9 deviates significantly from the Masoretic text but states exactly what was said in the Septuagint. Did Jesus, although probably speaking in Aramaic, quote this passage as he knew it to exist in the Septuagint, or did he quote it as it existed in the MT and the Holy Spirit simply directed Matthew to write it the way it was rendered in the Septuagint? Either way poses problems for McDonald's "correct-canon" argument. If the latter, then we have to wonder why the Holy Spirit deliberately misrepresented what Jesus really said. If the former, then apparently Jesus favored the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, and the Septuagint contained the apocryphal books (Tobit, Judith, Baruch, the four books of Maccabees, etc.), which were not in the Hebrew scriptures and are not in the canon that McDonald accepts. He doesn't see this as a problem?
If McDonald intends to base an argument on what might or might not be the "correct canon," he will have to extricate himself from the Septuagint dilemma. Jesus relied on it when he quoted the scriptures (if we are to believe the gospel accounts), and the Holy Spirit (if we are to believe the doctrine of verbal inspiration) directed the New Testament writers to quote it. So what is all this talk about the canon as we have it in the KJV and ASV? If his argument has any merit at all, it should focus on the canon as it existed in the Septuagint, the version favored by Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Another problem with McDonald's argument is his reasoning principle. That principle is obviously based on the premise that Jesus was the son of God and as such had divine knowledge of which books were inspired and which were not. The premise, however, is an assumption, which like all of his other assumptions must be proven before they can have any force. There is absolutely no evidence at all that Jesus was the son of God except for canonical and apocryphal writings that were produced by people who were obviously biased to the belief that he was the son of God. That is not good enough to settle the matter. Some scholars (G. A. Wells, for example) doubt that Jesus of Nazareth ever even existed, and their evidence is convincing enough to warrant earnest consideration. How then can McDonald expect to base a serious argument about the inspiration of the Bible on anything as dubious as what Jesus may have thought was the "correct canon"? As far as we can actually know, Jesus, if he even existed, was just another man.
The seventh and final element in McDonald's "total-situation" argument was his claim that "(t)he Bible is historically a reliable document." By reliable, he must of course mean inerrant, for that is what he has been affirming: the Bible is inerrant or at least it was so in the "original autographs." I have stressed throughout the debate that there is absolutely no way for him to know the original autographs were inerrant, because they no longer exist, so it is utter folly to argue that one can know that nonexistent documents were inerrant. If I am wrong about this, he should explain to us exactly how it would be possible for anyone to determine that documents that no longer exist (and as far as we know were never subjected to critical analysis) were inerrant. It's an impossible task.
In my fourth rebuttal, I cited pagan documents from Old Testament times that appear to contradict events as they are recorded in the Bible. McDonald's response to this was to cite statements from The Bible and Archaeology, a book whose avowed purpose is to confirm the inerrancy of Bible records, so his countermaterial was the very type that would be expected. I could cite books that interpret these documents in ways complementary to my position in this matter, but what would that prove? For the sake of argument, let's just assume that there are no known documents, pagan, noncanonical, or otherwise, from Old Testament times that dispute the Bible record of events that occurred in those days. How would that prove the reliability (inerrancy) of the Bible's account of history? A solitary witness to an event that happened thousands of years ago is poor evidence of accuracy. The account in Judges 19-21 is the only record we have of events concerning the murder of the Levite's concubine and the war against the Benjaminites that ensued. How then can we know that this is a reliable (inerrant) record of what happened if there are no other historical accounts to compare it to? Indeed, how can we even know that it happened if there is no other testimony except this one account? It might well be only a fanciful legend that was verbally transmitted and then finally written down years later. How can we know otherwise? But before McDonald can find any evidence for the inerrancy doctrine in the "reliability" of Bible history, he would have to be able to demonstrate how we can know otherwise. Surely he can see that. I am confident that our readers will be able to see it.
All through this debate, McDonald has tried to make an issue of Joseph Wheless's book Is It God's Word? He accuses me of now wanting to "disavow" this book after having once said that I consider it "the most convincing anti-inerrancy book that I have ever read." He has based this imagined disavowal on the fact that after having made this assessment of the book, I later referred to it as just a "good anti-inerrancy book." If statements similar to these appeared in the Bible, can the readers imagine what kind of objection McDonald would raise if I tried to make them into a contradiction? Let's suppose that a Bible writer in the opening chapter of his book described something as "the most convincing" but then later referred to it as just being "good." What would McDonald think of my claim that this constituted a contradiction? Probably the same thing that I think of his attempt to find an inconsistency in what I have said of Wheless's book.
In checking through my correspondence file, I have found that Mr. McDonald was apparently right in saying that I volunteered the information about this book in our initial exchange of letters. I have had fundamentalist preachers ask me to recommend books that examine the inerrancy doctrine, so I mistakenly thought that he had been one of them. For this, I apologize; it was an inadvertent mistake, but so that this issue will be put to rest, I will reassert my confidence in Mr. Wheless's book. I personally think that Is It God's Word? is the most convincing anti-inerrancy book I have ever read. I suspect Mr. McDonald has recognized its efficacy too. I can't think of any other reason why he persists in assailing a book that I have yet to refer to except in response to his assaults on it. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.
From his second manuscript until now, Mr. McDonald has complained that I have not answered all of his arguments, and he will probably do so again. I lay no claim to having responded point-by-point to everything Mr. McDonald said in his last affirmative. For one thing, much of what he has said throughout this debate couldn't even be properly characterized as "points." He uses a familiar debating tactic of Church-of-Christ preachers: seek to overwhelm the opponent and the audience with a mass of unexplicated syllogisms and scripture citations to leave a superficial impression of having verbally routed the other side. It's a tactic I have long been acquainted with, having been trained in it myself in Church-of-Christ Bible colleges. It's a strategy that relies on hidden assumptions, wild assertions, off-the-wall syllogisms, and rapid-fire, unexplicated scripture citations. To show the absurdity of "arguments" such as these requires much more time and space than it takes simply to spew them out and go on to the next preposterous conjecture. My strategy has been to do thorough rebuttals of the counterarguments that Mr. McDonald at least attempted to develop (the 20-year co-reign of Jehoram and Ahaziah, for example). I considered this better than shooting off a volley of it-just-ain't-soes to the barrage of assumptions and unproven assertions he fired at us. So that no one can accuse me of trying to dodge anything, I intend to take some of the issues he mentioned in his "rebuttals" (the price that David paid for the temple site, Mark's disagreement with the other gospel writers on what the women did after running from the empty tomb, etc.) and incorporate them into the defense of my proposition. My policy will be to focus on a limited number of fully explicated points to force McDonald to abandon his hit-and-run approach and get down to the business of actually trying to develop arguments.
To conclude this part of the debate, Mr. McDonald will write a short rejoinder. I don't yet know what he will say, but as we end this phase of the debate and go on to the next, I ask our readers to think about the advantage that my position has over Mr. McDonald's. My position leaves a margin for error; Mr. McDonald's doesn't. If he should be able to prove conclusively and absolutely that I am improperly interpreting some of the Bible passages that I have identified and will yet identify as contradictions, that would in no way disprove my position, because I have laid no claim to infallibility. If I identify contradictions A, B, C... Z, and he should prove conclusively that some of them, or even most of them, are not really contradictions, he would not have disproven my position, because my position requires me to show only that there are some errors in the Bible text. When I do that, even if I succeed in identifying only one--just one--contradiction, I will have proven my position. On the other hand, Mr. McDonald has no room for error. He must prove himself right on every single point concerning the allegation of contradictions and discrepancies in the biblical text. If he fails to explain away satisfactorily one--just one--of these allegations, he has lost his case.
That being true, I urge our readers to examine his "explanations" very critically and to think seriously about the unlikeliness of many of his far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios that he has offered and will continue to offer as the debate continues. There just has to be something wrong with an inerrant" book that requires its readers to stretch their imaginations to infinity in order to retain faith in its inerrancy. There are many weaknesses in Mr. McDonald's defense that I would ask the readers to focus attention on, but I urge them in particular to think about his complete failure to explain away the discrepancy in the ages cited for Ahaziah as "he began to reign" (1 Kings 8:26; 2 Chron. 22:2) and the variations between the Septuagint and Masoretic versions of Jeremiah. On the latter, he was forced to take the position that the text of Jeremiah was rewritten after the prophet's death, a position that leaves no room to believe that the original autograph and the Masoretic version, which his beloved KJV relies on, were both inerrant.
Regardless of anything else that was discussed or not discussed during the first part of this debate, these two problems alone leave Mr. McDonald in a very tenuous position. He has failed to sustain his proposition.
Go to McDonald's Rejoinder
