Here's my latest, which should make a decent starting point: ---------------------------------------------------------------- [purely personal matter snipped]
[Rev. A:]
>Now, that we've laid the foundation, that one's
>presuppositions determine one's conclusions, let's start with your beef.
[Brian Griffin:] Weellll, if you review our correspondance, think you'll find that I never affirmed a statement quite that strong. One's presuppositions heavily influence one's conclusions, but new data occasionally forces people to change basic presuppositions. I think you have to admit that, because both you and I have gone through it at least once, if I recall your testimony correctly.
>What makes you say that the birth narratives are inconsistent, and therefore
>undercuts the authority and integrity of Scripture?
Fair enough.....my first outline was very sketchy. And I've actually altered my position on this a bit since I first mentioned the birth narratives to you in April(?). At the time I held that there was at least a near logical impossibility in believing both Matt. and Luke because of chronological issues, especially the timing of the flight to Egypt. Since then I've come across a brilliant explanation which I hadn't seen in my previous readings, and which makes believing the two stories just barely logically possible (whether they become plausible or credible is another question altogether).
The explanation postulates an unmentioned move to Bethlehem
_after_ the return to Nazareth in Luke 2:39, whereupon the whole of Matt. 2 takes place. I, and all other commentators I've seen, tried to blend M and L's stories in different ways, with ludicrous results...this economical rendering recognizes that we have two separate and integral stories and places 'em end to end. Never thought of the possibility. One in the eye for me.
I still have serious problems with these scriptures, though; I'll cover them at least briefly, because some are good examples of whole classes of problems I have with biblical accounts and thus illuminate the reasons why I left the faith.
1)Luke's census....I've read a good bit on both sides, and think the non-inerrantists (errantists?) have a much stronger case, on the unlikelyhood of a postulated earlier governorship of Quirinius, on the general improbability of any Augustan census in Herod's domains, and most especially on the nature of the census: The often cited examples of censuses in Egypt where individuals away from their home for any reason were compelled to return do not seem relevent....Joseph obviously had no home or even close family in Bethlehem (hence the manger). A census for taxation puposes which involved people making treks of several days from their home in a Roman client state into another administrative region altogether on the basis of ancestry has no other known precedent and seems tremendously implausible, but would be convenient for explaining how a carpenter from Nazareth was actually born in the city of David.
2)Matthew's star....The attempts to explain it as Halley's comet or whatever strike me (and I would assume you) as totally off-base. Supernovae, planetary conjunctions, and the like don't move around and stand conveniently over houses....I'd assume we'd both agree that we either have a totally miraculous light in the sky which wise men can follow around, or we have nothing. If you postulate an omnipotent God, the light per se is no problem, but it would be a public phenomenon, and a pretty noticable one. The fact that the only record we have of it is Luke is odd. I'll follow that line of reasoning up in the next point:
3)The slaughter...Herod's reign is pretty well chronicled. Josephus in a particular seemed to have it in for him and loved to list his atrocities, but this one escaped him. An argument from silence can never be conclusive, but it can be indicative, and this is something one sees again and again looking at the Bible (Matt. 27:51-53 strikes me hard here, for one). (reminds me of the way you use Aquinas' "proofs of God" - not conclusive, but indicative......)
4)Matthew's odd appropriations of O.T. texts. This is something I want to develop later, as the best examples are elsewhere in the N.T., but the way the Gospel writers use the O.T. does help undermine my confidence in them as men whose words I should take as the basis of my life. Making Isaiah 7 apply to Jesus troubles me....and the odd bit about "he shall be called a Nazarene" (what is your take on that?).
5)As I said above, I now have seen a logically possible rconciliation of Matt. and Luke. But this doesn't mean I think it's probable. As I said way back when: "I find the liberal/secular line that the two stories are independent, (very) imaginative narratives vastly simpler, more believeable, more in line w/Ockham's Razor." Maybe I'll downgrade that from "vastly simpler" to "simpler" But....... You can assume an unstated move back to Bethlehem and link the two stories, but why are the two authors so scrupulous in telling their different tales? I.e., if both are recounting Jesus' historical infancy, why _no_ common ground except the names of His parents, an eventual residency in Nazareth, a Bethlehem birth, and the virginity of Mary ( the latter two being things of which Mark, John and Paul seem entirely unaware).
And though there is no absolute, unmovable contradiction the "plain sense" (to steal from one of your favourite phrases) of the text seems to me to be that Matthew's Joseph was from Bethlehem and eventually "came and resided" in Nazareth, and that Luke's Joseph made a brief stay in B and returned to his "own city" of N.
6)The genealogies: slightly off the topic of infancy, but the reconciliations I have seen of Matt and Luke here are very hard to swallow......
Ok...as you say "have at it". And I won't say "may the best man win". May the truth win.
-Brian