There are certainly more damning stories than this small discrepancy, but this was the one that broke the camel’s back. There was too large a buildup of frankly unbelievable (but still just possible) resolutions to Biblical contradictions. This was the first that I realized wasn’t even “just possible”.

There are plenty of detailed analyses explaining why your cited prophecies are not reasonably believable (see this one, for instance). The Daniel prophecy you cited has to be mangled beyond belief in order to fit the biblical story (which, in any event, is the only “historical source” to confirm the event even took place—awfully convenient to make fantastic claims about prophecies when no one can check your story).

All of which is pointless to mention, I suppose, since if you actually credit the “resurrections” you linked without even a hint of doubt, I have little chance to get you to think critically about any of this.

I find the atheist position much more difficult to comprehend. Their basic assertion is that nothing created everything. All the marvelous detailed complexity of life and the laws of physics, we are to believe are just one big unfortunate accident.

On the other hand we’ve got some good evidence concerning the truth of Christianity and the Bible. The precise arrival of Jesus, to the day, was predicted in Daniel 9:26. There are lots of others:
http://www.100prophecies.org/

Even better, God is still doing miracles:
http://www.megashiftministries.org/html/Resurrections.html

First of all you’re reference to Matthew 7:5-13 is incorrect. You obviously meant Matthew 8:5-13 (as long as we’re trying to be factual, perhaps you should make a correction).

It certainly is. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I appreciate your taking the time to write a fairly lengthy comment, but I’m a little disappointed that you haven’t actually said anything that I haven’t already covered. I absolutely agree with your explanation about it being a “usual form of speech”, and have indicated this several times, in the post and in the comments.

We appear to disagree on how much of a stretch it is to think the centurion would come out to Jesus after all that powerful speech about not being worthy to come to him in purpose. As I say, it’s “technically feasible”, but not very plausible. And there are many, many examples like this in the Bible.

There are some differences between trying to establish an event in court, and trying to establish infallibility. No court on earth tries to establish infallibility of the witness: fallibility is assumed. If minor details between witnesses are in inescapable contradiction, it obviously does not undermine the credibility of the event itself. However, in proving the Bible to be inerrant, we cannot allow such liberty: if the Bible can be proven to contradict itself, it is thereby proved to be in error, and the entire volume is shown to be suspect, since it, itself, makes the claim of perfection.

As a retired peace officer I’ve had to submit written reports on many incidents that I’ve been involved in concerning my actions, the actions of suspects, fellow officers and victims. I’ve also taught report writing. When a supervisor receives the reports from a number of officers who’ve responded to a particular incident there always seem to be apparent contradictions regardless of the fact that each officer faithfully and truthfully (we hope) prepared his documentation. Now that can be a problem when it comes down to whether the DA will pick up the case or not. Since I’ve been subpoenaed and sat before a judge defending my report while the defendant’s attorney tried to pick it apart I make sure that what I’ve written is clear, concise and as complete as I can make it, and I don’t worry about the other officer’s reports. The differences occur because we all arrive at slightly different times, hear and see different things and act according to those circumstances. Usually after all the reports are compiled there will be a clear, consistent and complete picture of entire incident.

I’ve found that to be the case with the Bible. For instance, Marks account of Jesus healing blind Bartimaeus on his way out of Jericho. (Mark 10:45-47). While Mark focused in on Bartimaeus, Matthew relates the same story (Matthew 20:29-34) but with less specificity; he mentions no name as he reports Jesus healing two blind men.
Why is only one man mentioned by name? Possibly, since Mark was not an eye witness of the Jericho healing, (Matthew was an eyewitness) Mark met Bartimaeus who related his testimony to Mark as he was still following Jesus (the other unnamed blind man may have gone his own way by that time). That being the case answers and confirms that both accounts are accurate.

Concerning the centurion you referenced, Bible commentator Finis Jennings Dake says regarding Luke 7:2, “If he was the same as the centurion of Matthew 8:5-13, where it seems the man himself came to Jesus, the seeming contradiction could be explained thus: It is a usual form of speech in all nations to attribute the act to a person even if it is done merely by his authority.” In the military a command that is relayed down through the ranks is always attributed to the highest ranking individual by name or title, who gave the command; it’s always in the first person.

I would also say that it is apparent that there were two “waves” of messengers (first the Jewish elders of the synagogue followed by a group of ‘friends’) and it is no stretch that the centurion himself would have personally come out to Jesus in the second group or following the second group and spoke directly as indicated in Matthew, making both Luke and Matthew to both be literally correct.

Both of these scenarios satisfy in my mind at least any supposed conflict between the two accounts.

Lastly, I would say that you should listen to your mother and dad.

I understand.

Thanks for the explanation.

In other words, it’s completely natural to describe Jesus as telling the centurion “I will come and heal him,” when in fact he only told his messengers to relay that to the centurion; but it’s not at all common for someone to describe Jesus as saying “Go your way” to the centurion, when in fact he said this specifically to the messengers, and it was not intended to be relayed to the centurion.

Between this explanation and the explanation that “Go your way” really actually was intended for the centurion, and was relayed through the messengers to him, I find the latter the more palatable, even though (as I’ve already discussed in the post) I still don’t find it very plausible.

I’ve been thinking about it Micah, I can see it being plausible though that “the centurion” would have been directed towards the messengers because they are agents of him. But you say that the specific nature of the wording couldn’t have meant it.

So the specific nature of the word was meant directly right?

I feel like I need alittle bit of clarification on the word used.

Thanks again.

Oops, I apologize for my lack of throrough reading.

Okay I see.

Thanks.

The point of the link you’ve given seems to be that “In the view of the ancients, agency and representation was the same as being there.” It then makes a fairly good case to support this.

I absolutely understand and agree with the writers of that page that “If the skeptics don’t like this answer, well, that’s just too bad­—it was a reality of ancient culture,” and there is plenty of evidence to support this. Hopefully, I’ve made this position clear in my original post.

The problem I have, is that this consideration does not cover the final passage in Matthew’s version:

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you.”

Particularly the “Go your way” bit. It is not possible for me to accept that such a phrase could be transmitted to its intended listener vicariously, and the specific nature of the wording rules out it actually having been meant for the messengers rather than the centurion.

Thanks for throwing in your input!

Thank you for posting this, it helped me to question it as well. I did alittle bit of research and found an article that may help explain some of this passage.

http://www.tektonics.org/harmonize/gospelculture.html

Hope this helps.

Kyle