Either this guys understanding of the Bible and church history is paper thin or he loves dispensing disinformation. I’ll put it in the simplest way possible, Aslan stated flatly. The Gospels are absolutely replete with historical errors and with contradictions. The gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born in 4 B.C. The gospel of Luke says Jesus was born in 6 A.D. That’s 10 years difference! Which one was right?” To be clear, there are numerous possibilities as to how to reconcile this supposed disparity. As it says here in my ESV Study Bible regarding the contentious Luke 2:2: According to Josephus, Quirinius was governor of Syria A.D. 6-7 and conducted a census in A.D. 6. But this cannot be the census Luke is referencing here, since it occurred after the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C., and it is known that Jesus was born during Herods reign (cf. Matt 2:1; Luke 1:5). Various plausible solutions have been proposed. Some interpreters believe that because governor was a very general term for ruler, it may be that Quirinius was the administrator of the census , but not the governor proper. Another solution is to translate the verse, This was the registration before Quirinius was governor of Syria, which is grammatically possible. This would make sense because Luke would then be clarifying that this was before the well-known, troublesome census of A.D. 6... Aslans antagonistic presuppositions are so overwhelming that he sees what could only be an apparent contradiction and, instead, sees an irrefutable error. Notice, too, that Aslan has overlooked Luke 1:5, which aligns Jesuss birth with the birth account in Matthew, contrary to his claim. Now, let me ask you a much more important question than which one is right, Aslan states. Do you think that the church fathers who in the fourth century decided to put both Matthew and Luke in the canonized New Testament didn’t bother to read them first? They didn’t notice that they have different dates for Jesus’ birth? They didn’t notice that the gospel of John absolutely contradicts the entire timeline of Matthew, Mark and Luke? They didn’t notice that there are two completely different genealogies for Jesus in Matthew and Luke? Of course they did! Aslan responds. They didn’t care, because at no point did they ever think that what they were reading was literally true.” Aslan digs himself even deeper here with more ludicrous claims. One such claim, that the early church universally denied the Bibles historical reliability, is pure nonsense. Many of the early church fathers believed in a literal six-day creation, while simultaneously attributing some spiritual symbolism to it as well. St Ambrose of Milan believed creation to have taken place in six days, not that God required time to form it in, for He can do in a moment what He wills... The same could be said of Basil, Augustine, and others. For crying out loud, Augustine penned a defense of the historicity of Genesis entitled De Genesi ad Litteram—Libri Duodecim or The Literal Meaning of Genesis in Twelve Books. Aslan, once again, has tortured the evidence to suit his faulty presuppositions. Even reformers like John Calvin believed the biblical creation account. Calvin writes, They will not refrain from guffaws when they are informed that but little more than five thousand years have passed since the creation of the universe. In other words, fundamentalism is far older than the 19th century. Reza Aslan destroys biblical literalism? Hardly. Really, the only thing thats been destroyed is the shoddy scholarship of Aslan.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:32:22 +0000
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