Fair enough. I’ll make some time and see if I can piece some of the stuff together that is mentioned above. I will try not to read any commentaries on the subject and just see if I can make the fit myself at first. This kind of stuff interests me anyway.

Can you take your understanding of what it means to be inspired, and then do the Resurrection Challenge, to tell us what you think actually happened? I’d be interested in seeing if the vast and many contradictions can actually be explained away as easily as you say.

I would take “inspired” to mean “directed”—I realize this is a bad example, but take a movie director. He “uses” the talents the actors have to convey his OWN point. He expects them to perform according to their talents, but to follow his direction in conveying what the director wants to say.

In a similar way (but very bad example I admit), the Holy Spirit “used” certain men and their talents to convey His point. He directed them to remember certain events, or to write a specific thing he wanted written, but allowing the author to retain his personality and style while doing so.

He directed them each to write what he wanted them to write, but allowed them to be themselves in conveying that message. Does that make any sense?

So, though inspired when writing, he is still giving his own account–God using his expertise to explain what he is seeing and doing on the journey with Paul.

Actually, both are true. The Bible says that men wrote as they were “inspired by God”. But God did not change their personalities, or their writing styles—he “used” the men to describe events, and often takes “parts” of an event and explains them through the eyes of one person, and then from a different angle through another person.

if you read the book of Acts for example you will note that it is a narrative given by Luke. He begins the narrative by saying “they” when talking about experiences—and then swtiches to “we” as he apparently “personally” joins the group who is making the journey. He retains his personality, writing style (many note he is deeply intelligent, and speaks much the way a doctor would—Luke was a doctor). He is “used” by God, but God does not alter Luke—he allows Luke to tell the story as he would, but led by the Spirit of God.

If that is all, then we are not talking about a text that is in anyway inspired by a god; just a fallible human account written by fallible humans (eyewitness accounts tending to be the least trustworthy, as you point out yourself) for their own purposes. That they were written at a minimum of fifty years after the events supposedly occurred makes things even worse.

You can’t have it both ways Joe; either you have a story told by humans, after being passed on from one person to another, and indeed, one generation to another, (lifespans did not reach 80 years in those days) and then written by scribes (even Paul did dictation, rather than writing himself), or you have a flawless account inspired by God that you can put your trust in (once you explain away the glaring contradictions). Not both.

That’s a bit rash isn’t it? Many of the “supposed” contradictions I’ve found can simply be explained by looking at any example where several people give “eyewitness” accounts. Take an accident for example. One person may have seen the accident from the front and speak of seeing two people in the car. Someone saw it from the side and saw four people in the car, etc.

Much of the Gospel account is like this. For example, Mark 5 speaks of (1) man having demons cast out from him, In another account it says (2) men ran down to meet Jesus at the shoreline. But Mark is “centering in” on the one man for a purpose—it APPEARS he has made an error by not listing 2 men—-but not truly so—-he is giving HIS account of what happened.

The resurrection accounts can be pieced together—and have been by scholars. We are talking (4) different people giving perspectives on one event. That is all.