Summations Only

Here's a simple question. If we grant that the statement assigned to Abraham foreshadows the appearance of the ram, how is that evidence of inspiration?If you can't answer that then you really ought to reconsider the worth of your argument.(Bear in mind that you cannot assume that Abraham truly said that, because that would require inspiration, making your argument circular)

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I can't very well think that what is actually there in scripture isn't really there just because you don't believe in inspiration.

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You aren't required to do any such thing. All you have to do is refrain from making arguments assuming inspiration when arguing for inspiration. If you can't do that then I am afraid that you're just too irrational to make a good argument.

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Abraham's remark is there and God provides a ram which fulfills it, that's also there, and the sacrifice of a lamb always points to Jesus, and the ram is simply an older lamb, which fits just fine with the fact that Jesus was in his thirties

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None of which is what I was asking about.I ask again how is the foreshadowing of the ram in Abraham's statement evidence of inspiration ?

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First, please recall that I demoted that part of the story to the second list because it isn't as clear as those in the first list

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But the problem isn't that it wasn't clear. The problem is that it isn't evidence of inspiration. You've had plenty of opportunity to argue otherwise and evaded the question twice. When I shouldn't even have had to ask.

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The correspondence of widely separated events is what I'm arguing is the evidence of inspiration.

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Actually this is a good example of confirmation bias at work. You start by arguing that Isaac corresponds to Jesus. But at the crucial moment the story diverges quite drastically - the son is not sacrificed and a substitute, of lesser value is, introduced. You ignore this and start saying that the substitute is now Jesus.I really can't see why anyone would take such weak and imperfect correspondences as evidence of inspiration. The strongest correspondence is the sacrifice of the beloved son, but as I point out above that is interrupted in a way that breaks the correspondence.The rest are mostly negligible to the point where I have to consider it more of an argument against inspiration. The use of hopelessly weak points always looks to me like an act of desperation, an implicit admission that the stronger points aren't sufficient - but that there is nothing more. Padding your case with points that only detract from it is unwise at best.

Well let's look at the main list:

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Isaac is called Abraham's only son

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Of course there are problems for that, but OK let's accept it. There's an obvious literary purpose to it, and Jesus being called God's only son has equally obvious reasons so it doesn't even require any deliberate attempts to make parallels. So, not significant on it's own, but if you could come up wiht more and better you'd have a case.

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Abraham's name means father

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That's not entirely true. Abraham's name means more than that, although it appears that the exact meaning is unclear - "father of multitudes" is one translation that makes sense. So, not much of a parallel.

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Abraham had every intention of sacrificing Isaac,

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Which only draws attention to the fact that he didn't. So this is more of a divergence than a parallel.

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Abraham believed God would raise Isaac from the dead.

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Even if that was justified it wouldn't be much of a parallel. But it isn't. The opinions of people far removed from the writing of even that version of the story carries little weight. The attempt to claim that it is implicit in the story is obviously false - and pointless.

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Abraham was told to perform this sacrifice in the region of Moriah on a particular mountain which God would reveal to him. This is where the city of Jerusalem was built hundreds of years later, which is of course where Jesus was crucified

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That's speculation. We don't know that the mountains are the same, and the events happening in the same general area would only be a weak parallel if they were. Moreover the religious importance of Jerusalem makes it something of a no-brainer to link both stories to it, so it has very little significance.So, objectively speaking there really isn't much to the case. Certainly not enough to justify any claim of divine inspiration. All well within the reach of probability with no need of anyone engineering any parallels.

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The passage SAYS Isaac was Abraham's only son. THat's what it SAYS

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Well thank you for saying that I got that right. I don't know why you bothered with something that obvious, though.

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You want to rewrite scripture don't try to get me to buy your rewrite.

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What rewrite ?

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Yes, "father of multitudes" is the usual translation and I should have remembered that but I didn't. However, you are wrong that it makes less of a parallel. Of course it makes a better parallel since God Himself is certainly the father of multitudes, not begotten multitudes but created multitudes.

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Obviously it DOES weaken the parallel, since God IS commonly called "Father" and not "Father of multitudes". And since there are good reasons for Abraham to be called that unrelated to making a parallel it makes it less significant, too

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Having the intention to kill Isaac is what supports the parallel with the sacrifice of Christ. He would have done it if God hadn't intervened. So you are wrong to dismiss that obvious parallel.

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Simply repeating the claim does nothing to counter my assessment.

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YOu are not reading carefully if you think Abraham's expectation that God would raise Isaac from the dead is not clearly indicated by the facts I gave. FACTS.

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Oh ? Seems to me that even if Abraham assumed that Isaac would survive (and that is not certain) there is no need for him to have any specific idea in mind of how that would occur. And we KNOW that there was an alternative to Isaac being resurrected - what happened in the story.

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Moriah figures in all three descriptions and Mt. Moriah too. You need to turn yourself into a mental pretzel to deny it.

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The land of Moriah appears in Genesis 22, and Mount Moriah in 2 Chronicles - and the name Moriah nowhere else in the Bible. We can't tell that they are the same place, just because the name appears to be the same. A mountain and a land are not the same thing - and even if they were related there is nothing to say which of the mountains in that region was the mountain where the sacrifice took place.So no, there's no need to turn myself into a "mental pretzel". Taking an objective look look at the evidence is all that needed.

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Genesis 22 refers to a mountain in Moriah to which God will direct Abraham. You really want to deny that that's "Mount Moriah?"

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Even if Mount Moriah is in the land of Moriah, which is not certain, Mount Moriah is only one of the mountains in that region. So why does the mountain where the sacrifice took place have to be that one ?

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When you trust the Bible to be true, when you encounter something you don't understand, which has to happen in a text written in such a different age in a culture of different ways of thinking, when you simply trust it and wait without jumping to conclusions you often do get an answer that makes sense and resolves your problem.

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So when the Bible comes into conflict with what you want to be true you look for excuses to pretend that it doesn't mean what it says. And to someone like you who pays very little attention to what the Bible says - as we've seen in this thread, and elsewhere - that isn't hard.

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No, trusting it IS testing it. The more you trust it and the more it comes through for you the more you trust it.

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But it doesn't come through for you. We see it quite often. In this thread we've seen that it didn't provide a good set of parallels between the story of Abraham's sacrifice and your beliefs about Jesus. It didn't even specify the mountain where the sacrifice took place or provide any hints that Abraham expected Isaac to be resurrected. Unless you wanted to rant and rave and try to bully people into believing that you had a good argument for inspiration there, it really let you down badly. And that's far from the only example.I guess that's why you care so little about the actual Bible.

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Only that the Jews knew it was and they were obsessive about their texts, about precise copying and preserving and so on, so that our own OT is just about identical with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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That is misleading at best. In reality there are variations even in the Greek version of the OT - which the early Christians used - as against the Masoretic text which is the standard Hebrew version. The Masoretic text itself was produced as a deliberate effort to produce an authoritative text, because of the variations that had crept in.And the Dead Sea Scrolls include even more variations - they may include versions substantially identical to the texts used to translate Bibles, but they also contain other variations, some of them major. And, while the Masoretic text was the majority other texts support the Greek "Septuagint".So, the idea that the text has been transmitted, unchanged, since the original writings was already highly suspect before the discovery of the DSS. The DSS put it to rest, once and for all - and showed that the early Christians used a text derived from a different manuscript tradition.

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Yes, I must confess I favor the scholars who support Biblical tradition and reject those who reinvented it all in the last couple hundred years, which of course, contrary to your statement, shows I distinguish between good and bad scholarship rather than favoring it wholesale in one case aqnd rejecting it in another.

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The fact that your evaluation of the scholarship is based almost entirely on whether you find their conclusions agreeable is quite sufficient to establish that you do not distinguish between good and bad scholarship. And the fact that your conclusions based on your extreme prejudice agree with your extreme prejudice is not in any way a validation of your judgement.Indeed given the number of hopelessly bad arguments you've made and tried to tout as good it's rather clear that you are not in any position to judge anybody's scholarship.The fact that you use lies and slander to reject expert opinions if they contradict you while insisting that expert opinions that support you should be unquestioningly accepted demonstrates not only hypocrisy but a complete disregard for truth and honesty.

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The Pentateuch was written by Moses

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According to a tradition of unknown provenance - a tradition that finds no support in the books themselves. Not a sound reason for belief.

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The most hideous evil thing the revisionists do is redate the writings

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Really ? I'd hesitate to call it "revisionism" or "redating" when we had no good dates for the book prior to the rise of modern scholarship. Exodus, for instance, is short of historical markers and the best that can be found do not seem to fit with the preferred dates for Moses.And why call it evil ? That seems absurd.

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THERE IS PLENTY OF EVIDENCE IN THE HISTORICAL USAGE OF THE BOOKS.

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Really ? "HISTORICAL USAGE" is unlikely to be good evidence of authorship in the first place. Even if it came very close to the supposed time of writing.

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I did find this page that deals with some of the allegations made here against Mark, his identity and his supposed lack of knowledge of Palestinian geography.

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Let us note that the page tells us that the "Mark" who wrote the Gospel was a disciple of Peter, and that the order of events is incorrect, at least to the point where Papias thought it worth mentioning. (see the text for the footnotes)

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ABE: This site also has a page discussing the basis for believing in the Bible as the word of God.

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"The Word of God" has many meanings. The idea that God wrote it is not the only one, nor one that can be supported from the text.The main reason that the article gives seems to me to amount to pride, and even it's use of the Bible is questionable.

Even the article that Faith cites comes down against the hypothesis that the author of Mark was an eyewitness. When you dismiss the evidence you are really agreeing with those that say we don't know who wrote Mark. Which is hardly a good position to be in if you want to argue that Mark is an eyewitness account.

Be fair, Golflly. The argument might not be that good, but it isn't that bad, especially by Faith's standards. And remember that even Faith disagrees with it.

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Changing the dating is a great crime of vandalism against God's word as it completely mangles the content of many of the books, both historical and prophetic books, but Daniel in particular. This is unforgiveable.

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Of course, we never had good dates for the Pentateuch, so "redating" is hardly an issue.And you just object to the correct dating and understanding of Daniel - and that is not something that needs forgiveness. Let's start with the fact that Daniel 8 places the "end times" in the period of the Diadochi states....