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Author Topic:   Did the sky really go dark as biblical inerrantists insist?
anastasia
Member (Idle past 5953 days)
Posts: 1857
From: Bucks County, PA
Joined: 11-05-2006


Message 103 of 113 (395653)
04-17-2007 10:08 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by nator
04-17-2007 8:42 AM


Re: I see....
nator writes:
See, this stuff that you wrote above is you massaging the text to mean whatever you need it to mean to counter any argument.
Coulda, mighta...you are rendering the plain text of the Bible as more and more meaningless with your heavy interpretation.
nator, the plain text does say 'appeared to many'. It does not even in its most plain state say 'dead people were walking around'.
The saints entered the Holy City. What does that mean? How can you read a sentence involving 'saints' in a plain way?
They appeared to many. How can you read something involving apparitions in a plain way?
There are apologetics, and there are 'simply trying to make sense of a text' interpretations.
There is every reason in the plain text to say that these saints arose bodily. The fact that they only showed themselves (Greek word also means 'appeared' or 'manifested') to MANY does seem to indicate that there was not a whole swarn of zombies walking from the graves. So what ARE the other options? For a person to speculate or try to imagine some possibilities, since Matthew is clearly not elaborating, does not necessarily make them an apologeticist.
Some people study the Bible for meaning, for plausibility, etc. These things begin after the plain text reading leaves off. The problem with some interpretations is that they try too hard, and in turn lose sight of the plain text altogether. No one is recorded as 'seeing grandpa walk out of his grave'. Extremely ad libbed and exaggerated excuses are not IMO the same as apologetics! The more a person has to add to a story to make it believeable, the worse it goes for them.
Now as far as the apparitions of the dead...I can give you many, many such examples of recorded events from history. I doubt that you will find a recorded incident from the 1890's any more convincing than these generalized, related by hear-say versions in Matthew. I can tell you that there was no big stir up of nations over them, that there was no reporting done to any authorities and there was in many cases no great panic in the 'visionary' that persisted long after the event.
I am not saying 'I believe' this or that. Only that in the RCC at least, the apparitions of the dead in Matthew are not an isolated event, and subsequent reported apparitions of the same nature were also relatively unnoticed. The fact of them having been recorded does not make them believable. So, is there anything in the text that clearly shows that Romans woulda or coulda recorded this? Do we actually have anything from this exact period of time that the Romans were recording and failed to mention these things within?

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 Message 102 by nator, posted 04-17-2007 8:42 AM nator has not replied

  
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