Superfluousity in the New Testament

Huh? Sorry but that just seems silly. Is this "My miracle is bigger than your miracle?" How is one miracle of greater magnitude than the other?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

If I understand correctly the essence of what you are saying is; even if God was the source of inspiration in the Bible, that is, the inspiration to record an event, the inspiration for the symbology, or for the comprehension of things not known to man, the human being acting as a conduit to the information is himself an imperfect organ of transportation? Or that the human will pass the information through his own mind and his own view of reality? Maybe in the way that each artist can do the same landscape with an intent of imitation, but with a result that is a product of his particular culture, technical ability, etc., and therefore limited?I think the truth of the matter of inspiration is to be found somewhere in this messy thought process. If you think about the modern meaning of infallibility, that of God just controlling the pen of the artist, and writing the words straight form His own mind, you would find things being written that are maybe so far ahead of their time, or symbolisms which don't reflect the literature of the same period at all. People seem to still want to believe that this was how it happened. In older artistic rendering you see a dove or other symbol of inspiration...in newer 'christian' cults, like Jehova's Witnesses, you hear about folk being enclosed in a room while God dictates a translation of the Bible to them with gold letters flashing across the wall. That to me seems to be a direct exploitation of the current christian craze with viewing the Bible as inerrant; it is giving them what they expect to see. Aside from literature, music is an area where I feel that inspiration is extremely apparent, even in a more mysterious way. It doesn't use words, and often seems beyond the human ability to 'think up' the perfect expression of the emotion conveyed. When it comes to Biblical inspiration, it may be more the ends than the means which lends significance. It is not an intent through art, to portray an emotion, or a landscape, but a God.

If you were writing a gospel, and you couldn't prove that there even WAS a miracle, showing that one event was a bigger deal than another, and therefore harder to account for, you might want to include numbers.A miracle is a miracle, sure, but is it the same thing to turn water into wine, as it is to raise someone from the dead?From a skeptic's point of view?

Huh?This is Matthew 14 & 15. Why does the author want to show one miracle is bigger than the other? Particularly in two chapters filled with such miracles what is the point.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I think it is.By definition, the supernatural is unmeasurable, so supernatural events can not be compared.(Do you think it's "harder" for God to do one miracle than another?)

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No, I understand, but if you had any question about the reality of the miracle, wouldn't it seem easier for someone to fake some things as compared to others?This seems more like a topic for scottness' new thread about what God would have to do to prove that He WAS God.

But that isn't where this tangent started. You were saying that feeding a bigger group of people was a bigger miracle. There is no issue of fakery there.The difference between four thousand and five thousand does seem like a superfluous detail.

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Ok; review of the two chapters shows that in the first story there were five thouand fed, in the second, four thousand (men) so if anything the second miracle was of less magnitude, and the number of loaves doesn't seem significant unless as a detail to show that the two incidences were not the same one.But I will be a nag; the whole point of the story is to show that Jesus performed a feat that was not possible; feeding so many with a small amount of bread. While the exact number of loaves is arbitrary, the story could not do without showing some indication of a small amount. In that sense the detail is not superfluous.

Yes, the number 4 thousand, or 5 thousand, is quite arbitrary. It is beside the point. It is not superfluous, in that the story would not have any significance if the number of people was not mentioned whatsoever.

So, is impossibility "the point" of the story then?As I may have mentioned earlier, people can read a lot into the details, attaching a significance that might not have been intended by the writer.Suppose the feeding of the five thousand was just a superfluous detail. Suppose it was only mentioned in passing, matter-of-factly. "And then He walked on water for a while, And, oh yeah, He healed a bunch of people too."If the whole story was superfluous, then the details would be too.

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Oh, man, Ringo...that's a whole other can of worms. Maybe the whole thing is superfluous...'a man was born, he did miracles, he was crucified, the end'?

Well, sure that's a possibility.There are plenty of other books that you would consider completely superfluous, aren't there? There's a whole continuum of possiblility from 0% superfluous to 100% superfluous. If you concede the possibility that one detail might be superfluous, then you have to consider the possibility that the set of details containing that detail is wholly superfluous.While taking a quick look at Jesus' miracles in the New Tesatament, I noticed that there are a lot of instances where it says matter-of-factly that He went around healing people. I can see the necessity for mentioning that He healed a lot of people on this day and again on that day and again a few days later. But how many instances does it take to establish the pattern?(By the way, I'm still wondering if you superfluized the topic title deliberately. )

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I do not see how lack of detail can make a case for inerrancy. Inerrancy it would seem to rest on accuracy and consistency.Also when there is detail it often leads to inconsistency. For example, just how did Judas die?

I need to put a qualifier on my own point about versimilitude. The detail about Malchus's name or the number of people fed... detail is necessary in the telling of any story. This is true even if particular details can be regarded as dispensable.A gospel that says only 'this person did a lot of miracles' would not convince anybody. It wouldn't even interest anybody. Readers need detail if they are to put events before their mind's eye. When someone says 'this many loaves and fish fed this many people' readers can imagine the sights and the tastes. They can decide without being told whether such an act would strike them as miraculous.All storytellling moves back and forth between the long view and the tight focus. Though today's styles are different from those twenty centuries ago, you see the same necessity operating in any modern novel or autobiography. Readers need detail in order to get involved in a story. They need fast forwards between scenes in order to stay involved.

quote:

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Drama is life with the dull bits left out.

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- Alfred Hitchcock

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__Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

And how many of these healings were actual supernatural events versus the healings being a spontaneous remission of symptoms?