Theological Opinions , PART II

[Lief Erikson]

One important thing to note, GreyMouser, is that because something isn't mentioned in a text doesn't mean the text denies that it happened.

One text might say, "Lief Erikson went to the bank, got some money and went home." Another might say, "Lief Erikson and his brother Minor Fwan went to the bank, got some money and went home." The first text is not inaccurate because it doesn't mention Minor Fwan. The fact that I went to the bank is still a fact, whether Minor Fwan did or not, and omission does not equal discrepency.

If omission was a discrepency, you might justly argue that both accounts are invalid, since neither mentions the people who work in the bank or says that they cashed the checks. It might also be a discrepency to history that the floor color wasn't mentioned. In this case all history books are full of errors, since all of them always leave out something. Omission does not equal discrepency .

This is important to note, for a huge number of the "errors" people see in the Bible come from simple omission. Not all, I grant you, but a huge number of them.


The difference between Luke and Matthew here is that Luke doesn't mention Herod's attempt to kill Jesus. So Luke doesn't mention what Matthew does, that Jesus was taken to Egypt for a while for his own safety, while Herod was alive. Then when Herod died, Joseph took his child (Jesus was still young, according to Matthew 2:20) back to Israel, to the town of Nazareth. Matthew 2:19-23 describes the story and says to conclude, "So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: 'He will be called a Nazarene.'"

*I'll continue this post later. I don't have time right now- my family is dragging me off the computer . . . AHH!!!*

. . . continued.

The purification at the Temple described in Luke is circumcision. That occurred "on the eighth day." That would have been shortly after his birth. According to the NIV text note in Matthew 2:11, the Magi would have showed up some months after Jesus was born. So that was well after the incident at the temple. In short, after being born in Bethlehem (Matthew and Luke), he was purified at the Temple (Luke) and lived for a short time in Nazareth (Luke). Then his parents took him out of Israel to Egypt (Matthew) and brought him back to Nazareth after Herod died (Matthew).

So the accounts don't all recount the exact same events. Matthew doesn't mention the prophecies at the Temple, and Luke doesn't mention Herod's attempts to kill Jesus. Yet the fact that the two authors chose to describe different events in their narratives doesn't mean that there is a contradiction.