Biblical Writers: Infallible or Inerrant?

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What do you make of these supposed discrepancies found in Acts of the Apostles?
  • Acts 5:33-39 gives an account of speech by the first century Pharisee Gamaliel, in which he refers to two movements other than the Way. One lead by Theudas (v 36) and after him led by Judas the Galilean. Josephus placed Judas about 6 AD. He places Theudas under the procurator Fadus 44-46 AD. Two problems emerge. First, the order of Judas and Theudas is reversed in Acts 5. Second, Theudas’s movement comes after the time when Gamaliel is speaking.
  • Acts 6:9 mentions the Province of Cilicia during a scene allegedly taking place in mid-30s AD. The Roman province by that name had been on hiatus from 27 BC and re-established by Emperor Vespasian only in 72 AD.[9]
  • In Acts 9:31 which says “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up” has been taken to mean that Judea was understood to have been directly connected to Galilee. If so, then Luke had an incorrect understanding of Palestinian Geography.
  • In Acts 11:28 and 12:25, Agabus prophesies a famine under Claudius (41-54 AD). The famine is mentioned in Acts before the death of Herod (12:20-23). Josephus mentions a famine in Jerusalem relieved by the good graces of Queen Helena of Adiabene connected with procuratorship of Tiberius Julius Alexander (46-48 AD). Josephus however locates the famine after the death of Herod. Agabus’ prophecy is therefore not precisely placed in the sequences of Acts 11:28.
  • In Acts 23:31, says the soldiers brought Paul from Jerusalem to Antipatris, a distance of some 45 miles, overnight. Thirty miles constituted a suitable days journey whether by land or by sea. Both the numbers involved (two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, two hundred spearmen) and the speed of the journey (38 to 45 miles in a night) are exaggerated to emphasize the importance of person being accompanied and the extent of the danger.
  • It seems very strange that Luke could know what Festus and Agrippa said to each other in their private apartments (Acts 25:13-22, 26:30-32) or what the members of the Sanhedrin said in a closed session (Acts 4:15-17, 5:34-40)
  • Acts 4:4 speaks of Peter addressing an audience of 5,000 people. Professor of New Testament Robert M Grant says: 'Luke evidently regarded himself as a historian, but many questions can be raised in regard to the reliability of his history […] His ‘statistics’ are impossible; Peter could not have addressed three thousand hearers without a microphone, and since the population of Jerusalem was about 25-30,000, Christians cannot have numbered five thousand.[10]
 
Bible is not infallible in the sense of the Pope’s declarations, Bible is inspired. The Church and the Pope as the teacher of the Church are protected from error in certain cases that would undermine the mission of the Church, but the infallible declarations of the Church are not necessarily explicitly intended by God.

Bible, on the other hand, is inspired and has God as its author: the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. (Dei Verbum 11) and everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit. This guarantee is stronger than the infallibility of the Chruch, it means that Bible contains exactly what God wanted it to contain and is free from error, because God cannot be a source of error.
 
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“gender neutral”? God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was a man. “gender neutral” appears to be a recent novelty that does not apply to the Church.
 
Veritas6 said:
What do you make of the similarities written out in the bullet points?
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You addressed this question to @Gorgias, but I’d like to add my own answer. At first glance, the parallels are very striking. However, I have never read the Bacchae and I plan to read it first and then come back to your list. For the time being, I would make just these few brief observations:

• As @Gorgias already noted, most of the Gospel passages referenced here are found in the Synoptics as well as in John.
• I don’'t understand the final one. What is meant by “disembodied apotheosis”? The Ascension?
• Who are the “old men” in #7?
• In #12,“the one whom his opponents cannot see.” Do you mean he becomes invisible, or just unrecognizable, as in the road to Emmaus passage?
• In #13, Jesus does not “miraculously escape arrest.” He is arrested, in all four Gospels.
 
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Veritas6 said:
What do you make of these supposed discrepancies found in Acts of the Apostles?
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I generally ignore any attempts
which approach Sacred Scriptures via scouring for a potential indotted "i’ or uncrossed “t”.

One can only begin to actually UNDERSTAND Scriptures through the Lens of the Mind of Jesus.
 
gama232 said:
“gender neutral”? God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was a man. “gender neutral” appears to be a recent novelty that does not apply to the Church.
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Jesus was a man, but the Body of Christ is not only man. This is the Body that we are become one with when we take Communion in the Church, and when we are like Christ, it may be also when we eat with sinners.

About the Bible, traditionally, the term ‘man’ referred to humanity and included women, but in more recent versions such as the NIV, women have requested to be explicitly acknowledged.
 
Oh, I should add that because Roman Catholic might as well be Early Christianity, men will always be thought of literally as men, i.e., women are not allowed in the official priesthood. But God gave us time (so, e.g., we get the gender-neutral NIV in 2011).
 
What do you make of these claims of Faustus of Mileve about the Gospel of Matthew?
But, besides this, we shall find that it is not Matthew that has imposed upon us, but some one else under his name, as is evident from the indirect style of the narrative. Thus we read: “As Jesus passed by, He saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and called him; and he immediately rose up, and followed Him.” No one writing of himself would say, “He saw a man, and called him; and he followed Him;” but, “He saw me, and called me, and I followed Him.” Evidently this was written not by Matthew himself, but by some one else under his name.
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[Augustine, Contra Faustum, XVII 1]
(emphasis mine)
 
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Veritas6 said:
Peter could not have addressed three thousand hearers without a microphone,
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Peter would need a microphone that could translate his words to all the foreigners there so they could understand in their own language.

If God can create the universe and life, then minor miracles like Peter speaking to three thousand should be child’s play.
 
EricPH said:
If God can create the universe and life, then minor miracles like Peter speaking to three thousand should be child’s play.
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Exactly - Anyone who demands naturalistic explanations for any miracle - is barking up the wrong tree.
 
I think that the Bible is a very important collection of books and the Catholic Church’s authorization of these books adds much credibility to them.

I see the books written by men under the influence of the grace of God and authorized by the church. I think Luke’s gospel who mentions the Census of Quirinus, together with Acts and the Gospels of Matthew and John are particularly factual accounts written by three different men with different writing styles.

Where perhaps I am not in lock stop with the church is that I would not be believing that there are no errors in the Bible no matter how ‘error’ is defined. I have no examples of definite errors although many have been suggested. For me men wrote the words in communion with God.

Men make mistakes and God gives men the freedom to make mistakes, including in sacred texts.

Again I recognize that this is not the position of the Catholic Church but my humble position.
 
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No matter what anyone ‘thinks’ - Sacred Scriptures are indeed “Sacred” “Holy” “Of God” - Word of God…

Via Faith -
It’s Author can be with one - in a transcendental and transformational manner
totally unlike any other 'book

Faith is the Key…

_
 
silentwitness said:
Men make mistakes and God gives men the freedom to make mistakes, including in sacred texts.

Again I recognize that this is not the position of the Catholic Church but my humble position.
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I don’t find this position to be at odds with the Church’s position.
 
The Church does not teach that there are no factual errors in Scripture. The Church teaches that Scripture contains:
without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation
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Nothing in that teaching prohibits errors of fact, so long as the fact are not needed for salvation. Scripture is not intended as a history text or science text. Factual errors can appear in Scripture, and obviously do. But Scripture does not err in teaching what is needed for salvation.
 
TMC said:
The Church teaches that Scripture contains:
without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation
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The whole Scripture is given for the sake of salvation, this does not limit inerrancy to a part of it. In order to understand the passage, you can check the footnotes, for example Providentissimus Deus 21:
It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error.
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The Church does not teach that the Bible is free from historical or scientific error. You can believe that if you want, but it is not what the Church teaches.

Surely you agree that the Church does not teach a seven day creation?
 
TMC said:
The Church does not teach that the Bible is free from historical or scientific error.
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The Church absolutely teaches that. On the other hand, it is not required to interpret that seven-day creation is asserted in the Bible in the literal historic sense.
Another referenced source of Dei Verbum is Divino Afflante Spiritu:
Finally it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain passages of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred, since divine inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and constant faith of the Church.
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Bernoulli said:
The Church absolutely teaches that. On the other hand, it is not required to interpret that seven-day creation is asserted in the Bible in the literal historic sense.
Another referenced source of Dei Verbum is Divino Afflante Spiritu:
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Those two statements don’t go together. I guess I don’t understand what you mean by without historical or scientific error.
 
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