Contradiction? what about the staff?

[james_neville]

Me and a couple of friends are getting together with a few friends to discuss the historical Jesus (for our non christian friends who actually wanted to know about it)

One of the questions my friend would like to know the answer to is this and i can’t seem to find an answer. usually good with stuff like this. any help would greatly be appreciated.

the question concerns the following.

(Mt 10:10) and Luke (9:3) Jesus is quoted as telling his disciples not to take a staff with them, but Mark (6:8) relates Jesus as charging them to take a staff.

Thanks

 

[bogeydogg]

Actually when Christ commissions them to go out of Israel He does tell them to take staff, sword, money, etc., but that was the second sending. The first sending was one of giving the promise to Israel who should have accepted with open arms and so the disciples should have had no need for provision (thus the shaking the dust off against those who reject you) but when they are sent to the world they are to provide for themselves because gentiles did not know the promise.

The Gospel writers blend things together from time to time but this does not make their accounts untrue.

For example witnesses at a car wreck all have different stories. Those involved and those not involved will have very different accounts based on position and sight lines etc but all may give the best truth they can. Mark (who was not an Apostle) is giving an account of second-hand stories from the Apostles (Peter most likely) and so in gathering the information perhaps a few details got blended together as to exactly when Jesus said what, however there is no dispute that Jesus did send his disciples and told them to take staffs.

Some will say this disproves the veracity of Scripture but that is silly because on the big ideas such as the Gospel (which btw is why Apostles wrote) there is no difference in the accounts of what Jesus taught or how He taught it. The salient points do not vary at all even though the fine details may be out of order from time to time. However we should still not be distracted by this because history writers of that time did not write history as a chronology the way we do today. Rather they used history as the backdrop to tell the important narrative they wished to teach (for example everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato but Plato never wrote an historical biography of Socrates).

I know this seems like special pleading but anyone concerned to study other texts of the day can see the same thing. Josephus’ the Wars was the same sort of thing; an historical document given to tell a broader story (God’s judgement against the Jews).

God Bless.

 

[Ignatius]

Me and a couple of friends are getting together with a few friends to discuss the historical Jesus (for our non christian friends who actually wanted to know about it)

One of the questions my friend would like to know the answer to is this and i can’t seem to find an answer. usually good with stuff like this. any help would greatly be appreciated.

the question concerns the following.

(Mt 10:10) and Luke (9:3) Jesus is quoted as telling his disciples not to take a staff with them, but Mark (6:8) relates Jesus as charging them to take a staff.

Thanks

I would just tell them the following:
That’s kind of like when your dad wouldn’t let you wear your galoshes because it wasn’t raining and then the very next week made you wear them because it was raining. How could he be so inconsistent, huh?

 

[Julia_Mae]

Me and a couple of friends are getting together with a few friends to discuss the historical Jesus (for our non christian friends who actually wanted to know about it)

One of the questions my friend would like to know the answer to is this and i can’t seem to find an answer. usually good with stuff like this. any help would greatly be appreciated.

the question concerns the following.

(Mt 10:10) and Luke (9:3) Jesus is quoted as telling his disciples not to take a staff with them, but Mark (6:8) relates Jesus as charging them to take a staff.

Thanks

There are all sorts of contradictions among the Gospels, it is these very contradictions that testify to the genuineness of them. If four people witness a car accident or a crime, and you question them separately, you will get a lot of basic things the same and many details that are different.

Mark is the oldest of the Gospels and the most “primitive.” It seems almost like a travelogue, some scholars believe parts of it, maybe much of it, was written during Jesus’ lifetime on earth in the form of letters from a disciple. Luke, as he states in his Gospel, is a compilation from sources he investigated, which would include other writings as well as what he heard from Peter and the other Apostles.

We don’t need to read a lot of special meaning into the differences, because there *should be *differences, it would be very odd if there weren’t. It is the similarities that are important, all these accounts are essentially telling the same story of a real incident and have the same lessons.

The Holy Spirit did not dictate Scripture, but inspired people to write what they knew, and others to copy and preserve those, to use in evangelization and so that we, thousands of years later, would have the record.

Never try to explain away what seem to be contradictions in Scripture. You don’t have to. The whole point is to understand what is being said. “Who is God?” Jesus shows Him to us. “How do things work?” Life is eternal and what we do here has eternal consequences. “What does God want from us?” To love one another as Jesus loved us. “What’s important in life?” Not money, not status, not power: charity, humility, honesty, sacrifice, faith trump all of those.

 

[farpinho]

There are all sorts of contradictions among the Gospels, it is these very contradictions that testify to the genuineness of them. If four people witness a car accident or a crime, and you question them separately, you will get a lot of basic things the same and many details that are different.

Mark is the oldest of the Gospels and the most “primitive.” It seems almost like a travelogue, some scholars believe parts of it, maybe much of it, was written during Jesus’ lifetime on earth in the form of letters from a disciple. Luke, as he states in his Gospel, is a compilation from sources he investigated, which would include other writings as well as what he heard from Peter and the other Apostles.

We don’t need to read a lot of special meaning into the differences, because there *should be *differences, it would be very odd if there weren’t. It is the similarities that are important, all these accounts are essentially telling the same story of a real incident and have the same lessons.

The Holy Spirit did not dictate Scripture, but inspired people to write what they knew, and others to copy and preserve those, to use in evangelization and so that we, thousands of years later, would have the record.

Never try to explain away what seem to be contradictions in Scripture. You don’t have to. The whole point is to understand what is being said. “Who is God?” Jesus shows Him to us. “How do things work?” Life is eternal and what we do here has eternal consequences. “What does God want from us?” To love one another as Jesus loved us. “What’s important in life?” Not money, not status, not power: charity, humility, honesty, sacrifice, faith trump all of those.

 

[pablope]

Me and a couple of friends are getting together with a few friends to discuss the historical Jesus (for our non christian friends who actually wanted to know about it)

One of the questions my friend would like to know the answer to is this and i can’t seem to find an answer. usually good with stuff like this. any help would greatly be appreciated.

the question concerns the following.

(Mt 10:10) and Luke (9:3) Jesus is quoted as telling his disciples not to take a staff with them, but Mark (6:8) relates Jesus as charging them to take a staff.

Thanks

I think “staff” here refers to the walking sticks…as be seen in those period movies (you know what i mean)…not a “staff” of people.

 

[COPLAND_3]

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Matthew, quotes uses St. Augustine’s comments on this. I am not over impressed with the explanation, but I will present it, but I will also provide additional comments on it too.

Because you have the right of receiving from others yourselves; and, for that reason, you do not need to carry these things. Hence, when something is permitted, if it does not happen, it is not a sin; however, whatever happens over and above, is supererogatory. Hence, Paul also, although he could have received from others, accepted nothing, and this was a supererogation, according to Augustine, because not to use permitted things is supererogatory. Hence, Paul says: “It is good for me to die rather than make my glory void” (I Cor. 9, 15). And why? Because he was not using that which was permitted: For the workman is worthy of his meat. But what is that which He says elsewhere, that they may carry a staff? Augustine says that it is not unseemly that sometimes certain things be said mystically, and at other times literally. Hence, what Matthew says here, he says literally, that they ought not to carry a staff: but what Mark says, is understood mystically, namely, that they may not carry temporal things, but they have the right of receiving from others.

 

[COPLAND_3]

This is my preference from the great Bishop John McEvilly

St. Mark (6:8) says, He allowed them a staff, “but a staff only.” Some expositors (among the rest Euthymius) say, that our Redeemer having, in the first instance, prohibited it, afterwards dispensed in the precept (Victor of Antioch), in accommodation to the weakness of His Apostles, and allowed them to carry a staff, as is stated by St. Mark, who, writing after St. Matthew, records this dispensation. These apply the same solution to the former question regarding the sandals. The more probable solution, however, seems to be that St. Matthew and St. Mark speak a different description of staff. St. Matthew of a weapon, for the purposes of offense or defense; St. Mark, of a staff for support, for leaning on. This is implied in the words of St. Mark, “but a staff only,” as if allowed only for the purpose of support or propping up. Moreover, our Redeemer s object is to render them less encumbered with care or anxiety in regard to their future provision and protection with which a walking staff did not interfere and to cast aside all superfluities. Our Redeemer opposes the “rod,” which He prohibits here, to a sword (Luke 22:36), where He would seem to revoke the precept given to the Apostles at
their first mission here. At their first mission, He prohibited offensive weapons. In St. Luke 22 He allows them, which would show it is of a rod as a weapon of offense, and not as a means of support, He speaks here.