03-09-2024, 12:19 AM
"so for 2000 years, people who were actually looking for the text to say something didn't come up with what you came up with so they are all wrong and you are somehow completely right. I'll take a hard pass on this, then."
You can't believe your own eyes, if it isn't what you would expect. I might have similar misgivings, except I solved a problem this way that wouldn't work in life until I dropped the common interpretation, and pretended I was like a little child, and took a fresh look at it. Now, it works. This is how science and technology advanced. It didn't advance as long as people said, "The experts can't be wrong." When they started saying, "We have to test everything," then about 2000 years of stagnation came to an end, around 1600.
There is no question what the text says, but for 2000 years the interpreters added one phrase in their reading of it: "from the cross" and that eliminated the possibility of Jesus being buried before. I have read the NT my whole life, since 4 years old, and I thought it said, "down from the cross" and added that subconsciously, in my mind. Finally the counter-missionaries pushed me to wrestle with it and it finally broke through: "It isn't there!" Now I can see that it isn't there, and I can't unsee it. You can see that it isn't there. But because, I, a nobody, 2000 years too late, finally am pointing it out, then "that can't be, it must be implied somehow, because 2000 years of scholarship cannot be all wrong!"
Two things might help. One is that 2000 years is a series of about 70 generations of people, each having, say 70 years of life, say, 50-60 years of study. If each person starts by learning what other people taught, and is trained to revere his scholarly predecessors, there is little chance of any individual correcting an error. The error just has to survive 50-60 years at a time. The third generation is told: "Impudent imbecile, your teachers have studied for 100 years and you think you can correct them with your little brain." Later it becomes: "Impudent imbecile, your teachers have studied for 500 years and you think you can correct them with your little brain." And it took me about 60 years to finally correct my misreading, And now it is: "Impudent imbecile, your teachers have studied for 2000 years and you think you can correct them with your little brain." No, they studied for 60 years, like I did, but, either didn't notice it, like I almost didn't, or were too proud to admit they were wrong, as I have done.
The other is that there is a textual reason for possibly why scholars made their error. When the Jewish leaders came to insist that the bodies must be "taken down" before the Sabbath, they meant from the cross. A scholar who is trained to use grammatical evidence to infer meaning could be guided into thinking that the implied prepositional phrase from the first should be applied to the second, when Joseph "took it down", instead of just reading what it says.
You can't believe your own eyes, if it isn't what you would expect. I might have similar misgivings, except I solved a problem this way that wouldn't work in life until I dropped the common interpretation, and pretended I was like a little child, and took a fresh look at it. Now, it works. This is how science and technology advanced. It didn't advance as long as people said, "The experts can't be wrong." When they started saying, "We have to test everything," then about 2000 years of stagnation came to an end, around 1600.
There is no question what the text says, but for 2000 years the interpreters added one phrase in their reading of it: "from the cross" and that eliminated the possibility of Jesus being buried before. I have read the NT my whole life, since 4 years old, and I thought it said, "down from the cross" and added that subconsciously, in my mind. Finally the counter-missionaries pushed me to wrestle with it and it finally broke through: "It isn't there!" Now I can see that it isn't there, and I can't unsee it. You can see that it isn't there. But because, I, a nobody, 2000 years too late, finally am pointing it out, then "that can't be, it must be implied somehow, because 2000 years of scholarship cannot be all wrong!"
Two things might help. One is that 2000 years is a series of about 70 generations of people, each having, say 70 years of life, say, 50-60 years of study. If each person starts by learning what other people taught, and is trained to revere his scholarly predecessors, there is little chance of any individual correcting an error. The error just has to survive 50-60 years at a time. The third generation is told: "Impudent imbecile, your teachers have studied for 100 years and you think you can correct them with your little brain." Later it becomes: "Impudent imbecile, your teachers have studied for 500 years and you think you can correct them with your little brain." And it took me about 60 years to finally correct my misreading, And now it is: "Impudent imbecile, your teachers have studied for 2000 years and you think you can correct them with your little brain." No, they studied for 60 years, like I did, but, either didn't notice it, like I almost didn't, or were too proud to admit they were wrong, as I have done.
The other is that there is a textual reason for possibly why scholars made their error. When the Jewish leaders came to insist that the bodies must be "taken down" before the Sabbath, they meant from the cross. A scholar who is trained to use grammatical evidence to infer meaning could be guided into thinking that the implied prepositional phrase from the first should be applied to the second, when Joseph "took it down", instead of just reading what it says.