"Literalist" Hermeneutics, John's Gospel & the Synoptics

***Videos 1 and 2 are both re-done***
I hesitate posting these videos...I find my own voice irritating. I hope these are somewhat helpful, though. You may come across unbelievers who accuse evangelicals of being "selectively" literal when they read the Bible. Perhaps you've read the Passion accounts and wondered how it is that Jesus could celebrate Passover on a Thursday night and then see John's record stating Jesus was crucified on the Preparation Day of Passover...isn't that the day they slaughter the lambs for Passover? How could Jesus partake of the Passover and then die before He partook?

These topics came up by way of a You Tuber going by the moniker "PropMTH". He gets thousands and thousands of views per vid. He basically regurgitated Bart Ehrman's observations (here's his vid), which seemed to add to the practicality of making a response...which turned into two videos. The first one primarily deals with the notion of "literalist" hermeneutics...the second deals with the the apparent contradiction between John and the synoptics. It's a total of twenty minutes worth of your time. If you were to choose one, and not the other, I'd recommend beginning with the second one even though it is a direct continuation from the first.

Many thanks go out to Turretin Fan for linking me up to a book called A Harmony of the Gospels edited by A.T. Robertson (that link is to google books...they have most of the book on there for free). Besides a helpful discussion of Preparation Day, this book addresses another difficulty with clarity I haven't seen anyone else use...why is it John seemed to think Jesus was crucified at a different time than Mark? I'll give you the answer, but I'd encourage you to read up on it. John wrote his Gospel to non-Jews well after the destruction of the temple...his audience followed the Roman way of keeping time...and A.T. Robertson doesn't pose this as a mere possibility, I'm convinced of it as John freely referred to evening as being part of the same day...and not the beginning of another day (remember, Jews followed a lunar calendar which means the evening marked the beginning of a new day)...that is to say, John converted the events to the Roman way of keeping time. Very interesting stuff, and it's amazing to think it takes current scholarship to muck everything up.

Here's Video 1...I did the video over again. It is shorter, easier to follow, and has different visuals:



Here's Video 2...this one is also easier to follow (in my opinion)...and it shows my mad photo "enhancing" skills:

Crucifixion Timelines in Synoptics and John's Gospel

***Updated***
I recorded this video again using a microphone...you can actually hear everything with no problem. I also added some more visuals (not many, don't get too excited).
This is the third, and final, video that's part of a series directed toward ProfMTH.

Topics covered:
Conclusive proof that John's Gospel has Jesus dying on Friday, the day after the Passover meal.

What of the time discrepancies between Mark and John? Mark has Jesus on the cross at the third hour, John has Jesus on trial still at the sixth hour.

Velvet Calvin

I'm glad I'm not in the market for a seminary...by bringing this up, I would be automatically precluding myself from one in particular...Westminster in California is where R. Scott Clark teaches, and he is a confessionally Reformed fellow. What gets some of these WSC guys into trouble is when they try to be consistent on their 2 Kingdom approach to Christianity. If you remember reading a post from a bit back, you'll recall that 2 Kingdom theology essentially places Jesus as King of the spiritual realm while here on planet earth, we're ruled by man.

Scott Clark runs Heidelblog, and today he wonders if a Christian man dealt with a situation appropriately. This man (from his side of the story, we don't know the other) was working at a retail store and lost his job for stating his opinion about sodomy...this didn't come out of the blue as the woman manager made it a point of bringing up her "fiancee" (i.e. lesbian cohabitator) and flaunting her rebellion about. Here's the video:


I don't think he did a perfect job of confronting the woman...in fact, I don't think he did particularly well...but it's difficult for me to blame him. Christians are used to saying "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life"...that doesn't translate well when sin needs to be addressed. Our latent Pelagianism is caught off guard when men flaunt their sin and demonstrate they aren't looking for God to bandage up their boo-boos. We're great at talking about someone's tone of voice, or if Billy shares with others, or some other superfluous standard of "niceness". We're great at that...oh yeah, and we're very good at apologizing for being zealot Pharisees (well, okay, we don't apologize for ourselves, we apologize for all "those" other "Christians" that we're not like)...so we're out of practice when it comes to addressing sin. Here's Scott Clark's take:

If he wanted to communicate the gospel to her, Instead of accusing her of sin (of which she is guilty) would he have done better to accuse himself?

Are you serious Professor Clark? Seriously? That is ridiculous...step away from your 2 kingdom view for a minute...I'm not saying become a Christian Reconstructionist, I'm just saying to act a bit more like Paul or John the Baptizer. Did Paul accuse himself when in Athens? Did Paul accuse himself when he went before Caesar? I know, did John the Baptizer accuse himself before Herod?

Is there a practical difference between Scott Clark's approach here compared to Rob Bell's Bullhorn guy?

A not-so-uncommon refrain from Calvinistic 2-Kingdomers: