So all this stuff about you leaving the thread alone and "agreeing to disagree" is really nothing more than a rhetorical tactic… lip service. An attempt to make it look like you're taking the moral high-ground on walking away from a fruitless discussion, but you want to have your cake and eat it too: say you'll walk away from a fruitless discussion while still trying to maintain the discussion. Nice… but a bit too obvious when you don't actually do it.
This comes from the Anchor Bible Commentaries on the Gospel according to John by Raymond Brown, the most preeminent Johannine scholar of our lifetime.
Of course if an authority figure says it that makes it so, right? No, just more naivety.
Now, you think it is sufficient to demonstrate that John 19:14 is a contradiction by simply quoting your authority, Raymond Brown (Brown doesn't actually give any reasons to support his conclusion, just assertions and a reference).
Ehrman is considered a preeminent NT scholar by some folk, right? Apparently
you view him as an authority too, correct (unless you want to end up arguing against yourself again)?
Well Ehrman believes the resurrection of Christ is simply a made up story to convince to become Christians:
After the days of Jesus, people started telling stories about him in order to convert others to the faith. They were trying to convert both Jews and Gentiles. How do you convert somebody to stop worshipping their God and to start worshipping Jesus? You have to tell stories about Jesus. So you convert somebody on the basis of the stories you tell. That person converts somebody who converts somebody who converts somebody, and all along the line people are telling stories…
Ehrman agrees with you that John 19:14 is in contradiction with the other gospels:
Did he die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, as John explicitly says, or did he die after it was eaten, as Mark explicitly says? Did he die at noon, as in John, or at 9 a.m., as in Mark?
So points for you, right? Add another notch to your list of scholars on John 19:14. Well Ehrman believes that the resurrection story has these same contradictions:
Or take the accounts of the resurrection. … You have the same problems for all of the sources and all of our Gospels. These are not historically reliable accounts. … Year after year Christians trying to convert others told them stories to convince them that Jesus was raised from the dead. These writers are telling stories, then, that Christians have been telling all these years. Many stories were invented, and most of the stories were changed. … These accounts that we have of Jesus' resurrection are not internally consistent; they're full of discrepancies, including the account of his death and his resurrection.
Now, let's look at your methodology here.
You claim, "
x is a contradiction."
I respond, "No, it's not because it's possible that
y."
You respond, "Yes it is because Authority1 says so."
Now, if "Authority1 says so" is sufficient to substantiate a claim, then if Authority2 says the resurrection is most likely a made up story then that should be sufficient to substantiate
that claim.
So do you accept Bart Ehrman's conclusion or not? If not, then you're also going to need more than assertions from Brown.
But for John this is not only the day before the Sabbath but also the day before Passover, and John's "Day of Preparation for Passover" reflects the Hebrew expression 'ereb pesah (StB, II, 834ff). Torrey's theory (JBL 50 [1931], 227-41) that Passover should be understood as the festival period of seven days and that John is speaking of Friday within the Passover week has been refuted by S. Zeitlin, JBL 51 (1932), 263-271.
First of all, I didn't use Torrey's argument that Passover referred to the weeklong festival, so even if Zeitlin has refuted him, it doesn't deal with what I said.
Second, I've read Zeitlin's article and all he does is demonstrate that "The word Παρασκευή is not a Jewish technical term at all" (268). But this doesn't exactly defeat Torrey's conclusion that by "Passover" John referred to the weeklong festival, although it does defeat one of the premises his argument is based on: that it was Jewish technical term.
Cullen Story manages to retain Torrey's conclusion by arguing that this is the way
John used the term (regardless of whether or not it was a Jewish technical term), as evidenced by 6:4 (cf. The Chronology of the Holy Week.
Bibliotheca Sacra 97.385). So we might say Torrey's conclusion can stand even if the premise can't.
In the different witnesses to the text of John the clause appears in difference places in the verse – sometimes a sign of scribal addition.
That this is "sometimes" a "sign" of scribal addition isn't sufficient to prove it invalid and if the clause is present in all the MSS and we still have vs 42 then we really have no reason to reject it. .
Furthermore, note that in order to avoid the charge of a contradiction one need only show that there are *possible* solutions. So it's not even necessary that I say the clause is actually original in 31 or that this is actually the solution to John 19:14. So long as there is a possible harmonization it can't be charged as an actual contradiction.
Brown doesn't give us any
reason to believe John 19:14 refers to Thursday. Instead he gives us an assertion. But simply saying "Nuh-uh!" doesn't cut it, even if the one going "Nuh-uh!" is a "preeminent" scholar. "Nuh-uh" isn't a rebuttal, so again you haven't addressed my claims... You've just quoted Brown making assertions.
As for the quote concerning the hour of the crucifixion, see the resources I mentioned. It's a bit ridiculous when I answer the charges you bring up and all you do is try to find more. Why not just save yourself some time and say "But what about the stuff Sutra mentioned?!" That's the common tactic of atheists who are desperate to suppress the truth in unrighteousness, but when you're looking to folks like Ehrman to "study" Scripture I guess it's not too surprising…