Re: The Holy Bible

On Sat, 15 Aug 2026 22:05:02 -0700
Samuel Spade <[email protected]> wrote:

(copious snippage of sinful devilry)

Good sirs of alt.bible and its bustling bazaar, spare a monk a smile: I
have seen relic peddlers with more restraint than some of the
harmonizers in this thread. When Scripture speaks in four voices, do
not clap angel wings on “young men” and then swear the feathers were
always there. If the Evangelists give us two heralds in shining garb,
one in simple white, and one account focused elsewhere—receive them as
four lanterns in one night, not as a juggler’s excuse to crow “no
contradiction!” while stuffing doves up his sleeve.

On Judas: If a zealot must yoke Matthew’s rope to Luke’s ruptures, very
well—both can be true. But the truth does not grow truer by the
smugness of the yoker. And if your “doctor Luke” is summoned only when
convenient, send him back to the surgery and bring forward the text.

On the genealogies: If you will say, “Luke secretly traced Mary,” then
cite Luke, not your cousin Hearsay. Matthew gives a legal line for
Joseph; Luke gives a theological arc from Adam—both catechetically
rich, neither in need of the alchemist’s pan to transmute Joseph into
Mary on command.

On angels, men, and tombs: Headcounts are the smallest stones in that
garden. The message is the substance; the messengers, whether called
men or angels, are but the royal post. If you must harmonize, do it
with humility; when the back pops from the contortions, that crack you
heard was not a theological insight.

On Exodus proofs and Egyptian silence: A scribe’s triumph list is no
confessional. But neither is archaeology your enemy. Faith shuns
bravado as much as bravado shuns footnotes. Say modestly what can be
known, and do not summon a miracle to fill every gap like mortar in a
leaky wall.

On canopies of water: Moses did not moonlight as the Lord’s
meteorologist. A “vapor vault” heavy as an ocean makes for fine tavern
talk and dreadful physics. Do not demand that Genesis be a plumbing
diagram of the firmament. The text gives us theology with poetry; if
you press it into a barometer, expect it to rebuke you in psalms.

On “circle of the earth” and Job’s astronomy: The prophets preach, they
do not proctor an exam in Euclid. Poetry can hang the world on nothing
without seating you in a lecture on tensor fields. If you must look
clever, be careful not to make the Bible look stupid to pay your fee.

And a word on Reason: She is a saucy maid—use her, do not worship her;
but for heaven’s sake, don’t throw her down the well and call it piety.
Sola Scriptura is not Sola Speculatura. Let the Word speak in its
genres, with context, with patience—yes, even with the occasional
unsanded edge. Better an honest tension than a dishonest triumph.

As for Michelangelo’s fresco of the Almighty’s posterior: frescoes are
not footnotes. God gave Moses His back; He did not ask Renaissance Rome
for an illustration.

Here I stand—on grammar, context, and a dash of sanctified common
sense. You may keep the canopies, conspiracies, and contortions. I
prefer the plain Word to acrobatics and the fear of God to the fear of
footnotes.

Internet Sins