This Generation...
Mr. Kroll is quite right and brings up an excellent point when he says that Jesus did not say that generation. N. Clayton Croy, in A Primer of Biblical Greek (Eerdmans, 1999) says: “Biblical Greek, like English has a ‘near’ demonstrative houtos for something relatively close in time, space or thought, and a ‘far’ demonstrative, ekeinos for something relatively distant.” In Matthew 24:34, the ‘near’ demonstrative houtos is used. If in fact, Jesus had meant for a generation that was far in time, space, or thought, he would have used ekeinos.
I also agree with Mr. Kroll that there is no textual or contextual reason to translate the word genea in Matthew 24:34 any differently from the way that it is normally translatedwhich is the English word “generation.” As a supplement to Mr. Smith's article, I would invite TSR's readers to reread Mr. Hutchinson's response to my article, carefully examining his biblical citations concerning “this generation.” Observant readers should notice that each time Mr. Hutchinson cites an instance in which the words “this generation” are used, except Matthew 24:34, he concedes that it is somehow a reference to Jesus's contemporaries. It would behoove Mr. Hutchinson to explain why in all of the other instances that the words “this generation” are used in a direct address, Jesus was referring to his contemporaries but all of a sudden, in Matthew 24:34, Jesus meant something else.
Another issue to consider, and an issue that was raised in my first article for TSR, is that the implications of the argument that genea could mean “race” are frightening. Take Matthew 16:4 in which Jesus called his audience a “wicked and adulterous race!” Or consider Jesus's temper tantrum in Matthew 23:36 in which he describes all of the horrible things that will come upon this “generation.” If this word can mean “race,” then it could mean that the Jewish race is under some kind of curse (and according to the Bible, God can and does curse an entire race of people). If genea can mean “race,” the New Testament may be far more anti-Semitic than once thought. Good thing Hitler didn't talk to any fundamentalists.
(Brian Rainey, Box 2622, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912; e-mail, Brian_Gdog G@ brown.EDU)
Editor's Note: The tragedy of biblical fundamentalism is exemplified in Roger Hutchinson's frantic quest to prove that obvious inconsistencies and discrepancies in the Bible are only “apparent.” The extremes that he and like-minded cohorts must resort to in "explaining” discrepancies make them look ridiculous, but they seem to prefer looking ridiculous to acknowledging that discrepancies are in the Bible. They put more importance on a highly questionable religious belief than their intellectual integrity.
On the genea matter, Hutchinson has been buried under a mountain of evidence, but I predict that that will not budge him a millimeter from his claim that the Bible is completely inerrant in everything it says. Biblical inerrantists die hard.
The Preterist Position...
Mark Smith set forth an excellent and very extensive explanation of Matthew 24:34 in the July/August 2000 issue of TSR. He documented, almost to the point of overkill, that “this generation” referred to the contemporaries of Jesus in the first century.
To use a metaphor of Christianity's being a tree, one could say that Mark Smith sawed off the large and popular limb of dispensational premillennialism. Not all Christians, however, are perched on that limb. Some of the other limbs of bible prophecy are amillennial, partial preterist, and full preterist. Mr. Till, you know that most Church-of-Christ preachers believe Matthew 24:1-34 was fulfilled in the first century when Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed by the Romans. In A. D. 70, the Jewish nation and the Jewish “world” or “age” came to an end (Matt. 24:3). This was a “coming” of Jesus in judgment.
Max King of Warren, Ohio, upset other Church-of-Christ preachers in the 1970s with his full-preterist view. He used the term “realized eschatology” and preached that all Bible prophecy was fulfilled by A. D. 70.
Among the Christian scholars quoted by Mark Smith, Gary DeMar is a partial preterist, and Stuart Russel and Milton Terry were full preterists, who lived in the 1800s. None of these men believed that Jesus was mistaken about what he said in Matthew 24.
Max King is still around, and the enclosed material from preterist resources in Bradford, PA, will show that the full-preterist limb of Bible prophecy is alive and growing. Mr. Till, if anyone can shake this limb or saw it off, it is you. I am not sitting on this limb, so go to it.
(Don Robertson, 644 Walnut Street, Rock Hill, SC 29730)
Editor's Note: When I had much closer contacts with Church-of-Christ preachers and members than I now have, the preterist doctrine was considered a rank heresy by the mainstream churches. It was, in fact, referred to as the A. D. 70 heresy, and Max King's name was anathema. If it is now accepted by most Church-of-Christ preachers, then it has gained a much wider acceptance than it had a decade ago.
At the time that preterism was causing so much controversy in the Church of Christ, I had a sort of admiration for those who were preaching it, because they could at least see that various New Testament passages clearly taught the imminent return of Jesus and were making some effort to reconcile that recognition with the obvious fact that Jesus didn't return within the lifetime of the people living then. What I see wrong in the A. D. 70 doctrine is that it has to resort to absurdities in order to explain away the problem in such passages as Matthew 24:34, and their absurdities are just as ridiculous as those we have seen Roger Hutchinson trying to peddle.
Hutchinson claims that the Greek word genea in Matthew 24:34 didn't mean generation in the sense of the people living at that time but “race” in reference to the Jewish race. That far-fetched interpretation has now been completely dismantled, but it is really no more absurd than the preterist position that Jesus returned in A. D. 70 in a “judgmental sense” when God, through the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, brought judgment on the Jews for their rejection of Jesus, the Messiah. The aspects of this interpretation are too complex to discuss in an editor's note, but its absurdity lies primarily in its failure to satisfy some rather clear statements attributed to Jesus in Matthew 24:29-31, which spoke of signs and wonders accompanying the return of Jesus that would be witnessed worldwide before that “generation” passed away. The sun and moon would be darkened; the “sign of the son of man” would appear in heaven, which would be seen by all tribes of the earth, who would mourn over him; and the son of man, with the sound of a trumpet, would send his angels to gather the elect from “the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.” Obviously, none of this happened, and so preterists must resort to the old “figurative” route in order to explain it. It happened but just not in a literal sense; it happened figuratively. Such an interpretation is no more sensible than Hutchinson's attempt to make "generation" mean the Jewish “race.” They both are far-fetched attempts to cling to a belief that the Bible is inerrant. Some people just refuse to accept the more likely interpretation of passages like Matthew 24:34. They were written by people who expected an imminent end of the world, which just didn't happen. In the 2,000 years since then, some still have not learned the lesson of these prophecy failures, and so we find people in our day who constantly preach signs of “the end,” which they think they see in current events. They illustrate the truth of an axiom that says that those who don't learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.
Why Didn't I respond?
Thank you, sir! You have shown, by your words on page 14 of the current TSR (July/August 2000), that you are still an honest man. You wrote, “After science has presented evidence for evolution that cannot be reasonably disputedand we have almost reached that pointfundamentalists will....”
I would direct your attention to the words “we have almost reached that point.” This is an admission that scientific inquiry has not reached that point yet! I want to thank you for saying in print that, as of this day, science has not yet presented evidence of Darwinian evolution that cannot be reasonably disputed.
Now I would like to see if you will be honest on the following point that is contained within the above mentioned material. You wrote, “(T)he writer had known all along that evolution had caused ‘speciation.’” You have shifted the gravamen of the anti-evolutionist argument from the question, “Can Darwinian evolution create the first life?” to a lesser question, “Can evolution cause speciation?” I think you know that it is improper to do this. I think you know now that Mr. Darwin's theory cannot account for the first life and is only plausible in relation to “speciation.”
In closing, sir, may I gently remind you that October 25th will make one year since you wrote to Amy Smith about my “strange” ideas. I sent you several letters, none of which you responded to. It is my opinion that one full year is sufficient time to respond, so I will begin to remind you each October 25th that another year has gone by, but you still haven't responded.
(Douglas Palmer, 3420 Hartford Street North, St. Petersburg, FL 33713)
Editor's Note: To explain Mr. Palmer's grievance, I would need an entire issue of TSR. Years ago, Palmer tried to engage me in a private correspondence on the origin of existence, a project for which I simply didn't have the time. Some letter writers apparently have no concept of the volume of mail that I receive, and so they sometimes express their irritation if I don't immediately give my personal attention to their letters. Since Palmer's subject of interest has at best only a remote connection to the publishing purpose of The Skeptical Review, I saw no need to neglect other projects in order to cater to his special interest. This was an easy decision for me to make, since Palmer's letters indicated that he had some rather bizarre ideas, chief of which was his belief that life is a video game in which we are all characters. I kid you not. This, as Amy Smith knows, is a belief that Palmer seriously defends.
He referred above to letters he had sent to me in reply to a letter I had sent to Amy Smith, but he did not mention that I had written to Ms. Smith only because he had sent me a copy of a letter to her in which he had brought me into a discussion with her on his favorite subject. Although he is a biblical skeptic, he believes that existence can be explained only by positing a “first cause,” so in this sense he isn't much different from typical theists. In his letters to Amy Smith, he had accused me of evading his favorite topic because I can't answer his arguments, as if my not writing to him on this subject for the primary cause of time restraints constitutes evasion. The fact is that on this issue that so fascinates Palmer, he himself is the evader, because I sent Ms. Smith a 9-page, single-spaced letter in which I addressed each point that Palmer had made in his letter to her, and I quoted some very reputable physicists who see no problem at all in the question of the origin of existence. Matter has simply always existed. My letter to Ms. Smith, a copy of which Palmer received, addressed the sensibility of this position over the idea of an eternally existing “first cause” that created all things. In a two-page “reply” to Smith, which all but ignored my rebuttals, Palmer brushed almost everything I said aside. My response had pointed out that Palmer is demanding explanations for existence from me when he himself has a duty to explain the origin of his “first cause.” He dismissed this with, “I don't think it is possible to make any comment on ‘who made God?’ so I don't bother with it.” No, he doesn't want to bother with “it,” but he gets his nose all out of joint if I don't drop everything I'm doing to attend to his demands that I explain and support whatever views I may have on the origin of existence.
Instead of attempting to answer my rebuttal points, he focused on comments I had made to Smith about his rather bizarre ideas, so after evading my rebuttal arguments, he is now saying in reference to his letter to Smith, “One full year is sufficient time to respond, so I will begin to remind you each October 25th that another year has gone by, but you still haven't responded.” Well, I have an answer to that. I replied to his letter to Smith, and his “follow-up” ignored practically everything I said, so I have sent back to him a copy of my letter to Smith with notations in the margins to point out parts that he did not answer. As I write this, he has yet to reply to those parts.
One other comment on his letter is in order. He showed his crass ignorance of evolution when he asked, “Can Darwinian evolution create the first life?” Apparently, Palmer doesn't understand that evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life and makes no attempt to explain how life began. Evolution is simply a process through which life, once it existed, specialized and evolved into the various species now inhabiting the planet. The evidence for this process is so overwhelming that one has to be scientifically ignorant not to know that it happened and continues to happen. Abiogenesisnot evolutionis the scientific field that is concerned with the origin of life, so if Palmer is so interested in the origin of life that he wants to debate it, he should at least take the time to learn what scientific field concerns itself with the subject.
Palmer no doubt will demand that I explain how life could come from nonlife, because he has been stamping his feet and holding his breath in demands that I explain how something could come from nothing. His “reply” to my letter to Amy Smith ignored all of the data I submitted from scientific journals to show that modern physicists no longer accept Palmer's worn-out cliché that says “something cannot come from nothing.” Even if we accept this as a scientific fact, Palmer would still have the problem of explaining the origin of his “first cause.” Oh, I forgot; Palmer doesn't want to bother with that question. Instead, he wants everyone to cater to his whimsical belief that there was some kind of first cause that made everything.
I'll leave him with a question. If something cannot come from nothing and so something has always existed, why could that something not be matter itself instead of some mysterious unknown, never-seen “first cause”?
Accursed of God?
In “Jesus Accursed of God?” (TSR, July/August 2000), Robert Miles discussed Paul's statement in his letter to the Galatians (3:13), “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Miles says, “What Paul was referring to here is Deuteronomy 21:23.” The context begins at v:22, the whole reading: “And if a man have [sic] committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee [for] an inheritance” ( KJV).
It must be pointed out that Paul's “scripture” was not the Hebrew from which our common versions are translated, but the Greek Septuagint. This is shown elsewhere by his quoting it, the Septuagint, as from Psalm 14 in Romans 3:10-18. The Greek of Deuteronomy 21:22 for “and ye hang him on a tree” has kai kremasEte auton epi xulon. In v. 23, that Paul quotes, for “upon the tree,” it has epi tou xulon.
Miles conclusion that, “His [Paul's] statement in Galatians 3:13 amounts to either an incorrect understanding of the Hebrew passage or a deliberate attempt to make Deuteronomy say something it didn't mean...” is erroneous, because Paul was quoting the Septuagint and not mistranslating the Hebrew.
(Kenneth Bonnell, P. O. Box 65706, Los Angeles, CA 90065; e-mail, Khbonnell@aol. com)
Editor's Note: If Mr. Miles wants to respond to Bonnell's letter, he may do so. I don't know what Miles may say in reply to Bonnell, but unless my Greek has gotten rusty, I can see that Paul wasn't “quoting” the Septuagint. He was at best paraphrasing the Septuagint, because “kremamenos epi xulou” (hung on a tree) are the only words in his Galatian text that match the Septuagint translation of the verse in Deuteronomy. Mr. Bonnell partly quoted verse 22 from the Septuagint, but it was verse 23 that pronounced the curse on the one who had been hung on a tree. The Greek versions that I have in my library show a match only on the three words quoted above. Paul's statement is otherwise worded differently from the Septuagint.
The apostle Paul may indeed have used the Septuagint version as a guide in his paraphrase, but that would merely raise a question that biblicists would need to answer. If the Septuagint used xulon to translate the Hebrew word ets when dendron was recognizably a more exact word, why did Paul, who was allegedly inspired by the omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit as he wrote, choose an inappropriate word?
We Get the Shaft...
In the July/August 2000 issue of The Skeptical Review, I found Johan Grahn's letter and Farrell's reply to be especially interesting. Since he comes from Sweden, a relatively religion-free society, I can certainly understand Mr. Grahn's utter amazement at the degree to which fundamentalist Christianity permeates American culture. He asked for an explanation, and Farrell complied more than adequately. However, something occurred to meanother factorthat I would like to add to the mix. Money!
In the USA, where capitalism reigns supreme, we often hear the cliché, “Money may not be everything but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place.” There is much truth here. In a free-market economy such as ours, money is everything. But the sad truth is that there is no money in atheism, and I don't see that situation changing any time soon. In that regard, did you ever wonder just how long a TV sitcom entitled Touched by An Atheist would last?
On the other hand, there are great fortunes to be made in marketing religion, especially the most primitive versions of it. Mass marketing opportunities such as those provided by television, radio, and the internet have been, and are being, successfully exploited by the evangelical Christian community with astounding success. I remember reading in Time magazine that in its heyday the now defunct Jimmy Swaggert ministries received on the average $175,000 a day in tax free contributions. That's far more, I would imagine, than the combined budgets of every freethought organization in this country and perhaps in the entire world. Because of their arrogant excesses many of the most popular and aggressive TV evangelists have been exposed and publicly humiliated. This may have slowed them down for a while, but they are now making a big come back, perhaps bigger than before. They have apparently learned from their mistakes.
Now, anyone pointing out a serious problem, as I have, is obligated to propose a solution and rightly so. However, I must admit in all candor that as of now I have none to offer. The absurdity of this situation is compounded by the fact that although we freethinkers and skeptics have the most convincing arguments firmly grounded in reason, research, and rationality plus superior debaters, the fundamentalists have what really countspeople and money. In other words, they get the gold mine; we get the shaft. The catch 22 is that we can't get money until we grow, and we can't grow until we spread our message which takes money. Ah, life's ironies!
(Louis W. Cable, 102 Spyglass Drive, Lufkin, TX 75901; e-mail, skeptic8@inu.net)
Editor's Note: Money can't cure ignorance.
Wolfe's English...
I just read one of the letters "From the Mailbag" for the online March/April 2000 Skeptical Review, in which a reader suggested that a certain Mr. Wolfe's poor command of English might be due to his first language being French (his address having been given as being in Montreal). Your experience in France stood you in good stead as you were able to determine that Mr. Wolfe's letter (which I read) is not typical of a French person with poor English skills. I would just add, to forstall any possible criticism, that although the "Quebecois" French spoken in Montreal does lend itself to slightly different errors in English than the French spoken in France, Mr. Wolfe certainly did not come across as a Montreal francophone in that letter. Keep up the good work.
(Ian Ferguson, 1455 de Maisonneuve W., Montreal, PQ, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail, ian@ vax2.concordia.ca)
Editor's Note: I appreciate Mr. Ferguson's taking the time to express his opinion in this matter. From my experiences with native French speakers who spoke English as a second language, I didn't think that Mr. Wolfe's bad English was characteristic of someone struggling to write in a second language, but my experiences in this went back 40 years. Ferguson's opinion is based on current experience.
Why Give Hutchinson Space?
Why do you continue to let Hutchinson occupy space in your newsletter? It is a waste of time and space. I don't read what he has to say any longer, nor your response. Let's get on a more meaningful path.
(Don Peterson, 7116 Patton Lane, Nashville, TN 37221-3415; e-mail, freethinker1@home.com)
A Concurring Opinion...
I received the latest issue of The Skeptical Review today, It was an excellent issue. I think that you give too much space to Hutchinson, but I guess that you have to give him enough rope and let him put his foot into the bucket.
(Sol Abrams, 132 East Hampton F, West Palm Beach, FL 33417-1922; e-mail, Heliosol@aol. com)
Editor's Note: Mr. Abrams has answered Mr. Peterson's question. I give Hutchinson space, because his articles do far more to expose the folly of the inerrancy belief than a thousand articles about biblical discrepancies. In Hutchinson's articles, Bible believers can actually see the silliness that inerrantists must resort to in order to “explain” biblical discrepancies. After all, even some biblicists can see what the letter writer below has seen in Hutchinson's articles.
His Real Name?
If I did not believe Farrell Till, Dave Matson, and Stephen Van Eck to be scrupulous, honorable people, I would suspect that they keep getting together to write ludicrous essays under the pen name “Roger Hutchinson” for the express purpose of having ridiculous, simplistic inerrantist arguments which could easily be demolished by the application of the sort of common sense and logic that we'd expect from the average 5th grader.
Case in point: In the September/ October issue of TSR, “Hutchinson” (if that's his real name) again advances the argument that the atrocities perpetrated by Josef Stalin in Russia, Mao Zedong in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia can be traced to the “fact” that they were “skeptics” (his mischaracterization, by which he really means simply “non-Xian”). This is typical of the mindset of those who truly believe that “those who are not with me are against me,” thus dividing the world neatly into two (and only two) mutually exclusive camps of True Believers and Enemies.
What “Hutchinson” ignores is that the True Believers have True Beliefsideas which they literally hold to be beyond question. But atheists do not. As skeptics, they question authority; they don't just blindly follow it, as True Believers are expected to. Thus it is trivially easy to point to a set of beliefs that motivates Israelites, Puritans, Crusaders, Inquisitionists, etc. to commit their atrocities, but “Hutchinson” cannot point to any comparable set of beliefs that spring from skepticism, because there are none.
After having answered the question “Is there a god?” with a definitive “no, “atheists have exhausted the consequences; they are done making pronouncements. There may be doctrines (benign or pernicious) which follow from a “yes” answer, but there can be none which follow from a “no.” The Big Book of Atheism contains just the one page.
(Richard Russell, P. O. Box 750, Madison, WI 53701-0750; e-mail, RichardRussell@badger. alumni. wisc.edu)
Editor's Note: Hutchinson is his own worst enemy
but is too blind to see it.
