Bruce Alderman

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bio	website	brucealderman.info
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	age	44
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I've been a Christian since 1985, and a member of East Heights United Methodist Church in Wichita since 1994. My theology is Wesleyan/Arminian, but I don't think all Christians must share this view.

I believe that the Bible is inspired but not inerrant, that it was written to teach us about God and not the physical universe.

I believe faith is not an intellectual pursuit but a transformation of our entire being.

	2,347 reputation	bio	website	brucealderman.info	visits	member for	1 year, 7 months
722 badges		location	Kansas		seen	7 hours ago

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Nov 1	comment	Who named the wrong priest in Mark 2:26? @Jon: Regarding "no reason to add the mistake"; that's why it is called a mistake. If we look at the thousands of minor errors in later manuscripts, there is no reason for someone to have added them, yet they are there. I understand Dr. Ehrman's logic, I just don't think it matches the reality of life before the printing press.
Nov 1	comment	Who named the wrong priest in Mark 2:26? Then does that mean every time a Christian forgets something, we are sinning?
Nov 1	comment	Who named the wrong priest in Mark 2:26? @Jack: I can't see how Bob's comment even addresses my answer.
Nov 1	comment	Who named the wrong priest in Mark 2:26? @Jon: If it went back to Jesus, I don't see why nobody would have corrected it over the 30-40 years before it was written down. We can see, based on how Matthew and Luke treat the source we know about (Mark), that they are not reluctant to make changes even to the very words spoken by Jesus. Is there a reason to believe Mark was any different?
Oct 31	comment	Does Joh 14:26 speak to assumptions about hermeneutics? Sure, the gospel writers took their task seriously. However, they did not write the gospels to communicate the history of Jesus, but rather the meaning of Jesus.
Oct 31	comment	Does Joh 14:26 speak to assumptions about hermeneutics? I don't think there is any evidence that the gospel writers would always have left out details whenever there was any doubt. Compare, for example, the differences among the gospels in 1) the words exchanged between Jesus and John at Jesus' baptism, 2) the names of the twelve apostles, 3) the words exchanged between Jesus and Pilate at Jesus' trial, 4) the identities of the people who questioned Peter before the cock crowed, 5) the women who accompanied Mary to the tomb. There is considerable disagreement on the details, yet they all agree on the big picture, which is what really counts.
Oct 31	comment	Does Joh 14:26 speak to assumptions about hermeneutics? Are you implying that denying biblical inerrancy is equivalent to calling the apostles liars?
Oct 31	comment	Does Joh 14:26 speak to assumptions about hermeneutics? Who are you including in "the apostles"? Do we even know what most of the 12 did after the day of Pentecost?
Oct 27	comment	Why is “raah” usually translated differently in Amos 3:6 and 9:4 Possibly relevant: The NRSV translates it "harm" instead of "evil" in 9:4.
Oct 27	comment	What is “verbal plenary inspiration” and to what texts does it apply? re: "This is a view mainly held by Protestants," or more precisely, by Evangelical Protestants
Oct 27	comment	Is there a scriptural warrant for the literal-historical approach? Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as advocating excluding literal methods. I'm only trying to exclude the view that each scripture passage can have at most one meaning, and that it cannot mean anything other than the surface-level meaning of the words unless the passage itself explicitly says otherwise. I'll try to edit my answer to clarify.
Oct 26	comment	Redaction criticism and grammatical-historical hermeneutics For example, Isaiah 45, which mentions Cyrus the Great as God's "anointed" who would free Israel from captivity, is believed by most critical scholars to have been written during that captivity.
Oct 26	comment	Redaction criticism and grammatical-historical hermeneutics And I don't think this statement is accurate: "If a prophesy is fulfilled, critics date the text as a whole to after the fulfillment." Most historical critics (as far as I've seen--I'm not an expert) tend to assume any prophecy will be fulfilled within a short time after being written, because historical criticism seeks the meaning of the text for the first readers.
Oct 26	comment	Redaction criticism and grammatical-historical hermeneutics Could you give some examples of how historical-grammatical "converges" where historical criticism "diverges"?
Oct 26	comment	How does “Sensus Plenior” differ from Allegory, Gnosticism, Kaballah, and Midrash? I would just note that Christians have used allegory since before the church included Greeks. See, for example, Paul's allegorizing of the Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4.
Oct 26	comment	Is there a scriptural warrant for the literal-historical approach? @Bob: Are you referring to Biblical literalism, as defined in the Wikipedia link? "Biblical literalists believe that, unless a passage is clearly intended as allegory, poetry, or some other genre, the Bible should be interpreted as literal statements by the author."
Oct 25	comment	Is there a scriptural warrant for the literal-historical approach? Meta discussion here: meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/135/…
Oct 25	comment	Is there a scriptural warrant for the literal-historical approach? I'm going to start a discussion on meta about terminology, because as I understand it, these are all examples of allegorical interpretation.
Oct 6	comment	Which 'modern' English translation of the Bible is considered the 'closest' or most accurate translation? There is a difference between "literal" and "accurate". If the literal order of the Greek or Hebrew words doesn't yield a sensible sentence in English, or if the original language contains an idiomatic expression, a direct word-for-word translation is less accurate than a translation that captures the meaning but loses the structure of the original.
Oct 6	comment	Where does the “slippery slope” of allegorical interpretations start? It seems to me that you are making an unwarranted assumption that there is only one right meaning. Often a single passage has multiple meanings that can apply to different people in different times.