Have you ever stopped to consider how flexible people are when using geographical terms to
describe somewhere they have been in the
past or are going in the future? Perhaps you have heard friends telling about their trip to
Dallas, Texas, to watch the Dallas Cowboys
play football. The truth is, however, the Cowboys technically do not play in Dallas, Texas, but in
Irving, Texas. It may be that one
day your family decides to take a trip to Atlanta, Georgia, to go to Six Flags. If you do, make
sure you first understand that Six
Flags is not exactly in Atlanta, but in Austell, Georgia.
Oftentimes, when discussing details regarding a particular geographical region (and the towns,
cities, and attractions within that
region), general terms are stated in place of an exact location. A person who lives in Sand
Springs, Oklahoma, often will tell people
he lives in Tulsa. Why? Because Sand Springs is a suburb of Tulsa, and more people have heard of
Tulsa than Sand Springs. The same is
true with nearly all suburbs of major cities. Sometimes even small “country” towns are
equated with their “neighbors up
the road.” My wife and I used to live in the small west Tennessee town of Clarksburg. Yet,
even though we lived in Clarksburg, we
had a Huntingdon, Tennessee, address—and the city of Huntingdon was ten miles away. When people
asked where we lived, I said
Clarksburg. When they asked for our address, I told them Huntingdon. Yet, regardless of whether I
said Huntingdon or Clarksburg, no one
ever accused me of lying.
Considering how much “leeway” we allow ourselves today when speaking about
geographical regions, it is not surprising to
find Bible writers using that same freedom in the documents they wrote to regular people, just
like you and me. Although skeptics also
use the same approximation that Bible writers sometimes used, they arbitrarily reject the Bible
writers’ information as being
accurate and inspired. For example, in his attempt to “disprove” two biblical passages
referring to the location from which
Jesus ascended, skeptic Steve Wells has written: “Luke says Jesus ascended from Bethany, but
Acts (1:9,12) says he ascended from
Mount Olivet” (2001). As is often the case with skeptics, Mr. Wells misrepresented Luke. The
inspired writer of the
“third” gospel account actually wrote: “And He [Jesus] led them out as far as
Bethany, and He lifted up His hands
and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them
and carried up into heaven”
(Luke 24:50-51, emp. and bracketed note added). Notice, he did not say that Jesus ascended “
from” Bethany, but that they had
gone “as far as” (hoes pros; literally “till over against") Bethany,
and from this point Jesus ascended into
heaven. The New International Version seems to capture the real meaning of this verse,
saying that Jesus took His apostles
“in the vicinity of Bethany” before ascending into heaven. As one can see, the
text does not say that He ascended
directly “from Bethany.”
That point aside, since Bethany was located just one and three-quarter miles from
Jerusalem on the eastern slope of the
Mount of Olives (Pfeiffer, 1979, p. 197), Luke merely used different geographical referents to
establish the same location—the
gospel of Luke referring to the vicinity of Bethany, whereas the book of Acts mentions
specifically the Mount of Olives.
REFERENCES
Pfeiffer, Charles F. (1979), Baker’s Bible Atlas (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book
House).
Wells, Steve (2001), Skeptic’s Annotated Bible [On-line], URL:
http://www.Skepticsannotatedbible.com.
Copyright © 2004 Apologetics Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
We are happy to grant permission for items in the "Alleged Discrepancies" section to be reproduced in their entirety, as long as the following stipulations are observed: (1) Apologetics Press must be designated as the original publisher; (2) the specific Apologetics Press Web site URL must be noted; (3) the author’s name must remain attached to the materials; (4) any references, footnotes, or endnotes that accompany the article must be included with any written reproduction of the article; (5) alterations of any kind are strictly forbidden (e.g., photographs, charts, graphics, quotations, etc. must be reproduced exactly as they appear in the original); (6) serialization of written material (e.g., running an article in several parts) is permitted, as long as the whole of the material is made available, without editing, in a reasonable length of time; (7) articles, in whole or in part, may not be offered for sale or included in items offered for sale; and (8) articles may be reproduced in electronic form for posting on Web sites pending they are not edited or altered from their original content and that credit is given to Apologetics Press, including the web location from which the articles were taken.
For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:
Apologetics Press
230 Landmark Drive
Montgomery, Alabama 36117
U.S.A.
Phone (334) 272-8558
http://www.apologeticspress.org
