Comments on: When Jairus came to Jesus, was his daughter dead or dying?

By: Errancy

Errancy — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:25:19 +0000

On “repeatedly” versus “earnestly”, in Mark 5:10, which contains precisely the same phrase, the NRSV gives “earnestly”. Odd.

By: Amtiskaw

Amtiskaw — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 09:44:53 +0000

Interesting. “Repeatedly” seems to be a peculiarity of the NRSV. Other translations have “earnestly”.

I guess the difficulty is in translating the word πολύς which apparently means “much” and is open to some sort of interpretation.

But yes, some sort of harmonisation along these lines might be possible.

By: Errancy

Errancy — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:55:30 +0000

Looking at this more closely, I do think that there’s a harmonisation available that doesn’t involve Jairus contradicting himself in his confusion.

I’ll put a fuller explanation above in the Inerrantist Responses section, but the key is the word “repeatedly” in Mark, describing Jairus begging Jesus for help: if Jairus begged Jesus for help repeatedly, and his daughter really was at the very point of death, then at some point it would be natural for Jairus to think that she would have died and change his plea to reflect this.

By: Errancy

Errancy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:34:20 +0000

There’s no logical contradiction here: it could be that Jairus’s daughter was dying, but that Jairus nevertheless said everything attributed to him.

However, I think that Matthew and Mark use reported speech to bring the story to life, not to distance themselves from his claims, that their readers are meant to believe what Jairus said. Because of this, I think that even though the accounts aren’t contradictory, at least one of them is misleading.

That’s enough for me to want to classify this as an error, even though I accept that a harmonisation is possible.

By: Amtiskaw

Amtiskaw — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:41:37 +0000

I think Matthew has edited the story for length. One might say it’s close enough to the truth to be acceptable… though personally I don’t like it.