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::*Douglas, your point is interesting but the passage in question is not about anyone trying to debunk the miracles Jesus performed.  If anything, they were so utterly convincing that no one could dispute the power behind them.  The best the Pharisees could probably do is to be deceitful, and imply that Jesus was an agent of the devil rather than God, and this concurs with another Gospel passage where Jesus is accused of invoking demons to cast out other demons.  Getting Jesus to say something heretical would be a means to that end, while saying something politically incorrect would not.

::*Douglas, your point is interesting but the passage in question is not about anyone trying to debunk the miracles Jesus performed.  If anything, they were so utterly convincing that no one could dispute the power behind them.  The best the Pharisees could probably do is to be deceitful, and imply that Jesus was an agent of the devil rather than God, and this concurs with another Gospel passage where Jesus is accused of invoking demons to cast out other demons.  Getting Jesus to say something heretical would be a means to that end, while saying something politically incorrect would not.

::*Jeff, I apologize if my response to you seemed wordy, but you asked good questions that deserved a well-reasoned response.  Where the Bible is concerned, if I can't back up a suggestion than I don't make one.  To be brief, it's a tangent to ask what modern-day liberals and skeptics would do if Jesus walked on earth today.  Our assignment is to take the words of scripture describing what happened between those people, at that time and place, and use our best language to make it understandable.  To change the meaning so the actions of ancients are recast as the actions of our contemporaries is not what we are supposed to be doing, I think.  --[[User:ChrisY|ChrisY]] 15:13, 27 January 2010 (EST)

::*Jeff, I apologize if my response to you seemed wordy, but you asked good questions that deserved a well-reasoned response.  Where the Bible is concerned, if I can't back up a suggestion than I don't make one.  To be brief, it's a tangent to ask what modern-day liberals and skeptics would do if Jesus walked on earth today.  Our assignment is to take the words of scripture describing what happened between those people, at that time and place, and use our best language to make it understandable.  To change the meaning so the actions of ancients are recast as the actions of our contemporaries is not what we are supposed to be doing, I think.  --[[User:ChrisY|ChrisY]] 15:13, 27 January 2010 (EST)