"What is Truth?" - John 18:38

This is the question from Pilate in respone to Jesus, who had just said, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

We are not told how Pilate asked this question. Sincerely, or sarcastically. We are told that Pilate utters this question, and then departs Jesus. Whether this was because Jesus left the impression no answer was forthcoming, or because Pilate wasn't really interested in an answer, we just don't know.

But I think this offers a good place to leave our discussion of Truth. We'll probably never adequately define it, and we'll darn sure never prove it. The only thing I would hope is that we can both agree on one basic, fundamental thing: God Himself is the ultimate unchangeable Truth. If even that premise is up for debate, then I'm not sure on what basis any discussion on Truth can proceed.

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I admire your admission that science operates on theory, and that the objective is to craft a theory that best explains past events and predicts future events. That's an honest appraisal. It is unfortunate that many wish instead to offer science as irrefutable fact, and use that assertion to ram home various agendas. It gives a bad name to both science and ideology.

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How best to reconcile Matthew 27:5 and Acts 1:18 I just don't know. I'll simply provide what one commentator provides (www.carm.org, under the "Bible Difficulties" section):

There is no contradiction here at all because both are true. A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another. In fact, what happened here is that Judas went and hung himself and then his body later fell down and split open. In other words, the rope or branch of the tree probably broke due to the weight and his body fell down and his bowels spilled out.

Also, notice that Matt. 27:3-8 tells us specifically how Judas died, by hanging. Acts 1:16-19 merely tells us that he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out. Acts does not tell us that this is the means of his death where Matthew does.

That the Bible doesn't spell out all the details of every event doesn't necessarily make the Bible fallible. The writer of the above justification more or less makes that point: the two accounts don't contradict one another. It's just that the full details are not provided. If the standard by which descriptive text is to be judged is that -- every conceivable detail must be present -- well, then pretty much every document ever written fails. Certainly every single one of my white papers fails. Every newspaper story fails. Every court proceeding fails.

When I hold that the Bible is inerrant, what I am holding to is that the Bible contains an underlying truth, as provided by God. That we may not immediately see the truth that's buried there is, I believe, by design. Had God simply provided a straight-forward, unambiguous set of truths, two things would happen: we would quickly grow bored of considering them, and we would just as quickly ignore them. The Ten Commandments are pretty unambiguous (please, no commentary on what "kill" vs. "murder" means), and they're almost universally ignored, then as well as now.

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You wrote:

The savage beating he portrays Christ receiving seems too savage to me, are people really capable of behaving (with such relish) like this?

Absolutely. Recently here in the United States we had a news item related to a Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the death penalty for people who commit their crimes under the age of 18. The case involved a young man who at the age of 16 I think decided it would be "fun" to kill someone. He picked a victim and bound and gagged the woman. Then he drove the woman to a bridge over a river and threw the woman -- bound and gagged -- into the river, where she drowned. All for "fun." Yes, people really are capable of behaving with such relish.

That said, it's my personal opinion that Mel Gibson played up the relish enjoyed by the Roman soldiers a bit much. I think the violence in the movie was more than was needed, and in fact detracted somewhat from the message (which is why, incidentally, Gibson has just released another cut of the movie with about 6 minutes of the more gruesome depictions removed).