First, I'm going to say I'm going to cease defending the writings of Rav Sha'ul/"St. Paul", because, to be perfectly honest, I don't see him as inerrant whatsoever, and I frequently ignore his rulings; in many cases, I'm actually more likely to follow rulings from the Rambam than from Rav Sha'ul on the same subject. Of course, I still think Rav Sha'ul is someone to be studied, and who is clearly important (as his rulings on Torah and Jewish thought, however flawed they may be, make for the tenants of Christianity), however he is not the greatest. He is important, he said many great things, and he made mistakes. This, I will not deny.
Actually, this entire thread is meaningless, to me, as I do not believe generally that the Messianic Writings to be divinely inspired as Christians do, and, thus, do not believe them inerrant (argument can be made over the Revelation, but as it is a book of prophecy, it cannot be directly disproven or proven).
What I believe, as a Messianic Jew (though I cannot pretend to speak for all Messianic Jews), is that Yeshua was the Messiah, and all his teachings were correct. However, the records of his teachings, as passed down in the traditions from Mattityahu, Markos, Lukah and Yochanan, are not perfect nor divinely inspired.
The point is, I'm not going to defend Paul anymore.
You'd think he'd have checked up on such a thing. The fact that Jews today remember the difference every year when Tisha B'av rolls around means that this wasn't a mystery.
A few conclusions can be drawn: He wasn't concerned with the truth/figured his audience wouldn't know the difference (a problem of credibility for the author of one of the books Christians consider holy)... This author apparently wasn't divinely inspired (contrary to a claim commonly made by Christians).
It's strange that centuries of scribes making copies of this book wouldn't have corrected the error, considering how frequently we're told how Jewish the first Christians were. Were they all really that ignorant? Or did they just not care?
Scribal error, yes. But probably not by a Jew, but a Christian, probably after the original Hebrew text of Mattityahu was destroyed (well, some copies remained extant to the Crusades in the Holy Land, and were destroyed for preservation of the "True Faith"'s decree that the original text was the Greek) and they were continuing the tradition in Greek. This person was probably dedicated to studying the accounts of Messiah, something early Christian students were wont to do, and ignore the Tanakh. Thus, he made the error. Then, a few centuries later, his text was the one found and was copied down, and his error became permanently a part of the "divinely inspired" account of Mattityahu, at which point the error could not be corrected for the same reason that they burned the Hebrew original texts of the account - to preserve the doctrines which said that their Bible was inerrant.
When you've got the book right in front of you, there's no excuse. The statement "when Abiathar was high priest" is a direct contradiction of what's written in Samuel. Maybe it was a scribal error... maybe it was Jesus' error.
If I told you that President Lincoln died of natural causes, when it's well documented that he was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth, how credible would I be in your eyes? Why would you believe anything I said? What would it say about my intelligence, especially if I was writing a biography about Lincoln and had the records concerning him in front of me?
We're not talking about two people of the same name anymore. This Louis XIV and Louis XVI business might have been more meaningful when discussing Zechariah.
It most certainly is an error.
Probably, yes, it is an error. Not made by Yeshua, but probably by a scribe, probably in the same way as I described above.
To the goyim, it would be completely irrelevant why Joseph went to Bethlehem... if they were going to be told that the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem, all that mattered is that he went to Bethlehem.
The fact is, it wasn't just a silly cultural quirk that called Jersualem the city of David. The Bible had already called Jerusalem the city of David. If the goyim were expected to blindly accept certain assertions made by the Tanach despite them having no meaning for them, they might as well have been accurate.
It was not irrelevant, in Lukah, a historian's, eyes. Lukah has been shown to be accurate in almost all historical details, even when many historians have contradicted for centuries, then archeological evidence shows Lukah's writings to be accurate, and other historians inaccurate. He, apparently, for his account, went to all sources he found to be reliable and accurate, primarily, the preexistent writings of Markos in Aramaic, and gathered it together. Lukah, also, was trying to establish a specific date to draw for Yeshua's birth, since, of course, Jews didn't celebrate birthdays nor keep especial track of what day people were born. To tie it to the census is a way to relatively date the birth of Yeshua, by identifying the Roman governor, the Emperor, etc. In other words, an approximation of the birthdate for gentiles rather than Jews.
Of course, you are also falling into a slight fallacy - you are comparing the gentile Christians of the early centuries to the modern Christians of today, or even the Christians of a millennium ago. Christians at the time Lukah was writing did not follow the Tanakh blindly as modern Christians tend to.
No, it wasn't a reasonable assumption that he left when Terach died. The first mention of God speaking to Avraham was telling him to leave his country, his relatives, and his father's house. That last bit... his father's house, would seem terribly redundant if his father was dead.
I'd take your bet and I'd double it. Children are taught that Abraham left his father's house, which is to say, he wasn't dead yet.
I find it hard to believe that Stephen knew specifics about verse 31, but was ignorant of verse 32. Since there was no such thing as verses in those days, that means he carefully read one sentence, skipped a few lines, and carefully read some more.
It would seem so, yes.
You mean
Orthodox children are taught that Avraham left his father's house. The average American Jew is Conservative or Reform. For many Jews, the Bar or Bat Mitzvah is the last time they read from the Torah or even read, much less study, the Tanakh or Talmud. I have heard one Conservative cousin describe his Bar Mitzvah as "Freedom from Hebrew School". Many, if not most, don't learn, or don't care to learn, scripture at all.
And, of course, as I said, he is on trial. He is speaking, trying to defend his beliefs, while trying to convince others of the truth thereof, while he is facing death. You try to speak without error when you're facing an angry crowd holding large stones.
Maybe. Jews are generally good with numbers... 10 commandments, 40 days and nights, 12 tribes of Israel... Who would have come up with 75 when the number is 70? That's like saying "A man speaking under prosecution mentioned the 15 tribes of Israel."
See my last paragraph. Of course, this could also be a scribal error, like the one I described above. 70 and 75 are much more similar in Greek than they are in Aramaic or Hebrew, and since the Acts was originally written in Greek... Either way, yes, it is an error.