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Contradictions in the Bible from the Skeptic

 
 
 
 
 
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Contradictions? In the Bible? Bah... and yet there they are!

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09/02/2008
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yeahwecool 2 months ago

This is the reason one must study. Without the Holy Spirit to illuminate the truth of God's word, one will never understand the Law of old, and the Grace of new, and the meaning of the revelation of Jesus Christ in typology, literation, and figurative discernment.

Ermangarde 2 months ago

Captain111, you tell the author not to criticize.. and yet that's exactly what you're doing. You're criticizing and commanding the author to read and believe. Because he/she can.

So what? Lots of people believe in faeries and dragons, despite scientific evidence. So yeah, technically he or she CAN believe.

But who's being technical here, besides you?

It goes far deeper than that. For example, if you HAVE read the entire bible cover to cover TWICE .. then why not explain the issues he/she is having with the bible ? Like why such vulgarities, sexism, racism and filthy behavior was taken place?

And don't say the translations are different because that is not the case with the filthy, ever-lasting stories that are "well" excused and continue to haunt the victims who are blamed for this -- til this day!

i.e. A woman is blamed in modern days for the corrupted behavior of man today. If a person is a 'gentile' they are unclean and must be avoided... etc.

Yeah, truly a command from the voice of Love...

Contradiction, much?

captain111 2 months ago

Don't criticize what you don't understand. I've read the Holy Bible twice cover to cover and studied it a lot besides that. It is a great book and all of it is important. If you want to believe you can.

Part of the problem is that most churches teach certain things that are contrary to the Bible. Which is why reading it confuses some people. But once you grow in God you will have faith enough to believe in the authority of the Bible. Then you will realize that the Church is corrupt, but the word of God is True.

mehmood981460 3 months ago

hi my brothers,
why are criticizing your brother. If newtestament is really word of God then where is its original copy like the Hebrew text because jesus' language was hebrew. these are not gospels of jesus. there is book named The Fifth Gospel in which they prove that these gospels contain only few sayings of Jesus. Moreover, Who told you that Jesus was for whole world he himself says that i am for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. There are many contradictions in bible how can God contradict his own saying and the way in which creation process is described in Genesis do you really believe in this age. I believe that if you brothers challenge your faith and see that bible is really word of God your conscious shall tell you the truth. Read the book "Misquoting Jesus" and "Lost Christianities".

modres 3 months ago

Dear Heretic Rikky51,

You have simply not done your research. I wish I had time to educate you, but you seem uneducatable in this regard, so I will leave you with this, all right?

Taking just the New Testament:
- There are more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscript copies of the New Testament.
- These manuscript copies are very ancient and they are available for inspection now.
- There are also some 86,000 quotations from the early church fathers and several thousand Lectionaries (church-service books containing Scripture quotations used in the early centuries of Christianity).
- Bottom line: the New Testament has an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting its reliability.

There are also over 150,000 "variants" however, out of these 150,000 variants, 99 percent hold virtually no significance whatsoever.

Here are some examples of these "variants":
Manuscript #1: Jesus Christ is the Savior of the whole worl.

Manuscript #2: Christ Jesus is the Savior of the whole world.

Manuscript #3: Jesus Christ s the Savior of the whole world.

Manuscript #4: Jesus Christ is th Savior of the whle world.

Manuscript #5: Jesus Christ is the Savor of the whole wrld.

UnbeLIEVABLE!!! Did you catch the DIFFERENCES?! It is STAGGERING and it is no wonder people claim that you cannot trust the Bible today!

Here is more information for the uneducated and closed minded individual:
There are more [New Testament] manuscripts copied with greater accuracy and earlier dating than for any secular classic from antiquity.

Rene Pache adds, "The historical books of antiquity have a documentation infinitely less solid."

Dr. Benjamin Warfield concludes, "If we compare the present state of the text of the New Testament with that of no matter what other ancient work, we must...declare it marvelously exact."

From Norman Geissler:
The average gap between the original composition and the earliest copy is over 1,000 years for other books.

The New Testament, however, has a fragment within one generation from its original composition, whole books within about 100 years from the time of the autograph [original manuscript], most of the New Testament in less than 200 years, and the entire New Testament within 250 years from the date of its completion.

The degree of accuracy of the copies is greater for the New Testament than for other books that can be compared. Most books do not survive with enough manuscripts that make comparison possible.

On the Dead Sea Scrolls:
The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the accuracy of the transmission of the Bible.

In fact, in these scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947, we have Old Testament manuscripts that date about a thousand years earlier (150 B.C.) than the other Old Testament manuscripts then in our possession (which dated to A.D. 9...

rikky51 3 months ago

Dear and glorious Modres,
It is the nature of a scholar to question authority, including his or her own. Having said that, I believe that God is in control--there is no inadequacy in stating this. I also believe, however, that His creation is more complex than some shall accept. He has provided humans with free will, and thus, free thinking and free acting. Consequences exist, even for the Bible, based upon human actions and reactions. Thus, it's a likely impossibility that the Bible has remained unchanged by human interaction with it.

Some folks assume several things: first, that God wrote the Bible, that it is a perfect or faithful and unchanged recording of His Word; second, that there is no historical or cultural context to the Bible; and third, that God has never left the Bible to human acts of free will. I assume, first, that God inspired humans to write it within the context of their culture, or His Word should not have been understood; second, that for His own purposes He has let our free will act upon it, along with everything else in this world, as we have seen fit, either to our benefit or downfall; and third, and of paramount import, that God is not evil.

I will present here no lengthy argument for my assumptions. Suffice it to say that our Bible today is not the same as the Bible of centuries ago. Ours has been subject to, and altered by, human decision with respect to it--e.g., the Apocrypha, the Council of Nicaea, the frequent translations. Cardinals, leaders of other churches and faiths, and scholars everywhere, have decided what stayed in the Bible, what could be left out of the Bible, and the original words and their meaning. In some translation, for instance, hell is simply the grave (OED). I believe that we err if we accept human infallibility in our current consensus; that those who partook in determining it were necessarily men and women of unquestioning faith and probity. Considering the moral and political history of every Church, it's an unconvincing possibility.

I believe that the core truths--God's love, God's mercy, Jesus as His Son and the Messiah, and His commandments to us--remain intact.

If an 'adequate' understanding of God renders Him petty, vain, and vindictive; which is to say, if an 'adequate' understanding of God reduces His nature to that of His creature, then I will remain perfectly inadequate and glad for it. God is not evil.

Again, I am a heretic. I believe that the Anti-Christ embodies more than a man; it is the sum of false ideas either expressed in secular terms or in religious terms; it is the sum of actions that go against the teachings of Jesus--and, thus--His Father. It is telling that the political party that bought and sold slaves in the Old South elected such a man as Obama. Such is the continuity of evil.

modres 4 months ago

"I do not believe that every word in the Bible comes from our Creator. In the beginning, perhaps it did, but centuries of human meddling for religious, cultural, and political reasons has rendered much of it suspect. Contradictions in the Bible, therefore, arise from prior human interference."

This thinking shows nothing more than a completely inadequate view of God to begin with. Of course we do not have the original autographs, but the Dead Sea Scrolls (along with the thousands of other full and partial scrolls we have), have proven that the manuscripts we DO have do not change anything related to doctrine one iota. If there has been human tampering, it is certainly not evident.

A God who can actually "write" the Bible, but not have the power to MAINTAIN its integrity is no God at all; certainly not a God worth trusting with our own lives.

"It may be the case, also, that the propensities of biblical writers for using parables and code (a Methodist minister informed me that John meant much of what we read in Revelations as code to fool his prison guards"

Garbage. Jewish idioms were commonly used then, just as figures of speech are used today. They do not contain code. They point to literal meaning. Daniel, Ezekiel, Revelation, the Olivet Discourse - are all completely understandable WHEN the Bible is viewed from the perspective of the culture in which it was written - Jewish and Judaism. It's a no-brainer. People want to see symbolism when symbols are used, instead of understanding that 99% of symbolism used in the Bible is EXPLAINED in the Bible.

"Our Father in Heaven has other things in store for each of us according to our deeds."

If you believe that salvation is based on works. It isn't. Salvation is based on God's grace, through faith in Christ's finished work on Calvary's cross. Works, or good deeds if you will, are to be a natural outflow of the salvation process. They come AFTER salvation is rec'd, not before. Those "good deeds" that come before are done in our own strength and amount to cow dung.

One final thought...how do you think we will ever get to the events described in Daniel 9, or Revelation 6 on, if we do not get there through Socialists like Obama? God is in charge. Always has been. Always will be.

rikky51 4 months ago

I admit I'm a heretic. I do not believe that every word in the Bible comes from our Creator. In the beginning, perhaps it did, but centuries of human meddling for religious, cultural, and political reasons has rendered much of it suspect. Contradictions in the Bible, therefore, arise from prior human interference. It may be the case, also, that the propensities of biblical writers for using parables and code (a Methodist minister informed me that John meant much of what we read in Revelations as code to fool his prison guards; nevertheless, given the nature of the current U. S. president, one must wonder if there is more to it than mere cipher) created the appearance of opposition.

I averred my unorthodoxy. Now, let me add the following. I believe that passages in our most sacred text that speak to His omniscience, His omnipresence, His omnipotence, His unending mercy, and His eternal love, come closest to the truth about Him and though His Son, about our relationship to Him...

Yes, for want of a better pronoun, I use the male forms. Arguments about that are mere pettifoggery--with special emphasis placed on creating a fog of obfuscatory semantics...

He is not evil. I regard with suspicion any passage that makes Him appear human in His nature. I would not believe in a supreme being so angry, petty, and retributive, that he would consign any one of us to everlasting agonies--fire and brimstone; torments; Dante's self-indulgent visions; Dickens' clinking, clanking collection of cash boxes and chains--after a mere lifetime. My Creator is more Godlike (as opposed to Grecian, Roman, or atavistic godlike) than any of that insupportable wishful thinking suggests. My Creator teaches...

I could wish that He has provided a special place in Hell for the exquisite torture of those who claim to be teachers. I mean, of course, the inculcators, the propagandists, the uncritical ones, the union mobsters, who have helped during that last 50 years and to this day to "dumb down" their students--and our children--so that they unwittingly accept serfage in Obama's socialist America, instead of resisting it and fighting it with the weapons of knowledge and understanding that their teachers could have given them. Truly, I could wish for the worst sort of devilry to befall such fiends, but to what avail?

Our Father in Heaven has other things in store for each of us according to our deeds.

modres 4 months ago

"When I was a Christian, I never read the Bible..."

Interesting, but let me say this...if you were a Christian at one point, you would still be a Christian. I find it fascinating when I run into "ex-Christians" who KNOW that they were Christians; KNOW that they believed in God; KNOW that they believed the Bible, etc., etc., but NOW they KNOW that God does not exist; they KNOW that the Bible is wrong; they KNOW that what they once had, they no longer have.

There is one problem with that mindset. It's as if they are saying "I USED to be married and I LOVED the person I was married to. I KNOW I was married at one point, but not only am I NOT married any longer, but that person that I was married to NEVER existed."

Look, the Dead Sea Scrolls have proven beyond doubt that the manuscripts that existed prior to finding them had absolutely NO difference in theological meaning.

The other day, I was on a Muslim-related website and they boasted "101 Contradictions in the Bible" and the plain fact of the matter is ALL of their 101 contradictions were NOT contradictions. Not ONE of them, as they were easily explained.

In one example, they cited one gospel that told where Judas kissed Jesus and then they cited another gospel where THEY said that Judas didn't kiss Jesus because he could not get close enough. The truth of the matter is that in John's gospel, he simply says "Judas was standing there." and he makes no mention of whether Judas did or did not kiss Judas in betrayal.

Another example they pointed out was when Christ cursed the fig tree and it "withered immediately" in one gospel and in another, the narrative explains that the next day, they saw the withered fig tree, leading the Muslims on that website to say "See? It took 24 hours for the fig tree to wither - a contradiction!" No, there is NO contradiction because all the second text says is essentially that they saw the fig tree the next day and it was withered. The text does NOT say that it TOOK 24 hours to wither, in contrast with the other passage that said it withered right away. There is no contradiction.

Most seeming contradictions occur because people are so unfamiliar with Jewish culture, it's pitiful. Or, they are completely unaware of how Jerusalem looked during the time of Christ. In one place in the gospel, it talks about a man going through a specific gate in the city. In a corresponding gospel, it talks about the same man but says he went through a different gate in the city. Which one is right? They are BOTH right, because one narrative talks about the man as he entered the city and the other narrative talks about the same man as he exited through a different gate into another part of the city. There is NO contradiction.

The Bible was written by over 40 human authors, over a period of over 1600 years. Any actual discrepancies ...

cheriwindsor1492 4 months ago

when one IS a ONCE-born believer...the Sentences within WRITTEN-scriptures APPEAR to contradict...I have found that as a TWICE-born...[by Faith...believing] that it is not the Words but the once-born mind reading according to SELF interpretaion which varies once-born man to once-born man...BUT when read in One Mind...Filled with Spirit of Faith...there is not the contradiction
that unreborn minds "find" according to the spirit of Deception within them. YES
it is true that few CLAIMING to BE God's
actually Know anything according to the Presence of God FOUND in TRUE believers.
But sadly...as Paul God's instrument PENNED...yeah...yea...yea ...Hear ye...Hear ye...Daddy Said there'd be days
..yea...times...Dark...su ch as this. The
Holy Code of God...cannot be found by the unreborn...God's LAST LAUGH upon men Devil-led. Yes and MOST members of the church JUST LIKE IN THE TIME...DAYS of Jesus...most legalists...self-righteou s ...hypocrites...could not recognize Father in Christ...God when they had Him standing right in front of them. Same ol' children of the Devil
...found IN and OUTSIDE the so called "church"...but blessed be the ones bearing Father in Christ in them
the Spirit of Testimony...Truth. Hard to tell the church from the children of THIS world...born here below...and not reborn from Above...by the Will of God
and IT IS WRITTEN...PLAINLY...not by the choice...will of man...which is EVIL.

jeffbkill 5 months ago

Bah, most of your contradictions are purely a matter of your interpretation. No wonder you choose the KJV, Its arcane language is easily twisted to suit your needs. Its the same reason the cults like the KJV.

The modern translations have corrected many errors and interpolations in the KJV. This is not the result of 'covering up'. We simply have more and better texts to provide a more accurate translation of the Bible.

Some versions are intended for simple minded folks like yourself like the comic book version of the Bible. Those are not intended for deep exegesis. Just to present the story in a simplified form to new reader. Sure when I read a dumbed down version of the bible intended for a different audience the wording is different. Go figure. You may as well complain that the Chinese version of the Bible is in Chinese.

All of your apparent contradictions have been answered elsewhere.

sandwiches 5 months ago

How could a primitive band of nomadic shepherds write a collection of books that contained historical errors and contradictions?

the1stkjv 5 months ago

Answers To The Contradictions.
http://www.the1stkjv.com

rikky51 7 months ago

Contradictions in the Bible stem from human interference. Proceeding from the assumption that God is not evil reveals them for what they are, in consequence of which,they become as nothing compared to one's faith and trust in Him and His Son. Happy Christmas to all.

fredoheaven 10 months ago

well documented based on your perception. The bible says, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts...which of course, contradictory to your's.