THE BIBLE CONTRADICTS ITSELF
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INDEX INDEX
HALEY’S BLUFFS, LEVITICUS AND
DEUTERONOMY
HALEY’S BLUFFS, JOSHUA AND JUDGES
HALEY’S BLUFFS, KINGS AND
CHRONICLES
THE BOOK CATHOLICISM AND
CHRISTIANITY
The Bible shows the full extent of the how far people can wander from decency over dogma and religion. There have been more inspiring and enlightening books and yet this one is the one that everybody promotes and has in the house. We would not want the Bible to be the word of God. Who would listen to it? It gives plenty of orders and no convincing reasons to follow them. It implants a totally unacceptable attitude towards right and wrong for it obviously identifies right with what some authority says and that is the might is right philosophy. Grown people should decide for themselves instead of being treated like children by this book. And it has even its most devoted followers lying for it. God said in Deuteronomy 18 that if a prophet makes so much as one error in predicting the future despite being right all the time in other predictions he is a fake for God cannot err. Christians say when they are shown a contradiction in the Bible that it cannot be a contradiction because the Bible never contradicts itself which is the very logic implicitly rejected in Deuteronomy 18. God does not want people rationalizing contradictions and errors. You can reconcile any contradiction if you assume there is no contradiction and if you try hard enough which is why it is so important to keep things simple and prefer simple explanations to hard ones. The solutions to Bible contradictions are shown to be contrived by their very complexity and improbability. What solution is selected depends on what presuppositions and interpretations the self-appointed solver wants to impose on the text. But interpretations are just interpretations and nobody can be obligated to accept the interpretation of another. To do that is not to believe in the Bible but in what you want to see in it. Contradictions being “solved” does nothing to quieten those who accept sceptical interpretations of the Bible. If a sceptical interpretation that sees lots of contradictions is possible then nobody has the right to insist on an inerrant Bible. And it is more than possible – it is warranted.
The Bible is spiritual pornography and should be detested.
Some Bible contradictions.
Deuteronomy 10:1-3,5 relates that the ark of the covenant existed before Moses went up the mountain with the two new stone tablets he wanted God to write on contradicting Exodus 34-37 where Moses acquires the articles required for the making of the ark after he comes down from the mountain from God.
Jesus said that whoever puts faith in him has more belief in God than in him (John 12:44). So you believe Jesus because of God. But when he claimed to be giving evidence for what he claimed about God and for the existence of God – evidence that can’t be got any other way - that cannot be. You would need to trust Jesus more than God. Jesus is not making sense here.
Gleason W Archer published an important work of apologetics for Bible Christianity in 1916. It is the Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties.
The introduction shows that one cannot seriously believe in Jesus if one denies that some of the stories of the Old Testament are history like Adam and Eve and so forth. If the Bible errs then it cannot be trusted in religious matters - the things of supreme importance. You do not drink a bottle of poison because the label says it will do you no harm and you see erroneous statements on the label. The book seeks to prove that Moses wrote the Pentateuch and that there are not errors or contradictions in the Bible – every traditional opinion of the Bible in short.
The book says that the Bible states that Moses wrote the entire five books of the Law, or the Torah (page 45). But in fact that it merely attributes certain parts of it to Moses and does not say who wrote the rest. The real reason for this strange idea is because Archer thinks that Jesus himself thought that Moses wrote the Law. The source of a doctrine is as important as the content so if Jesus was wrong about the source the doctrine had no foundation or a weaker one. The authority of the five books would be stronger if Moses actually wrote them for he was a major prophet. So if Jesus were a prophet he would have known by the light of God that Moses wrote the law from which Jesus took doctrines. So Archer is determined then to bend the evidence to fit what he reckons Jesus says. His book says that certain features show that the author is more familiar with Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula than Palestine so Moses was the author. But these do not prove that Moses was the author for they only show that whoever the author was he either did his homework or he was there. Many Israelites came from Egypt with Moses and would have had records and any of them could have been responsible for the Torah. The Law could still have been forged using ancient writings centuries after Israel settled itself in Palestine. It is dishonest to argue that the author knew little about Palestine for the books were concerned with the wandering in the desert and had no need to mention Palestine.
Appalling evidences for Mosiac authorship are proposed which argue from the fact that some material in it can be traced back to a time like that of Moses that Moses must have been the author. This is garbage. We cannot expect much better of an Encyclopaedia that says that since Abel sacrificed a lamb to God that he knew of the salvation offered by Christ and was the first saved person to die (page 76). The book insists that Numbers 12:3 which calls Moses the humblest of men, was written by God through Moses so Moses was not bragging about himself (page 136). It cites the authority of Haley, author of the notorious, Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, himself for this. But this rests on the unfounded assumption that Moses wrote Numbers. Christians invent miracles to cover up the errors of Jesus and that is not on for they would not tolerate Mormons saying that God forced Joseph Smith to copy the Bible to make the Book of Mormon.
The Epistle to the Hebrews insists that Melchizidek had no parents but was a divine being for he had no beginning or end. Archer disputes this and says that it only means that no parents were mentioned in the Old Testament. But the words would have been taken literally if it had been Christ not Melchizidek.
In the Book of Exodus we read that Moses did miracles in Egypt during competition with the Egyptian magicians and priests who were able to replicate many of these miracles. It is asserted on page 113 that Pharaoh's magicians performed their miracles by trickery. But would the Egyptians have been impressed by them if they had? There is always something in such trickery to give one away. For example, when a conjurer does a trick you know it is a trick though you cannot explain how it’s done when you see him doing and saying unnecessary things. A real magician would not find a chosen card after taking the pack from you but would magic it out of the pack without taking it.
Page 123 seeks to justify the divine toleration of polygamy in the Old Testament. It says that a man taking a second wife would not be adultery. But that is saying that it is a valid marriage. But how can it be a real marriage when marriage involves the complete giving of self to another and you cannot give yourself completely to one woman and then another? Archer said that rulers needed to practice polygamy when it was the sole way to sire children for without them the greater evil of strife and civil war could result. The Bible never says that. It never says why polygamy is allowed which gives the impression that it was only allowed because it was thought to be right. To allow polygamy for that reason would be like saying you may murder a man because he is a potential killer! You may not for he might never do it. And would divorce not be better if the first wife proved barren? It would be more honest anyway. At least monogamy would be preserved.
The error in Leviticus that declares that rabbits chew their cud is casually brushed off (126). The explanation is that it is handy to say they do to forbid eating them just because it looks like they do it. But you can magic away any mistake that way. Would Archer agree with a person who says he saw Mary at the scene of a murder when he only saw a person who resembled Mary? The likes of Archer will have to say that any rabbit that went into the Holy Land in those days was miraculously enabled to chew the cud until the Law had passed. Such a credulous explanation would make it possible to reconcile any contradiction at all. Incredibly, it is claimed by some extremists that the word for cud can mean berry or grain too so they solve the problem by saying not that the rabbit chews the cud but that the rabbit chews the berry (See Web, Rabbits do not chew their cud, Alleged Bible Contradictions). This ignores the context which considers animals that do dirty things to be unclean and chewing the cud is eating dung and is dirty and the rabbit is being accused of chewing the cud. If you can’t eat animals that eat the berries then you can eat nothing. The fact that Christians are able to come up with ten explanations for every Bible contradiction shows that something is wrong for only one of them, naturally the simplest one, or none of them can be acceptable. They are only making the Bible seem useless and unclear with their efforts to delude their sheep. It would have to be very vague to be able to legitimately take their rationalizations.
Archer says that
Archer refuses to perceive the absurdity in this. If God cannot prevent the sight of him from killing you then God is not all-powerful. You could see God with your mind and still have your body – only you would be able to do his will for you cannot resist perfect goodness which is God.
First Samuel 17 says that David killed Goliath but Second Samuel 21 says it was Elhanan. Archer says that the original in Second Samuel has been altered by errors and that it should say that Elhanan killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath. Archer says that the copyist put two words in the wrong place and misread the word brother thus corrupting the text forever. But this cannot be proved and is only speculation. Archer admits as much when he says that the “corrupted” passage makes sense and when he says it has two or three mistakes so he is not sure how many or if any. It is just an attempt to deny a contradiction where one exists. He says that 1 Chronicles 20:5 gives the true reading saying Elhanan slew Goliath’s brother but that does not prove that there were textual errors in Second Samuel. Also, he claims that the present text of the latter says that Elhanan was called the son of the forests of weavers which he says is a ridiculous name showing that copyists have made transcription errors. The name is not ridiculous – it could be poetic. A man could be called forests of weavers just like the meaning of Jesus is really Yahweh our Salvation. In Defence of the Faith says the same thing as Archer and applauds some translators for changing the text to make it say that Lahmi was the brother of Goliath because Goliath made no sense (page 138). When the translators had to change the text it shows there is no proof that the original said brother of. Evangelicals alter the Bible and then tell us so confidently that the Bible cannot err!
Archer’s claim that the original has been ruined contradicts his Jesus who said that not a dot could pass away from the Bible and Archer’s claim that the Jews would not have canonised books which contained errors (275). The earliest scholars did not agree with his theory when they did not feel like amending the text. Their word comes first for they were closer to the originals. They believed the original was wrong and not corrupted.
If the Bible God let the numbers be lost from the originals then maybe that happened with the accounts of the feeding of the five thousand and the number of apostles who seen the resurrection as well making them exaggerations.
We read that God was got David to sinfully count his people (2 Samuel 24:1) but in a parallel account we are told that Satan did that (1 Chronicles 21:1,2). The wording in the two is identical except where Satan is substituted for God in the latter. Archer says that they can be reconciled. God permitted Satan to trick David so it can be said that God did it and Satan did it. But God did it indirectly and Satan directly. But when the passages are nearly the same the words must have been the same meaning. When one says, “God did it”, and the other says, “Satan did it”, they must mean did it in the same sense. They are most likely to. So, the first is saying that God did it directly and this shocked the person who used the book to make Chronicles and he changed God to Satan. There had to have been a reason for the change. Also, you never just say a person did something unless you mean directly. The context of the verses do not hint that we should take the indirect meaning. Archer’s reconciliation is implausible.
Archer argues that when Jesus said that the mustard seed was the smallest of all (Matthew 13) he meant that it was the smallest seed in Palestine and not the smallest in the world (329). This may be the black mustard seed but orchid seed is even smaller. Archer holds that it is unlikely that Jesus meant that mustard seed was the smallest in the world when he could have meant the smallest seed in the country he lived in. But all means literally all in the world when the context does not narrow it down. If Jesus meant only the seeds of Palestine he would have said so and anyway the orchid grows in Palestine.
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible by John W Haley claims that there are no contradictions or errors in the Bible. Needless to say, it is only the contradictions he can handle or thinks he can handle that he deals with. The real ones are conveniently ignored. For instance, he does not try to explain away Jesus’ error when he argued that Satan could not cast out Satan. Or Jesus’ error when he said that that God saying he was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob proved the resurrection.
Some contradictions are followed by outrageous attempts to reconcile them.
He says that Genesis is right to say that light existed before the making of the sun and the stars (422). He says that light energy or the action that causes light was made before light began to shine. So, the author of Genesis using his word for light meaning something that shines did not mean that which shines! The author used a word that meant shining light for nobody knew of any other kind of light and there is a man trying to tell us that words don’t mean what they mean! The author of Genesis was like the pagan writers who made blunders as bad and sometimes worse. Why would God make light before he makes the sun and the stars? Logic says you make the sun and the stars first and then light them up.
Genesis 1 and 2 contain different creation stories. They obviously contradict one another but Haley says they do not (page 408). Genesis 1 says man and woman were made last but the next story claims that the man was made first. Haley’s solution is that Genesis 2 is not chronological. A book is more perfect if it is chronological so this would be sufficient proof that Genesis was not inspired. Christian evidence for Genesis 2 not being chronological is that the two stories would not have been in if they did not agree. But this assumes that the authors meant to be writing infallible scripture. It is more likely that they did not know which story to listen to and put the two in. To blame neglect of chronology is to make it possible to reconcile any contradiction that people make whatsoever. Genesis 2 is chronological for it says man was made before plants and trees were so there could have been no animals either. These chapters would have been read by very few before the exile so the contradictions might not have been noticed or perhaps they didn’t think and assumed there would have to be a solution.
Page 360 says that the Bible writers sometimes did not write chronologically where things make little sense if interpreted chronologically. If true then there is a natural reason why there may be no contradictions in the Bible if there are none. This means that there is no evidence that it is from God.
In Genesis we read that God made Adam and Eve and warned them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that they would die the day they do it. A snake told them to eat for they would not die and they did and God rejected them as sinners. Page 393. Haley says that God did not tell Adam and Eve that they would die physically that day if they sinned for he meant they would spiritually die. Haley just says that because they failed to die that day. Adam lived for several hundred years after and Eve did not die that day either. The snake told Adam and Eve that they would not die. They did not want to eat the forbidden fruit at first in case they would die. Now, if sin causes spiritual death – alienation from God – they would not have been so reluctant about dying because it would only take a bit of repentance to repair the damage. The death they were afraid of was physical death and that was what they feared and so they understood God to have meant physical death and so he did mean it for he knew if they were misinterpreting. Clearly then, God broke his promise to kill Adam and Eve if they ate the fruit.
It is much much later in the Bible before we read about spiritual separation from God being symbolised as death. The Law of Moses never stated that there was a life after death and saw doing wrong in terms of doing damage in this world and making God angry rather than in terms of death. The Christians habitually read later stuff back into the old stuff to give the whole Bible the appearance of being consistent divine revelation.
So the Christians pretend that the death threatened on Adam and Eve was spiritual death. The serpent told them that they would not die and this meant physical death. Assume it meant spiritual death only. Adam and Eve would have sinned not when they took the fruit but when they decided to take it so the sin would have preceded the eating. If sin causes spiritual death, how could Adam and Eve have believed the serpent long enough to reach for the fruit for they would have spiritually died the moment they decided to touch the tree and the moment they thought they should sin and they would have seen that he was a liar? Only holding that the serpent meant physical death makes sense of the story.
The serpent must have meant physical death for Adam and Eve would have believed that spiritual death was easily corrected by repentance and would have been more scared of physical death believing that it was the end forever. And if they were more scared of spiritual death then they would already have been spiritually dead for they loved life more than God. They loved being right with God more than God who wants all our love. God did tell them that they would physically die the minute they touched the forbidden fruit when that was how he was understood.
Page 420. The Bible says that God’s name Yahweh was not known until it was revealed to Moses in Exodus 6:3. And yet the name pops up in Genesis. It appears in Genesis 4:1 where Eve uses it. So people were using the name before Exodus says so. Haley tries to make us believe that in those cases, Moses just put the name in even though they did not know it for it was Yahweh they meant or that Moses just translates their word for God as Yahweh, the new word. This is outrageous. He is just saying that the lie of saying somebody knew somebody’s name is not a lie. And then he says that if this reconciliation is wrong then the attributes of God represented in the name were not known so the true meaning of the name was not known. This claims that the name was known from the time of Genesis but the meaning of the name wasn’t revealed until the time stated in the Book of Exodus. But Exodus says that God’s name not just its meaning was hidden from the world. Yahweh means I am who am. This is supposed to say that God needs nothing to exist. But Eve knew this for she could not have sinned unless she believed that God was supreme. God could not have imputed sin to her unless she knew that he was the only boss and was right. She and Adam knew God better than anybody else for they were sinless for a time and talked face to face with God.
Genesis contradicts itself concerning when people started to worship God (4:3,4; 4:26). It says that Cain and Abel worshipped God and then that this was not true. Haley says that the so-called denial infers that organised public worship of God did not happen until later (4:27). But the verse says that men began to call on God and that does not sound like it means they started holding services. There is a huge difference between people praying and them having services.
He even says that men could have begun to adore God with their voices at that time while before they just worshipped in silence! This is implausible for the Bible says that primitive humanity was not mute.
By the way, page 345 of Haley’s hollow book says when God told Israel that he would bring him out of Egypt though he was to die before that that it was his descendants who were meant. But the whole context commands us to believe that Israel personally was meant. Read it and see. Haley is covering up for the Bible God being a false prophet.
Here are more of Haley’s inane attempts to reconcile Bible disagreements.
Page 318, God gave the land to Abraham (Genesis 13:15) but we read that Abraham did not possess it (Acts 7:5). Haley says that Abraham got the land in trust – it was his although he never got the chance to take it. But when God told him that it would be Abraham and his seed’s forever it is plain that both get the land in the same sense. God would not give you something you will never have. The context tells us that the promise was intended to be a reward and getting the land in trust is no reward.
Page 318, In Genesis 20, Abraham worries about Abimelech stealing his wife for he would not have the army to get her back when in chapter 14 we read that he had three hundred and eighteen servants and in all probability the men of Aner, Eschol and Mamre also to fight to get his kidnapped nephew back. Haley says that there is no contradiction for Abimelech must have been too strong for even all these. There is a contradiction for there is no need to think that Abraham was afraid of a war. And he was not worried about losing Sarah when he let Abimelech think she was not his wife and take her in. He did not believe a war would be necessary. He didn’t fear that Abimelech would be too much for him to handle. If he could not handle it, he would not have let her go in the first place.
Haley conveniently ignores the fact that in the same chapter God first threatens to kill Abimelech in a vision for what he did with Sarah and then in verse 6 he repents when Abimelech tells him he did not know until God told him that Sarah was married and tells Abimelech that he will not punish him for it was not his fault. So God did not realise at first that Abimelech was not really guilty and appeared to him for nothing and threatened him in the wrong.
Page 336, Genesis 24, 28 and 36 disagree about who Esau’s wives were and the number of wives he had. Haley says that the same people are meant but different names were used. For example, he uses what he admits is just a theory, the notion that women changed their names upon marriage, to identify Adah with Bashemath. This is unbelievable. The theory is refuted by the fact that the records and lists were drawn up after the women were married so their new names would have been used. Nobody calls Jude John in a historical record when few call him John. If Genesis had had the one author or editor as Christians say the same names would have been employed.
Page 318, Abraham laughed at the angel’s promise that he would father a child despite being one hundred years old. And then we are told after that he fathered babies by Keturah.
Either he was impotent or he believed he could have no child for Sarah was too old. Haley says that if Abraham fathered children by Keturah after this then God miraculously cured his impotence.
But if you start assuming miracles to solve conflicts you will be able to reconcile any contradiction whatsoever. You will not be able to point to a book being without error as proof of its divinity. This argument really destroys the Bible’s authority. You can’t assume miracles any more than you can assume that €10 vanishing from your wallet is a miracle.
Haley then suggests that the Keturah bit is a digression and is about what happened in an earlier period when Abraham was virile. That is unlikely for the author could have moved it. It would show bad structure in the narrative and God wouldn’t want such an imperfection. And there is no hint that it is a digression so it is not when it is not likely to be.
HALEY’S BLUFFS - LEVITICUS AND DEUTERONOMY
Page 354. Deuteronomy 31:2 says that Moses was a decrepit old man unable to go in or come out. 34:7 says the opposite. Haley “solves” the difficulty by alleging that Moses meant he could not go out of the wilderness with the people to go into the Promised Land. But he said first that he was a hundred and twenty years old and then that he could not go out and come in – evidently meaning that he couldn’t leave his tent. Then he said the Lord told him he would not enter the land – another topic. He did not blame his age for that for he could have been carried to the land but he blamed fate. The reason he added that God told him he would not set foot on the Promised Land was because he felt he was not far from death as his bodily state showed. He did not mean what Haley said. There is a contradiction.
Page 363. Because the Bible says that Aaron died on Mount Hor and then that he died at Mosera, Haley says that Mosera could have been the name of the district in which the mountain was. Haley says that he might have climbed the mountain to die - unbelievable. And it is wrong to say that Mosera could have been the name of the area when there is no evidence. It is wrong to say there is no contradiction because there might be one. Even if the whole Bible can be reconciled that does not prove that this is not a contradiction. And especially when the Bible said that a false prophet could get everything right and make one error that proves he is a false prophet.
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HALEY’S BLUFFS – JOSHUA AND JUDGES
Let us see what Haley has to say about the Book of Joshua and Judges.
It is interesting that he does not try to deal with Samson tying two foxes together and setting them on fire near Philistine crops to destroy them. It would not have been a very effective method of burning them out. The author seems to think it would have made them rocket forward and run for miles setting all the fields on fire. It would not. Each one would have tried to pull away from the other. Strange that a Nazarite like Samson whose strength depended on him remaining a Nazarite according to an angel could touch foxes when they ate dead meat? Nazarites could not touch anything that touched anything unclean.
Page 348 says that Joshua defeated kings but did not get their cities. Haley says that Hannibal killed the Roman leaders but did not manage to conquer Rome. But the cities can be seized if one has enough men. Joshua must have had enough when he was able to kill the kings and their armies and weaken the cities by killing their soldiers and then go on further liquidation sprees. Joshua 15:63 says that Judah could not get rid of the inhabitants of Jerusalem so they lived together. That is simply not believable for mistrust and resentment would always have been there. The “sacred” author is lying when he says they did that to “this very day”.
Page 324. Joshua literally wiped out all the Canaanites and we are told no survivors were left (Joshua 10:40) but the Canaanites in the land were enslaved by his nation (Judges 1:28). Haley says that the texts saying no survivors are general and refer to the wipeout in the southern region for in chapter 11 of Joshua, Joshua attacks the northern area run from Hazor so there had been Canaanites left there. But Joshua 10:40 says that Joshua conquered the whole land and names some areas as examples and that nobody was left and Hazor is one of the areas too though it is the last to be discussed for the author wants to tell us more about it.
Joshua 8:8,9 says that there was an ambuscade of thirty thousand men on a city and a few verses later we read it was five thousand (Joshua 8:12). Haley on page 381 says there could have been two ambuscades or the text was corrupted. The unreliable Septuagint is his case for corruption! But when Joshua picked out thirty thousand men for the job meaning that it was expected to be a hard struggle to take over the city would only five thousand have been attacking? There is a contradiction.
Page 368. Since it is recorded in Joshua that some cities belonged to the region of Dan and elsewhere that they are in the territory of Ephraim, 1 Chronicles 4:69, Haley presents the suggestion of some that the latter text has words missing through sloppy copying! He says that is just an opinion so there is no evidence for it. When fundies see a conflict they blame the copyists! Then they have the nerve to say the originals which they have never seen are inerrant!
Page 376 says that the reason the Bible says Joshua conquered the whole land of Canaan (Joshua 12:7,8; 21:43) and then that he only had a part of it (Joshua 23; Judges 2:23) was that Joshua had the land for it was powerless to resist him but did not occupy or rule the whole land but only a bit. Haley blames the disobedience of Israel for not them not being able to drive the Canaanites all out. The idea that a nation hungry for power and which conquered everywhere couldn’t and wouldn’t root out everybody who was not an Israelite is absurd.
HALEY’S BLUFFS, KINGS AND CHRONICLES
Haley lied his way through the errors of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles.
313 and 320 state that many names were put down wrongly because the transcribers made mistakes. Haley who agreed with Jesus who said that if a person cannot be trusted in small things he cannot be trusted in greater pretended that there was no threat to divine inspiration in this! Haley has no choice for to support their authenticity would involve admitting that contradictions exist and are rife in the Bible as its text currently exists. Why didn’t the authorities correct the mistakes centuries ago? They seem to have believed that they were not mistakes and were reluctant to touch them. God should have been able to preserve his word. A God who writes a Bible and then lets it be corrupted is a bungler.
323. Asa removed pagan shrines from everywhere in the land (2 Chronicles 14) and then we are told that he did not (1 Kings 15). Does: “But the high places were not removed. Yet Asa’s heart was blameless with the Lord all his days” (AB) sound like it only means that some of the high places remained like Haley says? Of course it does not. And especially when we read that he was able to drive all the homosexuals and prostitutes out of the land. That shows he could have torn every one down. The land was religious when it cooperated with him and so spies would have abounded.
Page 335. Haley says that when Eli corrected his sons (1 Samuel 2) and then we are told that he did not (1 Samuel 3) that the Bible means he corrected them but that he was too soft or waited until they were hardened in sin when it was too late. But they had already heard it all before. Why preach at anybody who knows they do wrong? Haley’s explanation is junk. A soft correction or a severe one is still a correction.
Page 336. Haley declares that when the Bible says Elhanan slew Goliath (2 Samuel 21) though it was David who did that that it could have been Goliath’s son of the same name. But when the book mentions a Goliath who could have been anybody so casually it must be referring to the one the readers all know, the one David killed, the famous one. Nor would the author call David his name most of the time and then turn to Elhanan so Elhanan is not another name for David.
Page 339. Haley says that Hiram’s mother was a Naphtalite (1 Kings 7:14) and a Danite (2 Chronicles 2:14) at the same time. The tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Dan were two distinct tribes. It is most likely that this is a contradiction for the author of one account knew what the other had written and still wrote different. The earlier author would have known better.
Page 351. We read that alleged contradictions between lists of ancestors are often down to father and son being used loosely for ancestor and descendant or for father and son. Haley is trying among other things to resolve the conflict between Samuel and Chronicles concerning who the father of Kish was. Why make the lists if you are going to do that? What function would they serve then? There is no point in a genealogy that says x was the father of y and z was the descendant of x for that is breaking the genealogy for a genealogy with gaps as wide as that could easily be wrong for z could have been adopted or something or perhaps his mother fooled around. Haley is lying yet again. Pages 396-400 blames discrepancies in times on copyist’s mistakes. This is dreadfully dishonest. Haley would not care who he accuses as long as defends the Bible. He says that the Hebrews had a peculiar way of calculating regal years or the length of a reign. They would have counted from the beginning of the year a reign began rather than from the time in that year in which it began. On page 396, he says it seems that this is the case. He’s only speculating. Is it really likely that Israel would do that? And then he says that if their times are incorrect it does not disprove inerrancy for the writers are to be judged by their own standards and not ours (page 397). But it is a sin to be unnecessarily inaccurate. The writers did not think of future generations in which that would not be acceptable. Haley hoped that we would not probe his silly argument too deeply and discover that it really attributes sin and sloppiness to God.
Page 389, Reason and Belief, page 39 observes that 2 Samuel 24:9 says that 800,000 men of Israel lifted the sword while the parallel in 1 Chronicles 21:5 the figure is 1,100,000. Haley says the solution is that it was based on oral tradition and not on disagreement. So disagreements are not disagreements now! And why are the accounts so close if they are dependent on oral tradition? He then says that there was the fighting army who were 800,000 but when the standing army, the standbys, were included the figure was 1,100,000. This is nonsense for the verses were about those who had the sword and used it and the wording in both verses was very close.
Reason and Belief points out the contradiction between Michal being said to have been without children all her days and several chapters later it is said she had five sons. Haley on page 385 says that the first verse was corrupted and never originally said it was Michal who had no children. As usual, there is no evidence given for this mistake. So Haley admits that the Bible as it stands is contradictory but he denies God made an error and blames the copyist. Haley says that the original said Merab. The copyist would not have made such a mistake for Michal was the daughter of Saul and it would be as silly as explaining a modern contradiction on the basis that the author or copyist wrote down Sophie Wessex instead of Diana, Princess of Wales, by mistake. They are too well known for that to happen.
Page 403. There is a contradiction between the Bible saying that all the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:7, 8) were killed and then that some survived (1 Samuel 30:1,17). Haley says that all the Amalekites being killed means all the caught for some escaped to do more damage later. But Israel was stronger than they were when it was able to win the war against the Amalekites. It could have wiped them out to the last man. This tells us that all is literally all. Take all to mean all when it could be all. We would be reading that God was angry with Israel for not killing them all if they had let some escape. And it was a surprise attack. God strictly wanted all the Amalekites dead for he emphasised that literally all had to be killed and to the prophet. Would God then instruct Israel to attack them at a time that they could not slaughter them all? No way! God does not command the impossible. When God complained about them taking the flocks and cattle of the Amalekites and not destroying them and never mentioned that they let the some of the Amalekites go then they left no survivors. Not enough of Amalekite men would have survived to attack the cities of Ziklas and Negeb knowing that David and his men were on the way (1 Samuel 30). They even took David’s wives. There is a contradiction.
THE BOOK, CATHOLICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
This book explores some of the errors in the Bible.
We learn that the Tabernacle that was made in the wilderness had 48 frames which were 15 ft high and 2 and three quarters broad with 100 bases made of solid silver which would have weighed 96 lbs each and made up four tons also with 9 pillars of wood and the 300 for the court and the drapes and the pegs and ropes and so on were all placed in four wagons according to Numbers 8:8 which is impossible. Christians say that Numbers only says that four wagons were given not that four were used. But the next verse says that there were more wagons that could have been given for they were available to the priests who would carry the altar and things but it was decided that the priests will do this themselves. Why would the author say that they got four wagons and not mean that was all they had? It is like saying without qualification that ten cars were hired out for a wedding. People would know you mean there were no more cars and no less.
C&C observes that when you audit the figures given in Numbers 1 and 2 regarding the census of the people you learn that this would leave every married couple having at least fifty offspring. Numbers 20 suggests that the whole population of the country to become, Israel, drank water from a rock to satisfy their thirst which was due to drought. The C&C omits to tell us that the livestock had a good drink there too (v11). It is correct to say that there would have been too many people for that to happen. Christians say that only some of the people were thirsty. But that is wrong when they were all in the desert and when the story gives no hint that some were okay.
Luke 23:45 tells us that there was an eclipse over the land when Jesus died at Passover. But this was impossible because of the position of the moon for the Passover was always at a full moon (page 186).
C&C finds a problem with Matthew and Luke being so very close in many things and having so many parallels and yet one gospel has Jesus curing two madmen on one occasion while the other gospel has him curing only one. If the gospellers research was as good as Christians say, they would have been able to work out how many men there were. You need an extremely strict method of historical research to report a miracle or sign from God for it has to be verified better than a person’s murderous guilt because God comes first and especially when you teach that God comes first like these gospellers did. The sloppiness is evidence that at least one of the gospels in question is not inspired by God. He didn’t write it.
Other problems are the fact that the allegedly divinely inspired New Testament claims that Moses was the author of the Law and that Psalms that David could not have written were David’s work and that Luke 19:27 has Jesus saying he would slaughter anybody who did not obey him as king and develop their talents in his service. Bible Christians say that Moses did write the Law for Jesus said it. But the law itself never gives a single hint that Moses wrote it. If Moses wrote it he would not have presented himself in such an unflattering way at times and he would have said he wrote it for he claimed to be the supreme prophet. Evangelicals have evidence against this such as the use of Egyptian words and the vividness and alleged realism of the narrative which really fails to prove anything. They always exalt the evidence they love over the evidence they don’t want to see regardless of how strong the hated evidence is. More often than not the evidence they give for most of their claims is not even related to what they are hoping to prove.
Another problem is that the gospels say that Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem but Matthew alone has two animals, a donkey and a colt, to make a closer match with Zechariah’s prophecy. Had the other gospellers believed Jesus used both they would have said so for the same reason. They all sought to prove that Jesus was fulfilling the prophecy. Given that the Bible says that one witness is not enough we must conclude that there is no evidence that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy as Zechariah stated. For Matthew to be God’s word he would have had to have another gospel to back him up too.
Matthew changes the all that Jesus healed in Mark to many thus reducing its force.
He was backing away from its absurdity to make it less ludicrous.
If these things are not problems as Christians maintain then anything contradictory can be reconciled.
The Christians guess the solutions to the Bible contradictions and problems and they claim that the Bible has no contradiction in it thanks to these solutions. So they make their guesses as much the word of God as they do the Bible! They hold that it is okay for Moses and Elijah to appear to Jesus, Peter, James and John as reported in the Bible spontaneously and they hold that that is what happened. But the accounts never actually say they did not try to summon them like mediums so how do we know they didn’t do that? The Christians want to forget that possibility because they want to teach that Jesus and the rest did not disobey the command of God that forbade spiritualism. It is fact we need not conjecture before we can have the right to tell people that the Bible is infallible.
All attempts to prove that the Bible is the word of God fail because the Bible contradicts itself and attempts to hide this are stupid, irresponsible and are fabricated.
FURTHER READING
A Summary of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof, The Banner
of Truth Trust,
A Test of Time, David Rohl, Century, London, 1995
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, Undated
An Act of God, Graham Philips, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1998
Answers to Tough Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press Bucks, 1988
Attack on the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1965
Belief and Make-Believe, GA Wells, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1991
Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985
But the Bible Does Not Say So, Rev Roberto Nisbet, Church Book Room Press, London, 1966
Catholicism and Christianity, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Creation and Evolution, Dr Alan Hayward, Triangle, London, 1994
Does the Bible Contradict Itself? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
Essentials, David L Edwards and John Stott, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1990
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Free Inquiry, Fall 1998, Vol 18, No 4, Council for Secular
Humanism,
God and the Human Condition, F J Sheed, Sheed & Ward, London, 1967
God Cannot Lie, David Alsobrook, Diasozo Trust, Kent, 1989
God, Science and Evolution, Prof E H Andrews, Evangelical Press, Herts, 1985
God’s Word, Final Infallible and Forever, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
Hard Sayings, Derek Kidner, InterVarsity Press, London, 1972
How and Why Catholic and Protestant Bibles Differ, Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ and Donald Senior, CP, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1983
How to Interpret the Bible, Fergus Cleary SJ, Ligouri Publications, Missouri, 1981
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
Inspiration in the Bible, Fr Karl Rahner, Herder and Herder, New York, 1966
It Ain’t Necessarily So, Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past, Matthew Sturgis, Headline Books, London, 2001
Jehovah of the Watch-tower, Walter Martin and Norman Klann,
Bethany House Publishers,
Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Which Bible is the Real Word of God? Barry Burton, Chick Publications, Chino, California, 1983
Know What You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture Union, London, 1973
Know Why You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture Union, London, 1971
New Age Bible Versions, GA Riplinger, Bible & Literature Foundation, Tennessee, 1993
New Evangelicalism An Enemy of Fundamentalism, Curtis
Hutson, Sword of the Lord,
None of These Diseases, SI McMillen MD, Lakeland, London 1966
Our Perfect Book the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1958
Proof the Bible is True, Rev JMA Willans BD, Dip.Theol. Vermont Press, Larne, 1982
Radio Replies Vol 3, Radio Replies Press, Minnesota, 1942
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
Remarks on the New King James Version and Revised Authorised Version, DK Madden, 35 Regent Street, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 7005, 1991
Return to
Science and the Bible, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
Science Held Hostage What’s Wrong With Creation Science and Evolutionism, Howard J Van Till/Davis A.Young/Clarence Menninga, IVP, Downer’s Grove, Illinois, 1988
Science Speaks, Peter W Stoner and Robert C Newman, Moody Press, Chicago, 1976
Set My Exiles Free, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin, 1967
Testament, The Bible and History, John Romer, Henry Holt and
Company,
The Authority of the Bible, Ambassador College, Pasadena, California, 1980
The Bible Fact or Fantasy, John Drane, Lion, Oxford, 1989
The Bible is the Word of God, Jimmy Thomas, Guardian of
Truth,
The Bible or Evolution? William Jennings Bryan, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
The Bible, The Biography, Karen Armstrong, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
The Bible, Questions People Ask, A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1980
The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Touchstone Books, New York, 2002
The Canon of Scripture, FF Bruce, Chapter House, Glasgow, 1988
The Church of Rome and the Word of God, Rev Eric C Last, Protestant Truth Society, London, Undated
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The Enigma of Evil, John Wenham, Eagle, Guilford, Surrey, 1994
The History of Christianity, Lion, Herts, 1982
The King James Version Defended, Edward F Hills, The
Christian Research Press,
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E Brown, Joseph A Fitzmyer, Roland E Murphy, Geoffrey Chapman, New York 1990
The Theology of Inspiration, John Scullion SJ, Mercier, Cork, 1970
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, John R Rice Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1943
What is the Bible? Henri Daniel-Rops, Angelus Books, Guild Press, New York, 1958
When Critics Ask, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992
Which Version Now? Bob Sheehan, Carey Publications, 5 Fairford Close, Haywards Heath, Sussex RH16 3EF
Who is a Fundamentalist? Dr Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1982
Why Does God..? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls , Bucks, 1970
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, Freeman, New York, 1997
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
WEB
Final Response by Steven Carr to Dr Wilkinson
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/wilkin6.htm
Science in the Bible? Dr M Magee
www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/440BibleScience.html
Why It’s a Load of Old Cobblers, Adrian Barnett
www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/noahs_ark.html
Exposes the utter absurdity of the Noah’s Ark story in the Bible
Steven Carr, Critique of Josh McDowells Non_Messianic Prophecies This Site cannot be overly recommended. It is superb.
www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_carr/non-messianic.html
New Testament Contradictions, Paul Carlson
www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html
Rabbits do not chew their cud, Alleged Bible Contradictions
http://unhindered.com/apolo/contradictions/index.html
The Bible as History Flunks New Archaeological Tests
www.10.nytimes.com/library/arts/072900david-bible.html
Biblical Errancy by Dennis McKinsey
http://members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/bepart31.html
This is one of McKinsey’s online magazines. The magazine is excellent for it gives the fundies the chance to respond and carefully exposes their twisted reasoning.
This particular issue says that Herod was not a king though the New Testament says he was for the Roman tetrarchs were the rulers. It says Matthew’s story that Herod massacred the boys of Bethlehem to get rid of the baby Jesus is false for Josephus liked to bring up the terrible things that Herod did and never mentioned this one. It also says that the story of Jesus being nailed between two thieves is fiction because theft was not a capital crime. It argues that when Luke said about Augustus decreeing that the whole world must engage in a census it was a lie for Augustus never had the results which he would have done. Genesis 11:26 says that when Teran was 70 he sired Abram and Nahor and Haran. The trouble is it says Abram was 75 when his father died and yet his father died at 205. The Christians argue that Genesis 11:26 does not say Abram’s dad was 70 when he was born though the passage cannot mean anything else. They fudge the problem by saying that just because Abram was mentioned first that does not mean he was born first. It does in the way the verse is written for why say Terah became a father at 70 and list the sons if you don’t mean one of them was born that year and it would naturally have to be the first one mentioned Abram. Pity he didn’t point out that when the fundies cannot agree among themselves how to reconcile Bible contradictions that it shows that their solutions are just contrived and fraudulent.
24 November 2007