Biblical errors and contradictions

Nothing gets this place livelier than a good religious discussion so here goes. Saltyone challenged me to find errors and contradictions in the Bible, so I did a little looking around and here are a few. For laziness sakes I've copied alot of these from other sources, but the information is accurate so here goes...


Who is the father of Joseph?

MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.

Who was at the Empty Tomb? Is it:

MAT 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

MAR 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

JOH 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

The number of beasts in the ark

GEN 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

GEN 7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, GEN 7:9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

How many stalls and horsemen?

1KI 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.

2CH 9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.

Rabbits do not chew their cud

LEV 11:6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.

Judas Death

ACT 1:18: "Now this man (Judas) purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out."

MAT 27:5-7: "And he (Judas) cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests...bought with them the potter's field."

Jesus' first sermon plain or mount?

MAT 5:1,2: "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying...."

LUK 6:17,20: "And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people...came to hear him.. And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said..."

Years of famine

II SAMUEL 24:13: So God came to David, and told him, and said unto him, shall SEVEN YEARS OF FAMINE come unto thee in thy land? or will thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue. thee?

I CHRONICLES 21:11: SO God came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Choose thee. Either THREE YEARS OF FAMINE or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee;

Moved David to anger?

II SAMUEL 24: And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.

I CHRONICLES 21: And SATAN stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

God be seen?

EXO 24:9,10; AMO 9:1; GEN 26:2; and JOH 14:9
God CAN be seen:
"And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my backparts." (EXO 33:23)
"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." (EXO 33:11)
"For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." (GEN 32:30)

God CANNOT be seen:
"No man hath seen God at any time." (JOH 1:18)
"And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live." (EXO 33:20)
"Whom no man hath seen nor can see." (1TIM 6:16)

Tempts?

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham." (GEN 22:1)

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." (JAS 1:13)

Ascend to heaven

"And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." (2KI 2:11)

"No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, ... the Son of Man." (JOH 3:13)

Who bears guilt?

GAL 6:2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

GAL 6:5 For every man shall bear his own burden.

Do you answer a fool?

PRO 26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.

PRO 26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

How old was Jehoiachin when he began to reign?

2KI 24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

2CH 36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.

Did those with Saul/Paul at his conversion hear a voice?

ACT 9:7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

ACT 22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.

Good deeds

Matt 5:16 "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (NIV)

Matt 6:3-4 "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (NIV)

 

First, off I get your point here, but it isn't cool to just copy and past a list of problems. Most of these lists have given no insight into the context or theme, and do not consider things like Hebrew culture. To anyone who studies the Hebrews they just don't care about details as long as the point is made. Like if I tell you I have a million pennies in a jar you would probably assume I have a whole bunch of pennies, but maybe not litterally 1 million. The Hebrews do this all the time. They may right some dude had 10,000 men in his army, and another telling might say 100,000. The point being made is that the army was really big.

I answered a bunch of these things, but not all.

Same dude with his name shown in different languages. Kinda like Thomas being referred to as Levi in some accounts.

Mary Magdalene and Mary go to the tomb in both Matt and Mark. In John only Mary Magdalene is mentioned. It does not say she was alone. This is an omission by a different writer and not a contradiction or an error.

The first verse details the number of animals taken. The second verse details how they entered the ark... two by two. Do you really think the writer forgot what he was talking about within 5 verses.

Nothing with numbers like this is literal. The Hebrews just didn't care about exacts. The point is that Solomon had a crap ton of horses and chariots and charioteers.

I am not certain of the full passages, but these might not be referring to the same thing. The first may be referring to in his kingdom while the second refers to a particular city. I will check.

The first account does not detail how Judas died. It just says what happened to his body. That may have happened after he hanged himself.

Also it bothers me to use the term hanged.

There are several possible answers. I think what makes the most sense is that part of the sermon was delivered in the hills and part on the plains. Their may have also been a mesa or plateau in the hills.

You have to take each of these individual verses in context. The overall point is that no man has seen God in his full glory, but that some, like Moses have seen various aspects that God has allowed them to see.

Elijah was assumed into heaven he did not ascend under his own power.


Who bears guilt?

This is just silly. These are not contradictions if you read these passages.

They heard the voice but they didn't hear the voice, meaning they heard the voice, but not the calling.

Good deeds

The first verse is saying to do good deeds to inspire others to do good and give glory to God. The second says do not seek personal glory for your deeds.

 

Why? I don't feel like typing these out myself when someone has already done it.

This is irrelevant when pointing out biblical errors. Discerning what they meant in context of the culture instead of what they actually wrote has nothing to do with the fact that what was written in the verses contradict each other.

Again, an error is being recorded as fact. If in a court deposition I state that I have 10 cars, but I only have 3, wouldn't that be an error or a lie, even though my point was that I have alot of cars?


The ones that I included where contradictions in a literalistic sense. If you want contradictions in the discerned message of the bible, there are many more.

I think the biggest contradiction in the entire bible is about the nature of god. He is portrayed as a loving, protecting, caring being in the New Testament (although he is also a rapist if you believe in the virgin Mary story). However, if you read the old testament, he is a jealous, murderous, insecure, unhappy, genocidal maniac.

Furthermore, if you interpret the meaning and underlying themes of the Old Testament, I honestly don't know why Satan gets such a bad rep. If you were as close to god as he was, and knew how evil god was, wouldn't the act of opposing such a monster be the noble thing to do?

 

Most of what you cite is from the old testament and it can be viewed as a contradiction to the law, however, Christians (like myself) argue that it was a precursor for how God dealt with people like the Amalakites, when it was really the viewpoint of Hebrew people and their "soverign" pact with God.
They also will argue that Christ redeemed all people, so the new Testament is perfected through God by Jesus Christ.

Just another side to it, although I see your point about contradictions.

 

a debate like this is nearly worthless since most/all of us cant delve into the hebrew, aramaic and greek texts.

hell, experts just recently figured out that jesus wasnt the son of a carpenter. joseph was a stonemason.

 

yes, many of those "contradicitons" i would argue are resolved by christ. the entire hebrew bible is basically the covenant of god with the hebrews, as you said. this covenant was overridden by christ/love/holy spirit.

 

Do you have a link to any information on this? Is it from any sort of archaeological evidence, or is it from a corrected translation of the scriptures?
As far as I know, the experts have not yet sufficiently proven that Jesus even existed (I think Jesus was a real person, a revolutionary against the corrupt Jewish church who was later deified by his followers)

 

for me, the most important "fallacies" of the bible are the corruption of authorship. i guess i can buy that "john" is from god because it was written by an individual that is more likely than joe blow to have been inspired by god.

i guess i can even buy letters like "timothy" that were written not by paul but by a trainee of his (dictation, perhaps).

my problems come with books like "genesis" "isaiah" and "hebrews"

how can you validate the divine inspiration of writings if the author is not known? id guess the answer is because is says what you want.

 

not yet. i'll look.

my recollection is this was just a reinterpretation of the aramaic word that was translated originally as "carpenter". dont know the reasons behind the reinterpretation.