Bible errors, problems, and quirks

[Mythra]

I thought I would start a thread to point out Bible problems, quirks, contradictions, and outright mistakes. Just in case anyone here still thinks this little piece of literature is inerrant. Got any favorites?

 

 

Here's one to start: Isaiah chapter 37 is identical - word for word with 2 Kings chapter 19. Check it out.

 

And they say there's no plagiarism in the bible..

[Mythra]

Another one:

 

Jesus is expounding scripture to the Pharisees in Mark 2:26. He talks about when David eats the bread of the presence when Abiathar is the high priest. Jesus gets it wrong. Ahimelech was high priest at that time. Abiathar is his son and doesn't show up until later in 1 Samuel.

[Ouroboros]

Well my favorite is Eden: Adam and Eve are not allowed to eat the fruit of knowledge, which will give them the ability to discern good from evil, right from wrong.

 

So of course they eat the fruit, because they don't know how to separate right from wrong. They could only avoid eating the fruit if they had the ability, which only the fruit would give them.

 

It was the Divine Sin Trap. Snap! Rat’s caught!

[Ouroboros]

From one of the other threads:

 

If the payment for sin is death, eternal death, why did Jesus only stay in the grave for three days, and not for an eternity, to pay for our sins?

[Mr. Neil]

The best case of two books in the Bible saying the exact same thing is when you have two identical quotes that contradict on a very minor, yet important, detail. Here's one from Gastrich.org.

 

2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chronicles 19 record David slaying a different number of chariots. In thes following two passages, only the number of chariots slain is different.

 

"wayyacharog David me'aram sheva' me'ot rekev" - 2 Samuel 10:18 (700 chariots)

 

"wayyacharog David me'aram shiv'at 'alafim rekev" - 1 Chronicles 19:18 (7,000 chariots)

 

("And slew David of the Arameans [700 / 7,000] chariots")

 

~www.gastrich.org/7000.html

[Mythra]

How about in all of Paul's rants there is a conspicuous absence about any details of the life of the man Jesus. Everyone one knows that the Epistles preceded the Gospels. There's no way Paul wouldn't have talked about it if he had known about it.

 

Paul mentions lots of stuff about Moses, Abraham, and numerous other o.t. characters. Yet no mention of Jesus' miracles, virgin birth, or really anything else about his earthly life.

 

Could it be that part of the story had not developed yet? Nah....

[Ouroboros]

Talking about Paul, he was persecuting the Christians, got the revelation of Jesus and got inflicted by the Holy Spook virus same way as we were.

 

Now he moves around a lot, hiding and scared and all. Barely newly saved, and yet he goes to some distant place (Armenia) for several years to study the Bible (OT), without any NT books, because they don’t exists yet.

 

He never got any teachings from Peter or the disciples.

 

He most likely never sat down and listened to Jesus! If he had, he wouldn’t have been so against the Christians. He truly believed they were heretics. You don’t spend time listening to someone you hate, planning to be his greatest persecutor. So there is no chance he knew much about Jesus, or had at the best heard one or few of Jesus teachings.

 

Now later he comes back and tells Peter that he’s wrong!

 

Woo, hold your horses, he wouldn’t be eligible for teaching, not even in Sunday school!

 

How the heck did Paul know shit about Christianity?

He can’t just come back and tell how he knows it all!

 

Kill Christians – No wait, don’t kill them, but I’m the one chosen by God, so listen to me! That dude had a big EGO Problem!

 

Probably something went seriously wrong when he got His circumcision.

 

[edit]

It’s likely that his omission of details about Jesus was due to that Paul never saw Jesus, and invented the Paulinistic version of the Gnostic Jesus believers.

[Guest Anathema]

Ge30:37-43 Jacob alters the genetic characteristics of cattle by showing them a stripped tree branch. This is absurd, and is yet another example of the widespread ignorance of science in ancient times. Putting peeled branches in front of an animal has no effect on it's appearance.

 

 

Ex12:37, Nu1:45-46 The number of men of military age who take part in the Exodus is about 600,000. If you were to count their families, a total of more than 2,000,000 Israelites left Egypt at a time when the whole population of Egypt was less than 2,000,000.

 

2Ch13:17 500,000 Israelites die in a single battle. This is more than were lost in any battle of World War II, and amazingly is more than the number of deaths from the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. At Gettysburg, the greatest battle of the Civil War, the defeated army lost 5,000 men.

 

The bible says salvation is obtained by faith alone in John 3:18 & 36 and then later it claims that it is repentance that saves (2 Peter 3:9). However, Jesus told a man that in order to be saved, he must obey the Commandments. (Matthew 19:16-18)

Each gospel differs significantly in it's establishment of the salvation doctrine. Keep in mind, the 4 gospels were "supposedly" written to different groups of populations that were fair distances apart, and were dependent on their own version. At least this is what I learned from the pulpit of my former church. So which way is it and how do they know their belief is the correct one? Before the canonization of the new testament in the late 4th century, depending on where the early christians lived their conditions of salvation differed greatly. This went on for almost 300 years after jesus' time. This fact alone makes the divine authorship of the books in the bible unavoidably suspect to anyone of sound mind, and is strong evidence that the bible is simply the work of men. If all these doctrines were equally important, and given by inspiration of god himself, why were they not given to ALL, instead of them being scattered across the continent, each location believing in salvation on totally different bases?

[Mythra]

It takes a pretty good contradiction to get my attention any more, there are so many. But this one is really interesting.

 

Exerpt from "Did Jesus Exist?" by Wells

 

"The most telling moment in the gospels, however, is when Mark has Jesus quote from the Old Testament in his arguments against the pharisees. Nothing surprising about this - except that Jesus quotes from the mistranslated Greek version of the Old Testament, which suits his purpose precisely, not from the original Hebrew, which says something quite different and unhelpful to his argument. That Jesus the Jew should quote a Greek mistranslation of Jewish Holy Scripture to impress orthodox Jewish Pharisees is simply unthinkable. It does make sense, however, if the whole incident were made up by one of the hundreds of thousands of Greek-speaking Jews who no longer spoke their native tongue and could not read their scriptures untranslated, hence attributing to Jesus their own misunderstandings.

[Mr. Neil]

Exerpt from "Did Jesus Exist?" by Wells

 

"The most telling moment in the gospels, however, is when Mark has Jesus quote from the Old Testament in his arguments against the pharisees.  Nothing surprising about this - except that Jesus quotes from the mistranslated Greek version of the Old Testament, which suits his purpose precisely, not from the original Hebrew, which says something quite different and unhelpful to his argument."

Interesting... What verse is that?

[☆ TexasFreethinker ☆]

My favorite is the (failed) prophecy about Tyre

 

In the eleventh year, on the first day of the month, the word of Yahweh came to me: Mortal, because Tyre said concerning Jerusalem, "Aha, broken is the gateway of the peoples; it has swung open to me; I shall be replenished, now that it is wasted."

 

Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD: See, I am against you, O Tyre! I will hurl many nations against you, as the sea hurls its waves. They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down its towers. I will scrape its soil from it and make it a bare rock. It shall become, in the midst of the sea, a place for spreading nets. I have spoken, says the Lord GOD. It shall become plunder for the nations, and its daughter-towns in the country shall be killed by the sword. Then they shall know that I am Yahweh.

 

For thus says the Lord GOD: I will bring against Tyre from the north King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, king of kings, together with horses, chariots, cavalry, and a great and powerful army. Your daughter-towns in the country he shall put to the sword. He shall set up a siege wall against you, cast up a ramp against you, and raise a roof of shields against you. He shall direct the shock of his battering rams against your walls and break down your towers with his axes. His horses shall be so many that their dust shall cover you. At the noise of cavalry, wheels, and chariots your very walls shall shake, when he enters your gates like those entering a breached city. With the hoofs of his horses he shall trample all your streets. He shall put your people to the sword, and your strong pillars shall fall to the ground. They will plunder your riches and loot your merchandise; they shall break down your walls and destroy your fine houses. Your stones and timber and soil they shall cast into the water. I will silence the music of your songs; the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more.

 

I will make you a bare rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets. You shall never again be rebuilt, for I Yahweh have spoken, says the Lord GOD.

 

The photos below show modern day (rebuilt) Tyre, Lebanon (population 132,111) where the bible says there will be only bare rocks.

 

[Guest Anathema]

The inclusion of city names and tribes yet to exist at the time of Moses’ death, approximately 1450 BCE, is devastating to the traditional Mosaic authorship of the Torah claim. Genesis 11:31 says that the Chaldees lived in the city of Ur during the life of Abraham, but clear historical records tell us that the Chaldees didn’t even exist as a tribe until well after Moses was dead. In addition, they didn’t become a prominent enough group to occupy a city until the sixth century BCE.

Genesis 14:14 mentions the city of Dan, but the city didn’t acquire this name until it was seized one thousand years later via conquest. Genesis 37:25 mentions traders with spicery, balm, and myrrh, but these weren’t the primary trade products of the region until the eighth century BCE. Isaac visits King Abimelech of Gerar in Genesis 26:1, but Gerar didn’t exist until after Isaac’s death and wouldn’t have been powerful enough to require a King until the eighth century BCE. Genesis 36:31 says that there were “kings that reigned in the land of Edom,” but there’s no extrabiblical record of Kings in Edom until the eighth century BCE. Exodus 13:17 details Moses’ apprehension toward entering the land of the Philistines in Canaan, but there’s zero evidence that indicates the Philistines occupied Canaan until the thirteenth century BCE. In addition, they couldn’t have sufficiently organized in threatening numbers until a few hundred years later.

Moses references Palestine in Exodus 15:14, the only known mention of that name for hundreds of years. In Deuteronomy 3:11, Moses also mentions the city of Rabbath and Og’s location within the city, but no one outside of Rabbath could have held this information until it was conquered hundreds of years later. Jacob is called a wandering Aramean in Deuteronomy 26:5, but the Arameans didn’t have contact with the Israelites until the ninth century BCE. Some particular names mentioned in Genesis 14 and 25 (Chedorlaomer, Kadesh, Sheba, Tema, Nebaioth, and Adbeel) are consistent with names of people recorded by the Assyrians as living during the sixth through eighth centuries BCE, not a thousand years prior. The writers never provide the names of Egyptian Pharaohs even though Moses would have readily known this bit of information.

The Pentateuch authors claim that many of the leading Genesis characters, such as Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, rode camels. However, there’s no archaeological evidence indicating that anyone domesticated these animals earlier than 1200 BCE. Again, this was hundreds or thousands of years after the deaths of these alleged biblical camel riders. Furthermore, no known person trained camels to carry people and other heavy loads until many years later.

By the time the Israelites had a compiled history of their origins, no one at all ever claims that God had or still has such liberal verbal and visual contact with anyone as he supposedly had in old testament times. All of a sudden, God seemingly ceases to exist from the observable world, a world in which no such supernatural events take place. No known Hebrew authors make extraordinary claims in the multi-century span between the documentation of these events and the beginning of the Common Era. In fact, the Israelites have existed pretty much as we do now: living normal lives and never recording any verifiably miraculous acts.

 

[♦ ficino ♦]

I forget where i posted this before, but one of my favorite biblical contradictions is when Matthew invents a second donkey for the apostles to spread clothes on for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem. The quotation Matthew hauls in from the OT shows that he misunderstands Hebrew poetry. "on an ass, on the foal of an ass" is Hebrew poetic iteration, but Matthew (i.e. the dude who wrote the first gospel) thought it prophecied that Jesus would ride on two donkeys, so he conjures up a second one - when the other gospels mention only one donkey. It won't do to say that the other writers just simplify and leave out the second donkey, because Matthew makes it clear they put the clothes on both animals. How stupid is that? No one rides on two donkeys at once.

 

Matthew tends to double as a general rule.

[Ouroboros]

My favorite is the (failed) prophecy about Tyre

The photos below show modern day (rebuilt) Tyre, Lebanon (population 132,111) where the bible says there will be only bare rocks.

LAME JOKE ALERT!

 

That was because God got tyred (tired)...

[Mythra]

Neil:

 

The passages are Mark 7:1-23 where Jesus uses an argument based on a mistranslation of the Greek.

 

In Acts 15 starting in verse 13, James does the same thing.

[Mythra]

Now he moves around a lot, hiding and scared and all. Barely newly saved, and yet he goes to some distant place (Armenia) for several years to study the Bible (OT), without any NT books, because they don’t exists yet.

 

He never got any teachings from Peter or the disciples.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hans - there is actually a big discrepancy in the story of Paul here.

 

In Acts 9, Paul immediately begins to proclaim Jesus in the synogogues in Damascus, right after the scales fall off his eyes. Then he has to escape from the Jews in Damascus, and he goes to Jerusalem, where Barnabas takes him to the apostles. Then Paul begins to "preach boldly in the name of Jesus" in Jerusalem.

 

Compare this to Paul's account in Galatians:

 

1:12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

 

starting at 1:17

 

nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days.

 

ps ficino, texasfree, anathema, thanx for those posts. interesting stuff.

[Ouroboros]

Hans - there is actually a big discrepancy in the story of Paul here. 

What I find so interesting is just the fact that he never knew Jesus, and never studied the theology about Jesus, and then thinks himself to be the master apostle of it.

 

If I would go to the Realians and tell them that I know more about the space aliens than they do, and starts writing letters and condemn the teachings in their church. It's just lunatic. So that part of Paul's story, shows that he more or less invented Christianity rather the other apostles. So it wasn't Jesus that started the Christian movement but Paul (if he even existed).

 

And your info about Paul, might show that maybe Pauls letters were just a way of faking the existence of Paul too, and to make the religion to look bigger and more widespread, and in reality nothing of it was true at all.

[Mythra]

The Jesus Mysteries book pretty much assumes Paul to be a historical dude, without going into what evidence there is for that.

 

The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S. seems to say that he's a made up dude.

 

Don't know what to believe.

 

Maybe Lokmer or AUB have more knowledge of the "Paul is a Myth" hypothesis.

[Vigile]

2Ch13:17 500,000 Israelites die in a single battle. This is more than were lost in any battle of World War II, and amazingly is more than the number of deaths from the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. At Gettysburg, the greatest battle of the Civil War, the defeated army lost 5,000 men. 

 

 

That's a really good point. God I was such an idiot when I was a christian. I must have read through those accounts 10-20 times without blinking.

[Ouroboros]

That's a really good point.  God I was such an idiot when I was a christian.  I must have read through those accounts 10-20 times without blinking.

I guess it is the proof that the Jewish oral tradition wasn't that accurate after all. I remember Bible school, when we had Bible History, and they said that the Jewish oral tradition was perfect and without flaw, not details would change through the generations. Yeah, right!

[Guest JP1283]

How about when God commands that we fear the Lord, yet commands that we love the Lord, and says that there is no fear in perfect love?

[Mythra]

I think the important thing there, JP is that you make sure to fear God's love.

 

 

Here's another. (There's so freakin many - how in the hell can anyone but a complete moron say the bible is inerrant?)

 

 

Romans 3:10 and following:

 

As it is written, None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

 

and, Romans 3:23

 

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

 

 

VS.

 

 

 

Luke 1:5

 

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

 

 

 

I guess the way the Christians get around this is that Romans says that not even one is blameless. Zechariah and Elizabeth are two.. You see? makes perfect sense.

[Sokudo Ningyou]

I still like the fact that most Christians are so illiterate that asking them what God kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden for always ends up with me having to get a Bible and pointing it out for them. You ask them, they'll always, or at least 9.5 times out 10, say it was just because they disobeyed. And yet, when you get the sucker out and point to the passage, you get this:

 

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

 

Yet, up until that point, the tree of life is never mentioned. Matter of fact, God explicitly mentions that every other tree is pluckable other than the tree of knowledge, which means God was protecting a tree he/she/it had never said Adam and Eve couldn't touch:

 

2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

[DoubleDee]

Acts 7:15-16 Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died. Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money

 

Joshua 24:32 And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.

 

More reading on the subject Gen 23, 49 & 50

[DoubleDee]

Romans 3:10 and following:

 

As it is written,  None is righteous, no, not one.  No one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

 

and, Romans 3:23

 

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

VS.

Luke 1:5

 

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah.  And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.  And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 

I guess the way the Christians get around this is that Romans says that not even one is blameless.  Zechariah and Elizabeth are two..  You see?  makes perfect sense.  

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Romans 3:10-18 is a hodgepodge of OT misquotes and verses taken out of context from several chapters of Psalms, Eccl.& Isaiah. Rather interesting to see how Paul has taken such liberty with the OT to come up with his new doctrine.

 

Rom 10 as it is written:

There is no one righteous, not even one;

there is no one who understands,

no one who seeks God.

 

vs.

 

Psalm 14

The fool says in his heart,

"there is no God".

They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;

there is no one who does good.

The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if

there are any who understand, any who seek God.

All have turned aside,

they have together become corrupt;

there is no one who does good,

not even one.

Ooops! Forgot verses 4-6, my bad

 

4 Will evildoers never learn--

those who devour my people as men

eat bread

and who do not call on the Lord?

5 There they are, overwhelmed with dread,

for God is present in the company of the righteous

6 You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor,

but the Lord is their refuge.

 

The other OT verses taken out of context/misquoted for Rom. 3:10-18 are:

Eccl 7:20

Psalm 5:9

Psalm 140:3

Psalm 10:7

Isaiah 59:7-8

Psalm 36:1

 

When the above passages are read within the context of their respective chapters it is very clear that Paul is a liar. Paul uses his hodgepodge of OT misquotes to usher in the “Righteousness Through Faith” doctrine and basically nullify the OT law. Rom 3;19-31.

Paul, I believe, counts on the pagans’ ignorance of the OT, so he can preach to them his savior-god.