thedistillers

I'm not sure you can separate the 2. You need to figure out what the author meant to say before you find a contradiction.

Let's say an author purposely write lies, for whatever reason. Then later if he writes a different story, the contradiction is only apparent, because what he doesn't believe what he wrote first. I think intentions are crucial.

jab

If the Bible is not the Word of God, then it doesn't matter if it contradicts itself. so why are you trying to prove it doesn't?

Net2004

When was the field bought and who physically paid for the field?
acts says judas bought the field himself before he died.

jab

It does make a difference. If you don't say what you meant to say in your writing, the likelihood is that you are a bad writer. As I have pointed out on this thread and another, the good dr's God is a bad writer; but now the dr apparently doesn't hold the position that God wrote the Bible.

dr lazer blast

I could easily say you're not reading into the semi colon enough, just to further prove my point, every definition of contradiction, contrary, or contradict has its context based upon opposites.

contradiction

contradicting


contradict
contrary
Answer me this thenetian.

The victim was killed with a knife
The victim was killed with a gun

is that a contradiction?

dr lazer blast

no christian that has a remote amount of knowledge about christianity holds the view that God wrote the bible, further more, no learned educated atheist or agnostic holds the view that God wrote the bible. Sorry you're just incorrect.

Deus Ex

The simplest answer is that fallible humans wrote the books that make up the official canon of the Bible. You have different authors, writing at different times to different audiences.

The author of Acts is probably just relaying the Judas story, as he heard it. The author of Matthew may have heard a different oral tradition concerning Judas.

I do not see a Bible with errors as fatal to Christianity. It just upsets fundamentalists with an 'All or Nothing' mentality.

A fundamentalist needs to believe that God verbally dictated every line of text in the Bible. God would also have to divinely guide all translations of His Word, as well as divinely preserve His Word from unintentional copying errors committed by scribes.

Of course, Fundamentalist Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura. They do not rely on Church Authority as the Catholics do. Fundamentalist Protestants need the Bible to be inerrant, as a source of answers to all of life's mysteries. A Bible of limited inerrancy would require Church Authority to point out which verses were trustworthy towards salvation.

WVIncagold

not necessarily a contradiction but how about a downright lie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus numbers at 2 million or more given in the bible that’s not including livestock.
3 million walking 10 abreast with 6 ft between rows would extend for around 340 miles (3,000,000 / 10 * 6 = 1,800,000 ft. = 340 mi)
That’s 340 miles. To give a idea of distance that’s from Bunker Hill WV to 40 miles outside Columbus OH! That takes 6.5 hours to drive at 65 miles an hour. I know I drive it to visit my son there who is attending the university.
That’s ten abreast people. Better yet it is only 345 miles from Cairo to Jerusalem!
So being the civil war buff that I am I took some applied knowledge from southern troop movements considering they were less fed and equipped than union soldiers.
The Confederate authorities carefully outlined the expected rations in the army regulations issued in 1861. Each soldier was to receive per day .75 lbs. of pork or bacon or 1.25 lbs. of fresh or salt beef, and 18 oz. of bread or flour or 12 oz. of hard bread or 1.25 lbs. of corn meal. In addition, for each 100 rations, there was to be issued: 8 quarts of peas or beans, or in lieu thereof, 10 lbs. of rice; 6 lbs. of coffee; 12 lbs. of sugar; 4 quarts of vinegar; 1.5 lbs. of tallow candles; 4 lbs. of soap; and 2 quarts of salt. On marches, the bread ration was to be 1 lb. of hard bread.
However, the army began to have difficulty in supplying this ration almost immediately. Vegetables were very scarce during the winter of 1861-62, and in April 1862 the meat ration was reduced to a pound of beef or a half pound of bacon or pork, with some reductions also in the ration of flour and meal. During the retreat up the Peninsula, rations were limited to flour, meal and salt meat, and frequently troops received only parched corn, with four ears of corn per man as the standard issue

So taking into this that quail as the meat source and manna as the bread source I think most would find this acceptable “replacement”. So a one pound quail will give approximately .50 to .75 lbs of meat source that means every day they would have killed 3 million quail and 3 million pounds of bread per day just to keep the people moving. That comes out to being about half a pound of excrement a day per person. Never mind that quail could not keep that population suggested and that bread does not fall from heaven (if that is what manna is) that’s one and a half million pounds of poop a day just from the people.
I would also like to point out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Bread_Company that it takes this bakery one week to produce 60,000 loafs.
Now lets look at 3 million birds per day and bread form the sky. What do birds do when you scatter bread? So the Hebrews would have been competing for the manna with not only the 3 million quail they would be killing that day but the 900,0000,000 birds needed in order to maintain this consumption for just one month. Since they only breed and can lay 300 eggs per year. It takes 17-18 days of incubation or 15 days to hatch depending on temperature. In any case 900,000,000 is a lot of birds doing what birds do best, eat and poop. So allot of that bread will not be usable because of loss to birds and just plain poop contamination. In any case that’s allot of poop. Keep in mind we are not talking the beast of burden included just the humanity and the birds god sent for them to eat. Also I would like you to consider this
An average six-ounce skinless quail contains about 123 calories, 40 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of protein, 50 percent niacin, 30 percent vitamin B6, and 28 percent of iron. The same bird has only 1.2 grams of saturated fat, 1.2 grams monounsaturated fat, 1.1 grams polyunsaturated fat, and 64 grams of cholesterol. Not allot to go on per day. By the bible god was starving his people and they were knee deep in excrement. Great for today’s fat conscience not so go for starving people who need the fat a nutritional source.
Just a thought how would you like to be the last 10 people in line? Think about it traveling 6 miles per day. 10 abreast for 40 years. 1.5 million pounds of human feces per day. That’s 547,500,000 pounds of poop a year. For a grand total of 21,900,000,000 pounds of human excrement in 40 years if there population stayed at its constant of 3 million. That’s twenty one BILLION pounds of poop stretched from Egypt to the lands of Canaan. Anyone want to think about the flies?
Now what would this of done to the watersheds of the Nile? The fecal chloroform and nitrates from this much waste would have spoiled all the water in the area basically killing any in the back of the pack. Keep in mind we are not talking today’s world but the ability to get water from open running sources only or already dug wells. Water was even more precious in those days and is a pretty hard commodity even today in third world countries. Imagine a horde of people stretching as far as you can see that would take approximately 58 days to pass you by from beginning to end. All of them wanting your villages water source. No wonder they were not received well. Very quickly the water source would have been vile and polluted. One need only study Andersonville prison to see what the conditions would be like for the 58 days it took to “pass” you by.
I think this alone brings all of Exodus to a “never happened” and a mere myth. Look at a map and imagine an army column stretched from Columbus Ohio to Morgantown WV. The logistics and the mere amount of waste if we ignore the whole magic of food appearing in itself shows the mind boggling (excuse the expression) crap that the bible expects us to swallow and many inerrant believers expect us to swallow as truth.

dr lazer blast

ouch! i hit my head on a huge wall of text comprised with off topic material, baseless assertions, no points, and sarcastic attacks, this part right here basically shows his ignorance

I guess nobody buried poop?

Deus Ex

I love this quote by John Shelby Spong.

"When Martin Luther countered the authority of the infallible pope, he did so in the name of his new authority, the infallible Scriptures. This point of view was generally embraced by all of the Reformation churches. The Bible thus became the paper pope of Protestantism."