Roland

One of my favorite contradictions involves Doubting Thomas.

According to John, Thomas was not present when the risen Jesus first appeared to the disciples in the locked room.

Yet, Luke specifically states that "the eleven" were present. Since Judas was, obviously, gone by this time, wouldn't that mean that Thomas HAD to be there with the rest of them?

The only halfway plausible rebuttal to this I've ever gotten from an apologist is that the term "the eleven" signified the apostles as a group, not necessarily as eleven individuals (could one still refer to The Beatles as The Fab Four even if one of them was temporarily absent?). I'm not sure if this is a valid argument or not. It seems to me that when the Bible says "eleven," it means eleven. And I would imagine most Bible literalists would believe that too, unless, of course, it would cause problems for them to do so. Then literalism be damned!

Johann_Kaspar

To love your enemy...

To insult him, to kill him (many examples).

But not so hard contradictions if the texts were written as literature works and by different authors at different times. One has to understand how the Hebrew literature was built.

Julian

I believe that the quote about god being jealous is an incorrect translation. According to my masoretic translation it arises because of a confusion between qana and qanna, one of which means jealous and the other zealous. The passage is translated as god being zealous which makes a lot more sense.

I also agree with a post ealier which stated that any contradiction can be explained away if you are allowed to add any extra words you care to. And they do, indeed, allow themselves to do this. For example, my favorite contradiction which is the birth year of jebus. Is it 4bce as according to Mathew or 6ce as according to Luke? The contradiction is glaring and beyond any resonable dispute yet they have managed to explain it away. How? Well, since the bible is absolutely true then clearly we must just not understand what is going on here. So therefore Cyrenius (spelling in SAB) must have been governor twice. Even though that would be unprecedented in the whole history of the roman empire. No one was ever govenor twice of the same province. Yet that is their explanation. Despite not having any evidence nor reason for this to be true. See how you can explain away any contradiction? I gave it up a long time ago. The christians are absolute moronic idiots who will never be convinced by anyone. In rare instances they manage to convince themselves and we get another member on the good guy side, but it's rare.

All that being said, give them hell! I wish you luck.

Julian

ceb

You think

makes more sense than

?

nermal

I've never been big on finding contradictions. I leave it to theists to substantiate the supposition that God exists, then we'll get down to the details. Nevertheless, I found this one last night, and guffawed:

Ezekiel 25:10
"Unto the men of the east with the Ammonites, and will give them in possession, that the Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations"

Cracked me up.

Ed

capnkirk

Nor I...but my favorite is the claim that Jesus was of the House and Lineage of David (via Jospeh), then taking Joseph's seed completely out of the picture by claiming that Mary conceived or the holy spirit! I'm not even sure there is an apologetic for this one, but if there is it must be a tortured one indeed.

Matrioshka_Brain

What about the one with I Corinthians where Paul claims that the letter is his word, but in Timothy or something it clams that the whole bible is the word of Yhwh?

Or that incident where it names of 16 cities, and says that there's only 14?

And of course there are scientific errors, like that part (Samuel somewhere, I think) were it essentially states that Pi=3.

Sorry for not being really specific...

Julian

Checking up on the jealous/zealous/envy issue, it pretty much seems that you can translate it pretty much as you like. The Hebrew god is ludicrous enough without us making him jealous as well.

Julian

PS. My, really nice, version of MT with translation prefers to use zealous rather than jealous. I find that the translation is generally excellent to the best of my knowkedge. Take that statement with a grain of salt since I do not read Hebrew. I do not remember what version I have but I can check when I get home.

Sensei Meela

1 Kings 7:23
He [Solomon] made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.


Contradictions? Hmmm...how about the Omnimax God? There's a good place to start...(soo much to say, and yet soo much alcohol impairing me...)

Boro Nut

Well it certainly follows the golden rule that a rhyming word misspelled in one language must by definition be another rhyming word in the other language. For similar examples try googling for mumbo and jumbo.

Boro Nut