Tubby Lardmore

One of the members here recently quoted two New Testament scriptures. One of them was to the effect that to know whether something is real, you must test it. The other said that God is not to be tested.

Gullwind

One of my favorites is Acts 9 vs. Acts 22. Two different accounts of Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, but what did the men with him hear? A voice, or nothing?

(I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on what they saw. One version says the saw a light, and the other says they saw no one. Not strictly contradictory, but they couldn't have both heard the voice and heard nothing.)

Tubby Lardmore

I brought that one up years ago at another discussion website when I was debating a fellow who used the handle "moreword." I wish I had recorded his response, but I didn't. I do remember that part of what he said to me was that I couldn't just go lifting quotes willy-nilly from the Bible, I needed to be careful to put them in context.

judge

Actually matthew does not say this. All it says is that judas "hung himself". To us living in 2005 this means death, but it seems that this is merely an idiom meaning Judas was overcome with grief.
We have a similar phrase "to hang ones head in shame"

Aristophanes uses something similar I believe in Vespae 686(?)

If this phrase is taken figuratively all the other contradictions connected to thses verses seem to vanish.

John A. Broussard

You really can't win when trying to deal with Biblical contradictions, no matter how contradictory they may be. E.g., Satan orders the census. God orders the census. Now how much more contradictory can you get than that?

The most usual answer I get from the true believers is that God ordered Satan to order the census, ergo no contradiction.

See? You can't win.

Roland

In Luke, the risen Jesus first appears to the ELEVEN disciples; in John, Thomas is missing.

In Matthew, Mary Magdalene is told by an angel that Jesus has risen; in John, she tells Peter she thinks the body has been stolen.

judge

If Judas was not dead (see my post above) then this makes sense as judas would have been present. taking one word figuratively rather than literally solves many apparent contradictions (in this case anyway)....there are of course contradictions in the bible.

Who initiated the census mentioned above is an obvious one.

Jayhawker Soule

If I recall correctly, YHWH wipes out the beasts of Egypt in Exodus 9 and then preceeds to (re)kill the firstborn of the beasts in Exodus 11.

Gullwind

Yeah. He kills the cattle, then afflicts them with boils, and then kills the firstborn again.

I guess Yahweh doesn't like cattle.

Nectaris

One I noticed but I don't see brought up often or ever is the number languages in the world after the flood. In the Tanakh we have that after the flood, each of Noah's three sons splits up to form his own culture. The relevant passages are: Gn 10: 5, 20, & 31 from the 1917 JPS:

So it looks like the world has three different tongues and cultures, yet in the beginning of Genesis 11, we have:

Bolding is my own.

Bolding is my own.

I checked under Strong's and the words used for tongue in Chapter 10 than the word used in Chapter 11, I don't know if this has any significance, though. Perhaps someone more familiar with the language who has a a firmer grasp on the subject could illuminate.

I've actually read one biblical scholar/critic (Tim Callahan) who thinks that the Tower of Babel story in Chapter 11 is out of place, and that it should go before the flood story because of this. I'm not sure if I subscribe to that, though.

Dave