repoman

It is quite easy to see that the Old and New Testaments both have a massive amount of contradictions of facts and themes. But given what I have been finding out about how they were written (esp. the OT much of the early part compiled circa 7th century BCE) why didn't they edit it for much greater consistency?

When, for example, you read about the "Ten Commandments" in Exodus very closely there's a surprise. In chapter 34 you find that the details of the tablets are radically different from the "standard" TCs. In fact the 10th is "thou shall not seethe a kid in its mother's milk". Why didn't they just put the details of Exodus 20 there instead?

There is one advantage to the contradictions, though, it allows them to argue both sides of a topic at different times for different personalities or goals. Without them the writers would have to choose which facts or viewpoints are more persuasive.

Any theories about this?

dado

...which sounds a lot like how the real world actually works. no doubt part of the reason there are inconsistensies is because it hadn't occured to those early editors and writers that all these disparate texts would one day be bound into one book and read as a whole.

Amaleq13

I agree. They also probably didn't expect folks to take everything they wrote quite so literally.

Llyricist

I think the OP was asking why the people that actually did bind them together into one book did not edit them for consistency.

A possible answer for this is that the various stories were already too well known to get away with this. Though that didn't prevent them from "getting away with" omitting large amounts of relevent material.

MysteryProf

There's also the fact that ancient writers and compliers didn't have the same ideas about history that we do. Criticism of that time wasn't as specific and discriminating as it is now, and rhetoric and readability were considered as (or more) valuable at times as the actual substance. Also, as spiritual works, the books of the Bible weren't written as histories (except maybe Luke and Acts). The other gospels are biographies (which emphasized personal qualities and illustrative stories over complete accuracy). I'm not in as good a position to comment on the OT, though. Basically what I'm saying is that compilers wouldn't have viewed contradictions as critically as we do today.

dado

it was too late: binding them into a single book was separated from writing of the original texts by the better part of a millenia. there were too many extant scrolls floating around the mediteranean basin to get away with such tomfoolery. the only way to do that is to - essentially - scrap the old texts and come up with some new ones.

oh wait, some folks did try that.

Llyricist

Which is of course, a mor verbose restating of what I said in the paragraph following the one you quoted

dado

i get paid the word. don't you?

Magdlyn

dado, you mean, "I get paid by the word." You left out "by," so lost some money!

I wish dado would be more verbose. He is overly terse.

dado

you sure i didn't mean "the word" is the currency of payment?