blastula

This page lists some of them. Many are simple numerical contradictions. I believe some can be reconciled depending on the manuscript used, but I don't think the following passages can be:

1 Chronicles 19:18 But they fled before Israel, and David killed seven thousand of their charioteers and forty thousand of their foot soldiers.

2 Samuel 10:18 But they fled before Israel, and David killed seven hundred of their charioteers and forty thousand of their foot soldiers.

Those seem to me to be incontrovertible contradictions. Since it's a matter of the barest of facts, there can be no complicated theological reconciliation possible. Yet if it's explained as a clerical error, I believe that explanation must then call all the rest of the Bible into doubt.

Does not the "doctrine of inerrancy" allege that the "original" text is inerrant, even if later manuscripts may contain copyist errors? "Copyist error" may explain other apparent contradictions, and always in those cases the true original intent is claimed to be sussed out somehow. However, in this case where you have two books that disagree on a simple fact, what's the basis to take one over the other? This is not to say that the correct number in those verses is of any theological importance. What this shows is that in the other cases of disagreements on more serious theological matters there can be no reliable basis to assume one book over the other. There can be no basis to assume any other part of the Bible is infallible.

My question is, what is the apologetic answer for this type of contradiction?

xrey

Oh that's easy: David killed 700 charioteers... and then he killed another 6,300 charioteers. The first event was recorded in Samuel, but both events were totalled up in Chronicles.

It would be more difficult for an apologist to make that argument if Samuel said only 700 charioteers were killed.

Lucretius

Alternatively it is just a matter of punctuation

In this one the charioteers had perviously fled ,but on the second occasion David AND Israel together killed a combined 7,000.

Whereas this one clarifies that they had only fled from Israel previously and later David personally killed 700 ,obviously leaving it to the reader to infer that Israel killed the other 6,300 .

Tigers!

That's good. May I use that sometime?

squiz

Personally, I have little interest in how the apologists might explain away such things. I would find it interesting, however, to hear from someone fluent in Hebrew, how the two statements were written in the original and how the change might have come about.

Lucretius

Sure no problem

Roger Pearse

Only if we presume that numerals do not undergo copying errors. But in fact these are the commonest of all. No such numerical difference has any value as an argument.

The idea that inerrancy can be refuted in this manner seems a bit babyish anyway. It involves any number of doubtful theological presumptions.

Incidentally few suppose that two accounts, even today, of an event will agree on numbers of people killed (if you disagree, watch the next media reporting of some aircrash). Do we know that this general rule didn't apply to writers of scripture, and if so how?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Lucretius

I agree with Roger that numbers can be a problem,in particular where there is a possibility that the numbers mentioned merely mean "a lot" ,it is possibly significant that in both cases the number 7 i.e 700 & 7,000 is involved a "mystical,magical number" .

The question of these "innacuracies" only really arises when dealing with those, who state that the Bible is completley accurate and do not accept that errors can occur in any work (unless you have a really really good editor)

blastula

No, on the contrary, it's that whether or not "copying errors" can be used to reconcile those accounts, we still don't know which is the correct number, which then means that in the more serious contradictions of theology, we can't know which is the correct answer. For example, do children pay for the sins of the fathers or not?

What?

Um, but the Bible is the Holy Written Word of the Infallible Supreme Rule of the Universe, so it's supposed to be a bit more reliable that the word of us mortals, at least according the doctrine of inerrancy. Of course, my argument is not speaking to those who don't believe in inerrancy.

blastula

You're right, back to the drawing board for me. Though it's not an intellectually honest answer, it is a technically sufficient answer.