Freethought & Rationalism Archive

John the Atheist · 01-20-2002, 07:01 AM

Reactor,

You say there's a resounding yes to there being more errors in the bible? How do I know that for sure? I'm just going on your word. I appreciate all of the welcomings (cheers!) but I need to consider things s-l-o-w-l-y, and with indepth investigation.

With the over 50 discrepancies, you don’t have to take my word for it or anybody’s. The reason I went to the trouble of putting them up there is so others could count them out for themselves, without relying on me or anybody else.

Concerning the number (2) you brought up. Of the 200,000 variations, simply go to a google search engine, type in that number with Greek, and variations, and, you're in business. It’s one of the most common numbers scholars use.

Concerning the number (1) you brought up. No research is necessary. Reasoning is required here. This is my own analogy I thought of when you used the explanation you did from somebody you put in quotes. Instead of letting some backwoods apologist weasel in one of the infinite number of how it could be, may be, try this or that, any interpretation will do just so long as you say something; do yourself a favor and think it out for yourself. If you find inerrant apologists or theologians still wanting to go with the different lapse of time of many years to explain the more than 50 discrepancies, I hope you want let them off the hook so easily when you ask them to account for why over half of the groups population stayed the same. If you do, you’re being way too kind.

C-ya around, John

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]</p>

Photocrat · 01-20-2002, 05:23 PM

Well, I was going to put this in the other thread, but oh well :] Anyhow here's my reply to the comparison -->

Ezra 2. SERAIAH, REELAIAH, MIZPAR, REHUM
Neh' 7. AZARIAH, RAAMIAH, MISPERETH, NEHEM

Some others were missing, but these match up well enough...

Ezra 5. The children of Arah, SEVEN HUNDRED SEVENTY AND FIVE.

Neh' 10. The children of Arah, SIX HUNDRED FIFTY AND TWO.

Oops :] That's not that hard to make that kind of mistake when you use letters for numbers [think roman numerals]

Ezra 10. The children of BANI,
Neh' 15. The children of BINNUI,

Close enough :]

Ezra 12. The children of Azgad, a THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED twenty and two.

Neh' 17. The children of Azgad, TWO THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED twenty and two.

Oops! :] Ahh well, who cares how many descendants they had?

sixty and SIX.
threescore and SEVEN.

Sixty = threescore (3 * 20) but I note that you did NOT mark that as an error, but rather the 6 != 7 part. Heh, given how many numbers there are in there, I'm not so surprised... I don't know that many people cared exactly how many there were of each--not that they didn't try to keep it accurate.

Ezra 18. JORAH,
Neh' 24. HARIPH,

These don't look very similar.

Ezra 20. GIBBAR,
Neh' 25. GIBEON,

These do.

Ezra 21-22. The children of Bethlehem, an hundred TWENTY AND THREE.
The men of Netophah, FIFTY AND SIX.

Neh' 26. The men of Bethlehem and Netophah, an hundred FOURSCORE AND EIGHT.

23 + 56 = 89 != 88. Missed one, I guess.

Ezra 24. AZMAVETH, forty and two.
Neh' 28. BETH-azmeveth, forty and two.

You know what "beth" means, right?

Ezra 25. The children of KIRJATHARIM,
Neh' 29. The children of KIRJATHJEARIM,

*ahem*

Ezra 27. The men of Michmas, an hundred twenty and two.
Neh' 31. The men of Michmas, an hundred twenty and two.

Which explains why they seem to have so many "children." This looks like the KJV; why are we using that version, anyhow? There are plenty of better ones available free on the web, though I suppose KJV might still be used against those who are the "KJV only" types...

Ezra 28. The men of Bethel and Ai, TWO HUNDRED twenty and three.
Neh' 32. The men of Bethel and Ai, AN HUNDRED twenty and three.

I don't know the Hebrew numerals, but in Roman numerals that the difference between 'CXXIII' and 'CCXXIII' ... *shrug* It would be hard to memorize this whole list of names & numbers & recite it exactly, though, wouldn't it? People remember stories much better than boring bits like this.

Ezra 30. THE CHILDREN OF MAGBISH, AN HUNDRED FIFTY AND SIX.
Neh' [no parallel listed]

Ooops :]

Ezra 40. HODAVIAH,
Neh' 43. HODEVAH,

Many, if not most, names have variants like John & Johnathen...

NINE.
EIGHT.

Ooops :]

Ezra 44. SIAHA,
Neh' 47. SIA,

Ezra 45.
LEBANAH,
HABABAH,
AKKUB,

Neh' 48.
LEBANA,
HAGABA,
Shalmai,

Dunno abuot that last one. *shrug*

Neh' 50-52
Rezin,
Nekoda,
Gazzam,
Uzza,
PHASEAH,
Besai,
MEUNIM,
NEPHISHESIM,
Reaiah

Ezra 48-50
Rezin,
Nekoda,
Gazzam,
Uzza,
PASEAH,
Besai,
MEHUNIM
NEPHUSIM,
ASNAH

Reaiah & Asnah are the only two that don't seem to match up, but I may have cut & pasted wrong [I was matching things up, some are out of order now]. Oh well, a few more forgotten people *shrug* :]

Meunim - Mehunim
Nephishesim - Nephusim

Those pairs were highlighted above, but don't seem off by much to me...

Ezra 53. THAMAH,
Neh' 55. TAMAH,

Again... It might help to sound them out; they seem to differ by at most one syllable, here.

Ezra 55. Peruda
Neh' 57. PERIDA

A 'u' for an 'i'? Heck, that's like complaining about "color" vs. "colour" in english [american vs. british spelling]. You'd have it easier had you gone for quality over quantity.

Ezra 57. AMI.
Neh' 59. AMON.

Ezra 59.
TELHARSA,
ADDAN,

Neh' 61.
TELHARESHA,
ADDON,

*yawn*

Ezra 60. six hundred FIFTY and two.
Neh' 62. six hundred FORTY and two.

Yah, I snipped a lot of these earlier. *shrug* They miscounted, oh well :]

Ezra 65. TWO HUNDRED
Neh' 67. FORTY AND FIVE

Remind me not to hire them as bookkeepers... :]

Ezra 68-69. THREESCORE AND ONE THOUSAND DRAMS OF GOLD, AND FIVE THOUSAND POUND OF SILVER, AND ONE HUNDRED PRIEST'S GARMENTS.

Neh' 70-72. a THOUSAND DRAMS OF GOLD, FIFTY BASONS, FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY PRIEST'S; GARMENTS.

Maybe they counted the silver's value as gold? But no matter how you read it, it doesn't add up, does it?

(Using the Bible Handbook as well as the King James Version to note the over 50 discrepancies in names and numbers. IMO, a couple of the names with slight spelling variations possibly doesn't need to be highlighted. Sometimes their highlighted, other times not. There are many other repetitious stories told in the Bible dealing with a good portion of discrepancies, many dealing with numbers and names, although none I've found as long as these two pericopes, and with the sloppiness these two uncover.)

Yeah. They really should've checked it a bit more.

Now then, here is some commentary to put all of that into perspective, quoted from p. 581 of the New Oxford Annotated Bible -->

Introduction to Ezra:

Quote:

Anciently several books circulated under the name of Ezra, not only our Ezra and Nehemiah as a single book, but others now preserved in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Our Ezra-Nehemiah is usually ascribed to the Chronicler (see Introduction to 1 Chronicles), prepared as a supplement to Chronicles on the basis of Hebrew and Aramaic documents, memoirs of Nehemiah, a memorial of Ezra, genealogies, and archives. Chronicles ends with the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of treasure and captives. This supplement, the first verses of which appear also at the end of Chronicles, was written to tell how some returned from captivity and laboured at restoring religion at a restored temple in a refortified Jerusalem (see "Survey of ... Bible Lands," SS18). During the exile religious interest had concentrated particularly on the laws associated with the names of Moses, and had fostered that exclusiveness which became so charactoristic of Judaism. Thus the returned exiles were concerned not only with reconstruction of altar, temple and city, but with social and religious problems, freeing the community of foreign elements, and establishing religious practice in stricter conformity with a religious mission.

There seem to have been four stages of the return: (1) a return under Cyrus (about 538 B.C.) led by Sheshbazzar, who commenced rebuilding the temple but, under local opposition, had to leave it unfinished; (2) a return under Darius I (521-485) led by Zerubabbel and Jeshua, who also encountered opposition but, with encouragement from the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, completed the temple; (3) a group, under Artaxerxes I (464-423), led by Ezra, who brought a codification of Mosaic law; (4) another group, under Artaxerxes II (404-358), led by Nehemiah, who came twice under Artaxerxes I to build the walls of Jerusalem, still against opposition from the local groups, and to establish purity of community and worship. An alternate solution of difficult textual problems places Ezra's return under Artaxerxes II, after Nehemiah.

The text of Ezra and Nehemiah has been dislocated in transmission. It is probable that Neh 8 originally stood between Ezra 8 and 9 and that Neh 9 1-5 originally stood between Ezra 10.15 and 10.16. An editor, faced with this textual confusion, endeavored to ease it by supplying connecting sentences and by insertions, such as the name of Nehemiah in Neh 8.9 and Ezra in Neh 12.26,36.

From p. 594, in the Introduction to Nehemiah, it merely says --

Quote:

Since the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are really one book and since parts of Nehemiah are apparently misplaced and belong in Ezra, problems of origin, structure, and historical background are discussed in the Introduction to Ezra. It is sufficient to say that the book which we call Nehemiah relates the return of Nehemiah for two periods of governorship over Judah during the righn of Artaxerxes I (464-423 B.C.). The first return was in 445/444. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and instituted social and religious reforms. An oustanding aspect of Nehemiah's religious life was his dependance on God and his frequent prayers (1.4-10; 2.18; 4.4, 20; 5.9, 19; 6.14; 13.14, 31).

I hope you'll forgive me if there are any typos in that [no, I have nowhere to cut & paste that from :] but it makes it rather easy to see why it's in the state it's in, no?

Photocrat · 01-20-2002, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by John the Atheist:
<strong>

Perish the thought. Your manner and direct answers will take you a long ways here. I enjoyed reading your opposing view as much as Asha'man did.

And while I was reading though them all (what is it? 14 differences from 33 family units?) I was thinking, "Well, that's a stumper." Being one of the more traditionalist Christian types, who believes in inerrancy and all that, I really had to start rethinking my position of how I view the Bible.

I count a little over 50 discrepancies, give or take a handful; not 14. About half deals with names, and the other half with numbers.

1) People may have been recored as going, but between the periods of arriving at the rendezvous and actually leaving, people may have fallen sick, or died, or... blah. You get the idea. As one guys says, "The discrepancy is sufficiently accounted for from the different circumstances in which the two registers were taken: that of Ezra having been made up at Babylon, while that of Nehemiah was drawn out in Judea, after the walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt. The lapse of so many years might well be expected to make a difference appear in the catalogue, through death or other causes."

I don’t think neither Ezra or Nehemiah are stating any lapse of many years, and I think the wording makes it clear where they started and ended in both pericopes. But, if one wanted to try to make a case of this, it would do them good to take another look at the numbers. Ironically, it's the numbers and names that stay the same is what destroys this theory. It would be amazing indeed, how many of the populations stayed exactly the same over a period of many years. No one died, no one was born, the numbers stayed exactly the same for many of the people for a good many years. Or out of coincidence did some die and there were more newborns, and the numbers just happen to match exactly on this many different groups of people over such a long period of time? Try to compare this today of imagining a census of the world where at a ten year interval, the number of say, 160 nations populations were still exactly the same for one-half of the nations. A mathematician would have to add a lot of zero’s to a number to give us those odds. IMO, enough to where it would be indefensible. What do you think?

I'm speaking more about the bible as being a trustworthy source of information. I do realise there are small errors within the texts, them not being originals and such.

It’s not just a few small errors, unless hundreds of thousands of discrepancies and variant readings from older texts is what one considers small if one chooses to go back to the oldest manuscripts. Nor can translation problems remotely explain all of this away. Let’s take e.g. the current Greek manuscripts in existence today, in whole or part that account for about 5,300. Most of the scholars I’ve looked at come up with over 200,000 variants in those Greek NT manuscripts. So, unfortunately, going back to the oldest manuscripts we have, don’t solve the problem. Out of the 5,000 or so older manuscripts we have of Greek, would any theologian ever dare to say which one of these is the original work? They know better.

Some things to ponder.

Welcome to SW, and hope you’ll continue to post here. Hopefully, this will be my last edit. I kept finding other afterthoughts to add in.

John

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]</strong>

Eh? Some of that figure is a bit inflated; especially w.r.t. how serious the variants are. It's not a big surprise or a big deal that they forgot some unimportant names & numbers. You'd do much better to find places where the variant readings can cause significant theological controversy.

Photocrat · 01-20-2002, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by John the Atheist:
I don't think neither Ezra or Nehemiah are stating any lapse of many years, and I think the wording makes it clear where they started and ended in both pericopes.

Read the bits I quoted about the history of this book. They were originally one book & have been horribly confused at points [chopped up & put back together]. I don't think that the differences are from people dying on the way, though.

It's not just a few small errors, unless hundreds of thousands of discrepancies and variant readings from older texts is what one considers small if one chooses to go back to the oldest manuscripts.

Eh? We consider the older manuscripts more trustworthy & use those. How many of these have *theological* importance is another issue. Salvation does not depend on how many men Azaghad had... Please show us something theologically important. Hundreds of thousands of typos in thousands of manuscripts over thousands of years isn't exactly impressive.

Quote:

Nor can translation problems remotely explain all of this away. Let's take e.g. the current Greek manuscripts in existence today, in whole or part that account for about 5,300. Most of the scholars I've looked at come up with over 200,000 variants in those Greek NT manuscripts. So, unfortunately, going back to the oldest manuscripts we have, don't solve the problem.

Define "variant." Most of them are spelling and word order, which is basically irrelevant. There are only a handfull of NT verses for which the reading is in doubt, none of which have theological import.

There *are* other controversies & such, beside the wordings, though. I mean, some sections are regarded as later insertions [we know what the insertions probably originally said, though! :] and such. But the editing which has been done to the Bible is fairly trasparent [we can see who did what, at least for much of the NT :] so it's not that hard to reason through things. E.G. we have that much later edit to support the reading of the trinity [which was put into the KJV, *sigh*, which is why I complained when you used that version, since it doesn't always use the best manuscripts... :] and we know why that was done, that that wasn't in the original [though there are other bits of scripture to argue for it like the use of logos in John [c.f. 'memra' in the OT], sorry, it's completely tangential to this :] In short, if we can tell there's something wrong with the text, we can probably reason how it should've read, or at least know that something is amiss. If there's nothing wrong with a given text, there's nothing wrong with a given text :] From that, we don't have problems figuring out what's up :]

If you want to do something to challenge us who are not inerrantists, you might try and find those verses & see what you can do with them :] Maybe something over the alternate endings of Mark? At least there might be something interesting in that; I don't care much about how many men these folk had... Nothing depends on it; nothing is at stake, save perhaps notions of inerrancy I don't hold...

Quote:

Out of the 5,000 or so older manuscripts we have of Greek, would any theologian ever dare to say which one of these is the original work? They know better.

Which was *the* original is the wrong criteria, unless we eventually find one [it would have to be early & it would be hard to prove]. Which one is closest to the original reading of it is much better. We don't really have originals; we do have early copies & translations. Lots of 'em. By using non-biblical sources & all the rest of the things we know about history, we can reason out what reading makes the most sense [one of the reasons older texts are better!]. It's not that hard.

01-28-2002, 06:24 PM

Hi to Reactor

I have always found the discrepancies you mentioned to be a poor argument against inerrancy.

You said:

Quote:

You say there's a resounding yes to there being more errors in the bible? How do I know that for sure? I'm just going on your word. I appreciate all of the welcomings (cheers!) but I need to consider things s-l-o-w-l-y, and with indepth investigation.

After all, that's what we're all here for... right? Right!?!

I would like for you to have a look at one of my favorite contradictions. I will leave it to you to do the slow in-depth research, with the help of others here on the board, and merely post the chapters & verses.

I know that you will find some "explanations" that seem plausible (or at least tenaciously plausible) for the little group of discrepancies I will bring up. I will leave it to you to do the research and decide whether those "explanations" are better than the simple explanation that I suggest: that the Bible contains significant error, and is no different from other writings in this respect.

So, without further ado,
PART A:
1 Chronicles 21:1 - "Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to count the people of Israel."

2 Samuel 24:1 - "Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.'"

PART B:
2 Samuel 24:9 And Joab gave up the sum of the number of the people unto the king: and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the sword; and the men of Judah [were] five hundred thousand men.

1 Chronicles 21:5 And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all [they of] Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew sword: and Judah [was] four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword

Note on Part B: This is an account of Joab's report. The numbers differ, perhaps because of different methods of counting or inclusion, but the discrepancy lies not there. It lies in the fact that Joab is seen to report differently in the two passages. In order to be reconciled, Joab must have given two separate reports.

If you continue to read the two Census stories, the number of contradictions pile up. Each can be answered separately by some harmonization or other, some of which seem reasonable. In the end, I leave it to you to reckon whether all of the harmonizations together are the right explanation, or the explanation that the Bible contains errors of fact is the right one. I have narrowed this down to the Census account, but if you read the entire story of David and his ascension to the throne of Saul between 1st & 2nd Samuel & 2 Corinthians, I expect you will stop counting before you have enumerated all of the discrepancies.

If you have any questions about my take on this, or my reaction to various harmonizing explanations, please ask!

Good luck, & welcome aboard!!
Jerry

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

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01-20-2002, 07:01 AM	#11
John the Atheist Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: North Texas Posts: 42	Reactor, You say there's a resounding yes to there being more errors in the bible? How do I know that for sure? I'm just going on your word. I appreciate all of the welcomings (cheers!) but I need to consider things s-l-o-w-l-y, and with indepth investigation. With the over 50 discrepancies, you don’t have to take my word for it or anybody’s. The reason I went to the trouble of putting them up there is so others could count them out for themselves, without relying on me or anybody else. Concerning the number (2) you brought up. Of the 200,000 variations, simply go to a google search engine, type in that number with Greek, and variations, and, you're in business. It’s one of the most common numbers scholars use. Concerning the number (1) you brought up. No research is necessary. Reasoning is required here. This is my own analogy I thought of when you used the explanation you did from somebody you put in quotes. Instead of letting some backwoods apologist weasel in one of the infinite number of how it could be, may be, try this or that, any interpretation will do just so long as you say something; do yourself a favor and think it out for yourself. If you find inerrant apologists or theologians still wanting to go with the different lapse of time of many years to explain the more than 50 discrepancies, I hope you want let them off the hook so easily when you ask them to account for why over half of the groups population stayed the same. If you do, you’re being way too kind. C-ya around, John [ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ] [ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]</p>

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