Reactor

I'm a Chirstian...

*everyone gasps*

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. But wait, I'd go and have a look around at a few views first. After all, balance of opinions is a good thing, right?

So here you go. I threw together a couple of things that I think can explain this sort of thing.

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."

2) Copylisting errors. It's a common occurance, for obvious reasons, and it happens. The original texts are smudged in some way, and the numbers are then difficult to verify. This too happens with rare or unfarmiliar names, especially if they are non-Israelite names. Strong confirmation of this kind of copylisting error can be found in various pagan records, such as the Behintun Rock inscription set up by Darius 1.

But anyhow, I somehow doubt you guys are going to believe either of those two explanations. But there they are. Completely simplified by myself, and still, in my eyes at least, plausable explanations to why the numbers are different.

Vorkosigan

Hello and welcome aboard! Take some time to look around the library (see the link at the top of the page). We've got lots of great articles there and we welcome submissions from Christians.

If your position is that "the original writings were inerrant," it's not one we can readily accept. For one thing, we don't have the originals; for another, biblical scholars all believe that the Old Testament was compiled from several different sources. This is called the "Documentary Hypothesis." Basically it identifies five major writers behind the OT, called J, E, D, P, and R. Note that some books, such as Isaiah, had at least three authors.

Further, we know from internal evidence that some books, such as Daniel (dates from ~165 BC), are quite late and were written for specific political and social reasons. This makes it highly unlikely that there is some remote "original" from which copyists made errors.

Finally, as the Dead Sea Scrolls show, the OT writings were somewhat fluid and circulated in several, if not many, different versions. Some books not now regarded as "scripture," such as the Book of Enoch, were regarded as such prior to the advent of Christianity (for example, in the current Bible, Jude quotes Enoch). We have no way of knowing which version or arrangement of say, Jeremiah, was the "original." Even today in conservative Bible translations, one can read that the translators have faith that they are guided by the Holy Spirit when they make translation choices among the several hundred words whose meaning nobody is really sure of. (I think it is 1,500 of the 8,000 words in the OT, but am not sure. Apikorus, where are you?)

Hope this helps. Most modern Christian denominations regard inerrancy as an absurd doctrine obviously falsified by scholarship and history, and do not waste their time on it. There is no reason a thinking person like yourself should either.

Once again, welcome!

Michael

sidewinder

Welcome, Reactor. Could you just explain why your god couldn't have somehow simply threw in a verse or two to explain the differences, instead of leaving it up to fallible men? And, while you're at it, could you explain this same thing about the hundreds and hundreds of other errors and contradictions in the Bible? Why would your god leave it up to men to explain all these "difficulties", as Christian apologists like to call them, especially when your god would know that people would come up with a variety of explanations which differ widely?

Let me give you my simple explanation...the Bible was written and edited by human beings.

Reactor

I should have been a little more specific above. When I said "...who believes in inerrancy and all that..." 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. Between the synoptic gospels there are differences, for example- and... boy is there a lot of information to cover on all of this. Even so, from the Christian community I'm from (mostly uneducated evangelical) we tend to just say the bible is 'inerrant', because those differences or slight errors (from translational problems, etc) don't change the historical accuracy or message of the bible that God originally intended us to recieve.

As for why God didn't provide a perfectly written manual for the entire of mankind, I will never know. I sure wish I had an answer for you on that one, but as the word says, "God's ways are not our ways." On that same line too, his thoughts aren't ours either. Though that's hardly the answer I'm guessing you were looking for, it does stand to reason that just because we don't understand something, it doesn't mean God isn't in control.

I always liked the idea, personally, of how God does things. It's stange. If I were God, I sure as heck would have printed up the most flawless manual for repentance you could ever imagine. But I guess that if that kind of thing had have wound up in my hands (as me being human, and not God this time around , I'd be even more skeptical of it. It would just be too... fantasy-like. It wouldn't have fit into history and would have been rejected by so many people it isn't even funny. There'd be no reality in it... no feeling.

You ever read a really good book? You know, a really well written, cleverly planned out book? And, you're reading through the book (or books) to get to the end, and you're wondering, "Why the heck did that happen?" I've had this happen to me on a number of occasions, because... well, I'm not too bright a guy So I'm there... wondering... and eventually I get to the end of the book, or books (in a series) and the lightbulb switches on in the ol' brain and... well, there's ohhhing and ahhing in admiration of the writer who'd cleverly crafted the story so the ending was something I just couldn't see coming.

It's a cheesy illustration, I know. But you have to admit (or anyone with half a brain would admit) that we as people don't always see things coming. If there are hundreds of errors in the bible (hmmm...) then I'm sure God can work things to his pleasure with or without them there. If there's a slight difficulty here and there, I'm onfident that it's there for a reason. Not much of a reason I'm guessing, but a reason all the same.

I hope that's enough garble for you guys. Please let me know if you'd love more!

Vorkosigan

What we'd love is a substantive response. For example, it's not a question of there being errors or contradictions, it's thay, fundamentally speaking, your idea of the Bible is different from what scholars seem to say it is. The existence of a number of sources who did not draw on "original writings," but on earlier and human sources, this would seem to contradict your ideas. Have you read Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?

Michael

Asha'man

Reactor,

First, welcome to the II forums. I was pleasantly surprised to read your post, so many of the theist posts are rude, preachy, and badly written. Sloppy writing seems to be a sign of sloppy thinking. Since your post was well written, polite, and well thought out, I think there is hope for you! In any case, I hope you hang around for some deep conversations.

I originally felt as you did, the bible clearly had some holes, but the overall message must be true. But I had never actually read the whole bible. Then I did some reading about the errors and contradictions in the bible. I was overwhelmed. The problems were everywhere. I learned of contradictions with science, bad logic, bad history, bad math, and (most importantly) extremely questionable morality. The more I looked, the worse things looked.

Ok, sure, perhaps errors have crept in over time, and nobody is quite sure which parts are divinely inspired and which are man-made. But wait a moment, how do I tell the difference? Can I draw a line somewhere, and say that this part is an error, and this part is truth? With all these things that are provably wrong, how can I trust the stuff that can’t be proven? I am looking for a reliable source of evidence, but this book is clearly no longer trustworthy.

The problem gets worse when you look at other biblical problems, such as the two genealogies of Joseph, the husband of Mary. These two genealogies are completely incompatible. (I asked my mom about them, and she told me that one was really the genealogy of Mary. But I couldn’t accept that, since it clearly says Joseph in each one. How could she miss that?) Ok, so at least one of these genealogies was in error. So where did the other one come from? Clearly, someone invented it.

Ok, now things are getting bad. We have a fabricated genealogy here. Why would someone do that? Well, the motive is actually pretty clear: someone wanted to show that Jesus fit a prophecy. But if there is one fabrication about Jesus in the bible, could there be more? The only possible answer is yes, there must be more fabrications here. So suddenly the whole book, including the core message, is extremely suspect.

Does my chain of thinking make sense? The whole setup begins to crumble when the foundation is broken. If the book has any errors at all, if God hasn’t protected the truth in every translation and copy, then the book simply can’t be trusted. And without the bible as evidence, Christianity suddenly becomes just one more superstitious religion among many.

This is why atheists attack the bible. If we can show rational believers the holes, the deception, and the absurdity in the scheme, they may be able to break out of their indoctrination. I can’t speak for everyone here, but I want to break people like you out of a dangerous cult. In fact, you probably have the same reason to be here, to break people like me out of my cult. We both want to help people past their delusions, right?

John the Atheist

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 ]</p>

John the Atheist

Asha'man,

The problem gets worse when you look at other biblical problems, such as the two genealogies of Joseph, the husband of Mary. These two genealogies are completely incompatible. (I asked my mom about them, and she told me that one was really the genealogy of Mary. But I couldn’t accept that, since it clearly says Joseph in each one. How could she miss that?) Ok, so at least one of these genealogies was in error. So where did the other one come from? Clearly, someone invented it.

I'm working on this for a future board. I won't be arguing it from an errant/inerrant point of view, although a strong case could be made for it there, but I'll be doing this board to hope to put to rest this nonsense that Luke was really talking about Mary's genealogy, as if the actual reading of it isn't enough to convince one. I'm working on parallels and putting ALL the scripture evidence out there, not just drawing from Matthew and Luke, but also the partial genealogies of Chronicles and Ruth too, which will only expound on the problem even more as if they didn't have enough to deal with.

John

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

Reactor

Wow, so much to respond to I'd love to try and cover everything, but... well, I'll tell a little story instead.

I have some Catholic friends, and they (being highly zealous) tried to covert myself and a good friend to their ways of thinking. We had several discussions with the guys (a few 10+ hour debates) and concluded that their reasoning was quite solid, and that they might be right. We really didn't want to become Catholics (have you seen the Pope lately?), but if it was the truth, we'd do it.

So, from that time on we studied the bible, its teachings and its history. We studied the history of the early church, and crammed every bit of other information into our heads that we could find. Then, we debated some more with them. We debated amongst ourselves. And, we double triple checked every supposed Catholic truth they had given us. It took as some time, as you might imagine. As one of our Catholic friends said "To know history is to be a Catholic." so we took up that challenge. After some time, we were fairly sure we knew history better than any of the guys we'd been talking to.

Now, without the research, these guys sounded right. They could quote the dates of when the bible had been slapped together and all manner of other things. We didn't really stand a chance of understanding if these guys were right or not. With the research done however, we had a much better idea of what was going on. We could pick errors in their logic, and could find errors in their statements about history through and through.

It's a similar kind of thing here. One person says, "I've found 30 billion errors!" (give or take a few) or, "I studied the bible and found it has far too many problems." That's nice and all, and I'm sure you honestly believe it, but... well, I really need to check it all out. You might be right. You also might be wrong. And in some cases, neither of us may find out either way.

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!?!

Asha'man

Very good point. You want to see the evidence. I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t know if this is the best place to start, but I began with <a href="http://members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/" target="_blank">Biblical Errancy</a> by Dennis McKinsey. He wrote a monthly newsletter for about 10 years, in an attempt to provide an exhaustive list of errors and problems in the Bible. While I don’t agree with perhaps 20% of his errors, the pure quantity of the remainder is impressive.

You might also want to look at <a href="http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/" target="_blank">The Skeptics Annotated Bible</a>, an online copy of the JKV with annotations provided by skeptics. Again, you may not agree with all of the annotations, but the quantity is clear.

I have just started reading the commentary provided by Steve McRoberts at <a href="http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/smcdownlds/GdWdIntro.html" target="_blank"> Can the Bible be the "Word of God"? </a>. Steve effectively provides a running commentary as he reads the bible, pointing out problems as he runs into them. So far, most of his points are moral issues, rather than pure contradictions, but still a good read.

You might also like to read some of the essays from <a href="http://members.aol.com/JAlw/joseph_alward.html" target="_blank">Joseph Alward</a>. He tends to take a deeper look at a single issue, rather than just provide a survey of errors.

Of course, the library here also has some good papers. Check out <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/criticism.html" target="_blank">Biblical Criticism</a> and <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/errancy.html" target="_blank">Biblical Errancy</a> for some local reading.

And of course, don’t forget us here. If you run across an interesting point, come back and we can discuss it. I am looking forward to John the Atheist’s posting about the genealogies, because I think they are clearly significant.

Happy reading!

(a little trimming around the edges.)

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: Asha'man ]</p>