Biblical Scripture, a Hard Look

[allfoak]

so this thread isn't really about whether or not the scripture is correct and /or infallible

it's about believers....fooling themselves

Of course it is.


Don't confuse the aim with the substance.

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Here is why i think a thread like this is a good thing.
If people can see that these things not only exist but can be reconciled, then everyone benefits.

These problems that clearly exist in the bible are a problem only because the stories are being taken literally.

 

[Skwim]

Although various explanations may be suitable, I have no problem with accounting for scribal errors as a source of minor details like that.

Because scribal errors might get a date or number off, but they won't change the fundamental message of the Bible - which is too numerous and repetitious, weaved into the very fabric of every book, for any random errors to change that.

You would need to find more meaningful examples than that if you wanted to claim the Bible's revelation of God, His relationship to us, the accounts of Jesus, or prophecy, were in fundamental error. You would probably not even be able to come up with examples of meaningful historical error, let alone prove theological error.

I wasn't addressing any overview of the Bible's message, but rather the claims that the Bible is infallible, inerrant, and necessarily the exact word of god, plus perhaps a consideration of god's reason for allowing errors to exist in the Bible at all. Elements that Christians use to fool themselves.

The position I take on the Bible is that it is an accurate history of God's dealings with man, an accurate vision of who God is, an accurate guide to lead you to God, and an accurate warning or promise of what is to come on the earth in the future. Even if a scribe miscopied an otherwise irrelevant number in a list of families, that doesn't prevent the Bible from being any of those things.

In acknowledging that the Bible is not error free there's always the possibility that some of the more important elements in its narrative are in error.
Perhaps 2 Timothy 3;16, which says "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," was meant to say "Some Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,"

OR

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and may forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.​

OR

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through the Father who strengthens me.​

OR

Matthew 28:19-20
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19-20
Therefore go and make disciples of your nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
​

Of course I'm not saying these alterations are true, but that such mistakes are possible. Mistakes that could possibly make a difference in one's theology.


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[Nous]

I know there are contradicons in the bihle.

Where are contradictions in christ himself?

The link I provided presents a number of contradictory things stated in the Bible about what Jesus supposedly said and did. And after all, these secondhand accounts are all that are available. If God was inspiring these writers to make precise statements, then why did She inspire them to say contradictory things?

What exactly was Jesus' "message" about how we are to behave when we see merchants misbehaving at the temple? Is the message that it's okay to destroy their property in a fit of violence?

Many christians know there are technical contradictions and say there are. For example, in one place it says god dosnt change his mind. Then when hebwas with abram, at sadam ans gomorra, he did. The message wasntba contradiction. It showed god' justice on the wicked just as many other OTnpoints out. His changing his mond as wirtten and christian claismndont change the constancy of thenbibles message.

God changes his mind when you quotee "god doesnt repent" to "god repents". He is saying at first, I am not saying sorry for what i nl did and now, i sorry for this. When you say youre sorry, you usuallt didnt mean to do X to begin with until you findnit caused something maybe guiltnto make you want to apologize.

How are we ignorant mortals supposed to know when God has changed Her mind about something? Maybe some of the ten commandments are no longer applicable?

How are we supposed to treat our slaves? Were the Confederates right on that issue?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

The link I provided presents a number of contradictory things stated in the Bible about what Jesus supposedly said and did. And after all, these secondhand accounts are all that are available. If God was inspiring these writers to make precise statements, then why did She inspire them to say contradictory things?

What exactly was Jesus' "message" about how we are to behave when we see merchants misbehaving at the temple? Is the message that it's okay to destroy their property in a fit of violence?

How are we ignorant mortals supposed to know when God has changed Her mind about something? Maybe some of the ten commandments are no longer applicable?

How are we supposed to treat our slaves? Were the Confederates right on that issue?

My humble opinion. If I were christian, and choose between the bible and christ, Id choose christ. But like many believers, I think youre associating with Who jesus is based on what third, fourth, and fifth parties say.

You know more about a person when you meet them. When you meet her and trust her, THEN you take you take her word for it. Not the other way around.

Of course the bibke has contradictions. But if you havent met christ, how do you known christ himself contradicts himself given he is said to be a Real person?

 

[Nous]

My humble opinion. If I were christian, and choose between the bible and christ, Id choose christ. But like many believers, I think youre associating with Who jesus is based on what third, fourth, and fifth parties say.

You know more about a person when you meet them. When you meet her and trust her, THEN you take you take her word for it. Not the other way around.

Of course the bibke has contradictions. But if you havent met christ, how do you known christ himself contradicts himself given he is said to be a Real person?

The topic of the thread is about the claimed infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. It isn't about anyone's private subjective experience of "the christ".

Third parties cannot verify anyone's private personal experience. My personal experience is that no human who ever walked the earth consists or consisted of any greater part God than does any other creature or plant.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

The topic of the thread is about the claimed infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. It isn't about anyone's private subjective experience of "the christ".

Third parties cannot verify anyone's private personal experience. My personal experience is that no human who ever walked the earth consists or consisted of any greater part God than does any other creature or plant.

Thr bible has contradictions. The word, to believers, does not. The is talking about god's dicisions and indeciveness related to scripture. If not, I woulent see any sense making an argument/OP that the bible has contradictions without a point to support it.

Since god exist the source of scripture. The OP, when he says tue bible contradicts itself, he, to many believers are talking about christ.

Many christians admit there are errors in the biblical translation. They are in agreement with the OP there...

So if you take god out and both OP and christians agree, whzt is thr debate really about?

 

[Rise]

I wasn't addressing any overview of the Bible's message, but rather the claims that the Bible is infallible, inerrant, and necessarily the exact word of god, plus perhaps a consideration of god's reason for allowing errors to exist in the Bible at all. Elements that Christians use to fool themselves.

What I was pointing out by my post was that a Christian doesn't need to believe in scribal perfection to believe the Bible is a reliable document concerning theology, history, and the future. Your understanding of these topics from the Bible will not be fundamentally altered by scribal errors that alter a single random number that itself has no bearing on the meaning or message of the text.

In acknowledging that the Bible is not error free there's always the possibility that some of the more important elements in its narrative are in error.

You missed the point I was making: Random scribal error alone cannot alter the message or meaning of the whole Bible. Even if, by chance, a single sentence was altered in a meaningful way, there is nothing in the Bible of foundational importance that rests on the witness of a single verse. Any truth you want to draw from the Bible about theology, history, or prophecy has multiple witnesses that run as a common themes and ideas from start to finish.

Perhaps 2 Timothy 3;16, which says "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," was meant to say "Some Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,"

You misunderstand the implications of what I said. A scribal error does not make the whole book uninspired. The original writer didn't make the error, a later scribe did. And no scribal error is going to alter the message of an entire book. The inspired message is still there.

Example of this: I just happened to be watching a debate today between Bart Erhman and James White. White challenges Erhman to name any textual variant that altered the meaning of a book. He never gave one. He mentioned specific sentences where significant variant words existed that altered the meaning of that particular sentence, but in no case could any of those sentences alter the conclusions one would draw from the whole book, let alone the whole BIble, about foundational issues of theology, history, or prophecy.

OR

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and may forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.​

OR

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through the Father who strengthens me.​

OR

Matthew 28:19-20
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19-20
Therefore go and make disciples of your nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
​

Of course I'm not saying these alterations are true, but that such mistakes are possible. Mistakes that could possibly make a difference in one's theology.

You're dealing with hypotheticals where you assume several things that are not actually true:
1. The assumption that changing this one verse would change foundational understandings of theology.
2. The assumption that this one scribal change would be replicated in every single manuscript, so that the original reading was lost.

Neither of those assumptions is true.
Firstly, in the hypothetical example you offered of Matthew 28:19-20, we have three other Gospels and the book of Acts which all have Jesus telling the the disciples to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. This is an example of how important information is almost never contained in a single verse within the Bible, but you can find common themes and ideas sown like a thread throughout it from beginning to end. In fact, you can even draw upon Joel and Genesis (with God's promise to Abraham) to support the idea that Israel was meant to be blessed to be a blessing to the nations. So it's not like this idea pops up out of nowhere on it's own, or doesn't have mutual support from other books. In fact, most of the NT deals with the Gospel being taken to the nations.
This one sentence breakdown is a good example of how most of your hypothetical examples would play out if one examined the Bible as a whole.

Second, is the near impossibility of one scribal mistake like that being replicated across all manuscripts. The reality is that we have multiple independent lines of transmission for the NT texts from all over the western world. There was no central text in the first few centuries that copies were made from. Because of this, if any scribal variant got stuck in a regional manuscript, we can see evidence today of that by comparing it with other manuscripts from different transmission lines.
Because of this, the original readings are preserved, because the odds of everyone making the same exact random scribal error is virtually impossible.
That is why we can have textual criticism, which seeks to analyze all the variants and determine which were most likely the original readings.

Among the variants where there is any uncertainty about what the original word might of been, it never actually changes our understanding of the content of the Bible in a way that would change important theological/historical/prophetic conclusions.

 

[Skwim]

What I was pointing out by my post was that a Christian doesn't need to believe in scribal perfection to believe the Bible is a reliable document concerning theology, history, and the future.

But some do, and you can't simply dismiss them because they look at the Bible differently than you do.

You missed the point I was making: Random scribal error alone cannot alter the message or meaning of the whole Bible.

Didn't miss it at all.

You misunderstand the implications of what I said. A scribal error does not make the whole book uninspired.

Didn't say it did.

You're dealing with hypotheticals where you assume several things that are not actually true:
1. The assumption that changing this one verse would change foundational understandings of theology.

Didn't assume this at all.

2. The assumption that this one scribal change would be replicated in every single manuscript, so that the original reading was lost.

Didn't assume this at all. You know what, because you have obviously misunderstood almost all of what I said, and seem to read into it what you will, I'm going to stop reading right here and assume what ever else you've written is no better. I can only suggest that you closely reread what what I've said, and not what you think I've said.


.

 

[Nous]

The OP, when he says tue bible contradicts itself, he, to many believers are talking about christ.

Then perhaps these "believers" should try to understand what the OP actually, literally, says. Perhaps these "believers" should more vociferously reject the commonplace claims among Christian fundamentalists and Biblical literalists that the Bible is infallible and inerrant.

 

[siti]

Hedging qualifiers don't impress.

Damn - and I only posted it for effect!

The rest of your post is an excellent refutation of course...I surrender unequivocally. And since I was only playing Devil's Advocate anyway, I suggest the Devil engage alternative legal counsel.

 

[arthra]

Not a Christian here but I do respect the Bible as a Holy Scripture and one that I believe is inspired... Are there some inaccuracies in the Bible? I believe so ... Having gone through Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and been transferred in form from verbal traditions to scrolls and today in book form .. over the centuries are there some inaccuracies? Yes. but I also think pointing out that in one place the number of descendants of Adin varies from Ezra to Nehemiah is somewhat petty...unless you'd like to do a study to explain how this could have occurred.

There's also the much better known variation between the reputed ancestors of Jesus between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke... Now that's a much better known case than the variation of the descendants of Adin between Ezra and Nehemiah!

In any event... I have yet to recall that the variations of Jesus ancestors or the number of descendants of Adin has really captured the interest of many Christians... Thankfully they seem more interested in say the Sermon on the Mount or in the devotional character of the Psalms.

 

[Thief]

Here is why i think a thread like this is a good thing.
If people can see that these things not only exist but can be reconciled, then everyone benefits.

These problems that clearly exist in the bible are a problem only because the stories are being taken literally.

ok....and for years...
I quote and explain Genesis
as I do so the explanation works just fine......but....
some people don't like it

the discussion then falls to......people

the rest of the book is dealt the same way
no two people read ANY scripture .....the same way

so to launch a thread about correction......
might be a bit more that quoting scripture

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Then perhaps these "believers" should try to understand what the OP actually, literally, says. Perhaps these "believers" should more vociferously reject the commonplace claims among Christian fundamentalists and Biblical literalists that the Bible is infallible and inerrant.

Believers believe the bible is infalliable because it is christ words and christ is infalliable.

They wont see errors in the bible "in the same manner and mlintent" you and the OP doesn unless you can prove christ himself contradicts himself.

Its like telling the reader, their book author's ghost writer made errors to his script. Sure, there are errors, that doesnt mean the author is wrong it just means the ghost writer did a messed upnjob in writing his book.

Understand?

 

[siti]

Not a Christian here but I do respect the Bible as a Holy Scripture and one that I believe is inspired... Are there some inaccuracies in the Bible? I believe so ... Having gone through Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and been transferred in form from verbal traditions to scrolls and today in book form .. over the centuries are there some inaccuracies? Yes. but I also think pointing out that in one place the number of descendants of Adin varies from Ezra to Nehemiah is somewhat petty...unless you'd like to do a study to explain how this could have occurred.

There's also the much better known variation between the reputed ancestors of Jesus between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke... Now that's a much better known case than the variation of the descendants of Adin between Ezra and Nehemiah!

In any event... I have yet to recall that the variations of Jesus ancestors or the number of descendants of Adin has really captured the interest of many Christians... Thankfully they seem more interested in say the Sermon on the Mount or in the devotional character of the Psalms.

If only your last sentence were true...(sigh)...Unfortunately, far too many "Christians" (and some of these are among my closest friends - I love them dearly but that doesn't mean I don't think they are deluded) are way too concerned about my "eternal salvation" and whether or not I can ever free myself from bondage to the evils of scientific knowledge such as the "God-dishonouring" doctrine of "Evolution" - which, it is claimed - is disproven on the basis of the "infallible Word of God" aka "the Bible". At the same time as they are advocating complete faith in that written word, they seem to know almost nothing about what it actually contains or the sometimes outrageous, often ridiculous, claims that it makes.

Some of the inconsistencies can be "justified" - the two genealogies of Jesus for example, are sometimes claimed to take, alternately, the maternal and paternal lines of Jesus ancestry - i.e. one is a list of Joseph's ancestors, the other Mary's. That doesn't solve all the difficulties, but another "sleight of the hand" maneuver or two soon gets around the other objections like a significant difference in the number of generations recorded (God just didn't think it was important to record them all). All that is just fine with me, but then to tell me that Genesis provides a literal account of God's activities on six literal 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago - and I have to believe it verbatim because it is "in the Bible"...

...that (to me) is what this topic is really about - if the inspired penmen who were entrusted with the compilation of God's own utterances couldn't even count or consult the genealogical records without stuffing up - why should I believe them when they write about really important things? That is not a petty question for me or (I would have thought) anyone who is genuinely interested in truth (whatever that is).

 

[allfoak]

ok....and for years...
I quote and explain Genesis
as I do so the explanation works just fine......but....
some people don't like it

the discussion then falls to......people

the rest of the book is dealt the same way
no two people read ANY scripture .....the same way

so to launch a thread about correction......
might be a bit more that quoting scripture

There is a way that scripture should be interpreted.
Scripture speaks to the soul of man.
It is to be interpreted as such.

 

[Thief]

There is a way that scripture should be interpreted.
Scripture speaks to the soul of man.
It is to be interpreted as such.

yeah.....and the Lord breathed a soul into him....
so it is written

and the discussion immediately degrades.....what is a soul?

and the soul is infallible?.....for it is God's handiwork?

 

[allfoak]

yeah.....and the Lord breathed a soul into him....
so it is written

and the discussion immediately degrades.....what is a soul?

and the soul is infallible?.....for it is God's handiwork?

I have answers but it is late and i am sleepy.
I will get back to it in the morning.

 

[arthra]

...that (to me) is what this topic is really about - if the inspired penmen who were entrusted with the compilation of God's own utterances couldn't even count or consult the genealogical records without stuffing up - why should I believe them when they write about really important things? That is not a petty question for me or (I would have thought) anyone who is genuinely interested in truth (whatever that is).

Again Siti.. I'm not a Christian but considering that the Gospels were composed separately for different purposes it would seem they don't match up very well ... Matthew is probably more for an audience closer to Judaism while Luke was more likely for a Greek audience but the teachings of Jesus as represented in them is to me probably more significant than any variation in genealogy. I would recommend a pretty good source for you if you're interested at

Table of Gospel Parallels

You can see how the Gospel compare!

- Art

 

[siti]

Again Siti.. I'm not a Christian...

Me neither

... but considering that the Gospels were composed separately for different purposes it would seem they don't match up very well ... Matthew is probably more for an audience closer to Judaism while Luke was more likely for a Greek audience but the teachings of Jesus as represented in them is to me probably more significant than any variation in genealogy.

And I agree - you might want to check out my comments in the "You're No Christian" thread where I have noted the main import of Jesus' teaching (namely the two great commandments - love God and love thy neighbour - and the "golden rule") as being the most appropriate identifier of "Christian" Churches. But you would be amazed how few of the Christians responding in that forum agree.

Most seem to think that it is far more important that you understand that you're damned to hell if you don't take the Bible's account of creation and it's (obviously) allegorical imagery of judgement literally.

I understand that you are coming at this from a positive (rather than either an apologetic or critical) perspective and that's really great (I mean truly, sincerely), but for me, I've done that approach for more than 30 of my 53 years and I am afraid that Jesus is not, after all, going to liberate humanity from its own stupidity - only genuine knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world (that is "loaned" to us by future generations for a limited period only) can do that. And if that involves some of us standing Elijah-like on Mount Carmel and proclaiming the ridiculousness of the false "Gods" and their worshippers, then so be it.

The Bible is valuable - no question in my mind about that. The ancient scriptural tradition of all our ancestors has much wisdom. But it is not the supernaturally-revealed word of God - it is the spiritual heritage of natural humanity (in my humble, and ultimately irrelevant opinion).

 

[arthra]

But it is not the supernaturally-revealed word of God - it is the spiritual heritage of natural humanity (in my humble, and ultimately irrelevant opinion).

Well I think it's also inspired.. but not entirely accurate. By inspired I mean it has record of divine revelation to the Prophets.