ISO: Actual Bible Contradictions
October 16, 2018 § 2 Comments
Skeptics of Christianity often will mention “contradictions” in the Bible without specifics, but refer to one resource in particular. So I chose three Biblical “contradictions” completely at random from the oft-cited Skeptic’s Annotated Bible Contradictions to see if they truly represent internal contradictions in the Bible.
1. “David’s sons” compares 2 Samuel 3:2-5 to 1 Chronicles 3:1-4, revealing that David’s 2nd son is identified as Chileab in 2 Samuel and as Daniel in 1 Chronicles.
Why this is not a contradiction: Chileab and Daniel are the same person.
2. “Would we fear God?” lists 49 verses that deal with the “fear of God”, and also 2 verses that supposedly contradict this teaching (1 Timothy 1:7 and 1 John 4:8).
Why this is not a contradiction: 1 Timothy says “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” This is a rejection of baseless fear, a very different fear than the meaning expressed in the sense of fearing God, which “refers to fear or a specific sense of respect, awe, and submission” to God. It’s a mystery as to why the authors chose 1 John 4:8, however: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” No mention of “fear” in this verse.
3. “When did Ahaziah begin to reign?” points out that 2 Kings 8:25 has this Judean king beginning his rule “in the twelfth year” of the reign of Joram, the son of Ahab, while 2 Kings 9:29 indicates Ahaziah began his rule “in the eleventh year” of the reign of Joram.
Why this is is not a contradiction worth mentioning: Similarly, 2 Kings 8:26 says Ahaziah was 22 when he began his reign, and 2 Chronicles 22:2 says he was 42. I don’t know if this discrepancy is listed, but the answer to this “contradiction” is the same for many non-critical differences: They are copyist errors. An error that a scribe makes while making copies would be significant if it presented a theological or doctrinal issue, and most of these errors can be rectified with context, methods of textual criticism archaeology, and other resources. But none of these errors—most relating to punctuation, word endings, minor grammatical issues, word order, numbering errors, misspellings—prove significant. Scriptural inerrancy maintains that the original autographs, inspired by God, are without error. Humans making copies make mistakes, but God has not allowed any mistakes to creep in that alter any meaning or doctrine.
These 3 are just a random sample. Hundreds of alleged contradictions are listed at bibviz.com. I’ve browsed some others and they seem to be more of the same. Are there any ACTUAL contradictions to discuss that can’t be rationally explained with context or an insignificant copyist mistake? Something that actually challenges the authenticity and authority of scripture?
Some other posts I’ve written that deal with supposed contradictions in the Bible:
• https://godneighbor.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/answering-biblical-contradictions-ethical-objections/
God&Neighbor 
> Skeptics of Christianity often will mention “contradictions” in the Bible without specifics.
They also mention airplanes & automobiles without listing specific models, unless it is relevant to the discussion. And most of those who identify as “Christian” do not obey the teachings of Christ — so the designation is no longer meaningful. Can we just agree to call them “Churchian” ?
I think your complaint is really hypocritical because promoters of Churchianity will often declare that there are NO bible contradictions, without addressing specifics when they have been raised. They also claim that their bible is holy writ when there are actually multiple versions of the bible with radically different book counts. Which version is the one endorsed by God? —Nobody avoids inconvenient specifics quite so much as religious folk!
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> Are there any ACTUAL contradictions to discuss that can’t be rationally explained with context or an insignificant copyist mistake? Something that actually challenges the authenticity and authority of scripture?
Would you actually acknowledge them when confronted with them??? Since none of the manuscripts that we have are original, and the copies don’t all agree, and there are multiple versions of the “Christian” bible, what is “insignificant” and what is “authoritative” is a matter of OPINION. You can invent an explanation for any contradiction, but you would have to resolve ALL of them in order to prove that your favorite version of the bible is entirely devoid of contradictions — you cannot just cherry-pick the ones that you think you can debunk and call that a win. I think perhaps the more important and relevant question is why you feel the need to debunk bible contradictions when no version of the bible contains a guarantee of authenticity.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Christ_s_Ventriloquists.html?id=GdhiuwAACAAJ
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> God has not allowed any mistakes to creep in that alter any meaning or doctrine
That is absolute non-sense: there are 45,000 christian denominations –some with different bibles, and ALL with some different doctrines, which is the entire reason why these distinctions exist. You are making demonstrably-false claims about the nature of God here. You are also insinuating that you are the only one qualified to decide what God is and what God wants… but all of the other factions that disagree with you on some point also believe that they are uniquely qualified to dictate the nature & will of God. The claims that you are making here are so absurd and so intellectually arrogant that almost no one can be bothered to dignify them with a response.
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https://www.bartehrman.com/contradictions-in-the-bible/
Click to access bible-inconsistencies.pdf
Hi G&N, thanks for your comments.
I’m a bit confused why you would say that Christians “declare there are no Bible contradictions without addressing specifics when they have been raised” on a post where I did exactly that. 🙂 Do you have a favorite contradiction you’d like to see addressed?
You brought up “multiple versions of the bible with radically different book counts.” I assume you are referring to different translations and the Apocryphal books added by the Roman Catholic church. No translation from any language to any other is word-for-word, so there are always multiple ways to say the same thing, depending on what the goals for formality and readability are. The vast majority of popular translations accomplish this without doctrinal contradictions. It’s not hard to single out the few translations that aren’t faithful to manuscript sources. Some versions are a paraphrase by one person (I.e. Eugene Peterson’s ‘The Message’ or Kenneth Taylor’s ‘The Living Bible’), over-simplified to a fault (GNT and CEV), or heretical according to orthodox Christianity (the NWT commissioned by the Jehovah’s Witness cult, and the Reader’s Digest Bible, which excludes over half of the Old Testament and a quarter of the New Testament.) The Catholic Apocryphal books were never canonized mainly because they teach a very different version of multiple doctrines than the rest of the Bible (and a host of other reasons listed here: https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_395.cfm).
Re: “Would you actually acknowledge them when confronted with them?” Offer one and we’ll see?
Re: “Since none of the manuscripts that we have are original…”
Why would they need to be?
Re: “…and the copies don’t all agree…”
Actually they do in every way that matters (explained in post).
Re: “…and there are multiple versions of the ‘Christian’ bible…”
As explained, multiple versions are not a problem.
Re: “what is ‘insignificant’ and what is ‘authoritative’ is a matter of OPINION.”
Which means your feelings about the significance of differences and authority of scripture is also just a matter of opinion? If we can identity the fundamental tenets of a faith (we can) then we can also find clear contradictions regarding those in scripture (we can, they’re just not there).
As to your last point, the post is about the internal consistency of the Bible, not church denominations whose differing views you rely on to make your point. Diversity of Biblical interpretations doesn’t have anything to do with how true or consistent the Bible is (your logical fallacy here is an “Argument from Consistency” or “Hasty Generalization”) especially when we have a Bible to look at and use our reasoning to assess any differences.
I guess you’re the “almost nobody” who decided to dignify my “absurd and intellectually arrogant” claims with a response. 🙂