Some of the contradictions occur due to different writers telling different stories to different audiences; some are due to insertions or deletions by scribes. (We do not have the originals.)
One of Paul's letters says women should not be church leaders, yet in another he speaks favorably of some women who are leaders of one of the churches to which he was writing. The various Gospels tell different versions of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. In one, Jesus is silent all the way to Calvary and through his execution. In another, he cries out in despair. In another, he is forgiving everyone around him. There are contradictory accounts of who went to the grave, who found the body risen, and to whom Jesus went and what he said.
There are conflicting accounts of the Christmas story. In one version, the family goes to Egypt. In another, they go back home to Galilee.
The contradictions abound. Most people don't know about them because they are somewhat suppressed by preachers, but to deny them is folly.
It's OK that there are contradictions. Different people interpret the same event in different ways and different ideas resonate with different audiences. God appears to each of us in the way we're most likely to understand. No two people have the same experience of God, nor should they. That's fine. It doesn't make the Bible any less inspired. But to deny the contradictions is simply foolish. Trying to maintain that position will force you to twist yourself around like a pretzel.
“And let US create man in OUR image”
Who’s “us”?
Back it up with book chapter and verse - and we will have a nice discussion
COntextual understanding is important as well.....Just throwing out simplistic examples without full contextual exposition really is pointless
Bart Erhman.....”He remained a liberal Christian for fifteen years but later became an agnostic after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.[2]” from his biographical information on wikipedia.
Bleeech not impressed
There are no contradictions. Isaiah 28:10-13 shows that the Bible is not written in a chronological fashion (a reflection of God’s own mind, it seems; after all, God inhabits eternity as Isaiah 57:15 says, a concept that people who live in a space-time continuum can be told about but not readily comprehend), and has parts of the story in different books. And where there are seeming contradictions in places in English versions, those are awkward and sometimes outright bad translations.
“We do not have the originals” is a ploy that Muslims use to get people to believe what the Koran says about the Bible, to wit that it has has been corrupted and that Muhammad’s alleged revelation is the only reliable (and supposedly corrected) divine message. The Masoretic Text is most assuredly the original Old Testament, as the Textus Receptus is the original New Testament.
Very little sympathy will result in a simultaneous attack on the Bible and defense of O’Reilly’s liberalism, at least on this forum.
The Bible is impervious to the modern western world’s demand for empirical truth. Faith is evidence of things not seen. Some may say that’s a convenient self-reinforcing system...but they don’t have to believe it.
Is not Jesus referred to as the “stumbling stone”, a rock that causes men to fall? They stumble because they disobey the message, and busy themselves suppressing the message, or just nitpicking it to death.
God said, "Let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures: cattle, crawling creatures and wild animals." And so it was.
Genesis 1.24
This was the fifth day, and man was not yet created. He had already on the previous day created all the creatures of the sea as well as birds.
Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man is alone; I will make him a helper like himself." When the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, he brought them to the man to see what he would call them . . . the man named all the cattle, all the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field
Genesis 2.18-20
Here we see Man created and then all the animals, specifically and given by name including cattle and birds, both of which were specifically named in Genesis 1 as having been created before man. The same is true of plants and many other things as well, but this was the best example I think. It would be very hard to see this as anything other than a contradiction, unless one resorts to wildly strange ways of reading the text.
Humility being one of the biggest missed lessons.
If the holy spirit doesn't talk to Bill, then Bill is wandering in the dark. Pity him, and pray for God to reveal himself to him.
Why can we not have inerrant copies of the Bible today?
Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Are the Biblical Documents Reliable?
Do the Resurrection accounts HOPELESSLY contradict one another?
On one hand, nonbelievers, and Obama guard dog O’Reilly is possibly one of them imo, have been pointing out seeming contradictions in the Bible for the last 1900+ years.
In fact, 1 Corinthians 1:18 indicates that the message of the gospels is perceived as nonsense to those who are perishing.
On the other hand, when you consider that certain passages in the many English Bible translations disagree with each other, the possibility that translators who were unfamiliar with Hebrew and Greek figures of speech simply missed the side of the barn with respect to their armchair guesses as to what a given passage means must be taken into consideration.
Interestingly, a Hebrew as first language member of another message board had commented that the KJV translation is the worst English translation of Bible that he’s ever read. And if I understand correctly, not only is modern Hebrew different from ancient Hebrew, but various books of the Old Testament are known to be written in different Hebrew dialects; just more hurdles for translators to jump.)
Finally, note that regardless that Jesus’ apostles essentially studied the Scriptures from the same scrolls that Jesus did, Luke 24:44-45 indicates the folloiwng. The apostles had failed to connect events in Jesus’ life that they had been eyewitnesses to with prophecies concerning the Messiah until Jesus opened their minds as to how things that He had done related to prophecy.
of course surface paradoxes, false gospels, and outright errors about what the Bible says abound, we all hear them, usually from fools like oreilly. people who want to find contradictions will of course find them. our Lord apparently doesn’t want just anyone to understand His Word. however, i find that if i think long enough, listen to the wise and humble myself enough before my Lord, i’ve found that my misunderstandings are gradually harmonized with what is demonstrated about Creation and the Word. the *apparent* contradictions have so far been both temporary and all of my own making.
“EVERY ONE” does not agree that there are contradictions. Since God is perfect, it is impossible for Him to contradict Himself.
Eyewitness accounts so seldom match down to every last detail that it’s actually supicious when they do. The fundamental facts are corroborated, though. Every observer does not see or take note of every thing identically. They’re not observing from the same vantage point or even the same location. There will be variations in truthful accounts from credible, reliable witnesses. They saw the same event from differing vantage points, locations, times and individual perspectives, therefore there was variation in their accounts.
In Genesis, when God condemned the serpent to crawl on his belly forever....any idea how it got around before that?