"The tragedy of common sense
it that it is not
very common."
(Albert Einstein)

"Politically correct Christianity
is tolerated but despised.
Full Gospel Christianity is
respected but persecuted."
(Unknown)

"If you marry the Zeitgeist
you will soon become widow."
(Goethe)

"To reach the source of a river
you must swim upstreams."
(Stanislaw Jerzy Lec)

"I note that all those,
who are positive to abortion
already are born."
(Ronald Reagan)

PROBLEMS AND CONTRADICTIONS IN THE BIBLE

On the Internet there are atheistic websites that contain collections of alleged inconsistencies and errors in the Bible. The existence of such contradictions and inaccuracies are considered by many atheists as absolute and conclusive evidence that the Bible is completely wrong and definitely not the word of God (if there is a God). In this section of my site, articles will be published trying to resolve and refute such contradictions and difficulties in the Bible. We will see that the vast majority of issues can easily be sorted out if you go to the basic texts (written in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament). Some of the problems have to do with the fact that parts of some Bible manuscripts are lost or are unreliable. None of this affects in any way the reliability of the Scripture as a whole. No fundamental Christian doctrine or commandment is affected by any of the "contradictory or problematic" verses in the Bible.

Here we also notice how unjust many atheists can be. They do not treat the Bible the same way they treat other ancient writings. No other ancient text would be dismissed as easily and for the same shallow reasons as they use for rejecting the Bible. If they, in a letter from a Roman emperor, find scientific inaccuracies (for example references to fairy creatures that do not exist, or if they in hieroglyphics find obviously exaggerated depictions of Pharaonic victories), they would not, for that reason, dismiss the existence of Roman emperors or Egyptian pharaohs. And besides, they would probably not even deny the alleged Pharaonic victory. They would simply accept that exaggerations and scientific errors occur in ancient writings, and try to unearth the historical truth behind these errors. But not so when it comes to the Bible (you can read more about the Bible's reliability here).

Moreover, we must not forget that the importance of some old Hebrew words have probably been lost. For example, it can sometimes be very difficult to determine what kind of animals and birds are referred to in some of the Bible verses. This, however, is completely natural and does not affect in any way the reliability of the text.

Another problem that the atheist often ignores in his exegesis, are the cultural differences. Even if two people master a common language, it is not certain that they understand each other. Different cultures think differently and have different conceptions of space and time, which sometimes give the same word different meanings to different people. If a manager, for example, says to an employee, "Do not ever do this again!", the employee in our European culture would normally reply "No", which means "No, I will never do that again." In many other parts of the world, such as Asia, the reprimanded employee would instead answer "Yes", which means "Yes, I will never do that again." The latter, to my mind, seems much more logical. But this has led to bizarre situations in multicultural workplaces.

I have personally experienced this when I worked at sea and we had Filipino crew and junior officers. On one occasion the Swedish captain rebuked a Filipino second officer and said, "Never do that again!". The second officer then replied "Yes" and smiled. The captain took this as mockery and insolence and worked himself up to a fury, while the second officer smiled even more. What the captain didn't know, but found out later, was that in the Asian culture you must not lose face at any price, it is worse than dying. The second officer's smile was no sign of mockery, and his "Yes" was no sign of rebellion, it was in fact a scared second officer who testified his loyalty to the captain. Thus, it is not enough having a common language if you mean different things with words and body language.

The Jewish culture has a very different view on a lot of things. Statements about time, which do not seem consistent with our way of thinking, can be quite logical from the Jewish point of view. Concepts, which today have a precise scientific meaning (species, mammal, bird etc) are used in the Bible translations, but with a meaning that differs from the scientific meaning. All this must be taken into account to assess the Bible fairly. Therefore we need theologians and other experts, who not only translate the text, but also transmit the Jewish way of thinking to those who read the Bible today. They must convey the Jewish thinking, by letting the translation reflect the meaning of the original Bible text in a form that we can understand (which sometimes is very, very difficult). Here it is not enough to just know Hebrew or Greek, but you must also be familiar with Jewish culture. And not the Jewish culture of today, but the Jewish culture of the time when the actual Bible text was written. If you take this into account, many of the alleged errors in the Bible disappear.

Aside from the contradictions and inaccuracies that I mention here, there is of course much in the Bible that is difficult to comprehend in the right way. But then we enter into Christian faith, which is an entirely different matter, which is covered elsewhere on this site.

Atheists believe themselves to be objective and scientific in their Bible criticism. In fact, their criticism is very often both shallow and naïve, where they start from one single translation (for example, to Swedish) and base their entire critique on their own culture's interpretation of certain specific words and concepts. They have probably never read the entire Bible from cover to cover to get the complete picture, or tried to put themselves into the Jewish way of thinking during Biblical times, but their entire argument is hitched on one or two words in the text (from the translation, not from the original text). Most atheists seem more literal believers than any Christian I know, with their sterile fiddling with single words or even letters. I myself was an atheist until the age of 38, so I know what I'm talking about. When I finally gave the Bible a chance, and read it from cover to cover, I found something entirely different from what I had expected, which, to my own surprise, made me kneel before God and convert from atheism to the Christian faith.

Dismissing the entire Bible, from the discovery of seemingly contradictory parts of the text, is not honest. The Bible consists of 66 books, written by 40 different authors over a period of several thousand years. These authors came from all strata of society. From kings like David and Salomon to Amos, who was an ordinary shepherd. Although these writers worked during very different periods of time and had completely different cultural and social backgrounds, the Bible's message nevertheless follows a clear line. Many so-called problem areas in the Bible arise (as discussed above) because different people express themselves in varying ways. "Yes, but the Bible is claimed to be written by God", the atheist objects. "Then each letter must be completely accurate." Wrong! The Bible is not written by God. "….driven by the Holy Spirit, men spoke from God", according to 2 Peter 1:21. That is, people have used their own words, their frames of reference and their own cultural background and experience to express the message that the Holy Spirit laid down in their hearts. Then there is of course verses that claim to be directly dictated by God, such as the Ten Commandments, but when so is the case, it is clearly evident.

Not only atheists are biased in their Bible criticism. Representatives of Islam do the same thing. Islam claims to be based on both the Old and New Testament and that the Qur´an is the completion of these (the final message from God). At the same time there are numerous contradictions between the Qur´an and the Bible (as discussed on my pages on Islam). Here Islam is facing a very difficult problem. If the text of the Bible is really from God, and the Qur´an contradicts this, the Qur´an must be wrong. If, on the other hand, the explanation for the contradictions is that the Qur´an is true and the Bible is wrong, well, then the Qur´an must be wrong when it states that the text of the Bible comes from God. So no matter how you twist and turn, it seems the Qur´an is wrong. Here Islam has a seemingly insoluble logical dilemma. The only way to save Islam is to assert that the Bible certainly comes from God, but has later on been corrupted by Jews and Christians. The Bible has thus been changed after God gave it to Man. An explanation that is farfetched and hardly credible, especially considering the huge number of biblical manuscripts in existence, all showing how incredibly well the Bible text has been preserved for millennia (discussed in more detail here). To prove their claim, representatives of Islam have tried to find contradictions in the Bible and then compiled these (the list of Biblical contradictions in atheist websites are often based on these Muslim compilations — to find these alleged contradictions requires that you read the Bible numerous times and do this carefully, something few atheists would be willing to do). An example of such a summary is 101 Clear Contradictions in the Bible by Shabbir Ally. Four Christian Bible interpreters, Jay Smith, Alex Chowdhry, Toby Jepson and James Schaeffer, have compiled a lengthy article (50 pages) where Ally's alleged inconsistencies are individually sorted out and refuted (the reader can take part of the entire article here).

Below are discussed some of the more common "contradictions and errors" in the Bible (a couple of them are listed in Sabbir Ally's compilation). This section will slowly but surely increase. So please be patient!

Some of the Bible issues dealt with here are also discussed elsewhere on my website. But for the sake of lucidity, I have chosen to include them here as well.

(working links below are in bold characters)

You can read more about the Christian faith in: Myths and fairy tales do not solve any problems! Science and logic is the answer!