You hear that a lot, right? ”The Bible is FILLED WITH CONTRADICTIONS!” And then, they give you a list…or just one… Or none, because they don’t want ”To waste their time reading a book full of lies and myths”… Or, they give you a link, like this one and, I guess, feel really good about themselves because they think they ”got you”.
Indeed, they can create doubts in your mind and yes, there are some difficult passages in Scriptures but the contradictions?
We have to either work really hard, or not hard enough, to find contradictions in the Bible.
You need to remember is that these ”Contradictions claims” are not new. They have been around for decades, if not centuries. (William Henry Burr wrote a book on biblical contradictions in the 1800′s)
Just so you can give an answer when you are confronted with a ”Contradiction”, Here’s a list of 143 with the explanations. A great work to preserve the integrity of Scriptures.
Also, for a deeper study, here’s a book, yes a FULL Book, totally free! You can read it here. (The book is called ”An examination of the alleged discrepancies of the Bible, by John Wesley Haley)
I hope these ressources will be helpful to you. They were for me…
Good post. Much of what people read is only contradictory to them because they don’t have good reading skills, and they don’t know what hermeneutics is.
Sometimes they will fall back to a more defensible position of, “well the text can be interpreted 1,000 ways…”, but again, they lack the understanding that there is a precise method of interpretation that can narrow that down to a reasonable number, and then context and history can provide you with a very accurate answer to interpretation. And anything beyond that, you can pray over, which they refuse to do because that would shed light where they only want darkness.
Thank you! Your comment reminds me that it is so important to teach and preach the Word faithfully and accurately. When we don’t, there’s a chance we’ll create ”Contradictions” in the Bible…
God bless you!
Very helpful! Thank you!