The Inerrancy of the Bible

Sidelined, good try, but unlike the rest of you I'm not about to propose I know the details on processes I've not personally worked with...But let's break your gold powder problem down using some good ol' common sense:1) Does somebody make gold powder? Yes, a simple search of the net will tell you that much.2) Is gold dust edible so that the Hebrews could have consumed it in a drink? Yes, besides hard alcohol, apparently they put it on desserts: http://www.originalchristmasgift.com/MoreaboutOCG.html3) Could ancient people have made gold products let alone powdered gold? Answer again is yes: "Around 2000 BC, Egyptian craftsmen were producing gold leaf 1 thick"
http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH6.html4) Could ancient people have turned the gold leaf to a drinkable form? "In the process of fire gilding, a technique widely used on silver in the Roman world, gold powder or gold leaf was dissolved in hot mercury." Hint, disolved gold turns to powder when the mercury evaporates...
Page Not Found5) Would the Hebrews in the desert possessed technology capable of producing a hot enough fire? It's hard to say, the Bible doesn't give a temperature, but apparently a back-yard set-up is fairly easy using rocks, a bellows, and charcoal (or a lot of coals from a large bonfire). I imagine they had access to rocks to build with and wood to burn."Early iron smelters were small furnaces built from rocks that could withstand repeated heating. These furnaces looked like beehives with a vent in the top and an entry portal on the side. To create the high heat needed to smelt iron, smiths pumped air from a bellows through the tuyere (nozzle). The furnace was filled with charcoal and iron ore and the charcoal was then set afire. When the temperature rises above 2,800F, the iron flows from the ore and forms blooms."
Appaltree: All Ohio hotels6) Ok, so now we know it's possible to make gold physically consumable, the only problem from #4 is that mercury has the potential of killing those who consume it. But on the other hand, gold leaf also tears and things that tear can normally be ground (even metal's bonds break) so nothing here is beyond Earthly physical possibilities.7) The only question left is if the Hebrews possessed the technology in the desert? That's a good question, based on the blacksmithing history I'd say yes. But let's look at it from another angle. The Egyptians could build pyramids without modern technology and work with gold in 2000 B.C. - to assume the Hebrews couldn't melt gold using rocks and coals, even on the move, seems kind of ridiculous...Sidelined, that good enough for you? By the sounds of things a high school student could melt gold, it doesn't really take any scientific background 36 Christians, notice nothing they present you is ever really an "error" if you do a little research

"NosyNed," one topic at a time please First off though, thank you and your mates for attempting to shoot "36 Christians" and "Tom" down. I was previously unaware of a few of these alleged "errors" and am now happy that I will not be caught off guard with them in real life discussions.I do appreciate the chance to practice - you gotta learn the opposition's material to win this game. A question like 40,000 stalls vs. 4,000 stalls almost seems legitimate until you read all OF the words. You could say that the devil is in the details So you want more Creationists to take you on over historical dating issues next? Ok, I'll see what I can dig up...

Paul, can you please elaborate as to what was proven false or in "error?" Maybe you should go back and re-read all these posts. The only thing that you have proved is there is academic controversy over different events/claims, not that anything is actually in error. In case you don't know, raising an issue/question does not prove an "error," it just proves you had an issue/question. Furthermore, explaining said issue/question does not represent excuses - it just means others see the answer you apparently missed It's ok to be wrong once in a while, that's how you learn I myself won't be bold enough to claim the KJV is without errors, but on the other hand, until you actually find an "error" that's provable (not just conjecture or speculation on your part) I can't argue with "36 Christians" claim.

1) PaulK, for the moment, we'll have to agree to disagree then. I found a website that claims Augustus himself records a registration (census) in 2 B.C. I can't verify myself if this is correct so I'm buying the Res Gestae and works of Josephus off of Amazon.com. Thank you for pushing this issue though, even though I suspect you are incorrect, it'll be worth seeing it for myself in print..."but there is a reference to such a registration of all the Roman people not long before 5 February 2 B.C. written by Caesar Augustus himself: "While I was administering my thirteenth consulship [2 B.C.] the senate and the equestrian order and the entire Roman people gave me the title Father of my Country" (Res Gestae 35, italics added)."
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html2) Brian, you are correct that many Biblical references I cannot verify. But by this logic I also cannot verify I had any ancestors 200 years ago because I can't produce you any graves, names, or documents verifying their existence. But on the flip side to your statement, some things in the Bible are verifiable, so using statistics it would be possible to come close to an idea of how many "unknowns" are "errors" based on known facts/errors. Your efforts would be better directed at proving known errors than worrying about unknowns because from what I've seen on this forum, these kids are batting 100%. Thank you for bringing this to my attention though, I'm curious what kind of results we could produce from random sampling 3) Nighttrain: Committees and Conventions don't prove the KJV has errors, all that proves is that somebody didn't agree with it and thought they could do a better job. Not to stretch comparisons to far, but as you know from movies, the original can be better than the remake... Thanks for the trivia though.4) Sidelined, you raise a good common misconception. The Middle East has not always been the sandy desert paradise that we see today. There is a good bit of evidence (not from the Bible) that adequate wood/brush/forage would have been around to support the fire required to construct this calf. Not to speculate too much, but we have no idea where God led them for 40 years that they couldn't make the extremely short trip from Egypt to Israel - maybe they happened to wander through some part of the Middle East that had petroleum seepages (even the ancients knew oil burned). A better issue for you to raise would be how did God keep 600,000 men (and families) lost for 40 years (not to mention feed, clothe, support them). But is this an error? I'm not sure - somehow manna miraculously appeared... This could be another case of the miraculous "unexplainables." But again, thank you for raising issues I have to double check, it makes my faith/knowledge that much stronger 5) On a serious note to all involved in this forum, if you find real "errors" that are provable with archaeological, historical, scientific facts, please bring them up. Even us "Literal Christians" would like to know about them. On the other hand if you are only trying to argue about the most modern word to use in a sentence, don't bother, that's not an error. An error involving word usage involves a word misused within reference to its historical time period (not your modern lack of understanding).Again, thanks to all of you, I myself have learned some things

1) "Sidelined," I will have to admit I cannot answer this one and it does sound fairly outlandish. I agree, this should have caught the attention of many nations at the time. "36 Christians," you're on your own on this idea. I'm also not about to try and defend the Joshua day/night problem if anybody wants to bring that up...2) Hopefully this works for your Sinai vegetation doubts - it tells me there was enough trees in the area (not to mention current wadis still have trees)"Less old, though more expressive in some ways of the antiquity of Sinai, are the dozens of Wadis, or fossilized riverbeds, that define the terrain all over the peninsula. From the depth and frequency of the Wadis, we can tell that Sinai was at one time a lush and fertile region."
Sinai's Ecology3)"Coragyps." You know we don't have room for the Flood argument here - but to be brief - your "scientists" can't even agree if there was an asteroid catastrophe - some think global warming, others think the Earth was a giant snowball. Seriously, how is the Flood less credible? Until you pin down which catastrophe (if any) is most likely to have occurred, you can't pin "error" on this story.
BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Snowball Earth
BBC - 404: Not Found 4) "MangyTiger," before you point out that a guy bolded a statement, please read the rest of the article to figure out why he bolded it. The reason most of your associates here keep coming up with "errors" that aren't "errors" is because they don't bother doing their homework, reading all the words, or looking at context... But yes, your hypothesis is plausible, but on the other hand, Josephus could have been writing figuratively (not historically) too...5) "Ramoss," this "Glenn Miller garbage" references many books by title and author (Res Gestae, by Augustus being the applicable one here). Are you telling me that Augustus does not mention a 2 B.C. census in Res Gestae? I have no access to libraries here so I will have to wait for my Amazon.com order to arrive, if indeed Augustus never mentions a census, then you are right, the Glenn Miller piece is garbage. But on the other hand, if it mentions the census, I'm going to have to assume that you haven't read up on the issue yourself and are throwing out insults at random..."Sidelined," I concede "error" (or the need for some extreme miracles) on the issue of astronomical anomalies. Interestingly though, as of yet they are the only thing brought up in almost 300 posts that equate to "errors"... So the KJV might not be "inerrant" but it's close enough for me to believe... If anybody can come up with a logical explanation on this sun issue in the next 50 years I'd like to know."Tom," I wouldn't try to explain the "degree" problem off the cuff, I still maintain that anything in the Bible makes more sense than a lot of scientific theories (snow-ball earth being a good example) but until adequate evidence is found - this is a pretty tough problem to explain within the context of current human understanding."36 Christians," they found an issue I can't refute, good luck! Don't let this kill your outlook though, science is always proving its previous theories wrong... They may find your proof yet...This message has been edited by Incognito, 01-20-2005 23:51 AM