What is the biggest bible contradiction?

How do we determine what is the 'biggest' contradiction?Surely this belongs in accuracy and inerrancy forum?Brian.Edited by Brian, : No reason given.

Perhaps it was just poorly designed?Yahweh isn't the cleverest of gods, so He could have designed the universe to the best of His ability, He just wasn't very good at it!Brian.

Sorry, don't see that at all! Yet not a single post so far has been anywhere near these issues and the member had requested Accuracy and Inerrancy.I think it looks out of place here.Brian.

This is inaccurate.The author of John is at least second-hand information.For example:John 21:15-25 is clearly in third person.Theres a great many more internal clues that this Gospel was written by an non-eyewitness, you just need to study it a little more critically.Also, you should be aware that all four Gospels are anonymous works.Brian.

The title of the Gospels themselves are the sources.Take John as an example. All my Bibles have the title:The Gospel According to Saint John.The others have the 'according to' as well.So, it is according to what someone thought the Gospel of John was. It may possibly be a scribe who has copied down words from a few oral sources, or any number of possibilities. But John is quite different from the synoptics and is far too late to be the disciple John.You could also look into the naming of the Gospels if you get time, you'll be surprised just how late some of the namings took place.Matthew's Gospel, for example, was given its title by Papias around 130 CE, why did he have to name it if it was written by Matthew?Brian.

In Church tradition Jesus rose from the dead, so much for tradition. I am sure we could debate over why it was made up and the consequences, it is easy to find things to debate. I think it isn’t questioned as much because it is pretty obvious that it wasn’t written by the evangelist, the debate over the authorship is really over so there’s no big debate, John didn’t write the Gospel we have. It adds to the likelihood of propaganda for me. So you can psychoanalyse someone who died 2000 years ago?Third person narratives are usually indicative of a novella, which, of course, the Gospels are. Well, since we don’t have anything John wrote, we do not know if John bragged or not.Brian.

Don’t follow your reasoning here, as having the words ”according to’ is adequate enough to inform us that someone was writing what they thought John’s Gospel was.If we have John’s Gospel it would not have the ”according to’ in the title. It would simply be called The Gospel of John; since it is ”according to’ we know that it was not written by John, but by some other person(s). Um, yes it does! It means according to you your sister said that party is at 4 o-clock. It doesn’t actually mean that your sister said this does it?So, how do I know your sister said the party is at 4 o-clock? I only have your word for that and you might have any number of reasons for passing on misinformation. You might tell me it is at 4 o- clock when it is actually at 2 o-clock so your sister dumps me and you can have me all to yourself This is also inaccurate.All writing is simply a creation of the human mind and as such does not have to be what the author believed, it is simply what the author wants the reader to believe. This isn’t to say that the author didn’t believe these things but surely you are aware that there are a huge amount of extant ancient texts that are full of propaganda and clearly inaccurate.So, it is an error to assume that the author of a text believed that its contents are true. It adds to the possibility of error, it adds to the possibility of additions to the text, it adds to the probability that the text is pseudepigraphical. Why would the author of the original text not identify themselves?If the Gospels were written by the evangelists then why wasn’t it common knowledge at the time who they belonged to? Texts from Jesus disciples and they weren’t deemed important enough to be identified with their authors? Seems highly improbable to me. Same here. Yes, who cares that the Gospels weren’t written by an eyewitness, who cares that the Church are lying over their authorship, who cares that millions of people are silly enough to swallow the propaganda of novel writers who were not even born when Jesus lived.Brian.

Yes.Take history writing as an example. We only have the author’s opinion of what happened, the process of putting together the sources, selecting what is and isn’t relevant, constructing the thesis is all done in the mind. Correct, we do not know for sure if what an author claims was information from a non-human source or not. How can we know information came from God if we cannot demonstrate that this entity exists?Also, even if we could prove there was a God, the information that someone writes onto a page was constructed in their mind, we do not know if the information from God was copied down 100% accurately, humans are not perfect. The early authors are not automatically labelled as untrustworthy, they may well have written what they believed was inspired, but how do we know this info is reliable. They may simply have believed they were communicating with God but were in actual fact just writing down what they themselves had believed and their experience was just a self fulfilling prophecy.As far as the church writers go, we do know that Eusebius advocated lying as long as it furthered the teachings of Christianity. This is down to faith. The Bible cannot be trusted as an accurate history book for two reasons. Firstly, it wasn’t written as a history book, it was written as a story of God’s relationship with his creations. Secondly, the ”history’ in the Bible has been shown to be extremely inaccurate in many instances. Thus, inaccurate information plus theological agendas equals untrustworthy. Well it is down to faith again. Many Christians believe that the Bible is accurate because their faith hangs on the text, and if any of the text is inaccurate then their faith crumbles. It is a pretty weak faith that does this.I’m sure psychologists can give many reasons for religion.Historians certainly can.Brian.

God knows what you are trying to pull now I think we all know that the ”Gospel of John’ refers to the book credited to him in the New Testament. So why are you trying to be silly?To be accurate, the word ”gospel’ was used by early Xians to refer to the entire scriptures in an attempt to keep them distinct from the Tanakh. It was recognised that the Xian texts were split inot 2 groups, Prophets (Old testament) and Gospel )NT).But the word became a technical term for the particular books that recorded the story of Jesus’ life, message, and death. To keep the idea of the ”Good News’ united into one area of scripture the early texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were put together and called “The Gospel according to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John”. (Lutterworth Bible Dictionary (1994) page 342.But, the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are known as the ”Gospels’, every Sunday school kid knows that. How do you know they didn’t?Since there are no original mss there could have been anything written on them! Hallelujah. So, how do you decide which parts are from ”John’ and what parts aren’t? I know what the words mean, it isn’t me having the problem and dancing all over the place.Once again you repeat that they were put there after the fact without having any proof of this! When did I claim this? Indeed, and if the motive of the speaker in ”John’s’ Gospel was to convince the reader that Jesus was God incarnate then it follows logically that he would say whatever it takes to convince the reader. So the person who put the words ”according to John’ means that he thought the Gospel was written by John or written by someone who wrote this down because he thought this was the Gospel according to John?But, yet again, you jump to a conclusion without considering alternatives. You claim whoever put the words ”according to John’ on the title page believed that they were the words of John, but this is not the only possibility. He may have put them there to give more weight to the historicity of Jesus, he may have thought that the more texts they had from the disciples the more chance that people would be convinced of Jesus divinity. So, the person who placed the words ”according to John’ may not themselves have even believed it was John’s work, he only had to believe that other people would believe it was John’s work. Remember the early church were happy to lie to promote Jesus. I think it is a shame I have to repeatedly correct people who misrepresent what history and source criticism are, but hey ho. This is nothing to do with being sceptical; these are two plain and simple facts. We do not have any original text of any Biblical text, new or old testament, nothing sceptical about it. Yes, and we will never know for certain what the true reason is. This is just a fact of historical enquiry. Again though, you do not know IF they did identify themselves or not. But, in the first few centuries after Jesus death the great majority of the population was illiterate, and especially so in Xian circles as Xianity appealed greatly to the poor and ignorant. This meant that the Good News was spread initially by word of mouth and the audience would have been told who the author was, or was supposed to be. It is nothing to do with making a name for themselves, it is the simple fact that the information would carry more credibility if it was said to have been recorded by someone who witnessed these events.Think about it for yourself. Who do you find more credible, someone passing on information ”from a friend’ or someone who saw the incident(s) first hand?Brian.

You know this because?Brian.

So you have no idea why I put the word in inverted commas? No I'm not, I am using definition C.God knows why you thought I was using A. I didn't claim that they all had 'according to' on the first page, I said we didn't know what was on the originals.This is another example of your lack of critical skills. For all we know 'John's' Gospel may have had 'according to' on the original and it was deemed important that the others had 'according to' added to them. It is equally possible that another Gospel had 'according to' written on it and it was added to John, or perhaps none of them had it written on them, we just don't know so you have to be careful about making absolute claims about any historical text. Oh well, another brain-washed fundy to ignore.Brian.

I don’t see where the author has identified himself as being the disciple John, could you point it out for me please?As far as I can see the text is claiming that the disciple says that certain things are true and he wrote them down, it doesn’t say that these actual words that we have are the ones written down by John.
We don’t know what John’s original Gospel was like, simply because the original now longer exists, or hasn’t been discovered yet. It is quite possible that the original text is very different from the one that we have now. It would matter to some people. Yes, and it is quite likely that the author invented a great deal of information to convince people that Jesus was the Messiah, which is evidently not the case.If the Gospel is a first hand account then we have evidence of Jesus direct followers being capable of lying to further their cause. If it is second hand we have evidence of early Christians inventing events to further their cause. Well, not to you it isn’t, but it is to many others. Hold the front page Nem, we actually do not know the authorship of ANY Old Testament book, every single Old Testament book is anonymous. We also know that some of the epistles credited to Paul by the early Church are no longer credited to him. Hebrews, for example, is no longer considered to have been written by Paul.Also, just because the authorship of a letter is known it doesn’t mean the contents are true. Just because we know Paul wrote a certain letter it doesn’t automatically follow that he is telling the truth. When we see Paul claiming that he was on the road to Damascus to perscecute Christians we know from comparative history that this is more than likely a lie. Under Pax Romana people were free to follow which ever religion they wanted without fear of persecution. We also do not have any evidence (that I know of) to support the claim that Romans allowed ”hit squads’ to wander around their provinces murdering whoever they wished. The Gospels bring themselves into disrepute, you just need to try and study them without blinkers on.Brian.

But Lingua Franca deosn't mean French Language.I can never work out these smilies Brian.

What you might wish to ask you friend about is the differences between the different available biblical texts.You may wish to ask your friend which particular version of the Bible is the accurate one because some are very different.Here are some examples from the Book of Exodus:Quotes from KJV1:5 And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already.Masoretic Text (MT) and Septuagint (LXX) say seventy-five souls.Incidently Acts 7:14 contradicts this verse as well.7:14 Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls.Back to Exodus.1:22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.MT, LXX, and Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) say “Born to the Hebrews.”8:23 And I will put a division between my people and thy people: to morrow shall this sign be. LXX reads “will put a deliverance”12:40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.The MT, LXX and SP all read Egypt and CanaanThe Old Testament is riddled with conflicts such as these. So, not only do all Bibles have internal contradictions, they also contradict other extant biblical texts.Taking the Bible at face value is a waste of time and effort, and is only really for the moron.Brian.

Interestingly, the man who named gMat, Papias, claimed that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew!Perhaps the one in our Bibles have nothing to do with Matthew the disciple?Perhaps gMat is lost forever.Brian.