What is the biggest bible contradiction?

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.

"greek was the lingua franca of the 1st century roman-occupied middle east..."I love it :-)Talking in
English about the
Roman-occupied
Middle East using
Greek as the
"French language"...meaning the common tongue.Simple really :-)Iasion

"the words 'according to' mean what they say,"The words "according to" comes from the Greek word "kata".Tricky word.
ONE English translation won't really give you the essence.It's the same tricky word in Paul's "kata sarka",
meaning "according to the flesh",
or maybe "in a worldly manner"
or maybe "in an earthly style"
or maybe "physically".Scholars still argue about this phrase.You could just about translate the Greek title
"EUAGELLION KATA MARKON" (pardon my mangled transliteration)
as
"The Gospel in the style of Mark"Iasion

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.

Anastasia wrote:

quote:

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The contradictions mentioned have taken nothing away fron the meaning behind the story of the money changers, for example, and these spiritual lessons are what is thought of as being inspired. Not the history, not the science.

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I've enjoyed discussing these questions with you, Anastasia, and I think this quote of yours sums up a good view of the Bible. In this same post, you earlier mentioned how it was not rational to just take the Bible literally, hook, line and sinker. The above quote shows what you think is important. I agree - good ideas are important because they are good.Denying science because it contradicts a literal reading of the Bible doesn't do anyone any good. As you point out, there are useful and correct ideas in there, and we need to find them and evaluate them based on whether or not they are good, not on whether or not they are in the Bible.Have a fun day--Jon

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

Brian wrote:

quote:

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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.

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Here are some examples from the Book of Exodus:

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That's significant, and another point that may be useful for the OP is that in addition to that are the huge number of differences between our ancient texts of just the New Testament as well.As you know, Brian, (but many people don't know, such as perhaps the OP)when they books of the NT were written, people later copied them by hand, then copied them by hand again from the second copy when another copy was needed, then when that 3rd generation copy was taken to another city, someone there copied it by hand, etc,. So all we have are old copies of the copies of the copies of the copies, and we don’t know how many times it was copied before our copies were made.Even our oldest copies of nearly all the books date to a hundred years or more after the books were written, and they all disagree on what the books actually say - as one can expect from hand copying (try it yourself sometime!). In fact, of the over 5,000 manuscripts of parts of the new testament we have, no two of them agree word for word, except for the tiniest fragments. There are more differences between our old copies than there are words in the entire new testament. Of course, most of the differences are spelling errors and similar mistakes, but even a spelling error means that a worm could be different. (oops, I meant word, with a "d").Many people don't realize that our old copies of the books of the Bible (which are what was used to make the Bible we have today) are often like a box of chocolates - you never know what you'll get.Take care-

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

"But Lingua Franca deosn't mean French Language."Well,
it's literal meaning is the language of the Franks.I called it "French Language" in quotes to make my point look better :-)Iasion

Thank you for your kind remarks earlier. I hope you are attempting to draw Neutralmind back into the discussion. I would like to know more about the questions he has from his JW friend. When it comes to contradictions, the biggest ones seem to come directly from the Jehova's Witnesses themselves. They are so bad that they have had to write their own Bibles, which fly in the face of all translations, just to incorporate their philosophies. They will wave away all doubts by saying most people do not read ancient Greek. Any serious bible scholar will know enough Greek to see they are wrong.For example, their translation of John 1 says "the Word was like a god" because they do not believe in Jesus' divinity. (This purposeful deception IMO is worse than blind literalism.) Now, they do not believe in Jesus' divinity because he had a body, which is against another scripture that says "no man has seen Almighty God". Yet, for some strange reason, they also believe Jesus is Michael the archangel! So I guess angels have bodies.Another example of their translation; because they do not believe in transubstantiation, their Bible says "this means my body" and "this cup means my blood".I do not think there is much question about which version of the Bible the JW's use!

The biggest contradiction that I've seen, and one that I've been unable to reconcile, is the disparity between Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9.Acts is reputed to have been written by Luke. And this portion of the book is dedicated to the description of the supernatural event that Paul witnessed while on the road to Damascus. In the ninth chapter, Luke is giving a discourse on what had happened to Paul."the men who journeyed with him (Paul) stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no one."The voice is supposed to be Jesus when He asked Paul why he was persecuting Him. But in the twenty second chapter, it is directly quoting Paul, and Paul gives a conflicting account by saying,"And those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of Him who spoke to me."Naturally, the question that logically follows, is, "well, which is it? Did they see the light but didn't hear the voice, or did they hear the voice but not see the light?"I've heard a plethora of piss-poor, ad hoc answers in order to reconcile this, but so far, I haven't heard of one that is worthy. Now, this may seem like a minor detail, but, this presents a problem for those claiming biblical inerrancy.Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : typos

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Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust, vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. You cannot see Him just now, you cannot fully understand what He's doing, but you know that you know Him." -Oswald Chambers

In all the possible ways that we have seen that contradictions could come about, this could be fairly easy to explain. It may just be a transposition of words by a scribe. We are all guilty of it from time to time. To solve the mystery, though? I know I am treading on thin ice here, but from what you know about other apparitions, which seems more likely? Usually others will see the light, but not here the voices. When Moses went up to Mt Sinai, the mountain smoked and thundered, but no one else heard the voice. In the early 1900's there are reported apparitions which took place at Fatima, Portugal, in which at least 10 thousand people claim to have seem the sun contort and spin, but only 3 heard the voices. It can be said also about Lourdes, where the miraculous spring is a sign to many though there is only one visionary. I know these are extra-biblical visions, but in general it seems that God speaks individually to one messenger at a time.

The death of Goliath according to 1 Sam 17: 23 & 1 Sam 17 : 51 So you think David killed Goliath?
Well not according to 2 Samuel 21: 19: So it was Elhanan after all, or was it?
According to 1 Chronicles 20 : 5 it was Goliath but his brother that Elhanan killed: Sure, it could be a copyist error, but given that the Bible should be considered inerrant and given that the writers and copyists were acting according to the Holy spirit, we can cannot pick and choose what we consider correct and what is incorrect. So we can only come to the conclusion that:Goliath was killed twice on two different occasions, once by David and once by Elhanan
Goliaths brother was also killed by Elhanan.Right? Or perhaps the bible isn’t inerrant at all . ----------How old was Jehoiachin when he began to reign?2 Kings 24 : 8 2 Chronicles 36 : 9 8 or 18 . ----------How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign?2 Kings 8 : 26 2 Chronicles 22 : 2 22 or 42 . ----------Who was Josiah’s successor2 Chronicles 36 : 1 Jeremiah 22 : 11 Jehoahaz or Shallum .

The Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, although there are indications that some concepts were translated from the aremeic.On the other hand, while it is speculated that the GOspel of Matthew was written in Aremeic, many doubt it, because no one every mentions they saw a copy, even the most earlist references to Matthew.

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.

For starters, your explanation is ad hoc, nonetheless, it is appreciated. However, your explanation makes sense only in relation to other alleged supernatural events in human history-- none of which can be corroborated. But this really isn't the central issue. The central issue is that there is contradiction in the text itself. Sure, we're all fallible, but for an inerrantist, this presents a problem because God is supposed to preserve the text in His perfection.I believe the Bible comes from God, and I believe what is contained therein, however, perhaps it is not completely inerrant. Perhaps only the message is inerrant but that it can, and does, contain textual errors.I don't know. This one stumps me.

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Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust, vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. You cannot see Him just now, you cannot fully understand what He's doing, but you know that you know Him." -Oswald Chambers