Part 1

Today we begin a new study, on contradictions, inconsistencies, and errors in the Bible. Don't worry - none of them are important to salvation, most of them are readily explained, and some of them don't even exist. This study will examine some of the types of trivial inconsistencies in the Bible, some of the apparently real contradictions, how to think about them, and why they aren't important to God's plan of salvation.

My husband, a retired pastor, says that in seminary a professor gave a list of ten contradictions in the Bible. In planning this study, I was amused to find web pages with "101 Clear Contradictions," "Top 20 Most Damning Bible Contradictions," "over 700 inconsistencies," "113 'Contradictions'," and lists of 56 and 1000 contradictions, not to mention websites arguing point by point that other websites are wrong about the contradictions. (Please don't look for these websites. It just drives up their statistics and makes it more likely that some other person will find them and be misled.)

Especially in the longer lists, items are apparently included just because they caught the writer's eye - no inconsistency is even suggested, so the title of the list is inconsistent with its content. I didn't look at every so-called contradiction and inconsistency, because I got irritated at how many people who obviously cannot read can nevertheless create a website. We'll start with some numerical contradictions, because most of them are easy to explain. The readings will be short, because, math.

One thing I noticed in preparing this week's emails is that not all the inconsistencies appear in all modern translations. Sometimes the translators "fix" the text when the facts are obvious. In contrast, both the old King James Version and the new World English Bible (WEB) accurately reflect the Hebrew in saying in Kings that Ahaziah son of Jehoram was 22 when he began to reign, and also in Chronicles that he was 42. Which was it? Further reading shows us that his dad, Jehoram, only lived to be 40; he was 32 years old when he came to the throne and reigned 8 years. Unless Ahaziah was born when Jehoram was minus-two years old, Ahaziah was 22, not 42, when he came to the throne. This would make Jehoram around 18 when his first son, Ahaziah, was born, and that's perfectly feasible. So this is simply a copyist error, and only the people who get excited about it are the ones who fail to read the entire text.

I promise you the study tips will get shorter.

2 Kings 24:6-12 vs. 2 Kings 23:36-37, 2 Chronicles 36:9-11 (Copyist error, Failure to read the whole text, Rounding or approximation) (01/21/25)

I recently read a novel in which the heroine, a bookbinder, removes the cover of an old book from the text block (the "pages," for us non-bookbinders) on p. 150. A few minutes later, on p. 151, she spreads the book face down to study the cover, which appears to be a contradiction. A few days later, on p. 255, she removes the cover from the text block again, which is clearly a contradiction. Was it important to the plot? No. This novel was written by one person, probably over the course of a year or so. The Bible was written by more than 40 people over the course of about 1500 years. Not surprisingly, it contains some repetitive material, some apparent contradictions, and a very few clear contradictions. Are any of them important to God's plan of salvation? No. Does the Bible contain a clear, consistent message about salvation? Yes.

Some people - apparently some very anal-retentive people, if I can say that in a Bible study - consider it a contradiction that Kings says Jehoiachin reigned for three months, whereas Chronicles says that he reigned for three months and ten days. Oh, please, people. You've never heard of rounding? You've never heard of approximation? You've never been an ordinary person who said your kitchen remodel took three months when it actually took three months and ten days? Give me a break.

The question of whether he was eight years old or eighteen years old is more problematic, although no more important. He was (briefly) king toward the very end of the kingdom of Judah, when it was a vassal state first to Egypt (2 Kings 23:33) and later to Babylon (2 Kings 24:1). This seems to be the time line:

Josiah (a good and devout king), age 8 when he came to the throne, reigned 31 years (2 Kings 22:1), died age 39 at the hands of Pharaoh Neco (2 Kings 23:29).
Jehoahaz son of Josiah (an evil king), age 23 when he came to the throne, reigned 3 months, at which time Pharaoh Neco took him captive and replaced him with his brother Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:33).
Jehoiakim, born Eliakim, also son of Josiah and also an evil king, was put on the throne by Pharaoh Neco (2 King 23:34) at the age of 25, and he reigned for 11 years, dying at the age of 36. (I guess he was a more obedient vassal.) Apparently for the last three years he was the vassal of Babylon, who had defeated the Egyptians (2 Kings 24:1).
Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, was either 18 (2 Kings 24:8) or 8 (2 Chronicles 36:9) when he came to the throne and reigned for the aforementioned 3 months or 3 months and 10 days; he died in captivity several decades later (2 Kings 25:27).
Zedekiah, Jehoiachin's uncle and a third son of Josiah, was put on the throne at age 21 by the Babylonians (2 Kings 24:18), rebelled, and was taken captive and blinded (2 Kings 25:6-7). Jerusalem and the temple were razed and the walls destroyed.

Eighteen is supported by the Greek OT (the Septuagint, or LXX), which has 18 in both places. The Septuagint predates our current version of the Hebrew OT text by about a thousand years. So either the LXX corrected the original Hebrew text, or the original Hebrew had the right number and the basis for the current Hebrew text (the Masoretic text) somehow picked up a copyist error in the intervening 1000 years. One thing I think we can agree on is that the current Hebrew text, which has both 8 and 18, has a simple mistake, and that mistake would have been easy to make in a thousand years of copying by hand. (By the way, I'm willing to accept that the MT doesn't have many new copyist errors, if any at all. You wouldn't believe how carefully the copies are made, still by hand.)

So what's our takeaway here? That the final years of the kingdom of Judah were incredibly turbulent, ruled by evil, rebellious, short-lived, short-reigning kings who were vassals to Egypt or Babylon. Ten years one way or the other isn't important to the plot.

I've got to write shorter study tips.

1 Kings 7:23-26 vs. 2 Chronicles 4:1-5 (01/22/25)

Have you ever reversed digits in a phone number? Have you estimated, rounded, exaggerated, or low-balled a number? Have you incorrectly copied a number?

You've probably done all of these, and so did the biblical writers and copyists. Fortunately, salvation doesn't depend on numbers.

Possibly one of these simple explanations accounts for the difference between the reports of Kings and Chronicles for the amount of water in the sea of the temple, which was a huge wash basin used by the priests. We could be seeing a copyist error, an exaggeration, or an estimate. But take a close look at 1 Kings 7:26 and 2 Chronicles 4:5. The writers also might be recording two different numbers: the amount of water the sea normally held, 2,000 baths, and the amount it could hold when filled to the brim, 3,000 baths. (Isn't this exactly the way we might record how big a container is vs. how much water we put into it?)

We'll never know, because when the Babylonians came in later and razed Jerusalem, they broke the sea into pieces and took the bronze back to Babylon with them (2 Kings 25:13). This well-documented looting is probably why we don't have a movie called Raiders of the Lost Sea. (Or, since the sea is circular, Raiders of the Lost Arc MWAHAHahahahaha!)

Back to the Sea: This just in from fellow reader Steven D. "The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Since the book of Kings and book of Chronicles were written around 100 years or so apart, the length of the cubit may have varied between the two authors. ... Using the modern-day standard of ... 1.75 ft, the result makes sense to me. My calculation of the volume of a cylinder which has a radius of 5 cubits ... and a height of 5 cubits results in a total liquid volume of 15,743 gallons. Dividing this by 5.75 gallons, ... 1 Bath, it would hold a maximum 2,737 Baths if we were to write the passage today. It comes down to whose standard or forearm you are using for the length of a cubit. Mine, King Solomon's or Indiana Jones's. No matter which one you pick you will most likely be between 2,000-3,000 Baths. And that said, even my math might be a bit off."

Response: Good points all, and we'll talk more about this in a couple weeks when we get to pi.

1 Kings 4:26 vs. 2 Chronicles 9:25-31 (Copyist error) (01/23/25)

One of the famous contradictions in the Bible concerns the number of King Solomon's horses. A great deal of ink and electrons have been expended trying to reconcile, explain away, or "correct" the difference between the 4,000 horses in Chronicles and the 40,000 horses in Kings. Some people think Kings has a scribal error, which would be pretty easy to make, since four and forty look even more alike in Hebrew than they do in English. Some people think the difference lies in whether we're talking about "stalls for horses and chariots" or "stalls of horses for his chariots," although I find that argument a little arcane. Some people think that 40,000 horses is just too many. There seems to be no consensus, so I think we have to accept that this is one of the genuine contradictions.

If one of the two books were going to inflate Solomon's wealth, I'd expect it to be Chronicles, and Newmarket, in England, is one of the world's great horse-breeding centers and "home to more than 3,500 horses," according to Wikipedia. Overall, I'm inclined to go with 4,000 houses and the idea of a scribal error in Kings, but if you like 40,000, I'm certainly not going to argue with you. If you think these numbers matter to salvation, I certainly will argue with you!

As an aside, I saw one website that considered it to be a "contradiction" that we don't have copies of the history of Nathan, the prophecy of Ahijah, the visions of Iddo, and so on.

Contradiction with what? There are thousands of relatively modern books for which we do not have a single extant copy, but they are still listed in library catalogs. Rare books are inclined to disappear completely. Get a grip.

By the way, this study on contradictions was suggested a couple of years ago by fellow reader Nancy S. If you like it, she gets the credit; if you don't, I get the blame. If you have a topic you'd like to see discussed, send it along. I may get to it in a couple of years.

Mark 16:1-6 vs. Matthew 28:1-5 vs. Luke 23:55-24:5 vs. John 20:11-13 (01/24/25)

Let's say that you're out picking up your paper from the driveway, and two young men and a young woman stop their car and ask you for directions to Wal-Mart. Only the driver speaks to you. You go back into the house, and your spouse asks, just out of curiosity, "What took you so long?" At that point, several answers are possible:

"A guy stopped and asked for directions. Nice car!"
"Some people needed directions to Wall-Mart."
"Some kids were asking for directions. I think there were three of them, but I didn't really pay attention."
"Oh, some kids were apparently arguing among themselves about how to get to the shopping center, so they decided to ask me."

Question for thought: Are these contradictory answers?

I would say no, but the folks who are looking for contradictions in the Bible would say yes. Only one mentions the car! Inconsistency! One says "a guy" spoke, and another says "some kids" spoke. Contradiction! It isn't 'Wall-Mart'! Error! You get the picture, and I want you to keep this picture firmly in mind as you read the reports about the women and the angels at the tomb. Eye-witness reports nearly always vary, even when there's only one eye witness.

Inconsistencies in Names

2 Kings 15:1-7 vs. 2 Chronicles 26:1-4, 16-19 (Possible use of a birth name and a throne name or two different spellings) (01/27/25)

Have you or your spouse ever changed your name? Do you have a nickname, or one name at home and another at work? Especially in Kings and Chronicles, many biblical personages have more than one name, and often two have the same name.

I once read a commentary that was concerned about why the John Doe (I forget who it actually was) who lived in the time of the prophets was also recorded as living in the time of the judges. My immediate reaction was, "You never met two different guys with the same name?" If you're puzzled by a case that looks like this, just go with the easy, obvious solution - two different people - and you'll almost always be correct.

Figuring out that two different names refer to the same person can be a bit trickier. It's pretty clear that King Azariah son of Amaziah is the same person as King Uzziah son of Amaziah, because the details in the stories in Kings and Chronicles are the same. Why? That's less clear. One of them could be a throne name - do you remember when the press was speculating about whether King Charles III would keep the name Charles or change it to something else? His grandfather, George VI, was born Prince Albert, and "George" was his throne name. We could be seeing that here with Azariah/Uzziah. Another possibility is an early copyist error, because in Hebrew the two names are only one letter different, like John and Jon.

Remember that only one name is critical to salvation, so once we figure out who's who, we don't have to worry about name changes.

2 Kings 3:1-3 vs. 2 Kings 8:16-19, but see 2 Kings 1:17; 2 Kings 22:50; Matthew 1:8 (Possible use of a birth name and a throne name or nickname) (01/28/25)

If you've ever tried to read Kings without CliffsNotes, I suspect that you got really confused. In the first place, the text keeps skipping back and forth between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, without useful transitions like, "Meantime, back in Judah..." and with transitions like "in the 18th year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah," which would be a lot more helpful to me if I had a calendar. Grumble grumble.

In the second place, the two royal families were often related by blood or marriage, and they gave their kids the same names, compounding the problem we saw yesterday of people having two different names. To make Today's readings perfectly clear,

Jehoram son of Ahab is Joram son of Ahab.
Jehoram son of Ahab is not Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat.
Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat is Joram son of Jehoshaphat.
Joram son of Jehoshaphat is not Joram son of Ahab.

Got it? Good. We're seeing the same name for two different people and two different names for each of them, which is made clear by reading the whole text. We could be seeing throne names, nicknames, or, in the case of Matthew, a difference in the name as a result of translation first into Greek and then into English.

Matthew 9:9-13 vs. Mark 2:14-17; Matthew 10:2-4 vs. John 1:45-51, 21:1-2 (Changing names, Failure to read the entire text) (01/29/25)

Jesus had many, many disciples, who are people who study and follow his teachings. You and I, for example, are his disciples. "Disciple" means "student." He chose from his many disciples twelve apostles to send out with his message. "Apostle" means "one who is sent." All that is clear. A little bit less clear is the list of names of the twelve apostles.

There's no question that (1) Levi the tax collector who gave a party for Jesus right after he was called is Matthew the tax collector who gave a party for Jesus right after he was called. There's no question that (2) Simon the brother of (3) Andrew is Peter or Cephus, often called Simon Peter. Both "Peter" and "Cephus" mean "rock." (4) Thomas was also called "Didymus," which means "twin," so presumably he was a twin.

Several of the others - (5) Philip, (6) James the son of Alphaeus, (7) Judas Iscariot, and (8) James the brother of John, - are consistently called by those names, as far as I know. When named, (9) John the brother of James is always called John, but there's pretty widespread scholarly agreement that "the disciple Jesus loved" in the Gospel of John is John himself. James and John are also called collectively the Sons of Zebedee and the Sons of Thunder. (10) Simon the Canaanite is also called Simon the Zealot.

That leaves us with two disciples who are confusing. (11) Thaddeus, also called Lebbaeus (which I never remember), is probably the same as Judas son of James, and (12) Bartholomew is probably Nathaniel. And then of course there's (7a) Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot.

I want to think about Matthias for a minute. Acts 1:21-23 tells us that there were more people who had been with Jesus all the time from the very beginning. That, along with the Jews' penchant for always having twelve of everything, no matter what's included or how it's counted (e.g., the tribes, as we'll see in several weeks) makes me wonder fleetingly whether Thaddeus, Judas son of James, Bartholomew, and Nathaniel might actually have been three or four different guys. I've never seen this suggested by anybody, so you can ignore it. But I do think that it doesn't pay to be too dogmatic about interpreting some of the things we read in the Bible, and that you shouldn't ignore.

Deuteronomy 23:17; Luke 1:5-6; 1 Kings 15:11, 22:50; 2 Kings 14:3, 15:38, 16:2, 20:5; Matthew 12:22-23, 15:21-28 (01/30/25)

"Sons" and "daughters" can be generations apart from their "fathers" or "mothers." Son or daughter of X can mean any one of three things:

The actual child of X,
The descendant of X, or
A person with the characteristics of X.

In these readings, we see the second of these. By the time Moses delivered the Law, Jacob a.k.a. Israel was about 400 years in the grave, and by the first century, Aaron was another millennium or so dead. "Daughter/son of Israel" and "daughters of Aaron" are descendants of Israel and Aaron. David is called the father of a number of kings of Israel, both good and bad, which means that he was their ancestor, not their parent. We are, of course, accustomed to hearing Jesus called "the son of David," which by his time was a Messianic title.

By the way, when the disciples ask Jesus to "send her away," it isn't the ordinary word for send. I seem to recall reading in a commentary that in this context the word means more like "give her what she wants so she'll go away." That would actually make Jesus' response make a lot more sense.

Differently languages and cultures use words differently. Our goal is to understand what the writer intended, and not to leap to the conclusion that there's a contradiction or error.

Hosea 1:1-3; 1 Samuel 2:12; John 17:12; Luke 23:26-28, 13:10-17 (01/31/25)

Sons and daughters can also be figurative, although I guess, strictly speaking, it's the parent that is figurative. Unless X is a person, "son/daughter of X" means "a person with the characteristics of X."

A couple weeks ago in Sunday school we were discussing John 17:12, where the translation we're currently using says that Judas "was doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled." Class debate was revolving around the idea that this was pretty hard cheese for Judas, but he had to betray Jesus, didn't he? Or did he? "Doomed to destruction" didn't sound right to me, so while the discussion was going on, I looked at the Greek, which says that not one was lost except "the son of destruction," and I exclaimed, "Ooo! Bad translation!" Judas was not doomed to destruction, he was a person who was destructive. Huge practical and theological difference.

When God tells Hosea to take a "wife of prostitution," it means just what the Webster Common Version says, "a wife addicted to" prostitution. I also like that Webster used the same word three times where the Hebrew used the same word three times.

Sometimes the characteristic is taken as a name; "Belial" means wicked or evil. Clearly these are Eli's sons, so "sons of Belial" can't mean that a man named Belial was their father; read carefully, folks. The "daughters of Jerusalem" are women who live in Jerusalem.

The daughter of Abraham is left over from yesterday; she's a distant descendant of Abraham. I could take her out of here, but I happen to like this passage, so just humor me and read it.

Scientific "Errors"

Genesis 1:1-19 vs. light, plants, sun (Failure to understand the author's purpose) (02/03/25)

The Bible is a book of theology, not science. Just as we wouldn't look in a physics book for answers about God, we shouldn't look in the Bible for answers about physics. I've heard the objection that the story of creation is in error because the day and the plants appear before the sun. True, O Objector, but you haven't taken into account the purpose of the writer, because that wasn't the question. The question was, "Who made all this stuff, and what is the nature of it?" and not "How was this stuff made?"

The answer is "God made it, and it is good." If the question had been "how?" we would have gotten a lot more technical detail. No doubt that technical answer would have been "wrong" by today's standards, but the debate isn't between Genesis and Steven Hawking's idea about the origin of the universe. Instead, it's between God's people and the peoples of various other gods, who thought, for example, that the sun was a god. No, it is a made thing. No technical question is being asked here, but rather the theological question of "Who's responsible for all this stuff, really, and what is its nature?" The answer is "Our God, Elohim, made it all, and it is good." An answer to theological Question A can't very well be the wrong answer to technical Question B.

1 Kings 7:13-24 vs. pi (02/04/25)

STEM Majors: Watch this short video from Don McMillan and then skip to the scripture.

For Everybody Else: Do you eat pie on March 14? Or are you a real purist, who eats pie on March 14 at 1:59? The digits in the real value of pi go on - literally! - forever. They never stop. They never repeat. Every number you've ever seen for the value of pi - usually 3.14, but often 3.14159 - is rounded (or just truncated, but let's not get into the weeds). Nevertheless, some people accuse the Bible of unscientific inaccuracy for suggesting that pi is 3 instead of rounding it to 3.14159265358979324.

Other people, for the past couple thousand years (rounded to the nearest millennium), have spilled a great deal of ink trying to explain why the numbers three and ten for the diameter and circumference of the sea in the temple are actually accurate, mostly taking into account the thickness (four fingers) of the basin.

What's hilarious to me is that apparently none of these folks have ever noticed that the measurements are in cubits, which in this household of two people is either 17.6 or 18.0 inches. HAHahahahahaha!

Three and ten are rounded numbers. Just move on. They also happen to be numbers of mystical significance, and that could be in play here as well.

Leviticus 11:13-19, Deuteronomy 14:12-18, Isaiah 2:20 vs. biology (Problem existing only in translation) (02/05/25)

We should never rely on a translation to conclude that the Hebrews thought bats were birds. A lot of nay-sayers about the Bible get upset that "bats" are listed among the birds, when we all "know" that bats are mammals. Let me just say a couple of things about bats.

First, I'm giving you all three of the occurrences of a very rare Hebrew word, atallafe, often translated as "bat." A few translators noticed that it's in a list of things with wings, decided that things with wings are birds, and translated it "swallow." We do not know what this word means, so to accuse the Bible of inaccuracy on the basis of its translation is just dumb.

Second, I have a Ph.D. in geology, and I did my graduate work in paleontology. I have more hours in biology than in geology. When I was in grad school, we relied on common traits of modern animals and on common structures in fossils to classify animals. That was then, this is now. Now, many new fossils have been discovered, so scholars are redoing the structural classifications. DNA studies have come a long way, so they're also using DNA. Now we all "know" that birds are dinosaurs. The birds haven't changed; only our classification system has changed.

So what I see in this text isn't a list of "birds" or even "dinosaurs." It's a list of "flying animals that eat other animals or bugs." Under that classification scheme, which is a perfectly valid one, our mammalian bats would belong in it. And if it really means "swallow or some other bitty dinosaur that also eats animals or bugs and which the translators haven't even yet thought of," it still belongs in the list.

What doesn't belong in any list of scientific errors in the Bible is the translation of the Hebrew word atallafe.

Mark 4:1-9, 26-33 (Metaphor, figure of speech, parable, idiom, etc., clearly not intended to be taken literally; Exaggeration for effect) (02/06/25)

Often both the objectors and the apologists for some "factual error" completely miss the point. The objector says, "The mustard seed isn't the smallest, and it doesn't grow into a tree." The apologist answers, "It's the smallest one they knew about, and it gets pretty big." Then they go back and forth about sizes and what plants the hearers might have known or grown. If they're really committed, they might argue about growing conditions and mustard varieties.

Pleeease, people! It's a parable, told along with other parables about seeds. A parable isn't a science lesson; it's a short, memorable story with a theological point. The point of the Parable of the Mustard Seed is that little things can grow into big things. Whether mustard is the actual smallest seed or biggest tree is irrelevant.

Did the original listeners say to each other, "Well, I don't know. My mint crop was really stunted last year, and I think maybe the seeds were smaller than Fred's mustard seeds"? Or maybe one said, "Nah, my apple trees are always bigger than my mustard bushes," and another answered him, "Well, apple seeds are way bigger than mustard seeds."

They did not. They thought, "Yeah, he's right. For such a small seed, it grows into a pretty big bush. I see what he's saying about the kingdom of heaven." Stay focused on the seeds as a symbol of growth, and you won't get lost in the weeds.

James 4:13-5:5; Matthew 6:19-21 vs. rust (Problems existing only in translation; Metaphor, figure of speech, parable, idiom, etc., clearly not intended to be taken literally) (02/07/25)

One of the "errors" in the Bible is that gold "rusts." There are a couple of problems with this objection. The first one is that some of the Greek words being translated only occur once in the Bible, so the translator takes a guess from context, or maybe from related words. Like I might say that I am a Legophiliac, a word I can't find on Google,* and you would immediately know that I love Lego. A word we used to use in environmental discussions was methyl-ethyl-badstuff, which you can see was a generic word for complicated and dangerous chemicals. Somebody actually tried to trademark this word in 2006-2008. For what? I'm fascinated! So context can be a really good guide to meaning, although it doesn't necessarily tell you everything you'd like to know.

For example, sepo/corrupted occurs only in James 5:2 in the NT; in the Greek OT all six occurrences have something to do with sores or wounds on the human body. Katioo/corroded occurs only once, in James 5:3, but it's derived from the next word, ios/rust, which appears to be more typically associated with poisons. Brosis means eating, derived from a word for food, but in English we don't eat treasures,** so the translators often go with rust. The important thing is that for words that are rare or used in an unusual way, the translators have to look at the context and say, "What English words brings out the meaning of the original text?"

Of course, the more serious problem is that the objectors can't recognize a metaphor when they see one. If you look at the overall context for the rusting or corroding gold, it is that your wealth is eventually going to be gone. It is as if your gold will rot or rust away. You know you're going to be having a bad day when even your so-called incorruptible gold rusts! That's what it's going to be like for you if you don't use your wealth properly. Weep and mourn, O ye wealthy misers! And try to read in context, O ye biblical objectors!

* I did find Legophilia, however, which you could use to figure out the meaning if it weren't obvious at first sight.

** Except for fine chocolates.

More Contradictions in the Bible?
Contradictions in the Bible? - Part 2
Contradictions in the Bible? - Part 3

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Part 1

Contradictions in the Bible?

Numerical Inconsistencies 2 King 8:25-26 vs. 2 Chronicles 22:1-2; see 2 Kings 8:16-17, 2 Chronicles 21:4-5 (Copyist error, Failure to read the whole text) (01/20/25)