Part 2

We love sound bites, mostly because a sound bite is about the right size to remember. One of the very few things I can say in Hebrew is shenayim shenayim ba-u al Noach (Genesis 7:9a), which means, "two by two they came to Noah." Every picture you see of Noah's Ark (and there are millions of them) has pairs of animals - one pair of each kind of animals - marching into the ark in an orderly line. Those pictures and my sound bite are consistent with Genesis 6:19-20.

Unfortunately, they seem to be inconsistent with Genesis 7:2-3, which says there are seven pairs of clean animals. Fortunately, many seeming difficulties are cleared up just by overcoming our love for sound bites and reading a few more verses or chapters. Noah took one pair of every unclean species, seven pairs of all birds, and seven pairs of every clean species. Birds have a pretty high mortality rate on their own, and there had to be some clean animals for sacrifice (8:20). One pair of these wouldn't have done the job. Then, all the animals came into the ark two by two: one pair of unclean animals, and seven pairs of the birds and the clean animals.

One pair unclean; seven pairs clean. It says that! We have to read more than sound bites.

John 1:35-43 vs. Matthew 4:12-22 (02/11/25)

For a long time, I thought (as many people do, I suspect) that there are two accounts of how Jesus got his disciples, not to mention that it's pretty strange that when Jesus walks along the shore and calls for Peter, Andrew, James, and John to follow him, they instantly drop everything and follow him. I was guilty (as many people are, I suspect) of not reading the whole story. Then I read a commentary that pointed out an important bit about the sequence of events, which I had missed.

When you read the book of John, you see that Andrew and another disciple (who pretty much everybody agrees was John himself) were originally the disciples of John the Baptist. When John B. identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God, those two disciples go after Jesus and spend that day with him. John the Baptist is still free and preaching. There is no suggestion in the book of John that his disciples left him for Jesus at that time. After John B. is arrested, Jesus withdraws to Galilee, and there he calls Peter, Andrew, James, and John to be his own disciples (see Matthew 4:12, 18-22; Mark 1:14; Luke 4:14, 5:10-11).

Andrew, Peter, and (probably) John met Jesus by the Jordan while John the Baptist free. They became his disciples later, in Galilee, after John the Baptist was arrested. Three things led to my prior confusion: failure to read the whole text, not noticing that writers are talking about two completely different occasions, and not understanding that Mark, Matthew, and Luke mostly talk about what happened in Galilee, and John mostly talks about what happened in Judea.

Romans 7:19-20 vs. Romans 7:7-8:2 (02/12/25)

Here's another example of a text that's often misunderstood because we fail to read the entire context and don't take the author's purpose into account. You know our rule: always read at least 10 verses before and after a verse of interest. With Paul, we often have to amend that rule to "two chapters before and after."

Paul is often quoted as saying, "For the good which I desire, I don't do; but the evil which I don't desire, that I practice." When we say this, the unspoken subtext is, "If Paul can't do good and avoid evil, how can I be expected to?" Well, (a) just because Paul can't doesn't mean you can't, and (b) that isn't what he's saying at all.

In this passage, which John Wesley notes is a digression from Paul's main argument about the inability of the law to save us, Paul takes on the persona of an unsaved man. He is not speaking about himself. Paul, in his own person after the road to Damascus, would never in a million years say, "What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?" Paul is not wretched; Paul has been delivered by Jesus Christ, which he says in vss. 7:25a and 8:2: "I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!... For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death."

I think Paul's purpose in taking on the persona of the unsaved man is to make us feel the man's problem in our hearts, and not just understand with our minds. In that he succeeds, since we seem always to identify with the inability to do good and not sin. Instead we should identify with Paul, because we too are not wretched: we have been delivered by Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5:22 vs. Ephesians 5:21-27, 6:1, 4, 5, 9; Colossians 3:18-22, 4:1; 1 Peter 2:13-18, 3:1-2, 3:7 (02/13/25)

Failure to read the complete context can give rise to misunderstandings that extend far beyond puzzled discussions in Sunday school. One that has caused a lot of societal trouble (at least, in my opinion) is taking "Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord" out of its context. Somebody quotes this verse, and the conversation runs through women's place in the home, women's right to vote, and - worst of all - the applicability of the Bible to modern society. We can't even argue that, oh, that's just bachelor Paul speaking, because Peter says the same thing. This apparent contradiction isn't so much between two parts of the Bible as between the Bible and an egalitarian society.

But let's read before and after. My goodness! Husbands have to love their wives "as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it." (By the way, I don't ever remember hearing anybody quote that verse.) Since Christ died for the Church, it's not clear to me that husbands are getting the better deal here. Children should obey their parents, but parents shouldn't make unreasonable demands. Workers should do as they are told, but foremen should remember that they report to the same boss.

In short, everybody should submit to everybody (Ephesians 5:21), and this point is completely lost when we cherry pick the one verse we want to use in a particular situation. Peter explains why this mutual honor is necessary when he says, "by well-doing you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God."

Reader Comment: This just in from fellow reader Terri L. on Ephesians 5:25: "Actually, someone did quote that verse at least once. This is a clip from The West Wing, where the characters make the point (eventually - hang in there) that the point of the entire scripture is that we should be subject to each other."

John 17:9 vs. John 17:6-23 (02/14/25)

Here's another problem that results completely from failure to read the entire text. I have heard, or maybe read, whining that Jesus prays only for his remaining 11 disciples at the Last Supper. Yes, he prays for them: that they have learned what he taught them and that the Father will support and strengthen them in taking those lessons to a wider audience. Then Jesus prays that the people they take the message to "will believe in me through their word." Jesus prays for his disciples and the world. The only time there's an inconsistency between his message here and his message anywhere else arises when we fail to read the entire message!

"Contradictions" resulting from different author's purposes

2 Samuel 12:1-14 vs. 1 Chronicles 11:26... 41 (02/17/25)

The Bible was written by more than 40 people, and they often had different purposes, which we need to keep in mind as we read. Samuel and Kings present the political history of Judah and Israel, with consideration given to how obedience or lack of obedience to God's law affects history. Fellow reader Jack N. says that Chronicles, on the other hand, is pure propaganda, and he's got a point, because Chronicles emphasizes the glories of the Davidic dynasty and the temple almost to the exclusion of everything else. Where the two accounts cover the same material, Chronicles is typically a verbatim copy of Samuel and Kings (except for the horses we read about previously. Where they differ, it's a result of the differing purposes of the writers.

The book of Samuel makes no secret of David's adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of her husband, Uriah. God sends Nathan to reprimand David and predict that his sin - even though he repents - will lead to terrible consequences within his own household. These consequences indeed come to pass: David's oldest son, Amnon, rapes his half-sister Tamar. Absalom, her full brother, murders Amnon, rebels against David and drives him from Jerusalem, and rapes David's concubines on the roof of the palace. (Remember, Bible study ain't for sissies.)

Chronicles will have no part of David as a sinner, so Bathsheba is never mentioned, and Uriah is only listed as one of David's mighty men. The events surrounding the three children most prominent in the fulfillment of Nathan's prophecy, Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom, are notably absent in Chronicles.

What we have here isn't, strictly speaking, a contradiction in the text, because Chronicles doesn't say the seduction of Bathsheba, the rape of Tamar, the murders of Uriah and Amnon, and the rebellion of Absalom didn't happen - it just doesn't say anything whatsoever about them. I suppose we'd be justified in saying that Chronicle's picture of David contradicts the more-complete history we get in Samuel.

2 Kings 23:1-12 vs. 2 Chronicles 34:1-7 (02/18/25)

If King Josiah had been born and carried out his reforms a few generations earlier, we might have seen a much different history of the kingdom of Judah. As it was, his reforms - which were substantial and gained him high marks from the writer of Kings (2 Kings 23:25) - came too late to save the nation from destruction (23:26), especially since his descendants went back to the old, bad ways of his father and grandfather.

Both Kings and Chronicles tell about his reforms, but pay attention to one important difference. In Kings, we see Josiah purge not only Jerusalem and the countryside, but also the temple, which had become a center for idolatry, and even the priesthood. In Chronicles, no purge of the temple or priesthood is mentioned. God forbid there had ever been idols in the temple to purge! The purpose of Chronicles appears to be to glorify the Davidic dynasty and the temple and its workers, so the mud is omitted. The purpose of Samuel and Kings is to present an abbreviated history of both Judah and the northern kingdom, Israel, and to assess how each king's faithfulness to God or lack thereof affected history.

Again, this isn't an explicit contradiction in the text so much as a profound difference in the purposes of the two writers.

2 Kings 23:21-23 vs. 2 Chronicles 35:1-19 (02/19/25)

After King Josiah completed his reforms, he commanded the people to keep the Passover - for the first time in a long time - in accordance with the book of the covenant that was found in the temple while it was being repaired. (Scholars think this book was either the five books of Moses or just Deuteronomy.) This Passover is reported in three verses in Kings, but as we would expect for an event involving the priesthood, Chronicles gives it nineteen verses. Not a contradiction, but boy, is it ever a difference in emphasis that results from the writers' different purposes!

Vs. 22 is one of the fairly rare mentions in Chronicles of the northern kingdom, Israel.

John 2:11-22 vs. Matthew 21:9-13, Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-48 (Different persons or things, or different aspects of the same thing; Failure to understand the author's purpose) (02/20/25)

We've seen that the writers of Samuel/Kings and Chronicles each had their own purpose, which led to quite different material in some places. In the New Testament, each Gospel writer also had his own purpose. Mark got the outline down on paper.* As far as I know, he had to invent the gospel genre, and his text is long on action and short on discussion. Matthew and Luke incorporated something like 97% of Mark between them, but each one added his own unique material, including many parables and sermons. Matthew concentrates on material that demonstrates Jesus to be the rightful descendant of David and the Messiah. Luke includes much material on Jesus' interactions with Gentiles and women. John, writing later, filled in some gaps, particularly for the Judean ministry, and talked about what it all meant. Each writer also had his own audience in mind. Matthew wrote mainly for Jews, Mark and Luke mainly for Gentiles, and John, as near as I can tell, for the universe. Another thing to remember is that not everything Jesus said or did got reported (John 21:25). I once counted all the days (don't ask), and as I recall, I came up with 110 distinct days out of a three-year ministry.

When we see (or don't see) something in the Gospels that seems out of sync with one or more of the others, we need to ask ourselves a few questions before deciding that there's a contradiction:

Could the writers be reporting two similar events?
Could the writers be explaining the same event differently, either for different audiences or because different details struck them as interesting or important?
Could one writer be talking about something that the others didn't want to include or maybe didn't even know about?

Only when we're clearly looking at the same event is it even possible that the writers contradict each other.

One famous "contradiction" is the date of the cleansing of the temple, but I say, pooh pooh. John describes a cleansing near the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, on one of the trips to Jerusalem that the Synoptics don't talk about.** There's a whip, but no crowd. There's an argument with the folks in charge about why he's doing this, including the famous comment about destroying the temple (of his body) and the response about how long it took to build the temple (of Herod). Mark, Matthew, and Luke describe a second cleansing, near the very end of Jesus' ministry. There's no whip, but there is a crowd, a completely different discussion with the folks in charge. There's no contradiction that I can see.

Comments will be shorter tomorrow and Friday!

* Probably parchment or papyrus, but you know what I mean.

** The Synoptics do not record any trip Jesus made to Jerusalem between the time he was 12 and Holy Week, but see Matthew 23:37-39 and Luke 13:34-35.

Ephesians 2:1-10 vs. James 2:14-26 (02/21/25)

Paul and James don't disagree. Not only do they have different purposes and audiences in mind, they are talking about two different things. No contradiction is even possible.

Paul says, "by grace you are saved through faith," but we are "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them." We are saved through faith for works. Works won't save you, Paul says, but they are not optional once you have been saved.

James goes a little farther. He says that saving faith and works are inseparable. He gives a little analogy in vss. 15-16: I can say "be warm, be fed," but if I don't do anything about it, the one I'm speaking to stays cold and hungry. In the same way, I can say I have faith, but if I don't have anything to show for it, it's not a living faith, and dead faith cannot save. In James's view, works aren't what saved you, they are the sign that you have been saved by a living faith.

Here's how John Wesley explains it:

And yet there is no contradiction between the apostles: because, They do not speak of the same faith: St. Paul speaking of living faith; St. James here, of dead faith. They do not speak of the same works: St. Paul speaking of works antecedent to faith; St. James, of works subsequent to it.

By the way, we should never judge someone else's salvation status by works. For some people, getting up in the morning is a tremendous work of faith. For others, scattering millions of dollars on charities doesn't really cost them anything. We need to look at our own faith and works, and let God look after our neighbor's.

"Errors" and misunderstandings resulting from linguistic differences, especially in translation

Deuteronomy 32:23-24, 32:32-33; Job 20:16; Psalms 58:3-5, 140:1-3; Isaiah 51:22 (02/24/25)

A reader once wrote to me to explain indignantly that the translation I had used was in error because the serpents in the wilderness (Numbers 21:6) were not poisonous, they were venomous. Well, in English, strictly speaking, yeah - poison is ingested,* venom is injected by a bite - although just about everybody I know talks about poisonous snakes.

There are two problems. The second problem is that we human beings don't always speak strictly. But the first problem is that most words have no exact equivalent in another language. Some translators use poison, and some use venom. Maybe they should go with "toxin"? But then what do they do when the Hebrew has two words, and each is used for both toxins ingested and toxins injected? Notice that in the Hebrew, rosh and chemah are both used for things ingested and for things injected. As my Greek teacher said, sometimes you call a taxi, and sometimes you hail a cab.

I'm not telling you not to trust your translation. I'm telling you to read more than one, from unrelated families, and ask yourself why they differ. If it's a case of poison vs. venom - does it matter? You die.** The point is that translation is a tricky business, and before you decide there's an error or inconsistency, you should make sure that the problem didn't arise from reading in English.

* Or inhaled or absorbed, fine. Don't bother writing me indignant emails about this.

* If it's a case of understand vs. overcome, as in John 1:5, maybe it's a pun, which it is, and the translator should have said "grasp."

Numbers 12:1-9; Matthew 11:28-30, Matthew 5:1-5 (02/25/25)

As we've seen before, translating rare words is especially difficult, and English changes. The Greek word praus or (praos) occurs 18 times altogether in the NT and Greek OT, which is unusual, although not really rare. A lot of newer translations use gentle or humble, but you probably know it better as meek. Today, one definition of "meek" is "easily imposed on; submissive," and I think this tends to be the definition we think of when it's applied to a living person. I could be wrong, but if I am, why is there a joke that the meek will inherit a piece of the earth that measures 6 x 3 x 6 feet? An older meaning is "showing patience and humility; gentle."

Applying praus to an individual is rare. Only Jesus and Moses are described as "meek" - and only once each.* It's a little hard to imagine either one of them as "easily imposed on; submissive," don't you think? My model of meekness is a bull who goes through a china shop without breaking anything, so I was gratified to find Bible Hub saying, "It is not to be confused with weakness; rather, it is strength under control."

Gentle or humble, rather than meek, seem to me to better reflect the original text for modern readers. Think about that the next time you suspect that a post-King James Bible has "changed the meaning" of some verse. More likely English itself has changed the meaning of some word in the verse.

* For the rest of us, meekness is a goal, not a description.

Follow-up Comment on Meekness: In the study tip, I said, "My model of meekness is a bull who goes through a china shop without breaking anything." I stand by that, although it seems to depend pretty heavily on what bull you recruit. Mythbusters' bulls did no damage; a Spanish fighting bull destroyed the china, the shelves, and the shop. This has nothing to do with Bible study. Well, it does illustrate why we should read the Bible for ourselves and not take anybody's word for what it says.

Numbers 24:1-9; Job 39:1-12 (02/26/25)

Once when I was in grad school, I was in the lab for Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy when the TA came trotting toward me with a tapered, spiraling tube about six feet long. I recognized it immediately for what it was, even though I'd never seen one before, but I said, "Oh! A unicorn horn!" He didn't get it and assured me very solemnly that no, it was actually a narwhal tusk.*

Well, it turns out that the ancient rabbis who translated the Hebrew into Greek didn't get it, either, nor did early translators into English. The Hebrew word rame is used only nine times, and the rabbis translated it into the Greek monokeros. Well, apparently the English translators didn't know what to make of rame, but by golly they did know that mono means one, and keren means horn. So obviously rame means unicorn!

Sadly, we no longer believe in unicorns. What we believe in now is context. If you look at the passage from Job, you see that God is saying that the rame will not serve mankind by pulling a plow or eating from the manger, just as the wild ass will not serve man by working in the city and eating in the pasture. The wild ass is similar to a donkey who is happy to tread placidly through the city. So what wild animal is similar to the ox that pulls a plow and helps bring in the crop? The wild ox - and that, or something very like that, is what modern translations have. Don't attribute a scientific error to the Bible when it's actually a matter of translating an unusual word.

* Special thanks to all the readers who do get my jokes.

Romans 16:1-2 vs. Ephesians 6:21-22, Colossians 1:3-8, 4:7 vs. 1 Timothy 3:8-10 (02/27/25)

Many Greek words have different meanings depending on the context, just as in English. If you're at the vet's office, a hot cat is a feline with a fever, but if you're at a night club, a hot cat is a jazz musician who's playing exceptionally well. What drives me and my study buddy nuts is seeing a word translated differently by the same translator in what appears to be the same context.

Sometimes I suspect that a bias the translator isn't even aware of has crept into the text. The Greek word diakonos can be perfectly well translated as servant, minister, or deacon, depending on the context. In the World English Bible (which I like, by the way), we see "servant" vs. "minister" vs. "deacon" for exactly the same word in what certainly appears to be the same context. Is it a coincidence that only Phoebe is a "servant," or has the translator subconsciously decided that women can't be deacons? The translation of diakonos as servant here isn't actually wrong, however.

I'm not saying you shouldn't trust whatever translation you like to read, because I'm unaware of any difference in any translation that affects our understanding of God's plan for our salvation.* I am saying, first, that something that drives me nuts may or may not bother you at all or affect your understanding once you read the context, and second, just because someone says there's an error in translation doesn't necessarily mean there is an error. What is an error is basing a theology or doctrine on any one word in any one translation.

* Except maybe the New World Translation, which attempts to deny the divinity of Christ.

Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:1-4, John 7:19-24, 16:21 (02/28/25)

English changes: man used to mean person, but now, in the U.S. at least, it mostly means adult male person. The Hebrew adam and Greek anthropos also mean person,* so in older translations, man was perfectly valid, not to mention gender neutral. Now that the English meaning has changed, the translators can't win. Translations that use "man" are criticized because they exclude women. Gender-neutral translations are criticized because they "change the text" and are trying to be "politically correct." Always remember that salvation applies to everybody, no matter what word is used, and you'll be fine.

* Except when adam is being used as a proper name for the man Adam.

"Inconsistencies" in New Testament quotations of the Old Testament

Luke 4:14-22 vs. Isaiah 61:1-2 (Quoted from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament) (03/03/25)

English translations of NT quotations from the OT often don't match the OT, for any of several reasons. One reason is that many first century Jews read the OT in a Greek translation, and so many the quotations in the NT are from the Greek OT. When we compare the OT English translation from the Hebrew to the NT English translation from the Greek, they might be different.

In today's example quotation, it's pretty clear that Luke records Jesus reading from the Greek OT, not the Hebrew, because except for one word (a synonym) and a couple of optional letters, what's recorded in Luke is identical to the Greek of Isaiah and different from the Hebrew. For example, "recovering of sight to the blind" is in Luke and the Greek OT, but not the standard Hebrew text used by the vast majority of translators. So the inconsistency between the OT and the NT is apparent, but not real.*

* Obviously there's an inconsistency between the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the OT, but that's beyond our current scope.

Matthew 15:1-9 vs. Isaiah 29:13 (Quoted from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament) (03/04/25)

It's somewhere between difficult and impossible to say exactly the same thing in two different languages: this is why we call them "different languages." When I was helping a Chinese friend with English, he would ask me the differences between words like "house," "home," and "dwelling," because his English/Chinese dictionary would give him exactly the same Chinese word for all three. As a native English speaker, I could explain the idea behind each one, and he would get it. Guess what? We have no native speakers for ancient Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic. The New Testament was written exclusively in Greek, according to all the evidence we have, but the authors were drawing on Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek sources, and those ancient translators had all the same problems that modern translators do. Now we're trying to read it in yet a fourth language.

Yesterday we saw the words of the Greek version of Isaiah repeated almost word for word in Luke. Today Jesus quotes Isaiah again, but his words don't seem to match completely either the Greek or the Hebrew versions of Isaiah. Is he paraphrasing? Was Jesus translating from either Hebrew or Greek into Aramaic, and then Matthew translating from Aramaic to Greek? I don't know, and I'm pretty sure that no one else does, either (although you'll find a lot of people saying they do). Does it matter? Absolutely not! Because in any language, giving lip service to God's commandments while following man's rules is a bad idea.

Hebrews 10:5-7 vs. Psalm 40:1-11 (Quoted from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament) (03/05/25)

We don't know who the book of Hebrews was written by, but the content shows absolutely that it was written for Hebrews, i.e., Jews, because it is jam-packed with quotations from the Old Testament. Notice the difference between Hebrews 5:6b, "you prepared a body for me," and Psalm 40:6b, "You have opened my ears." This difference seemed odd to me, so I spent some time trying to figure it out. My first thought was that the Greek OT (the Septuagint, or LXX) would differ from the Hebrew OT, as we saw Monday. Nope, both of my electronic OTs, Greek and Hebrew, have ears, not bodies.

Then I thought that maybe the writer of Hebrews changed what he was quoting right in the middle of a sentence, because he (or she) does that sometimes (as do the other NT writers). I got out my giant study edition of the Jerusalem Bible to check the cross reference, and nope, that doesn't seem to be the answer, either. So then I got out one of my hard copy LXXs, because my study buddy and I have noticed that when we read the LXX, our texts sometimes differ a little. And by golly, there it is, "you prepared a body for me." By this time, I was on a roll, so I got out the Orthodox Study Bible, which is an English translation that uses the LXX as the OT, and there's the body again.

So the standard modern Hebrew text and some LXX texts have "ears," and other LXX texts have "body." The writer of the book of Hebrews had a text - maybe Hebrew, maybe Greek - that said "body." He correctly quoted what he had. I'll say it again,

never base your theology on one word in one translation,
don't assume an error when there isn't one, and
there are no differences between texts that are important to the overall message of God's love.

Mark 1:1-5 vs. Malachi 2:17-3:5, Isaiah 40:1-5 (Translation or paraphrase by the original writer) (03/06/25)

How much of the Bible do you have memorized? I know perhaps half a dozen verses by heart, or maybe even twenty if you count the portions of the Lord's Prayer and the Eucharist that are from scripture. You probably know more than that, because most people are better at memorizing than I am.

The next question is, how many Bibles do you own? I really don't know how many we have, or even how to count them. We have quite a few, but how should I count multiple copies of the King James Version? At one time I had both the Reader Edition and the Study Edition of the Jerusalem Bible; are they both still here somewhere? Does a separately bound New Testament - or Old Testament for that matter, because I have one and a half - count as a "Bible"? Do I get extra credit for the Greek and Hebrew? Do the 26 electronic Bibles on my desktop computer count?

Now, if we ask Mark, or any other New Testament writer, the same two questions, the answers will be "I've memorized lots of it" and "Well, I've got part of one scroll of one book." He and all the other writers were working from memory most of the time. Our memories are not well trained, but we can easily find things in books. For the biblical writers, the situation was reversed. They were trained to memorize, and scrolls were expensive and likely rare.

Apparently, the earliest manuscripts of Mark 1:2 have "As is it written in the prophet Isaiah," but then Mark quotes two prophets, Malachi and Isaiah. Someone corrected this, very early on, to "in the prophets." My electronic Bible translations give a slight edge to "Isaiah," but almost as many go with "prophets." Mark was more familiar with Isaiah; vs. 3 is quoted exactly from the Greek OT. Vs. 2a, from Malachi, is not exact, although it's completely recognizable. Some people would call the Isaiah/prophets mismatch an error or contradiction; I'd call it an unimportant slip of the tongue. What is important is that Mark draws on prophecy to introduce John the Baptist as the herald of Jesus Christ. Let's try to keep the main thing the main thing.

1 Peter 2:1-10 vs. Hosea 1:6-9, 2:1, 2:23 (5 (Translation or paraphrase by the original writer) (03/07/25)

This week we've seen several New Testament quotations from the Old Testament. Frequently a New Testament writer - or an Old Testament writer, for that matter - will refer indirectly to an OT scripture or just paraphrase it. In this brief passage, Peter quotes from Isaiah 28:16 in vs. 6 and from Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 8:14 in vss. 7-8. He refers indirectly to the entire history of Israel in vs. 9. In vs. 10, he paraphrases several verses from Hosea.

By the way, Hosea is short; you should read it. No other book of the OT shines so brightly with God's love for us.

More Contradictions in the Bible?
Contradictions in the Bible? - Part 1
Contradictions in the Bible? - Part 3

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