Biblical Inconsitencies

Much respect to this man

 

Only a mind that fails to grasp the most simplistic understanding could ever embrace these examples as positive Biblical error. Those who hate God work both day and night to try and find fault with His words, yet their worldly wisdom will finally be revealed as nothing but polished stupidity. Professing to be wise, they have become fools. Those who labor against the scriptures are but pawns of darker forces, who gladly use such indivduals for there own dark desires. Yet niether one, shall escape the eternal flame that awaits them. May God have mercy on them.

 

Great responce, excellent post. You must realize, some now have the minds of darkness. And the truth they cannot, and will not receive. Your post was well stated.

 

no eternal flame you see the devil cant afford to pay the GAS company for ever.

 

Excellent response! That was wonderful - you did so well communicating your sentiment.... Kudos to you, friend.

 

read or post the old testament so i can laugh out loud.

 

Here ya go. Have fun!

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html

 

Genesis 1:3-5
God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light, "day," and the darkness he called, "night."
Thus evening came, and the morning followed - the first day.

Is there a contradiction? Is "day" the light or the light and the dark? What is today? Is today just the day (sunlight) or the day and the night?

Matthew 11:14
Matt 2: John sends his disciples to Jesus. (more than 1)
Matt 3: they ask him, "Are you the one to come?"
Matt 7: Jesus speaks to the crowds ABOUT (of) John:
Matt 10: This is the one about whom it is written:
"Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you."
Matt 14: ... he is Elijah, the one who is to come. (NAB)

John 1:21
John is speaking about himself (19 And this is the testimony of John...)

When the Jews from Jersualem sent priests and Levites to ask him. "Who are you?," he admitted "I am not the Messiah".

So they asked him, "Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not". He said, "I am 'the voice of one crying in the ... desert... "Make straight the way of the Lord,"' as Isiah the prophet said.

Gee, did the Sadduccees believe in baptism?

So in the first instance you have Jesus saying that John is Elijah or Elias. In the second instance John says that he, John, is not Elijah or Elias.

Is there a contradiction? Jesus speaks of John and John speaks of John.

On a deeper level, how could the Sadduccees say that he was Elias or Elijah? Did they see him come down in a chariot from the sky? Well, what if they weren't there when Elijah or Elias landed? Did they actually think he was the same, physical, Elijah or was he someone who was saying the same things, who came in the same spirit? Did the Sadduccees think he was a re-incarnation?

On the surface it may be a contradiction. If there is any deeper meaning implied then one has to be able to see it in a different light.

To wit, Do you really think that you are either a man or a woman? You came from a man and a woman, therefore you cannot be just a man or a woman, you must be both. You can be 99% male and 1% female so that the body is that of a man, but you still will carry a part of a female in you, your genes carry both male and female genes.

Seeking yes/no, right/wrong, black/white answers is okay with the mind, but life is not either yes/no or right/wrong, black/white, it is all of them and none of them, both at the same time.

A man came up to Buddha in the morning and asked him if there was a God. He said, "No." In the evening a different man came up to Buddha and asked him if there was a God. He said, "yes".

His disciple asked him "which is it? Is there a God or not?"

Buddha supposedly said something to the effect, "The man in the morning was not looking for God, he was trying to prove there was no God. So I said "No," because that is what he wanted to hear. The man in the evening was looking for God, so I said, 'Yes,' so that he would keep looking and eventually find God."

'Yes' and 'no' were both true at the same time. The problem is that we only hear "yes" and "no" without having looked into each man's heart and seeing (or not seeing) what Buddha saw.

Jesus spoke to the masses, his message was to the masses and for the masses. John was speaking to the Sadduccees, his answers would be different than those he would have spoken to the masses, since the masses had different motivations for asking the questions.

You have a son.
He says he loves you.
You make him angry.
He says he hates you.

Which is it? Does he love you or hate you?

As a parent you know that even when he says that he hates you, you know that he loves you. You're not fooled, are you? Even in context what was said wasn't truth.

 

You save money for your retirement even though you know that you may die before then. Why then do you even bother? Why do you have life insurance?

In the former the object is one's progeny. In the latter it is one's self. In the former it may have been said to someone who has children, in the latter it may have been said to someone who has no children. Therefore there is no contradiction.

Is the inheritance left just money? What if it is land, or culture or tradition? What will you leave for your sons and daughters? Can you leave something for your son's son? Benjamin Franklin did. What did your grandpa leave for you? Nothing? What if he left a son who loves life and your father now had raised you up to love life. Won't you do the same with your son?

 

Granted, alot of the above contradictions aren't really contradictions and can be explained away pretty easily (sometimes it's funny to watch a skeptic who hasn't read the bible argue with a christian who hasn't read it either).


but anybody want to try and explain this one to me?

Romans 10:13
13"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved".

vs.

Matt. 7:21

21"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' 23Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

 

the bible is so vast and varied that it can be used, just like "law" to serve anyone's purpose.


if you are enlightened you can get some meaning out of the bible, but it is not clear to many.

this comtemporary interpretatain of the way things are coupled with the advice of the clergy is sure doom. start practicing your hail mary's now.

 

MrRee,

John 5:
31 If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony cannot be verified.
32 There is another who testifies on my behalf
33 John ... testified
36 I have a testimony greater than John's... the Father
37 You have never heard his voice nor seen his form

John 8:
13 You testify on your own behalf, so your testimony cannot be verified.
14 Even if I do testify on my own behalf, my testimony can be verified because I know where I come from
18 I testify on my behalf and so does the Father
19 You know neither me nor my father

They sound a lot alike. Where is the contradiction?

They were looking for miracles as evidence. And when he did them they persecuted him. They only wanted Miracles from Sunday to Friday. He said to them, "Creation doesn't stop on Friday, why should I? Does God only listen and answer prayers on the Sabbath? Man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for Man. God speaks all the time, it's just that you decide to only listen to him on the Sabbath. Don't blame me if you only speak and listen to God one day of the week. If God speaks and listens to me every day of the week then I will listen and speak to God every day of the week."

Genesis 2:2Since on the seventh day God was finished with the work he had been doing...

he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.

3: So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy...

The seventh day is still going on.

Maybe they should change it to: 2: "he rests on the seventh day", 3: "So God blesses the seventh day"

His rest is our existence. 3: "because on it he rests from all the work he had done in creation."

To the Pharisees or the Sedducees the seventh day is 24 hours long. To Jesus the seventh day has been always here, it is now, it is yesterday and today and tomorrow. To Jesus all of creation is the seventh day, the seventh day continues...

That is what Jesus meant by the Father giving testimony - that they are alive, the world continues, the birds fly in the air, the grass grows, the sun shines, that life is still going on...

 

I don't think anybodies trying to say the bible's worthless (although I haven't read all the posts), but if it contradicts itself how can it be the "infallable word of God" as christians say?

I think the important thing to consider is that if the same book is teaching incompatable principles, and your religion is based on that book, you have to awknowledge that somewhere along the line someone went through it (someone human) and picked and chose what parts to awknowledge and what parts to ignore.
In other words any religion formed this way (show me one that's not) is manmade.

 

NayKid Ape,

I think part of the problem stems from man trying to define what God is. If he is undefinable then why try to define it?

He can only be defined through the mind. Jesus said, "God is Love". Therefore you cannot use the mind to understand the heart.

Yes, there are mistakes in the bible. Some have been put there on purpose. Others were done through ignorance, say through translation. Some were because of politics.

Take for example a language that is not gender neutral (Spanish, German, French). How does one translate 'it' into English which is gender neutral?

Every word in the dictionary does not have just one meaning, some have multiple meanings. Or take the Chinese langauage, each picture can have different meanings, depending on how it is written. Or take the word we use for "snow," supposedly the Eskimos have seven different words for snow: light snow, heavy snow, wet snow, dry snow, icy snow, windy snow, gently falling snow... heck, for all I know they have a hot snow and a cold snow.

Supposedly there are cultures where verbs are mostly used, they don't have different tenses.

Apply that to the Hebrew language... where the most minute little swiggle, is if isn't long enough, will mean something different. There are words in every language which cannot be translated. And if they are translated they make no sense.

The word of God is fragmented because the language of Man is fragmented.

 

First off, we're not trying to define god. We're comparing to contradictory passages from the same book. considerring that the church took one and ran with it and ignored the other I think it's worth looking at.

Secondly the original gospels were written in Greek, not Hebrew. Greek is a well known and pretty straight forward language and it's unlikely the descrepancy is due to mistakes in interpretation.

I agree with the probablility of the intentional mistake theory.

Which still leaves us with this: If two passages from the same book are diometrecally opposed, which one do you believe?

Going back to the example I gave if Jesus said one thing and his followers said something else why did we wind up with a doctrine based on what the disciples said?
Because somewhere along the line it sounded good to someone who had a specific agenda.

Considerring most churches are pushing the Romans 10:13 version of salvation, inspite of what Jesus himself is supposed to have said, wouldn't that make most christians followers of Paul rather than followers of Jesus?

 

This gnostic rejects Paulism, preferring to just read the Gospels and Revelation. When it comes to the Gospels themselves, this gnostic prefers just the Gospel of John.

Au contraire. If scripture is being attacked, that is an indirect attack upon one's belief in God, it is obfuscation.

MrRee has OT quotes, therefore it is not just Greek translations being called into question.

One reads It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven and while one may literally accept that, it has been found that the word for 'camel' could also mean 'rope'. As fishermen repairing nets they would be quite familiar with heavy camel-hair type rope going through their big needles to repair their heavy nets. One then must ponder, "What did he mean?" Instead one rejects all of scripture because of one 'mistake'?

In school we were taught, "'I' before 'E' unless after 'C'". Yet when we wrote 'thier' the teacher said we were wrong, that there are exceptions... Weird, uh? I would say, "'I' before 'E' unless after 'C' or before 'R'".

Does one therefore reject all of Education because our teachers weren't truthful?

One seeks to find the non-contradiction in the contradiction, one seeks to understand what was said when and why.

Maybe Jesus was making a funny. He had a great sense of humour (imo) and he could be oblique. When he changed Simon Barjona's name to Petros and uttered, Upon this rock I will build my church (Matt 6:18), he may have named him after his personality - he was supposedly hard headed, he was obstinate. So, what did he really mean?

On all probability we both know why it was done, because it was a political expediant. That still does not mitigate the veracity of those whom witnessed the events.

If all one wants to do is find contradiction, then study just the book of Proverbs. There is a lot of humour contained therein, like Proverbs 26:27, He who digs a pit falls into it; and a stone comes back upon him who rolls it. rotflmao. I love slapstick.

I also went through a phase where I looked for inconstencies and contradictions in the Bible. I now see it as a waste of time. I meditated soley on one verse for 30 days, See the lillies of the field... for they think not of the morrow. My epiphany came to me at 10,000 feet, meditating at Pike's Peak, Colorado for an hour, just watching the snow flakes fall gently against the backdrop of mountain granite.

I could not utter one word for over 3 months, I was totally dumbfounded. I would sit in the coffee break room at work listening to people's problems, about their divorces, their money woes, their spoiled children, their ailments bothering them... and I would just stand up and walk away without uttering a word.

My epiphany was that my life was like that snow flake - it lasts but a micro second compared to the granite which has been here millions of years...

After that, petty arguements seem so trivial...

When I finished meditating I noticed that there was over 2" of snow on my shoulders. It's a great feeling seeing all the falling snow stop in mid air...

I therefore must ask what MrRee's motivations are. Are they political? Are they capricious? Is it to reaffirm his own belief system? Is it an honest inquiry? If it's an honest inquiry, then take the Good Book to a mountain top, look over God's creation (I'm waxing poetic here, people, don't take my words literally) and seek inspiration. Seek beauty where ever you are.

 

I think plain and simple that some Christians are fake. They are only involved in the church for selfish reasons... or they only call on God when they need an easy way out. There are also those people who are only in it for the money.... like they heal people in Jesus' name, but charge a lot of cash to do so... That's my take on it. I had a hard time with this verse when I first read it, but after deeply studying and praying on it, I think it makes a lot of sense.

 

rotflmao.

Romans 10:13
13"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved".

It depends on intentions. Just 'calling on the name', saying the words, is not enough. One must call from the heart - one must call from the bottom of one's heart, from the deepest part of the soul, it must be in anguish, from anguish, it must be painful, it must burn, it must hurt.