101 contradictions of the Bible

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I’m not aware of any Catholic book which addresses these
alleged “contradictions” (and different people come up with different lists of “contradictions” every other day, it seems).
There are several websites, I think by protestants, that address a lot of the “contradictions.”

I have seen articles by Catholic authors about these things, but I don’t remember where at this moment, but I don’t know of any book by a Catholic author… anybody??
 
Hi!

I don’t think a Catholic has written about it because it doesn’t need that much to refute. Many of the questions are questions of typography and estimations, and not of the Truth of the text.

Protestants (I was protestant once, too) are more concerned with those things I think than Catholics who have a fuller experience through the sacaraments and are not so concerned with those questions.

Now, on the other hand, if it is important “whether it was three months or three months and ten days” I’m sure the prostestant text will suffice.

Anyway, God bless.
Aaron Magnan
 
Thanks Aaron and Jaypeeto3!

I’m totally with you on being satisfied with the sacraments, the Catechism of our Church, and the Bible (as interepreted by our Church) for giving us what we need.

My brother in law who is in prison and who is a real good Catholic is trying to defend the Bible to an Arab aquaintance. His personal view is also like yours with this issue.

He is not able to get on-line to a wonderful site like this, so I’m trying to help him out. I do greatly appreciate what your wrote as it just furthers my faith in our Church.

I’ll pass this on to him.

BEST!!!

Al
 
abelville said:
Hi family!
Recently, a book from an Islamic author called out 101 contradictions of the Bible.
Al
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So? I mean, of course the bible has contradictions. Why shouldn’t it? It was written by many different people over many years, then repeatedly translated through various languages, then the parts were shuffled around, thrown out and added, and then we get what we have today.

Why is this a problem? The bible is by no means innerrant, and the Catholic church acknowledges this. Evolution is a fact of science; genesis is not literal. In fact, the two stories of genesis contradict each other and whether trees or man were made first.

I believe many atheists and agnostics are turned away from christianity by the severe lack of intellectual honesty in fundamentalist groups which are still trying to push an inerrant bible. Come on now.
 
Actually, Catholics do teach that Sacred Scripture is inerrant. However, the definition of what ‘inerrant’ means is different from the definition of other groups.

Check out this link to the USCCB (college of bishops) which discusses the situation in a report on Catholics and Southern Baptists:

usccb.org/seia/southernbaptist.shtml

and the relevant paragraphs:
Inerrancy: The conviction that the Bible is “without error” in what it affirms. But there are different interpretations of what this actually means.
For Southern Baptists, inerrancy means that the original biblical text was composed precisely as God inspired it and intended it to be because of God’s superintendence: not just the thought comes from God, but every word with every inflection, every verse and line, and every tense of the verb, every number of the noun, and every little particle are regarded as coming from God. Scripture is “God-breathed,” and God does not breathe falsehood, so the text is faithful and true in all it affirms, including the miracle accounts, the attributed authors, and the historical narratives. The 1978 and 1982 Chicago statements on biblical inerrancy are representative of this doctrine.

For Roman Catholics, inerrancy is understood as a consequence of biblical inspiration; it has to do more with the truth of the Bible as a whole than with any theory of verbal inerrancy. Vatican II says that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation” (Dei Verbum 11). What is important is the qualification of “that truth” with "for the sake of our salvation."
 
I just thought I would include an exerpt from the catechism that deals with this issue:
II. INSPIRATION AND TRUTH OF SACRED SCRIPTURE
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105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”
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“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”
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106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.”
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107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”
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Tantum ergo partly answered this in his post, but how is this quote from the catechism supposed to be read (emphasis mine)? When I’ve read things like the gospels and acts (narratives), I’ve always been under the belief “this is exactly how things happened because God has ensured the Bible is inerrant”.
 
Without error does not mean that there cannot be misspelled words, or that the same event cannot be told from a different perspective (for example, the Last Supper narratives of the synoptic gospels versus that of John), etc.

What is taught in the Bible is the revealed inspired word of God which teaches us, without error, what is necessary for our salvation.

Is it necessary for our salvation to know if a particular passage related to Nebuchadnezzer or his son? No. But the messages of Daniel, his status as a prophet, and the message for both the people of Israel then as well as for us today. . .that we need for our salvation. That will not be contradictory. God as Father, Christ as Savior. . .these truths are never contradicted.

Also, the Bible is nuanced and layered. The Woman of Revelation is Israel–and also Mary–and also the Church. To say that she is ‘one alone’ is what leads one to think there is a contradiction. But there is not.
 
From Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus
vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus_en.html
For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last: “The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.”(57) Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write-He was so present to them-that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth.
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He says that divine dictation is a teaching of the church, but he also says, “It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible.” So, the copies we have might have some errors. But Vatican I clearly says that the Vulgate (though not necessarily other Catholic versions) are sacred and canonical.
 
IanBoyd57 said:
So? I mean, of course the bible has contradictions. Why shouldn’t it? It was written by many different people over many years, then repeatedly translated through various languages, then the parts were shuffled around, thrown out and added, and then we get what we have today.

Why is this a problem? The bible is by no means innerrant, and the Catholic church acknowledges this. Evolution is a fact of science; genesis is not literal. In fact, the two stories of genesis contradict each other and whether trees or man were made first.

I believe many atheists and agnostics are turned away from christianity by the severe lack of intellectual honesty in fundamentalist groups which are still trying to push an inerrant bible. Come on now.
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The Bible is inerrant with regard to religious truths!
 
IanBoyd57 said:
I believe many atheists and agnostics are turned away from christianity by the severe lack of intellectual honesty in fundamentalist groups which are still trying to push an inerrant bible.
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We need to be careful with this, because I have experienced this myself. Good Catholics need to e prepared for dealing with a fundamentalist approach, as well as the atheistic approach to the Bible. How a person defines an error makes a difference. Saying there are no errors when we have not defined the definition of what constitutes an error is where trouble begins.
 
abelville said:
Hi family!

Me and my family converted to Catholicism in 1996. We were Penticostals (Church of God).

Recently, a book from an Islamic author called out 101 contradictions of the Bible.

I found one protestant source to refute the claims of this author, but I havn’t found any by a Catholic one yet.

theapologiaproject.org/101%20Cleared%20up%20Contradictions%20in%20the%20Bible.pdf

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks very Much!!!

God Bless!

Al
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There are NO “Contradictions” in the bible. It is all the same principles through several writers with different styles and backgrounds inspired by God through the Holy Spirit. There are some passages that may SEEM to be saying different things, but discernment will tell you otherwise.

Having said all that, I’ll go to this website, and give it a crack. These things rarely, if ever, have any merit, I find.
 
abelville said:
Thanks Aaron and Jaypeeto3!

I’m totally with you on being satisfied with the sacraments, the Catechism of our Church, and the Bible (as interepreted by our Church) for giving us what we need.

My brother in law who is in prison and who is a real good Catholic is trying to defend the Bible to an Arab aquaintance. His personal view is also like yours with this issue.

He is not able to get on-line to a wonderful site like this, so I’m trying to help him out. I do greatly appreciate what your wrote as it just furthers my faith in our Church.

I’ll pass this on to him.

BEST!!!

Al
Click to expand...
This book by a Dominican priest might be one to consider sending your brother-in-law:

amazon.com/Bible-Quran-Jacques-Jomier/dp/0898709288/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1838981-3926234?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177613664&sr=1-1
 
IanBoyd57 said:
So? I mean, of course the bible has contradictions. Why shouldn’t it? It was written by many different people over many years, then repeatedly translated through various languages, then the parts were shuffled around, thrown out and added, and then we get what we have today.

Why is this a problem? The bible is by no means innerrant, and the Catholic church acknowledges this. Evolution is a fact of science; genesis is not literal. In fact, the two stories of genesis contradict each other and whether trees or man were made first.

I believe many atheists and agnostics are turned away from christianity by the severe lack of intellectual honesty in fundamentalist groups which are still trying to push an inerrant bible. Come on now.
Click to expand...
The issue with some “contadictions” is that some people do not look at the different verses in the big picture. Take for example Judas’ death. In the Gospels we see that Judas hung himself, but in Acts we see that Judas fell on rocks and split open. A comentary I heard on this “contradiction” is the valley Judas hung himself in has its trees growing from the sides of the valley walls, so either, Judas didn’t tie a knot real well or his tree uprooted when he hung himself. Its important to seek
background info to see the big picture in the Bible instead of taking every verse that seems to contradict another on its own.
 
Latria = Reserved for God alone (ADORATION)
Hyperdulia = Veneration for the Blessed Virgin Mary (VENERATION)
Dulia = honour of all the angels and saints (VENERATION)
Honour = honour parents, king, superiors and wife honour of her husband

We do not give Our Lady the Adoration that belongs to God. She receives a special veneration as she is the Mother of God. She is the Queen of Heaven.
 
rando78 said:
The issue with some “contadictions” is that some people do not look at the different verses in the big picture. Take for example Judas’ death. In the Gospels we see that Judas hung himself, but in Acts we see that Judas fell on rocks and split open. A comentary I heard on this “contradiction” is the valley Judas hung himself in has its trees growing from the sides of the valley walls, so either, Judas didn’t tie a knot real well or his tree uprooted when he hung himself. Its important to seek
background info to see the big picture in the Bible instead of taking every verse that seems to contradict another on its own.
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There is a big difference between falling and hanging. The big picture is that Judas died and he was replaced by Matthias. We shouldn’t try to spin the details so they match, but as stated we should look to the big picture. Why should it matter what manner he died?
 
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