I haven’t seen the video and I can’t respond to that specific set of issues, although a couple posts seem to have some good leads.
I just want to encourage you to read the scripture prayerfully and asking the Holy Spirit for assistance. Pray for your friend who holds up these objections. Give him your best example as being a Catholic.
As Fr. John Corapi would say on EWTN, a thousand difficulties do not add up to a single doubt.
At the Second Vatican Council, the Fathers (bishops) approved the document about scripture called Verbum Dei, the word of God. In it, there was a carefully worded statement that the bible “contains” the word of God. This left some wiggle room for problems that seem to arise from scripture.
Now, Verbum Dei does not give examples that apply here, but I ran across one that may make sense to you.
Actually, I found the explanation in a Jewish commentary on Genesis, about the order of things in creation, that light was created before the sun. Well, what kind of light might that have been? The author of the commentary speculated that the author of Genesis might have been referring to the type of light in the sky that we see before dawn or after sunset.
It may be easy for skeptics to tally up lists of things that confuse them, but which may really not be important. It’s a whole other matter to deal with the translation itself, which is sometimes much more difficult than our printed bibles may lead us to believe.
I’m reading the Jewish Publication Society Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which, it says, contains many difficult passages – even though the book is given relatively late authorship.
There are also a certain number of words that appear only once in scripture, and it takes a study of nearby Middle Eastern ancient languages to look for possible suggestions as to the meaning of the word.
There are words that may appear a number of times, but are similar to the previous category. The translators simply don’t know what the word means. One reason given for this is that the words are so ancient, that more modern readers, even at the time of Christ, didn’t have an uncontested translation for a word. In some cases, the scholars look to the Greek Septuagint, to see how the Jews rendered the word into Greek as a clue to what its meaning is.
So, you can accept all the difficulties with a clear conscience and still get a good night’s sleep. There ARE difficulties and most Jews and Christians don’t lose sleep over it.
