Biblical Contradictions!

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“Infallible word of God” is not a Catholic teaching. You’ve mistaken us for the evangelicals. The bible is “inspired” by God. It’s purpose is to convey important spiritual truths about the world, faith, and morals. Contradictions are of no issue.

Though I would argue that some of them are mistakenly thought to be contradictions out of ignorance.
 
Farsight001 said:
“Infallible word of God” is not a Catholic teaching. The bible is “inspired” by God. It’s purpose is to convey important spiritual truths about the world, faith, and morals. Contradictions are of no issue.

Though I would argue that some of them are mistakenly thought to be contradictions out of ignorance.
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Thanks for the reply.

If we don’t take it all literally, how can we know which bits are and aren’t supposed to be taken literally?
 
JoeLatics said:
sciencebasedlife.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/biblecontradictions-reasonproject.png

Please discuss 🙂 How can we claim the Bible is the Word of an infalliable God when there are so many contradictions?!
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Hey joel excellent question
I hope this kind of stuff is not causing doubt in you
I am not going to go through the whole list that you gave here, but I just went to the first one just to see what we were dealing with.

2 Sam. 23:8- These are the names of David’s warriors. Ishbaal, son of Hachamoni, was the first of the Three. It was he who brandished his **battle-ax **over eight hundred slain in a single encounter.

1 Chron. 11:11- Here is the list of David’s warriors: Ishbaal, the son of Hachamoni, chief of the Three. He brandished his spear against three hundred, whom he slew in a single encounter.

These were from the NAB and immediately I see two different weapons. So he killed 800 with a battle axe and 300 with a spear.
The other obvious thing is that the translators and those who copied the scriptures could have easily made a mistake with the numbers.
Also as far as I know there are no original copies of any parts of the bible so everything that is available is copied.
But none of this speaks to the Church who authenticates the scriptures and who gave them to us.
It does not seem to me to be anything to lose sleep over.
God bless you and your family!
 
I’ll take supposed contradiction number one…
  1. How many men did the chief of David’s Captians Kill? 2 Samual 23:8 vs. 1 Chronicles 11:11
***These are the names of David’s warriors. Ishbaal, the son of Hachamoni, chief of the Three. He brandished his spear over eight hundred **whom he had slain in a single encounter. (2 Samueal 23:8)

Here is the list of David’s warriors: Ishbaal, the son of Hachamoni, chief of the Three. He brandished his spear against three hundred, whom he slew in a single encounter. (1 Chronicles 11:11)*

Yes, the number of those killed are different. But this is not a contradiction when you understand how people wrote in ancient times and what message they were trying to communicate.

300 enemies killed by one man? 800 enemies killed by one man? It’s still a heck of a lot of people for one man to kill and that was the point. That was what the author was trying to convey… dude was a stud warrior.

We read those two passages and see a contradiction in numbers. The ancients who read those two passages saw no contradiction in ideas. The passages contain different numbers, but they both contain the exact same idea. Both passages present us with the exact same message. The ancient authors were not concerned about the absolute accuracy of the numbers and were instead trying to communicate ideas.

The idea which the author was trying to convey, the message God wants us to know, is that the man was fearless in his service to and defense of his king.

That’s the message. It’s about fearlessness as servants of Jesus. It is about going into battle in defense of the Church and of Jesus Christ and not worrying about whether we die or not but valiantly fighting and coming out victorious.

The ancients communicated ideas, and both of those verses convey the exactly that same idea.

Now only 438 more contradictions to go… :rolleyes: Who want’s to take on number two?

-Tim-
 
Just to add to what others said - there are no contradictions in what it teaches.

There may be contradictions in the literal interpretation of what it says, but this is because the literal interpretation is not necessarily the correct one. The authors would write that the same events happened in different orders to emphasize a point, or say that the fish weighed 60 lbs instead of 50 lbs - but the key thing here is that they knew they were doing this, the readers knew they were doing this, and the people who decided scripture was scriptural knew they were doing this.

This whole “oh wow! I just noticed, thousands of years and millions of readers after it was originally written, that the Old Testament says pi is 3, I can’t believe no one noticed it before, the whole thing must be wrong” argument you’ll run into occasionally is just silly. The details aren’t exactly the same everywhere because no one - until recently - cared about the details.

And most of the other supposed contradictions are people misreading the bible or taking things out of context. For instance, the chart you linked seems to suggest that the bible says that one can fall from grace, and also that one cannot. But it never in fact says that one cannot - but I imagine that the people who compiled that chart didn’t look further than that some people say one verse says the first and that other people say some other verse says the second (for example, the chart actually lists the “call no man father” thing as a contradiction, which is rather… uninspired). We would say that (obviously) one of those people will be wrong.

And given a specific instance of such a “contradiction” we would demonstrate this.

As others have said, it is the Church and Tradition that show us the true meaning of scripture, not our own isolated (or someone else’s isolated) reading.
 
JoeLatics said:
Thanks for the reply.

If we don’t take it all literally, how can we know which bits are and aren’t supposed to be taken literally?
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Other answers are good, but I always thought this question was a bit silly. Common sense and familiarity with literature should make the distinction obvious to just about anyone. They did some things differently 2000 years ago, so familiarity with ancient culture would help as well, but you can still get a pretty good idea without it.
 
JoeLatics said:
Thanks for the reply.

If we don’t take it all literally, how can we know which bits are and aren’t supposed to be taken literally?
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The Church is the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). She already possessed the faith before a word of the NT was written. So she interprets or understands both scripture and tradition with the light and guidance she already has
 
Considering that many of the stories both in the Old Testament and New Testament were passed on my word of mouth first before being written down, and multiple people wrote them down, it is no wonder that there are historical inaccuracies, but those inaccuracies do not subtract from the message.

Besides, like someone already had said, we Catholics do not believe the Bible is the authority, it is the Church.
 
Farsight001 said:
“Infallible word of God” is not a Catholic teaching. You’ve mistaken us for the evangelicals. The bible is “inspired” by God. It’s purpose is to convey important spiritual truths about the world, faith, and morals. Contradictions are of no issue.

Though I would argue that some of them are mistakenly thought to be contradictions out of ignorance.
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Wrong forum. This is a Catholic forum not an Evangelical forum.
 
From St. Bridget of Sweden’s Revelations.
Third question. ”If your Holy Spirit has spoken through the evangelists, why is there so much variance in the Gospels?”
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Answer to the third question. ”As to why, if the Holy Spirit has spoken through them, there is so much variance among the evangelists, I answer: It is written that the Holy Spirit is various in his operations in that he distributes his gifts to his chosen people in varied ways. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is like a man with a balance in his hand, measuring and balancing the scales until the balance reaches equilibrium and comes to rest. A balance is handled in different ways by a person who is used to it and by one who is unused to it, by one who is strong and by one who is weak.
So the Holy Spirit now rises like a balance in human hearts, and then sinks again. He
rises when he uplifts the mind through keenness of understanding and through the soul’s devotion and through the inflaming of spiritual desire. He sinks when he allows the mind to fall into difficulties and to be anxious about trifling vanities and upset by tribulation.
Therefore, just as the balance cannot reach equilibrium unless the weights are adjusted, and it is controlled by a guiding hand, so too measure and a good life, a simple intention, and discretion in works and virtues are necessary for the operation of the Holy Spirit.
When I, the Son of God, visible in the flesh, preached different things in different
places, I had different kinds of followers and listeners. Some followed me out of love,
others in order to have an occasion for fault finding or out of curiosity. Some of my
followers had a keener intellect, others a simpler. Accordingly, I spoke simply to instruct the simple. I also spoke deeply to awaken the wonder of the wise. Sometimes I spoke darkly in parables, which gave some people an occasion for commenting. At other times I repeated things said earlier and sometimes added to or simplified them. So it is no wonder that those who arranged the gospel narrative recorded different but still true things, for some of them wrote it down word for word, others captured the sense but not the exact words. Some wrote things they had heard but not seen; others placed earlier events later; others wrote more about my divinity; yet all of them as the Spirit gave them to speak.
However, I want you to know that only those evangelists are to be accepted whom
the church accepts. Many people attempted to write who had zeal but not in accordance with my knowledge. Recall what I said in today’s reading: ‘Destroy this temple and I shall rebuild it.’ Those who testified to what they heard were truthful regarding the words they heard, but they were false witnesses because they did not consider the sense of my words, for I spoke concerning my body. Likewise when I said: ‘Unless you eat my flesh, you shall not have life.’ Many hearers went away, because they did not consider the conclusion that I added: 'My words are spirit and life, that is, they have a spiritual meaning and force. It is not remarkable that they went astray, inasmuch as they did not follow me out of love. Thus the Holy Spirit rises in human hearts like a balance, at one time speaking corporeally, at another spiritually. And he sinks when the human heart is hardened against God or falls into heresies or worldliness and is darkened.”
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