Contradiction, or Paradox?
I have a booklet a Muslim friend gave me which puts forth supposed "errors" in the Bible. So I find myself unable to explain all of these. I may have an idea on one or two of them. I would invite scholars to explain these. I should mention that none of these shake my belief in the inerrancy of the Scriptures in the slightest.
1. II Sam. 8:4 vs. I Chron. 18:4.
7 hundred or 7 thousand?
2. II Sam. 8:9-10 vs. I Chron. 18:9-10.
Toi or Tou, Joram or Hadoram, Hadadezer or Hadarezer?
3. II Sam. 10:18 vs. I Chron. 19:18.
7 hundred chariots or 7 thousand men? 40,000 horsemen or footmen? Shobach or Shophach?
4. II Kings 8:26 vs. II Chron. 22:2.
22 or 42 years old?
5. II Kings 24:8 vs. II Chron. 36:9.
18 or 8 years old? 3 months or 3 months and 10 days?
6. II Sam. 23:8 vs. I Chron. 11:11.
Tachmonite or Hachmonite? 800 or 300?
7. II Sam. 24:1 vs. I Chron. 21:1.
Is the Lord of David then Satan? God forbid!
8. II Sam. 6:23 vs. II Sam. 21:8.
Did Michal have children or not?
9. Gen. 6:3 vs. Noah's age when he dies.
10. Gen. 1:26 vs. Is. 40:18 and 25, Ps. 89:6, and Jer. 10:6,7.
Is there something (man) made in the image of God or not?
11. John 5:37 vs. John 14:9.
12. John 5:31 vs. John 8:14.
13. Matt. 15:24 vs. Mark 16:15 and Matt. 28:18-20.
14. Inclusion or exclusion of Mark 16:9-20.
I'm sure there are more, but these are a start. Thanks for your help, in advance!
In Christ.
posted by Adrian C. Keister @ 1:50 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
These are precisely the kind of smokescreens I mentioned in the sermon yesterday which are meant to distract us from the larger question: did God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son, or are we on our own to earn our favor with an arbitrary and distant God, cf. Islam?
A quick survey says that all of these are likely ms errors. The difference is that we believe in scholarship and do not fear these minor little errors which have crept in to our translations -- does a single one affect any doctrine? -- no, not even Mark 16.
Our focus is Jesus, not a "perfect" ms today, like the Muslims claim to have in their Arabic Quran (thought perfect only because they burned all the variant ms several centuries after Muhammad).
If you have dialog with this fellow, ignore these and press him on Jesus. Let Jesus be the Stumbling Stone.
FWIW,
Chris H.
Reply to Chris,
Good stuff, and I agree. I do, however, have two questions.
1. What is the exact position on the inerrancy of the Scriptures? We believe that the originals were inerrant. Well, even the Muslims claim to believe that. At least, they do in this little booklet. But is it true that we believe our current manuscripts are without error?
2. What does FWIW stand for?
In Christ.
What Lane said. What we have now are "pure" and "authentical" (WCF 1.8). I surmise that God did not allow all the ms to remain absolutely uncorrupted for two reasons: 1) Redemption comes to a real, messy world, even as the Incarnation. So the original ms have been lost but their message remains pure and authentic. 2) So that our faith would be in Jesus and not a book. The Bible does not save. Jesus does. Hence the WCF makes clear that for the Bible to do us any good, we need the HS to show us it's truth (WCF 1.5).
Muslims, however, put their faith in a book, which they learn to recite in Arabic, even though they can't understand it. And in a God of power who demands everything be perfect in THIS world, hence their confusion of mosque and state.
Chris
Nah, no blog. Under website, I put "yeah, right." I'm not that computer savvy, nor have the time....
Lovely bblog you have here
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