Posted by blue on June 01, 1998 at 23:56:55:
What is all this nonsense about Biblical contradictions? If you claim to have a religion based upon the Bible, your religion had better have an answer for any apparent contradictions.
A couple months ago, rpcman was debating one on one with someone about a Biblical contradiction that he claimed existed, she claimed did not. She was correct, but no one seemed to take much notice. I guess everyone assumes contradictions exist. I agree that many people are uneducated about the Bible, but not that contradictions exist within the text.
I downloaded a thousand or so "contradictions" from an atheist site, as an exercise to see if I could find any grounds to criticize Calvinism. I went through a few hundred in a couple of hours and found no substance in any of them. Most weren't even a challenge, none took more than a concordance to solve in a straightforward manner
One exception I will grant is in numbers. Not the book Numbers, but in numbers in general. Biblical math is not consistent. When we couple that with God's wrath against David for numbering the people, we have to conclude that we are not to be concerned about Biblical arithmetic. The key numbers, 3, 7, 10, 12, 40, and 10^n are used very consistently, in contrast to, say, how many cubits tall were the pillars in front of the temple of Solomon. So flame away on the numbers, I have no good answer. There probably is one, but I don't have it.
But how about concepts and theology, attributes of God and man, etc? Can anyone show me an inconsistency in the Bible, where one passage (WITHIN CONTEXT, PLEASE) contradicts another?