Question:
Dear Greg,
Last
week I stumbled upon an agnostic/atheist website by accident.
I counted over 315 alleged discrepancies of the Bible they have listed.
I have to admit that I was somewhat devastated when I read some of them
(I felt like young David against Goliath). When
I began to read some of the apparent discrepancies I began to realize that there
were some logical explanations to the apparent contradictions.
I thought to myself, “What a tragedy for those who read the information
in this website.”
I
plan to respond to the accusations. I
do not believe that I will be able to convince them that the Bible is without
error. However, I at least hope to
show them (and whoever reads the material on their website) that there are
solutions that are possible to their accusations.
Perhaps some good may come of it. I
do not believe that these accusations should go unchallenged (1 Peter
I
believe the Bible is worth defending. I
do not want to appear argumentative, but lovingly show the agnostics and
atheists that Christians are not expected to trust the Bible as the Word of God
based only on blind faith. Our faith
is based on factual evidence.
May
God bless you and your ministry,
Al
Answer: Dear Al,
Questions
that come from sources like the one you mention include an agenda.
There are many ways to twist and distort any kind of literature—whether
that is the Bible, or what Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare wrote.
Methods used by those who twist and distort the Bible do not follow
accepted rules of reading and understanding literature.
The easiest way to prove that is to take the methodology used to twist
and distort the Bible and use the same methodology on some other kind of
literature.
When
people either point out, manufacture or fabricate contradictions and
discrepancies they often juxtapose two statements that seem to war with each
other. They ignore the context, the
kind of literature (genre) being used within the Bible and then try to make the
Bible contradict itself. An example:
pick up the newspaper. It’s all
the newspaper. Read a selected
portion from the classified ads. Then
read a comic strip and compare it with that classified ad.
Then read a news item from the front page.
Compare that with the story of a football game on the sports page, or a
society event in another part of the paper.
They are all “true”. They
all report about reality, transmit truth in different ways.
To compare them indiscriminately and then pronounce that the newspaper
itself is telling lies and is discredited is to either be ignorant or to
willfully distort. Many alleged
biblical discrepancies are so silly and irresponsible, and argumentative, that
they do not deserve an answer because there is no basis in establishing common
ground.
I
cannot give a class on logic, hermeneutics or methodology here, but I can refer
you to excellent books to help you understand the Bible.
Two that might help you are “How to Read the Bible for all it’s
Worth” by Fee and Stuart and “Scripture Twisting” by James W. Sire.
May
God bless you.
In
Christ,
Greg
Albrecht