NT inconsistencies, not that they are even relevant given how fantastical the story is. If you have faith in all the other aspects of the Bible, then this inconsistencies shouldn’t really matter at all:
In Matthew 27:3-8 , Judas returns the bribe he has been given for handing over Jesus, throwing the money into the temple before he hangs himself. The temple priests, unwilling to return the defiled money to the treasury,[52] use it instead to buy a field known as the Potter’s Field, as a plot in which to bury strangers. In Acts 1:18 , on the other hand, Judas uses the bribe money to buy the field himself, and his death is attributed to falling over in this field.
Conversion of Paul:
"The men who travelled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one" Acts 9:7
"And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me" Acts 22:9
Well, there’s truth to what you’re saying, but your final point doesn’t really hold. It’s true, there are numerous, numorous “versions” of the NT that use various methods of translation over time, etc. But when you really dig back through them, the differences are relatively minor and there’s remarkable consistancy among them in terms of meaning and content. Much of this is due to the very strict practices in place with maintaining the integrity of the copy process over that period, especially w.r.t the bible. It’s even more remarkable if you study the OT and the Quaran, because they have an incredible tradition of care given to scribes and there is almost no variation within those books over time. It’s honestly remarkable.
That being said, I’ve pointed out there is very little real variation in content over time, little of which impacts big picture meaning. However, there are a myriad of interpretations. Calvinists interperet one thing, while Baptists interpret another. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. We live in a diverse world, with diverse personalities, and two people can watch the same car accident unfold from different angles and interpret different chains of events. This is the common belief among scholars why we have several contributing apostles, to try to capture a more well rounded 360 degree perspective of these teachings. I don’t think the NT, calls for a perfect understaning, in fact, I think it encourages the acceptance of our humanity. The common threads appear to be, faith, best effort, humility and love. I think if you read the NT, you come away understanding that, and realizing that the rest is fairly semantic. Obviously I’m not a good reflection of those things and I don’t call myself a Christian because of my own questions, but I can appreciate the validity of the message.
LMAO, that’s what you came up with in 2000 pages?! Dude, you do realize different apostles wrote each book and may have had a different chain of events given the chaos surrounding the time regarding Judas. And the second one I don’t even see the inconsistancy. Also, keep in mind this is following translations across 4 languages in 2000 years, but yes, Iteracom, you totally got me. Riddled with inconsistancies.
Edit: I’ll be honest, I was concerned you’d managed to find something major after taking so long away from the thread doing research. When you came back with this, I kinda felt like you made my point for me. You have to admit that’s a pretty weak example and you expected to find more.
Brah, I’m just relaying info. I think you are confusing me with somebody else, I just googled quickly because I was honestly curious. Never said anything about riddled with inconsistencies, other than the obvious fact that the entire story requires faith. In the face of that inconsistencies are nothing.
Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in the word faith you can spell analystforum? Don’t test it out, just believe me.
Here are 194 contradictions in the NT. All pretty weak to me and likely the result of various translations over the years and/or typical inconsistencies among “eye witness” accounts.
Yes…too broad of a topic. And we would have to dive into what exactly constitutes an inconsistency. There are plenty of factual inconsistences, but I don’t begrudge the writers that. Writing epic fantasy novels is difficult work when it’s only one writer over several years, much less several writers over hundreds. But, if anyone is interested just google it. There are thousands and thousands of pages of contradictions and inconsistencies. Some more interesting than others.
The inconsistency arguement is only fun when you’re discussing it with someone that takes the Bible literally and believes it’s truly the word of god writen through man, not by man.
Many less if you focus your efforts on the NT. NT is much more tightly constructed. Honestly, if you pick through the couple “inconsistancies” in the NT, you wind up with a shorter, less contraversial list than if you just dug through a review on any modern history book. So not that suprising. Anyhow, pretty interesting to hear someone who spent three years studying CAPM, VAR and their applications calling the Bible a fantasy book.
Anywho, when I do find myself in church I go to this Methodist dude’s service and he’s pretty cool. He actually spoke at Obama’s inaugural address. Even for a heathen like myself, I have to admit the guy is good to watch. Hell of a speaker.
A couple months ago his topic was the book of Genesis and specifically how old the Earth is. He laid out the arguement for both the 5 billion year old crowd and the 5,000 year old peeps. He did a fantastic job of explaining how, in his opinion, Genesis was writen based on the science of the time. Things like the world being in a snow globe was actually a popular belief way back when but people should use caution when taking it literally. He concluded by suggesting the Earth was indeed 5 billion years old, and he even managed to throw in some String Theory for good measure. He did all this while not offending the devout and keeping an asshat atheist like myself entertained. It’s really impressive to watch such a good public speaker.
I don’t have a point. Just felt like sharing that I’m quite pleased my wife left the Catholic church for a much more moderate church with a pastor that makes actual sense. I guess there’s reason this guy has a 19,000 member congregation and the largest Methodist church in the US. Hopefully this move to the center is a trend that continues.
That makes for a nice quote but I’m not sure why that’s surprising. I think most people that would call the Bible a fantasy book probably lean more towards math and science. Though, for the record, I find that CAPM and VAR hold true less frequently than the Bible.
Edit: I just re-read your quote. I suppose that was what you were getting at. Ah, well played.
But I still respect it, and come from a strong biblical academic background and think the faith gets trashed by a lot of ill informed arguments. I obviously don’t mind people not believing, but I get annoyed when they throw around innacuracies or think science has done a much better job of of explaining things at the tails of the universe.
I sort of understand where critics come from, with gun control, I think assault rifles are not an issue in and of themselves, but they get abused by lunatics. Religion may fall under the same category. Either way, I have a tendancy to take the under represented side of most arguments for the sake of balance.
At first glance, the vast majority of these are not “inconsistencies”. Rather, they are arguing over semantics (such as #171 and 175), or intentionally misrepresenting the text (#160 and 161), or are just plain dumb (#168 and 162).
Some are totally inconsequential (#127). Some are (as Higg noted) just differences in writers or translations, like #91.
Some are not contradictory at all, if you know the context, like #38 or #7.
Part of my point on the old testament is that people who want to be a hard-ass about religious stuff and enact religious rules almost always turn to the Old Testament for their justifications, even though the Gospel is really about how the rules and interpretation have changed to be in favor of things like forgiveness and empathy.
Its been a while since I’ve read this stuff, but pretty much the only times Jesus gets upset about anything is when he finds moneylenders in the temple and when the disciples all fall asleep in Gethsemane. And he was a bit upset with pops about dragging it out so long up there on the cross.