Bible Contradictions

[mwtech]

I used to be a Christian and only recently become an atheist after studying the Bible enough to notice the flaws. I believe the Bible in itself to be contradictory enough to prove itself wrong, and I enjoy discussing it with other people, especially Christians who disagree. I would really like to have a one on one debate with any Christian who thinks that they have a logical answer for the contradictions in the Bible. The one rule I have is that you can't make a claim without evidence, whether from the Bible or any other source. I am interested in logical conversation, and I don't believe that any Christian can refute the contradictions I have found without making up some rationalization that has no evidence or logical base.

[edform]

Ed Form,

If you would actually like to discuss contradictions, before I provide the first example, please let me know what version of the English bible you would like me to use. I will also be using the direct Hebrew translation at Bible hub if you don't have a better one you'd prefer me to use. (http://biblehub.com/text/genesis/1-1.htm)

I really don't care which translation you use. There are a few places where translation is an issue, but they can be pointed out in context if they arrive.

Ed Form

[edform]

[Replying to post 78 by bluethread]
Jesus does not fulfill messianic prophesy. The facts of the OT speak for themselves on this.

Rubbish!

It's resolved, and has been for centuries. Christians embarass themselves when they pretend to know more about the OT Messiah and his attributes and evidences than the actual people that wrote the book.

The people who wrote the book are all long dead and no accurate continuation of their thinking has existed among the nation from which they sprang since the prophets of the New Testament. Judaism, which I assume you refer to, is just another false religion, differing from the equally valueless Christian traditions only in the fact that God has definitely ruled on its validity - the dreadful history of the Jews since their expulsion from God's land by the Romans is proof that they are not right with God and marks them out as the completely the wrong folks to go to for advice on what Scripture means.

Deuteronomy 28 is unmistakably clear on how Jewish history was to be regulated - if they had kept themselves right with God, no one could have laid a finger on them; the fact that wicked hands have savaged them for 2 millennia since Jesus' day is proof that they are not right with God.

God has made Scripture accessible for study by all men and women, and steering clear of forming and expressing one's own opinion of what it says on the basis that it is an intellectual discourtesy to people whose opinions cannot possibly be correct is a really dumb idea.

Ed Form

[mwtech]

I'll start with these two verses.

God has never tempted someone.

James 1:13
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.

and

God has tempted someone.

Genesis 22:1
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

When looking into these two verses, I found many christian apologetics explaining it as being two kinds of tempting in the two different verses. Their belief is that James refers to the temptation to do evil, but Genesis refers to a test of faith.

I would have to argue that it has the same meaning in both instances. James 13 says that if a man is tempted to do evil, he is not tempted of God. To ask Abraham to sacrifice his son is tempting him to do something evil. As a matter of fact, what greater temptation is there for such a faithful man than for God himself to ask something of you? We know from Deuteronomy 12:31 that god finds human sacrifice to be an abomination (You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.). God IS tempting Abraham to do something God abhors. Whether he stops Abraham or not is irrelevant to the fact that he did tempt him. Before Abraham knew that God intended to stop him, we was tempted to do something evil that God told him to do.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 78 by bluethread]
Jesus does not fulfill messianic prophesy. The facts of the OT speak for themselves on this.

Rubbish!

Is that the best you can do to defined that? How about, well, point to the best OT prophecy you can that Jesus fulfilled,... and show me, in context, with a good translation that Jesus full filled it. Also, show that it wasn't 'written to'.

[edform]

[Replying to post 78 by bluethread]
Jesus does not fulfill messianic prophesy. The facts of the OT speak for themselves on this.

Rubbish!

Is that the best you can do to defined that? How about, well, point to the best OT prophecy you can that Jesus fulfilled,... and show me, in context, with a good translation that Jesus full filled it. Also, show that it wasn't 'written to'.

I'll return to your challenge in another post, but let me turn your words back on you. Why have you not said to Stryder: 'Is that the best you can do?' I have no problems in discussing the fulfilment of prophecy by Jesus, but general, sweeping claims like Stryder's, with no evidence to back them, are just so much hot air. My answer was the best he was entitled to.

Now to your demands: if you are of the same opinion as Stryder, perhaps you can list an OT prophecy or two that Jesus failed to fulfil - I'll be happy for you to chose the standard pot-boilers, where it is obvious that the words were intended as prophecy, and argument has already gone on endlessly whether Jesus can be seen to have fulfilled them; you don't need to delve into anything abstruse or novel. From looking at your by-line in this forum, I rather fancy that you toe a party line in such matters anyway, with no significant knowledge or study behind your messages, so asking too much of you might not be very productive.

Ed Form

[Zzyzx]

.

Rubbish!

Moderator Clarification
Since you are new to the Forum (and perhaps to debate), this is a clarification rather than a warning.

In civil, respectful, honorable debate we do not refer to an opposing argument as "rubbish" but present rebuttal arguments instead.

Also in civil, respectful, honorable debate we discuss ideas not personalities.

Those who ignore Forum Rules and Guidelines face disciplinary action -- up to and including banning.
Rules
C&A Guidelines


______________

Moderator clarifications do not count as a strike against any posters. They serve as an acknowledgment that a post report has been received and/or are given at the discretion of a moderator when he or she feels a clarification of the rules is required.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 95 by edform]

Ed one liners like Rubbish are really considered against the rules here and furthermore is not really that respectful to ones post.
Your tactic of not answering a request for evidence and demanding evidence in return is a tired debate tactic.

Your whole goal here is to avoid answering the question by continually attacking your opponents view(often used in evolution vs creation debates). If Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy it should be easy for you to show that. If you cannot show that then I am inclined to believe goat and strider more so than you.

So please have at and show us which OT prophecies Jesus fulfilled

[McCulloch]

[...] perhaps you can list an OT prophecy or two that Jesus failed to fulfil

People from the Nations looking to Israel for spiritual leadership and teaching.
Peace among the nations.
Messiah would judge the poor and afflicted.
And the jealousy of Ephraim will depart.

The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

Now it will come about that
In the last days
The mountain of the house of the Lord
Will be established as the chief of the mountains,
And will be raised above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it.
And many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us concerning His ways
And that we may walk in His paths.�
For the law will go forth from Zion
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And He will judge between the nations,
And will render decisions for many peoples;
And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not lift up sword against nation,
And never again will they learn war.

Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse,
And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And He will delight in the fear of the Lord,
And He will not judge by what His eyes see,
Nor make a decision by what His ears hear;
But with righteousness He will judge the poor,
And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth;
And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,
And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins,
And faithfulness the belt about His waist.

Then in that day
The nations will resort to the root of Jesse,
Who will stand as a signal for the peoples;
And His resting place will be glorious.

Then it will happen on that day that the Lord
Will again recover the second time with His hand
The remnant of His people, who will remain,
From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath,
And from the islands of the sea.
And He will lift up a standard for the nations
And assemble the banished ones of Israel,
And will gather the dispersed of Judah
From the four corners of the earth.
Then the jealousy of Ephraim will depart,
And those who harass Judah will be cut off;
Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,
And Judah will not harass Ephraim.
They will swoop down on the slopes of the Philistines on the west;
Together they will plunder the sons of the east;
They will possess Edom and Moab,
And the sons of Ammon will be subject to them.
And the Lord will utterly destroy
The tongue of the Sea of Egypt;
And He will wave His hand over the River
With His scorching wind;
And He will strike it into seven streams
And make men walk over dry-shod.
And there will be a highway from Assyria
For the remnant of His people who will be left,
Just as there was for Israel
In the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt.

23 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.�

[edform]

How about, well, point to the best OT prophecy you can that Jesus fulfilled,... and show me, in context, with a good translation that Jesus full filled it. Also, show that it wasn't 'written to'.

An arguments has raged between Jew and Christian, over the meaning of the words of Isaiah, particularly his Chapter 53. Sadly the opposing treatments of the prophecy show most clearly, not its meaning, but the divide between these opposed offshoots of the same root stock. It is observable that the majority of both sides teach a theology which is only loosely of biblical origin, and that the divide is confirmed, most acutely, by the major doctrinal errors of each camp. To the Jews, christian-trinitarian ideas of a divine Jesus cannot be countenanced, while christians condemn the failure of Jews to recognize Jesus as their Messiah. Isaiah, however, had no such blinkers over his eyes. He spoke clearly of an individual whose life would be bounded by detailed pre-telling. In this detail the recognition of the person described is
irresistible.

It is sensible first to consider the proximate fulfillment of the prophecy, for all prophecy must have a meaning for the people to whom it is delivered. Without this the zealous Jews would have rightly rejected the work from the canon as unsupported by the conditions of Deuteronomy 13:1-5. It was by the mechanism of a fulfillment in, or close to, the prophets own time that God identified those whose words were to be recorded and guarded, and it is to the credit of the Jewish nation that they did so when many of those writers spoke disparagingly of them. Thus we are able, in Isaiah, to see the identity of an Immanuel figure of Isaiah's time.

Chapter 1 is the key: it refers to the Assyrian invasion. Verses 8-9 speak like an eyewitness to the siege of Jerusalem, but in verses 5 & 6 the prophet complains of the spiritual condition of the nationÂ… "Why should ye be stricken any more?Â… the whole head is sick... From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores". The whole nation of Judah was leprous.

Chapter 38 tells of Hezekiah being afflicted with some form of the things called leprosy in Leviticus - probably a carbuncle that had invaded his brain-pan and horribly disfigured his face. Set against the nation's desperate sickness, it would seem as if "the Lord had laid on him" their sins and their punishment. Hezekiah was the one "whom man despisethÂ… whom the nation abhorreth" (49:7); the man whose
"visage was so marred more than any man" (52:14); who was "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted" (53:4). In answer to his cries of distress, God raised him from his deathbed on the third day (2Kings 20:5) and prolonged his life: "He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it him" (psalm 21:4). So here we see the background to Isaiah 53. Immanuel-Hezekiah bestrides the whole book and makes fools of the textual critics who claim multiple authors, and attempt its separation into fragments.

First at his birth, he appears as a child of sign (7:14); he suffers in the prime of life for the nation's sins; is raised the third day; and later, by his faith, is instrumental in defeating the Assyrians at the walls of Jerusalem.

A difficulty in reading Isaiah is his apparently careless use of tenses. Care reveals, however, that the tense changes are deliberate and supremely significant. In the 53rd chapter, which actually extends from 52:13, first there is future tense at 52:13-15, apart from the parenthesis at V.14b, then past tense at 53:1-10a, and finally future tense again at 53:10b-12.

New Testament sources indicate that the prophecy was first delivered orally (See Matthew 3:3; 4:14; 8:17 etc.), possibly within the circle of the prophet's own disciples (See Isaiah 8:16-17), and thus the transition from past to future tense at verse 10b marks the point in time between the prophets first visit to pronounce the King's doom, and his being raised from sickness three days later.

This clarity of identity with Hezekiah is, of itself, sufficient to destroy the basis of Jewish claims that the individual in Isaiah 53 is a personification of the Jewish nation in a healing role on God's behalf. The continuation of the detail, however, indicates reference to another person, of whom Hezekiah was a shadow only. So, verse by verse...

"Who hath believed our report?"

This and the preceding verse are, together, set in two coupletsÂ…
AÂ… "that which had not been told them they shall see"
BÂ… "that which they had not heard will they consider"
BÂ… "who hath believed that which we have heard?" (RV margin)
AÂ… "to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" (RV)
John at 12:38, and Paul in Romans 10:16 both apply the second couplet (BA) to Jewish refusal to believe the gospel, and in Romans 15:21 Paul applies the first pair (AB) to ready Gentile acceptance of it. In effect the Jewish prophets, and Isaiah in particular in the break in verse 10, stand at the door of the tomb and lament their countrymen's disbelief.

"He shall grow upÂ… as a tender plant."
Jesus was a shoot out of the felled Davidic stock (See Matthew 1, Luke 3; and Numbers 27:1-11 and 36:1-8), which flourished in the spiritually dry ground of captive Judah (See Isaiah 11:1 and Ezekiel 34:29).

"Before him"
Every word of Scripture is vital. Although Jesus grew up in the Godly environment of the home of Joseph the Just in Nazareth, his heavenly father watched carefully every event and circumstance of his young and promising life.

"He hath no form or comeliness."
We are not being told here that Jesus would be physically unattractive. Why did the Jews say, "Thou art not yet fifty years old", when he was only about thirty-three, unless his face was lined and haggard with the weariness and sorrow that attended his closing days?

"A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
There was nothing in Jesus' own personal life and conduct to cause him grief and sorrow; the prophet therefore explainsÂ…

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows"
The idea that one person may suffer pain in sympathy with others is well known. Jesus "groaned in himself" as he came to Lazarus' tomb (John 11:38). He saw all affliction as the fruits of sin against his Father.

"Wounded for our transgressions"
"Wounded" is correctly translated "pierced" at 51:9 (RV) and the other sufferings of verse 5 are correctly identified..

"bruised" -struck him- John 18:22

"chastisement" -spat in his face- Matthew 26:67

"stripes" -buffeted him and smote him- Matthew 26:67

All this happened before Caiaphas.

"Opened not his mouthÂ… led as a lamb to the slaughterÂ… opened not his mouth."
Isaiah predicts that on *two* occasions Jesus would refuse to speak; the first was before Caiaphas (Matthew 26:62). Then "they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate" (Matthew 27:2), "to the slaughter", and before him also "he opened not his mouth" (Mark 15:5 and Matthew 27:14)

"Taken to prison"
The prophecy is accurate even to a point not mentioned in the Gospels. If Jesus was arrested in the early evening, he would have to be kept in custody after his trials before Annas and Caiaphas, until he could appear before Pilate at about six o'clock the next morning.

"Who shall declare his generation"
This one of the little points which simply cannot apply to the Jews. The phrase means the person in question was unmarried and childless when all this happened to him. It was the greatest ambition of a Jew to have a son on his likeness (See Psalm
17:14-15 in RV), and one who failed to achieve it was "a worm, and no man" (Psalm 22:6)

"He was cut off"
The phrase describes criminal execution (See Daniel 9:26).

"And one appointed his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death "(Kay)
Pilate here appears in person on the prophetic stage, as the one who sentenced Jesus to be flung out with the two thieves, but changed his mind and gave the body to Joseph of Arimathaea to lay in his own new tomb. The verse is conjoined with a "vav" which could equally be rendered "but". That is the prophecy would read "One appointed his grave with the wicked, *but* with the rich in his death." which would be exact. [If required, I can go over the way in which this particular verse is mishandled, first by the Massoretes and subsequently by almost all translations - the translation above is in The Speaker's Commentary]

"Because he had done no violence"
The reason for the exception to criminal treatment is explained. God stepping in to witness that, unlike the two thieves, he had "done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth".

The prophet has beheld the suffering Immanuel buried, and now takes his stand at the tomb, and says, in effect: "You Jews think you achieved it all by your clever scheming, and are congratulating one another on your cruel success...

But 'it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief'.
It was according to 'the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked (Roman) hands have crucified and slain'". The prophet insists that God was in control throughout, from the moment of Jesus' arrest to his last expiring cry. The equating of God's eternal pre-vision with human volition is beyond our limited understanding, but the prophet makes it clear and unmistakable.

Now comes the jump from past to future tenseÂ…
"When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin"
The prophet introduces a new character here with the word "thou", and he can only be one who reads Isaiah's message. For "ALL we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all".

"He shall see his seed"
After his resurrection, which is here implied, the unmarried, childless, Saviour will have a family: "it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation" (Psalm 22:30).

"The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand"
As surely as it was God's eternal counsel that His Son should be brought through many vicissitudes to a sacrificial death, just as certainly will God's purpose go forward in him to the glory of its ultimate realization.

"He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied."
Only Jesus himself could adequately comment on the eternal satisfaction he will experience when his work of love has borne fruit in " a great multitude, which no man can number", who have been delivered from "the bondage of corruption" and brought into "the glorious liberty" of eternal fellowship with his Father and himself.

The prophet now opens up the spiritual implications of the great sacrifice.

"By knowledge of him shall my righteous Servant make many righteous."
For the last time in Isaiah his subject is called a servant. As at the decisive "wherefore in Philippians 2:9, a transition is recorded. The servant has become the "Shepherd" (See 44:28 and 1Peter 2:18, 21,25) Paul is usually credited with the expounding of the theme of righteousness imputed on the basis of faith in Romans 3, but Isaiah anticipated it by 600 years. (Luke 1:77)

"Therefore will I give many men for his share and multitudes for his spoils."
The promise here made to Christ is based on the 'golden' passage about Abraham in 41:2-4, and the incident to which it refers. After Abraham's defeat of the four kings (Genesis 14) he was offered the spoils by the king of Sodom, and declined them because the king might proudly have boasted he had made him rich. "After these things the word of the Lord came unto AbrahamÂ… sayingÂ… I am thyÂ… exceeding great rewardÂ… Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be"; for this multitude would be his "spoils". And this wonderful Abrahamic promise is paraphrased by Isaiah as being fulfilled in Christ's reward for his sacrificial and obedient love. [I can expand this group of points with a supplementary treatment of the hopelessly bad translation given in most English language Bibles for Isaiah 53:10-12 if anyone wishes to see it.]

"Because he hath poured out his soul unto death."
The difficulty presented by Philippians 2:7, RV, which says that Christ "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant", is resolved when it is realized that "emptied himself" is a literal translation from the Hebrew of the phrase "poured out his soul". The emptying therefore does not relate to the shedding of a pre-existent glory, but a pouring out of all his life in willing obedience "even unto death, yea the death of the
cross".

"He was numbered with the transgressorsÂ… and maketh (present tense) intercession for the transgressors."
The words are not a prediction that Jesus would be crucified among thieves, otherwise they would occur in the historical part of the prophecy, say at verse 8. The prophet says that the Servant, in his risen glory, would be able to intercede for transgressors because he had consented to be numbered with them in the days of his flesh. As early as his baptism he voluntarily acknowledged affinity with us in our fallen state. To John he said: "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh **us** to fulfill all righteousness". The atonement was already being anticipated in what has been called this "great act of loving communion with our misery" when he submitted to baptism.

When quoting this verse of Isaiah (Luke 22:37) Jesus emphasized in words of the keenest irony that the disciples need not prepare themselves to defend him because he was going voluntarily to be "reckoned with the transgressors" (RV). Jesus here was drawing out the meaning which was intended in the word of prophecy. Again our finite understanding stumbles at the depths of meaning enfolded in the atonement. Paul speaks of it in Romans 4 to 6 but here in Isaiah 53 we see it was already revealed.

Being laden with description and detail which cannot be applied to the Jewish Nation, being so plainly based upon the life of Hezekiah, and being so strongly in synchronism with the New Testament accounts, the identity of the central figure, the Suffering Servant is made plain.

Ed Form

I should acknowledge that many of the ideas in this expansion of Isaiah 53 were found in works by J. W. Thirtle, the Victorian Hebraist and Edward Whittaker, a Christadelphian scholar.

[edform]

[Replying to post 95 by edform]

Ed one liners like Rubbish are really considered against the rules here and furthermore is not really that respectful to ones post.
Your tactic of not answering a request for evidence and demanding evidence in return is a tired debate tactic.

Your whole goal here is to avoid answering the question by continually attacking your opponents view(often used in evolution vs creation debates). If Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy it should be easy for you to show that. If you cannot show that then I am inclined to believe goat and strider more so than you.

I'm sad that you did not notice my promise to return and answer the poster's challenge in a later post. I've been writing the reply I posted a few minutes ago for several hours, since I saw the OP and gave it a brief answer.

That brief answer was a protest at the poster's rather insulting assumptions about me. In effect I said: 'So it's OK for Stryder to be grossly insulting to me but I cannot question his habit of pronouncing all apologetics to be 'tired', 'laboured', 'tortured' and of saying things like "If we accept the latest excuse" and 'refuted 40 years ago' without offering a shred of evidence to back any of his claims.

I have never backed away from any discussion of what the Bible says and had no intention whatsoever of doing so when I asked the OP to consider his own attitude.

So please have at and show us which OT prophecies Jesus fulfilled

I was when you wrote this and I've posted it now. I'm ready to offer as much more as any of you is inclined to ask for.

Ed Form