Do you have any evidence the bible in inaccurate?

Question

If so, please share it with all of us. Do so respectfully please.

Answer 1

Thank you very much for your question. I presume you meant it seriously. Presuming that you do I have answered it seriously, I hope you will take the time to actually read my answer. If you wish you can contact me directly at the email address listed in my signature block at the end of this post.

The canon of the Bible was not formalized until the Council of Carthage -- when it affirmed a resolution of the synod of Hippo from 393 recognizing a group of books drawn together and claimed as divine by Bishop Anathasius. Anathasius did not even coin the word canon until 327 and the Council of Carthage did not formalize the list approved by Hippo until the late 390s (397 if I remember my church history correctly), and then sent it on to "the Church across the sea" (Rome) for the Pope's approval.

There are no full copies of what is now considered scripture until the 4th century. There are two copies from the 4th century (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) together with hundreds of manuscript fragments of various forms (Papyrus and Vellum Manuscripts and Vellum Palimpsests). Overall there are over 5000 copies of at least part of the present canonical Bible that are from the sixth century or earlier. These range from a few verses to whole books, to Bibles that were read in churches. According to Dr. Bart Ehrman, one of the foremost experts in the world on Textual criticism and Textual reconstruction, those manuscripts have between them at least 200,000 differences. Some of those differences are minor, or meaningless -- but some are very important and would change core Christian doctrines like the Virgin birth of our Lord and his divinity -- among others.

One does not need to be an expert to see that the Bible is fiction, and not the Word of God however. Even the American Bible Society explains scriptural accreation as starting with Hebrew tribesmen telling stories around a campfire. That is exactly where the earliest parts of the Bible started -- then it was expanded through midrash and so forth.

Looking at the received texts, the idea of Sola Scriptura becomes, with apologies, evidently ludicrous. The Bible says that the world has corners (Isaiah 11:12) and that it sets on pillars (I Samuel 2:8). It says that God accepted a human sacrifice -- he may have prevented Isaac's, but he allowed a general to sacrifice his own daughter without even a murmur, the text giving tacit support to the idea that having given his word, the man had to kill his child. (Judges 11:30-39). It clearly maintains that genocide is often commanded by God (Joshua 10:40-42 and I Samuel 15: 2, 3 and 8) and that, after killing all the adults in a race, taking the female children as sex slaves is permissible (Numbers 31: 17-18).

The God revealed by the Bible is not only both a liar who doesn't know the natural laws of his own world, and a monster, as shown above -- but he has no real regard, even for his own people, whom he forces into cannibalism (Leviticus 26: 27-29) when he is mad at them; or his priests, whose faces he wipes with dung (Malachi 2:1-3).

It is not only gays and lesbians that are hated by bible-god, though they are. The monstrosity also suggests killing kids who eat or drink too much (Deuteronomy 21: 18-21), and says that if he is angry with parents he will kill their children (Leviticus 26:22) and he blames things upon children whose great-great-great grandfathers committed the things being blamed on the kids (Exodus 20: 5).

Putting it in a word, bible-god is a monstrosity, a horrific demiurge of evil. Something that even he admits ( Isaiah 45:7 ) [Furthermore, the word used in Hebrew for evil, the word ra' is widely conceded to mean a number of different things: It can mean "wickedness," "mischief," "bad," "trouble," "hurt," "sore," "affliction," "ill," "adversity," "harm," "grievous," and "sad." So no matter what particular interpretation is given of this word -- it has profoundly negative implications. The idea that god is sovereign over the affairs of man makes this even worse, because no matter what interpretation it has, it indicates that bible-god deliberately does harm.]; evil about which he sometimes changes his mind (Exodus 32:14). What a font of unchanging morality -- that almighty God can decide to kill an entire people, and then be talked out of it by a human servant... Furthermore, it is obvious, if God can change his mind, then even if the Bible were not full of errors and horrors, you could not trust that God had not changed his mind on any other issue in it.

So, yes, I suppose if one wants to take as truth a book that says that beetles have four legs instead of six (Leviticus 11: 21-23) and that rabbits chew their cud [which they do NOT] (Deuteronomy 14:7) and if you are willing to, having accepted it as truth, overlook the fact that bible-god routinely changed his mind (I can show you other instances if you wish) then yeah, I suppose its words would matter

I on the other hand, while a Christian (as in Christ follower) am NOT a literalist, and do not think that a book of bronze age myths owing heavily to the Sumerian and Egyptian mythology in the Old Testament and to a collection of pagan faiths, particularly Mithraism in the New Testament, matters at all.

Christianity is centered around love, faith in Christ, and Eucharist. At best the Bible is sacred because of its place in the life of the early church and should be regarded as holy myth -- stress on the myth. And what is a myth? It is fiction.

Kind Regards,

Reynolds
Schenectady, NY
http://www.rebuff.org
[e-mail]

To sunestauromai -- according to what scholars? I've seen people make bland assertions before -- but it seems to me that you do nothing to deflect or answer anything I've said -- you just expect your calm surety to carry the day. That's a lousy way to discuss something if you actually are the scholar that you assert in your profile you are.

Answer 2

Where to start? Why not at the beginning? The Genesis tale of creation agrees with the scientific facts only by coincidence. (This is not rocket science; I figured that out when I was eight years old.) The Adam and Eve tale is phony; genetic evidence shows that the race had a single male and single female ancestor, but they never saw each other: they lived 250,000 years apart. The flood story has been known for a century to be bogus; there are a half dozen completely independent lines of evidence, each of which proves that no such event ever occurred. The tales of people living to ages of 700+ years is impossible for genetic reasons. There is a report that the sun stopped in the sky; that is impossible. There are literally hundreds more; someone claimed a tabulation of 1800 errors, although I have not seen the list and cannot comment on how the errors were counted. There are also dozens of self-contradictions [reference]. The bottom line: the bible is useless as a reference for much of anything.

Answer 3

Do you have any evidence that the bible is truly accurate?

No.

One can say that certain historical things happened - but that doesn't mean that the more radical things happened. It is commonly argued that because some historical events can be proved means that the whole bible is true. Not so. In fact, there are myths of other cultures that accurately document historical happenings, doesn't mean that the more radical miracle filled events really happened.

There are a lot of things in the NT that don't jive with history, or with Judaism. Such as who Pilate really was, and how he really treated the Jews. Pauls behavior as a Pharisee, and the fact that the Pharisees didn't work for the High Priest. Never. And that the High Priest didn't have any say when he sent Paul to arrest Jews the day that he had his conversion. That city was out of the High Priest's area of control, and the ruler would not have been true friendly to Paul's presence to haul away his citizens.

There are many things that don't seem to go - and I could sit here and talk to you about them. But would it make any difference?

Probably not. Because you have already decided to believe that the bible is true, all of it and that it is the literal word of God. So nothing that I present is going to change your mind.

Why even ask anyways?

Answer 4

I agree with the one statement that the bible is often inaccurately interpreted. Many years of being verbally rewritten etc. I am convinced about the fact that the truth will eventually set us free.Revelations may only be how the truth reveals itself to us.There can always be an element of truth in a lie and we shouldn't entirely discount the Bible. But, as a Historical book of natural disasters both past and future we should take notice. Some things are naturally occurring and predictable.Even mankind and it's wars are predictable to a point.Some may believe that the Jews are responsible for fabricating lies from the truth and calling themselves Gods chosen. When in fact they may have only been chosen originally to tell the actual truth at a chosen time and are capitalizing on half truths for their own benefit. This isn't much different than many Lawyers would do. (Respectfully that is.)

Answer 5

I have evidence that the Bible is inconsistent with itself. The book of Matthew and the book of Luke have directly conflicting genealogies for Joseph of Nazareth. They both begin at King David as was prophesied for the messiah (though since Joseph was not directly related to Jesus, that too is a little fishy) but other than that they have almost nothing in common. They can be found in Luke 3:21-28 and Matthew 1:1-16.

Answer 6

The accuracy of the text is attested by approximately 50 thousand separate manuscripts.

Yes, there were some textual variations brought about by the fragile nature of the writing materials at the time, along with a few human errors, things like spelling differences and changes in the form of root words used, like "he did something" or "something was done," slightly different forms of the same word.

Those variant readings amount to much less than 1% of the text and the statistical "level of confidence" that the currently published form is in compliance with the sense of the original documents exceeds 99.999%

... "of the approximately 20,000 lines that make up the entire New Testament, only 40 lines are in question. These 40 lines represent one quarter of one percent of the entire text and do not in any way affect the teaching and doctrine of the New Testament." -- http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/bible-manuscripts.htm

Answer 7

No I got no evidence. I only believe that the Bible is inaccurate.

Answer 8

To much info; But an example might suffice. At the beginning, in the first book, Cain left the Eden, but joined with a women, and had children; where did this women came from? If only Cain was expelled from Eden, there shouldn't have been any one else outside, right? Or, did God expelled Cain from Eden for his crime, and his women too, just for being Cain's women? Not very just, is it?

Answer 9

no. I find that it isn't so much that is inaccurate or accurate but it is the way it is interpreted. Everyone has their own take on it. I personally think that it is a collection of good stories.

Answer 10

When Moses is telling the Pharoh to let the Israelites go, the Bible says God hardened Pharoh's heart so he would not obey Moses. It SHOULD say Pharoh hardened his own heart and would not listen. God would not do such a thing.