Matthew 27:9-10
Then was fulfilled what has been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price has been said by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”
The problem with this passage is that nowhere in Jeremiah can this prophecy be found. Instead it is found in the book of Zechariah.
Zechariah 11:12-13
And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter...
Did the author of Matthew make a mistake?
2007-07-29 05:43:33 · 21 answers · asked by kimmyisahotbabe 5 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Sparky, I just now re-read the passages you cited, and there is nothing in there that resembles what Matthew mistakenly attributed to Jeremiah.
The author of the book of Matthew obviously made a mistake, he quoted Jeremiah when he meant to quote Zechariah.
2007-07-29 06:00:29 · update #1
The people that wrote the bible are a bunch of losers, so yea i can totally believe they made a mistake
2007-07-29 05:48:31 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 6⤋
Jeremiah 19:1 This is what the LORD says: "Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests 2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, 3 and say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. 6 So beware, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
Not uncommonly, God sent prophecies of things to come more than once.
2007-07-29 05:51:09 · answer #2 · answered by Steve 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The prophecy is found in Zech. 11:12. Albert Barnes shows that a change of a single letter in the original would transform Zechariah into Jeremiah, and it is supposed that some early copyist made the mistake. Another explanation is that Jeremiah, in the Jewish arrangement of the prophets, stood first, and that his name was given to the whole book of prophecy.
2007-07-29 05:53:38 · answer #3 · answered by Cookyduster 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
No
Jeremiah was placed first in “the book of the prophets,” and this section of prophecies included not only Jeremiah’s writings but also the writings of Zechariah. So Matthew was refering to the book of prophets which included both Jeremiah & Zechariah.
2007-07-29 05:52:51 · answer #4 · answered by Ask_Elvis 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
According to my Bible's footnotes, that is also Jeremiah 19:1-13 as well as Jeremiah 32:6-9
2007-07-29 05:50:22 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yes, not the first nor only mistake the authors made in the NT, but to be fair the simple answer that will probably be given would be that you learn something out from the connecetion between zechariah and jeremiah.
2007-07-29 06:47:04 · answer #6 · answered by Josh 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Not too bad, when you consider that hardly anybody had access to a good reference Library, it's been translated dozens of times by people who didn't understand the context, copied thousands of times by people who often were zoned out, written by people who often didn't know what they were talking about and was culled by the Church on the basis of what they liked from a much larger body of work.
It's not the book's fault that it gets used by folks who don't get the concept of metaphor and insist that every word of the King James Version is the literal and only Truth.
2007-07-29 06:26:21 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
There are many similar instances of poor editing in the Christian Bible.
For instance, the Cave of Patriarchs (the Machpelah) is in Hebron. But Acts 7 has it in Shechem.
2007-07-29 19:44:35 · answer #8 · answered by mo mosh 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It is possible that Zachariah is quoting something that Jeremiah had said.
In their books, they may be talking about some other prophet instead of themselves.
Just an idea, but I have no proof and I am not a preacher or expert in religion.
2007-07-29 05:47:15 · answer #9 · answered by :-* 2 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Well, it's about as accurate as a group of men can write it. There are many little other errors to be found throughout the Bible like this one. We all know God being perfect could not have made such mistakes, therefore God did not, directly at least, write the Bible.
2007-07-29 05:50:36 · answer #10 · answered by alex e 3 · 1⤊ 2⤋
There's lots of conflicts. It's amazing that the Bible is considered so sacred when it was written by man and is therefore open to many imperfections.
2007-07-29 05:47:45 · answer #11 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 3⤋