The Inerrancy of the Bible

I've already pointed out that by any reasonable standard of evidence Matthew and Luke conflict on the date of the nativity. In the face of htis opponents invent an unrecorded census which by all rights should not have happened. But that is not enough, they then invent the claim that the same man who oversaw the known census of 6AD must oversee this invented census, And when this is shown to be highly improbable due to his rank forbidding him from taking the post he is assumed - with no evidence at all - to have held, they then invent the idea that he must have been demoted to the middle classes - which would involve a major political scandal.
This is ALL invention, there is no evidence supporting any of it.Remmber 36 Christians claimed that study would FIND the Bible to be inerrant. So I do not need absolute proof of errors to refute them. Even a "balance of probability" standard would be sufficient to utterly refute the claim. If we find that the Bible probably contains errors we have NOT found that it is inerrant.

This is not an error, IMO, but one of the most interesting facts that I know about the KJV, or the Authorised Version, is that it was never actually officially authorised.Maybe not that interesting to others, but to a sad Bible lover like myself it is. There really are so many historical errors in all Bible's not just the KJV, that to claim inerrancy is to admit that you haven't really studied the Bible at all.One historical inaccuracy in the KJV that has been corrected in many other versions is the claim in Judges 4:2So the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. As any one remotely familiar with near eastern history knows, there was never a 'king of Canaan', the area has never been a single polity ruled over by one king.Other Bibles correct this error, for example, the NIV has:So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The NIV inserts an 'a' into the verse to make it at least plausible.Another feature of this thread is the actual lack of support for this alleged inerrancy. It appears that the KJV guys think that to make a statement is sufficient evidence.For example, has anyone shown evidence of a census during the reign of Herod?Regarding the age of the Earth, no one appears to acknowledge that the KJV has indeed given the age of the earth in its pages.The 1701 version of the KJV included Bishop Ussher's chronology in its margins. His chronology gives a creation date of 4004 BCE, a date arrived at by genealogical calculations and other internal evidence.If anyone is claiming inerrancy for any book they need to be able to provide evidence for all of its contents. Simply stating that there is no evidence to the contrary is no good. If you are claiming that some event happened, then what evidence do you have to support it?An example of this would be the war described in Gen.14 between the allied forces of the five Cities of the Plain and the four king alliance led by king Chedorlaomer. No one has actually been able to identify any of the nine kings involved in the war in any extant external source, there is also no external evidence for this war.Now, just because this war is invisible outside of the Bible does not make the Bible erroneous. But, if you are claiming accuracy then you need to provide evidence to support your claim.The Bible is rife with historical errors, it is no big deal as it wasn't written primarily as a history book.I think it would be a good idea to have a thread about the history and contents of the KJV, not a thread to argue in, but just to log the historical facts about the KJV. Interesting facts like the 'he' and 'she' versions of 1611, the 'wicked' version of the KJV, and how it continues to be the world's best-selling book.Brian.

Hi,Incog, since you seem to have a penchant for digging up reasons, perhaps you might explain why ,if the KJV is inerrant, the Southern Convention of the Anglican Church set up a committee of 54 members, high-ranking churchmen and scholars in 1870-71, to revise the KJV? After a period of ten years at the job, we were finally given a Bible so different from the KJV (RV,ASV),that the furore has never died down since.

Paul, the issue is one of belief. Obvious, correct?1) We can either affirm or deny the reality of God.2) If we affirm, (as Jar has done, for example) we still may deny the applicability of the Bible.3) If we deny this guide, we then have a spiritual concept that is the product of our imagination. This is our right, yet can we really be called Christians without any verifiable reference to the living Christ?

IncognitoA nomad people on the move in the desert find enough fuel to piss away on the melting of gold to form a calf and then find some more to melt it again? I am sure they had no problem with that.Atfter all wood is plentiful there eh?We will probably have to continue this in another thread as we are coming up to post # 300 where we need to shut down.Talk to you then perhaps.

Which question is that ? The question of whether we will FIND that the Bible is inerrant if we study it enough ? The evidence is in - not only is it not enough to study the Bible alone but it is quite clear that we do not FIND that the Bible is inerrant - indeed we find that it almost certainly does contain errors.Or were you talking about the idea that 2 Timothy claims that the Bible IS the Word of God ? Since Jesus never said such a thing I don't see why a follower of Christ would be forced to endorse it even if 2 Timothey was clear and explicit on the matter - which it certainly is not.

1) PaulK, for the moment, we'll have to agree to disagree then. I found a website that claims Augustus himself records a registration (census) in 2 B.C. I can't verify myself if this is correct so I'm buying the Res Gestae and works of Josephus off of Amazon.com. Thank you for pushing this issue though, even though I suspect you are incorrect, it'll be worth seeing it for myself in print..."but there is a reference to such a registration of all the Roman people not long before 5 February 2 B.C. written by Caesar Augustus himself: "While I was administering my thirteenth consulship [2 B.C.] the senate and the equestrian order and the entire Roman people gave me the title Father of my Country" (Res Gestae 35, italics added)."
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html2) Brian, you are correct that many Biblical references I cannot verify. But by this logic I also cannot verify I had any ancestors 200 years ago because I can't produce you any graves, names, or documents verifying their existence. But on the flip side to your statement, some things in the Bible are verifiable, so using statistics it would be possible to come close to an idea of how many "unknowns" are "errors" based on known facts/errors. Your efforts would be better directed at proving known errors than worrying about unknowns because from what I've seen on this forum, these kids are batting 100%. Thank you for bringing this to my attention though, I'm curious what kind of results we could produce from random sampling 3) Nighttrain: Committees and Conventions don't prove the KJV has errors, all that proves is that somebody didn't agree with it and thought they could do a better job. Not to stretch comparisons to far, but as you know from movies, the original can be better than the remake... Thanks for the trivia though.4) Sidelined, you raise a good common misconception. The Middle East has not always been the sandy desert paradise that we see today. There is a good bit of evidence (not from the Bible) that adequate wood/brush/forage would have been around to support the fire required to construct this calf. Not to speculate too much, but we have no idea where God led them for 40 years that they couldn't make the extremely short trip from Egypt to Israel - maybe they happened to wander through some part of the Middle East that had petroleum seepages (even the ancients knew oil burned). A better issue for you to raise would be how did God keep 600,000 men (and families) lost for 40 years (not to mention feed, clothe, support them). But is this an error? I'm not sure - somehow manna miraculously appeared... This could be another case of the miraculous "unexplainables." But again, thank you for raising issues I have to double check, it makes my faith/knowledge that much stronger 5) On a serious note to all involved in this forum, if you find real "errors" that are provable with archaeological, historical, scientific facts, please bring them up. Even us "Literal Christians" would like to know about them. On the other hand if you are only trying to argue about the most modern word to use in a sentence, don't bother, that's not an error. An error involving word usage involves a word misused within reference to its historical time period (not your modern lack of understanding).Again, thanks to all of you, I myself have learned some things

Yawn. A worldwide Flood.

Just to save everyone else looking it up, this is how it appears in the linked to site (the bolding - not italics as the site says ! - was lost in the original cur and paste).I'm no Roman history expert but isn't it possible that he's speaking figuratively ? "I'm so popular everyone agreed" kind of a deal ?

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Confused ? You will be...

Incognito Then you will not mind providing the evidence pertainent to the time period and location will you? Speculate all you want,however I do not believe there is any evidence of any such Exodus having occured. I need not,I hope, have to explain the destruction inherent in the moving of the sun backwards ten degrees.This event,is not to my knowledge, recored anywhere else and such a staggeringly odd incident would not have gone unnoticed.

Oh no, not the 'Glenn Miller' piece of garbage.You will not that Glenn Miller does not back up any of his claims.Plus, his explaination does not resolve the issues that 1) no census is recorded 2) the 'evidence' for quintarsis being govenor twice is a piece of stone where the name was totally worn away, and therefore is not evidence at all, and 3) During the reign of Herod, Augustus Ceasar did not have the authority to order a census in Judah.Oh, and by the way, would you be so kind as to let us know how Judas died?? Did he hang himself, or did he fall, and have his guts spill out?This message has been edited by ramoss, 01-20-2005 22:43 AM

sidelined, Red Sea Crossing Site RediscoveredThe inscriptions on the one found on the west side lying in the water had been eroded off. However, on the one found on the Arabian side, arachaic Hebrew inscriptions were still legible on the leeward side of the column. They read "This monument is erected by King Solomon, king of Israel, in honor of Yahweh in commemoration of the crossing of the Red Sea." If you stand on the poles the earth is rotating quite slowly. It would appear that God simply stopped the earth's rotation, rotated the earth in reverse, then caused it to start rotating normally again after he had moved it back 10 degree's. No one knows why some planets rotate in one direction and another in a different direction, the moon doesn't rotate at all. Its God that causes their rotation, unless you can prove otherwise.This message has been edited by Tom, 01-20-2005 23:25 AM

Ah! **SMACKS HEAD** Why didn't I see that? Now that you've explained it is quite apparent how it was done.Tom, those stories are made up. They never happened. There are threads here that went into the physics of what happens when you stop something as massive as the earth rotating and it isn't pretty.lfen

1) "Sidelined," I will have to admit I cannot answer this one and it does sound fairly outlandish. I agree, this should have caught the attention of many nations at the time. "36 Christians," you're on your own on this idea. I'm also not about to try and defend the Joshua day/night problem if anybody wants to bring that up...2) Hopefully this works for your Sinai vegetation doubts - it tells me there was enough trees in the area (not to mention current wadis still have trees)"Less old, though more expressive in some ways of the antiquity of Sinai, are the dozens of Wadis, or fossilized riverbeds, that define the terrain all over the peninsula. From the depth and frequency of the Wadis, we can tell that Sinai was at one time a lush and fertile region."
Sinai's Ecology3)"Coragyps." You know we don't have room for the Flood argument here - but to be brief - your "scientists" can't even agree if there was an asteroid catastrophe - some think global warming, others think the Earth was a giant snowball. Seriously, how is the Flood less credible? Until you pin down which catastrophe (if any) is most likely to have occurred, you can't pin "error" on this story.
BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Snowball Earth
BBC - 404: Not Found 4) "MangyTiger," before you point out that a guy bolded a statement, please read the rest of the article to figure out why he bolded it. The reason most of your associates here keep coming up with "errors" that aren't "errors" is because they don't bother doing their homework, reading all the words, or looking at context... But yes, your hypothesis is plausible, but on the other hand, Josephus could have been writing figuratively (not historically) too...5) "Ramoss," this "Glenn Miller garbage" references many books by title and author (Res Gestae, by Augustus being the applicable one here). Are you telling me that Augustus does not mention a 2 B.C. census in Res Gestae? I have no access to libraries here so I will have to wait for my Amazon.com order to arrive, if indeed Augustus never mentions a census, then you are right, the Glenn Miller piece is garbage. But on the other hand, if it mentions the census, I'm going to have to assume that you haven't read up on the issue yourself and are throwing out insults at random..."Sidelined," I concede "error" (or the need for some extreme miracles) on the issue of astronomical anomalies. Interestingly though, as of yet they are the only thing brought up in almost 300 posts that equate to "errors"... So the KJV might not be "inerrant" but it's close enough for me to believe... If anybody can come up with a logical explanation on this sun issue in the next 50 years I'd like to know."Tom," I wouldn't try to explain the "degree" problem off the cuff, I still maintain that anything in the Bible makes more sense than a lot of scientific theories (snow-ball earth being a good example) but until adequate evidence is found - this is a pretty tough problem to explain within the context of current human understanding."36 Christians," they found an issue I can't refute, good luck! Don't let this kill your outlook though, science is always proving its previous theories wrong... They may find your proof yet...This message has been edited by Incognito, 01-20-2005 23:51 AM

ROTFLMAO

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion