Biblical Inerrancy

Note the evidence that the authors of Matthew and Luke changing the narrative/content of Mark is proof positive that they did not consider it to be inerrant.

A favorite fundamentalist action on Inerrancy comes from the Editors of the NIV. According to them, the Bible is so inerrant, that they changed the Bible multiple times, to make sure it is inerrant.

Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 117.

“Since the Bible is a book, it makes better sense to approach it the way one approaches books. There are certainly books in the world that don’t have any mistakes in them. But no one would insist that a particular phone book, chemistry textbook, or car instruction manual has absolutely no mistakes in it before reading it to see whether it does or not. Rather than thinking that the Bible cannot have mistakes, before looking to see if it does, why not see if it does, and only then decide whether it could. . . . If God created an error free book then it should be without errors. If what we have is not an error-free book, then it is not a book that God has delivered to us without errors.”

From OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com, 12/5/2024.

Here are examples of textual and historical discrepancies found in the Bible, as highlighted by critical scholars:

Textual Discrepancies
  1. Manuscript Variants: Early manuscripts of the Bible contain differences, as scribes occasionally made errors, intentional changes, or interpretative additions. Examples include:
    • The ending of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:9–20), which is missing in some of the earliest manuscripts.
    • The story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11), which is absent from many early copies.
  2. Differing Accounts of Creation:
    • Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 provide two distinct creation narratives:
      • In Genesis 1, humans are created after animals, and male and female are created simultaneously.
      • In Genesis 2, Adam is created before animals, and Eve is created later from Adam’s rib.
  3. The Census of David:
    • 2 Samuel 24:1 says God incited David to take a census of Israel, but 1 Chronicles 21:1 attributes this incitement to Satan.
  4. The Name of God:
    • In Exodus 6:3, God tells Moses that He was known to the patriarchs as El Shaddai but not by His name YHWH. However, YHWH appears earlier in Genesis (e.g., Genesis 4:26, Genesis 12:8), suggesting inconsistencies in divine self-revelation.
  5. The Number of Solomon’s Stalls:
    • 1 Kings 4:26 states Solomon had 40,000 stalls for horses, but 2 Chronicles 9:25 says he had 4,000.
  6. Genealogies of Ezra and Zadok:
    • Ezra 7:1–5 lists Ezra’s genealogy as 16 generations from Aaron, while 1 Chronicles 6:3–15 lists the genealogy of Zadok, a contemporary of Ezra, as 23 generations from Aaron. This inconsistency suggests an incomplete or conflicting record.
Historical Discrepancies
  1. Chronology and Genealogy: Discrepancies exist between different biblical accounts, such as the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–38, which list different ancestors.
  2. Contradictory Events: Accounts of the same events sometimes differ. For example:
    • The death of Judas Iscariot: Matthew 27:5 says he hanged himself, while Acts 1:18 describes him falling and his body bursting open.
  3. The Date of the Exodus:
    • The Bible suggests the Exodus occurred about 480 years before the construction of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6:1), placing it around 1446 BCE. However, no archaeological evidence supports such a large-scale migration from Egypt, and Egypt’s historical records are silent on this event.
  4. The Fall of Jericho:
    • The Bible describes the conquest of Jericho by the Israelites under Joshua (Joshua 6). However, archaeological evidence indicates that Jericho’s walls had already been destroyed and the city abandoned by the supposed time of Joshua’s conquest (circa 13th century BCE).
  5. The Census in Luke’s Nativity Account:
    • Luke 2:1–2 claims a Roman census under Quirinius caused Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem. However:
      • Quirinius governed Syria in 6 CE, while Matthew’s Gospel places Jesus’ birth during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE.
      • There is no evidence of a Roman census requiring individuals to return to their ancestral homes.
  6. Nebuchadnezzar and the Siege of Tyre:
    • Ezekiel 26:7–14 prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Tyre. Historical records show Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for 13 years but did not capture the island city; Tyre was eventually conquered by Alexander the Great centuries later.
  7. The Reign of Kings:
    • The lengths of reigns for certain kings in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles conflict. For example:
      • Ahaziah’s age at becoming king is stated as 22 in 2 Kings 8:26 but as 42 in 2 Chronicles 22:2.
  8. The Death of Goliath:
    • 1 Samuel 17 famously credits David with killing Goliath. However, 2 Samuel 21:19 attributes Goliath’s death to Elhanan, a lesser-known warrior. (Some translations attempt to resolve this by inserting the phrase “the brother of Goliath,” but this is absent in the original Hebrew.)
  9. The Number of Those Returning from Exile:
    • Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 list the same groups of people returning from the Babylonian exile, but their totals differ (e.g., Ezra 2:64–65 lists 42,360 people, while Nehemiah 7:66–67 lists 42,360 but includes different details about servants and singers).

These discrepancies highlight the complex, multi-sourced nature of the Bible’s composition and encourage scholars to examine its historical and theological contexts. Faith traditions often address these concerns through harmonization or focusing on the text’s spiritual message.

End ChatGPT’s response.

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