Are there any errors in the Bible?

[Winken]

@coffeeandprayer........ Thank YOU for presenting the OP!!

 

[Root of Jesse]

Hello, I recommend this lecture on why there are differences in the Gospels:

There's differences in the gospels because the writers had different audiences and were meant to convey different truths. Pretty simple.

 

[faroukfarouk]

Yes, there are very many errors, inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible. So what? God is perfect. The Bible is a human product and isn't perfect. It can't be.

But it's the Word of God as well as having Spirit-inspired human authors.

 

[Ματθαίος]

But it's the Word of God as well as having Spirit-inspired human authors.

Yes. And with the human element, you get the associated problems.

 

[gordonhooker]

Even with the ancient languages we will never know what was originally written because none of the original writings exist, only copies of copies of copies. Hence I hold with Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience...

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

Not in the original languages.
But there are some small errors of mistranslated words and an odd verse or two
inserted by those wanting to reinforce church doctrine at the expense of truth.

1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word,
and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This verse is not in the original Greek and was inserted much later as a statement
to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity - the triune nature of the Godhead.
There are probably no more than half-a-dozen such interpolations in the KJV, etc.

How do we know what is the Hebrew and Greek of the original scriptures
inspired by God? I am glad you asked this question.

Bible numerics or gematria is the answer!
Ivan Panin was a professor of mathematics at Harvard University back in like the
1890s to the 1930s and while studying the orginal Greek he noticed that words
(like the definite article) were not used consistently and there were definite
patterns to the use of words in the original texts.

Our arithmetic numbers; 1, 2, 3, >9,0... came to us through the returning Crusaders
who read Arabic scrolls. These numbers came from India.
But in our ancient Greco-Roman world & the Middle East number values
were ascribed to the alphabet. Hebrew, Greek and Latin used letters of the
alphabet to indicate numbers.
The most familiar to us are the Roman numerals on old big clocks - I = 1 and
III = 3 or X = 10 and V =5 and C =100, and so on.
Thus 1996 in Roman numerals is MCMXCVI.

Ivan Panin discovered gematria or Bible numerics and proved that every single
word and verse in the 66 books of the Bible were sealed by God to protect
the purity and truth of God's word from Satan and other deceivers.

Ivan Panin's—Bible Numerics
God is a mathematician

Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it.
Psalm 119:140
5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
6 Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.
Proverbs 30:

Greek aside, there ARE THREE IN HEAVEN WHICH BEAR THE TESTIMONY. The Father, Word, and Spirit. They are all him. His word was in the beginning. He is Father. He is a spirit. Which is truth. Is this what you disagree on?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?

Yes, there are many errors in the Bible. The greatest error was made by Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit and brought sin onto mankind. The Jewish Pharisees erred when they did not recognise Jesus as their Messiah. Ananias and Sapphira made a grievous error when they lied to the Holy Spirit about the amount they sold their land for. These are just a couple of errors that can be found in the Bible.

 

[Sola1517]

due to translation

Possibly, but that's because of translators primarily.

or any other reasons

Interpretation can always be fallible.

 

[Lingshu]

Yes there are plenty of errors I would say errors of doctrine in the old testament and errors of translation in the new Testament. The Book "Evolution Creationism Christianity" while its primary focus is on the incorrect theories in evolution (abiogenesis) and creationism it also explores numerous errors within the old testament. the book also brings to light many MAJOR non-trivial alterations of the new testament in the NIV and RSV when compared to the textus receptus KJV.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0776LTCKV

 

[Emmy]

Dear cooffeeand prayer. Are there any errors in the Bible? NO: The Bible is God`s Word to man, and is inspired by God HIMSELF. God is Love, and God wants loving sons and daughters. Love is very catching, and before long we shall be as God wants us to be: loving and caring. In Matthew 22: 35-40: Jesus told us: The first and great Commandment is: Love God with heart, soul, and mind. and love thy neighbour as thyself. That is simply asked and God wants it. Jesus died for us, and now Jesus lives for us.
The Bible tells us: On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. In Matthew 7: 7-10: we are told: Ask and you shall receive." We ask God for Love and Compassion, for Joy and Peace, then we thank God and share all with our neighbour. God will see our loving and caring, and God will greatly BLESS us. Love will change all to what God wants from us. Jesus our Saviour will lead us all the way. Remember: Jesus is the WAY. Love is VERY catching. Let us try and be the men and women which our Heavenly Father wants. I say this with love, coffeeand prayer. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[joshua 1 9]

differences from the 1611

The KJV maybe the best translation but the authority is on the original language. I think one example is where Moses tells us to love the Lord our God With all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. "--The word "heart" has been taken both as "thought" and "affection." Hence, perhaps, the four terms, "heart, mind, soul, and strength," which we find in St. Mark 12:30".

No one would question Jesus for adding the word: "Mind" to what Moses wrote. A Bible translator would not be able to do that. Also Hebrew can not be translated totally into English. There are very few words in Hebrew and most of them would require a whole book to define and explain. There are a lot more English words and they can be defined usually in a sentence.

With Kabbalah we have the oral tradition that goes along with the written Word of God. I am reading the book: Paradigm and this is helping me to understand how exact and precise the Bible is. Esp time and place. Everything that happened with them in the past, is happening now, and will happen in the future. The wise men were able to find Jesus from their study of the Bible. They knew the time and the place where he would enter the world and they showed up with gifts.

This is very difficult for people to understand that do not study the Hebrew language. They think in terms of metaphors that do not have the exact literal meaning that a paradigm does. Peter 2:12 tells us: "But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;"

In my Bible College they teach that the non KJV bibles can be used as a Bible commentary to help us understand the Bible but they do not have the authority that the KJV has. We know that God watches over His word to do and to perform what He says He will do. Isaiah 55:11 "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

 

[joshua 1 9]

Yes, there are many errors in the Bible. The greatest error was made by Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit and brought sin onto mankind. The Jewish Pharisees erred when they did not recognise Jesus as their Messiah. Ananias and Sapphira made a grievous error when they lied to the Holy Spirit about the amount they sold their land for. These are just a couple of errors that can be found in the Bible.

Matthew 22:29 "Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God."

 

[Root of Jesse]

Even with the ancient languages we will never know what was originally written because none of the original writings exist, only copies of copies of copies. Hence I hold with Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience...

Yet it's amazing the copies of copies of copies we have of other ancient texts that we hold to be accurate.

 

[gordonhooker]

Yet it's amazing the copies of copies of copies we have of other ancient texts that we hold to be accurate.

We can only assume that to be the case because as I said we will never know.

 

[Tayla]

I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?

The Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. It contains fiction as well as differences in the testimony of eyewitness accounts.

 

[kwame1]

yes a lot of errors but that makes it even more accurate ...you will ask why i said that.
1.If the bible was altered the translators could have corrected the mistakes but they left it as it is...because they feared God wrath
2.what ever was writing in the bible thousands of years ago are now been discovered by scientist...
one eg, asteroids
3.the errors all lead to the same story.

 

[Deadworm]

Here are just 5 points to ponder about biblical inerrancy.
(1) Which biblical canon are we talking about? Jude quotes 1 Enoch and the Assumption of Moses as authoritative revelation; and Paul quotes the Apocalypse of Elijah (1 Corinthians 2:9). In the first 2 centuries, the context of the NT canon varies from place to place and is disputed. And the New Testament often quotes the Septuagint version which includes the Catholic OT apocrypha.

(2) How can the New Testament comment on its own inspiration when there was no consensus about the New Testament canon until around 200 AD?

(3) On what grounds do you claim any New Testament tests imply a full-blown inerrancy that includes a scientifically and historically error-free text? The relevant texts claim no more than inspiration with respect to doctrine and our way of being.

(4) Why would God provide an originally inerrant text, when God has not protected the transmission of the text from many thousands of contradictory readings, forcing scholars to use the modern science of textual criticism to argue for the texts they choose?

(5) Why is it legitimate to explain away apparent errors and contradictions with highly forced harmonizations and interpretations to preserve various texts from the charge of errors? Here are just 3 examples:
(a) Mark's original ending says that fear prevented the women at the tomb from sharing the news of Jesus' resurrection with anyone, whereas other Gospels claim that they headed straight for the apostles to tell them the news. It is highly forced and absurd to try and explain this discrepancy by claiming that the women didn't proclaim Christ's resurrection to stranger along the way. They wouldn't be expected to do that anyway.
(b) In Mark, the angel tells the women to send the disciples to Galilee for an Easter appearance. But in Luke, the promised appearance in Galilee is reworded to omit this promise about Galilee because Luke twice has the risen Jesus insist that the disciples not leave Jerusalem! The natural explanation of Mark here is that the women at the tomb disobeyed the angel's instruction. I have my own ideas about how to reconcile this discrepancy, but in all honesty Luke's wording and the reason for it must be treated as an error.
(c) Jesus' saying about pulling a camel through the eye of a needle is based on a mistranslation of the Aramaic word that can be translated as both "rope" (or thick string) and "camel." Obviously "rope" makes more poetic sense as the originally intended meaning. But that means that our Gospel writers buy into this error.

 

[Devin P]

I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?

In Matthew 7:23 when Jesus says depart from me, ye that work "iniquity".

The definition of iniquity is very, very broad. It means immoral, or grossly unfair. By whose standard are we immoral? Grossly unfair in what context, and again, by whose standard?

This word, leaves it open for interpretation, but the original greek word it's translated from, is much more precise.

The greek word it's translated from, is the word "anomia" - which quite literally means:

Lawlessness: for one of two reasons -
a) either the ignorance of the law or,
b) the desire to be without it

So, when Jesus says, depart from me, ye who work gross unfairness, or immorality, what He's saying is:

depart from me, ye who work lawlessness.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

Here are just 3 points to ponder about biblical inerrancy.
(1) Which biblical canon are we talking about? Jude quotes 1 Enoch and the Assumption of Moses as authoritative revelation; and Paul quotes the Apocalypse of Elijah. In the first 2 centuries, the context of the NT canon varies from place to place and is disputed. And the New Testament often quotes the Septuagint version which includes the Catholic OT apocrypha.

(2) How can the New Testament comment on its own inspiration when there was no consensus about the New Testament canon until around 200 AD?

(3) On what grounds do you claim any New Testament tests imply a full-blown inerrancy that includes a scientifically and historically error-free text? The relevant texts claim no more than inspiration with respect to doctrine and our way of being.

(4) Why would God provide an originally inerrant text, when God has not protected the transmission of the text from many thousands of contradictory readings, forcing scholars to use the modern science of textual criticism to argue for the texts they choose?

(5) Why is it legitimate to explain away apparent errors and contradictions with highly forced harmonizations and interpretations to preserve various texts from the charge of errors? Here are just 3 examples:
(a) Mark's original ending says that fear prevented the women at the tomb from sharing the news of Jesus' resurrection with anyone, whereas other Gospels claim that they headed straight for the apostles to tell them the news. It is highly forced and absurd to try and explain this discrepancy by claiming that the women didn't proclaim Christ's resurrection to stranger along the way. They wouldn't be expected to do that anyway.
(b) In Mark, the angel tells the women to send the disciples to Galilee for an Easter appearance. But in Luke, the promised appearance in Galilee is reworded to omit this promise about Galilee because Luke twice has the risen Jesus insist that the disciples not leave Jerusalem! I have my own ideas about how to reconcile this discrepancy, but in all honesty Luke's wording and the reason for it must be treated as an error.
(c) Jesus' saying about pulling a camel through the eye of a needle is based on a mistranslation of the Aramaic word that can be translated as both "rope" (or thick string) and "camel." Obviously "rope" makes more poetic sense as the originally intended meaning. But that means that our Gospel writers buy into this error.

What chpt verses would that entail? I'm not familiar with an original Mark that had the women that were commissioned by Christ to give a message to the brethern afraid of talking to strangers. Could you supply a link to that maniscript sidenote? Neither am I familiar with an angel sending a woman to tell the disciples to meet for easter .. scripture please

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?

I would say it depends on which greek texts bible versions use.
I like Young's Literal Translation as being a fairly accurate, and being word for word from the Bible texts, it can be awkward to read.
I avoid the KJV, tho the NKJV is a vast improvement over it, imho.

Textual variants in the New Testament - Wikipedia

Textual variants in the New Testament are the subject of the study called textual criticism of the New Testament. Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced. Most of the variations are not significant and some common alterations include the deletion, rearrangement, repetition, or replacement of one or more words when the copyist's eye returns to a similar word in the wrong location of the original text. If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error of dittography). If their eye skips to a later word, they may create an omission resort to performing a slight rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context. In other instances, the copyist may add text from memory from a similar or parallel text in another location. Otherwise, they may also replace some text of the original with an alternative reading. Spellings occasionally change. Synonyms may be substituted. A pronoun may be changed into a proper noun (such as "he said" becoming "Jesus said")........................

List of major textual variants in the New Testament - Wikipedia

This is an (incomplete) list of major textual variants in the New Testament, with a focus on differences between categories of New Testament manuscript.

• The Textus Receptus (Latin: "received text") is the name subsequently given to the succession of printed Greek texts of the New Testament which was first collated by Desiderius Erasmus in the 16th century. It constituted the translation base for the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale, the King James Version, and most other Reformation-era New Testament translations throughout Western and Central Europe.
• The Majority Text represents the Byzantine text-type, which was used in Eastern Greek speaking churches and was dominant from the late middle ages onwards. It is similar to the Textus Receptus.
• The modern critical text (e.g. Novum Testamentum Graece) is close to the Alexandrian text-type, which accounts for some of the earliest New Testament manuscripts; it stands behind most modern English translations of the New Testament including the American Standard Version, New International Version, Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, English Standard Version, and others.........

Rev 22:19
TR: and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
MT: and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the Tree of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
CT: and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Tree of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
Greek New Testament - Parallel Greek New Testament by John Hurt
19

Stephens 1550 Textus Receptus
kai ean tiV afairh apo twn logwn biblou thV profhteiaV tauthV afairhsei o qeoV to meroV autou apo biblou thV zwhV kai ek thV polewV thV agiaV kai twn gegrammenwn en bibliw toutw

Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus
kai ean tiV afairh apo twn logwn biblou thV profhteiaV tauthV afairhsei o qeoV to meroV autou apo biblou thV zwhV kai ek thV polewV thV agiaV kai twn gegrammenwn en bibliw toutw

Byzantine Majority
kai ean tiV afelh apo twn logwn tou bibliou thV profhteiaV tauthV afeloi o qeoV to meroV autou apo tou xulou thV zwhV kai ek thV polewV thV agiaV twn gegrammenwn en tw bibliw toutw

Alexandrian
kai ean tiV afelh apo twn logwn tou bibliou thV profhteiaV tauthV afelei o qeoV to meroV autou apo tou xulou thV zwhV kai ek thV polewV thV agiaV twn gegrammenwn en tw bibliw toutw