Expert: LEBoyd - 10/13/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hello LEBoyd,

I have came across many scientific errors and contradictions in the Bible. Can you please refute them...

1. Proverbs 6:6-8, ants have no commander, no ruler and no overseer!  This is absurdly false, because ants live in colonies and ranks of rulership and authority.  And they have a queen.

2. Leviticus 11:20-23 - "All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you."  No insect with four legs exists.  Insects have six legs and six feet.

3. Matthew 13:31-32 "He (Jesus) told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds,"  The mustard seed is not the smallest of all seeds.  Others, such as the orchid seed, are smaller.

3. Leviticus 12:2-5, a female causes double the pollution when she's born than that of a boy.  The mother remains unclean for 66 days after birth of a female instead of 33 days if she gives birth to a male.

Textual and Historical Contradictions:

2 Samuel 10:18 - David slew 700 and 40,000 horsemen and Shobach the commander.
1 Chronicles 19:18 - David slew 7000 chariots and 40,000 footmen.

2 Chronicles 9:25 - Solomon had 4000 stalls for horses and chariots.
1 Kings 4:26 - Solomon had 40,000 stalls for horses.

Ezra 2:5 -  Arah had 775 sons.
Nehemiah 7:10 - Arah had 652 sons.

2 Samuel 24:13 - SEVEN YEARS OF FAMINE.
1 Chronicles 21:11-12 - THREE YEARS OF FAMINE.

How did Judas die?
Matthew 27:5 - Hanged himself.
Acts 1:18 - And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all of his bowels gushed out.

2 Samuel 6:23 - MICHAL never had a child until she died.
2 Samuel 21:8 - MICHAL had 5 sons.

2 Kings 24:8 - Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he began to reign.
2 Chronicles 36:9 - Jehoiachin was 8 years old when he began to reign.

1 Kings 16:6-8 - 26th year of the reign of Asa, Baasha reigned over Israel.
2 Chronicles 16:1 - 36th year of the reign of Asa, Baasha reigned over Israel.

Who was Josiah's successor?
Jehoahaz - 2 Chronicle 36:1
Shallum - Jeremiah 22:11

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God." (2 Timothy 3:16)

"As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless...." (2 Samuel 22:31)

"And the words of the LORD are flawless...." (Psalm 12:6)

"As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless...." (Psalm 18:30)

"Every word of God is flawless...." (Proverbs 30:5)

These True Statements undoubtedly prove that the Bible is corrupt!

Pleae clarify...

ANSWER: Nisar,

I've had hardware problems and can just now address you questions.  You obviously have many questions, so I may not get to all of them in this post, but I will try:

1) It's clear to me that Prov 6 6 is talking about the natural work that ants do.  Yes, there is a queen in a colony, but even today scientist do not think the queen tells the colony what to do, they just do it.  Each ant has a job and they do it.

2) Lev 11:20 is a matter of what English version of the Bible you read.  The Hebrew word is sherets, which has many meanings, including small four-legged creatures, birds and flying insects.

3) Matt 13:31 refers to the seeds of cultivation used by the Jewish people during Christ's time.

4) All "clean/unclean" in the OT primarily refers to the spiritual nature of a person, not the physical.  Not all of the "clean/unclean" laws of the OT have a direct reference to what we may consider physically in danger of disease or infection.

The other examples you mention can be rectified when understanding when, where and why a book was written.  Just to give one example from your questions - Johiachin.  I've studied the kings of Israel in quite a bit of detail, one thing that is clear is that many times there were more than two "kings" wherein either the successor king ruled a small part of the country while the current king was losing power (for example, David and Saul) or a successor son ruled while his father was still king (for example, Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin).

I pray that you are searching for the truth in the Bible.  The Bible was written to show the plan of God.  There are many details and events that are in the Bible, because they do not affect God's plan.  Some writers report events from one view, while other report it from a different view.  The details that are reported can be matched if one is willing to fully study the Bible.  But if one is inclined to prove the Bible as false or "corrupt", you can ignore the logical methods of clarifying "errors".

We all read the Bible with different assumptions because of our life experience and education.  This clouds all of us in our reading of the Bible and sometimes makes it difficult to understand and more importantly follow.  It's so difficult to put ourselves back into the time frame of the writer and period.

Hope this helps.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Again the first scientific error is still an error. Though Bible is not the book of science, that does not mean that if any unscientific things are mentioned one can accept it. In any case God will not provide any information that is scientifically wrong. Ants live in colonies and ranks of rulership and authority. Bible is incorrect while giving example of ants.

The verse that is in question does not describe the thing how you are describing. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds," Very clearly one can understand that the verse indicates that mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds. Your point in wrong. This is a scientific error. Almighty God cannot give wrong examples.

The contradictions cannot be refuted....

We must first of all know that the entire Bible is corrupted and unreliable and is mostly filled with man-made laws and corruption!  "`How can you say, "We [the Jews] are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?' (From the NIV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)"

The Revised Standard Version makes it even clearer: "How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.  (From the RSV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)"

In either translation, we clearly see that the Jews had so much corrupted the Bible with their man-made cultural laws, that they had turned the Bible into a lie!

See Also Deuteronomy 31:25-29 where Moses peace be upon him predicted the corruption/tampering of the Law (Bible) after his death.

The Book of Moses predicted that the Law (Bible) will get corrupted.  The Book of Jeremiah which came approximately 826 years after did indeed confirm this corruption.

According to the NIV and KJV Bible's theologians, the gospels were written by mysterious and unknown people, in unknown places and unknown dates!

The Original manuscript don't even exist according to the bible's own theologians!

"Christians readily admit, however, that there have been 'scribal errors' in the copies of the Old and New Testament. It is beyond the capability of anyone to avoid any and every slip of the pen in copying page after page from any book, sacred or secular. Yet we may be sure that the original manuscript (better known as autograph) of each book of the Bible, being directly inspired by God, was free from all error. Those originals, however, because of the early date of their inception no longer exist."

"Because we are dealing with accounts which were written thousands of years ago, we would not expect to have the originals in our possession today, as they would have disintegrated long ago. We are therefore dependent on the copies taken from copies of those originals, which were in turn continually copied out over a period of centuries. Those who did the copying were prone to making two types of scribal errors. One concerned the spelling of proper names, and the other had to do with numbers."

"Most Christians will affirm that the Bible is our rule of faith and practice. It is a little self contradictory to stand in the pulpit and say the word of God is inspired, when in his heart the pastor knows he is not referring to any book here on this earth that people can hold in their hands and believe. He really should say what he believes - that the word of God WAS inspired at one time but we no longer have it, so the best we can do is hope we have a close approximation of what God probably meant to tell us."  (http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/transinsp.html)

"It also seems a bit inconsistent to say he believes the originals were inspired, when he has never seen them, they never were together in one single book and they no longer exist anyway. How does he know they were inspired? He accepts this by faith. Yet he seems to lack the faith to actually believe that God could do exactly what He said He would do with His words. God said He would preserve them and that heaven and earth would pass away but His words would not pass away." (http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/transinsp.html)

Yet, this same person writes:

"How Old Was Ahaziah, 22 or 42?

This is an apparent contradiction that frequently is thrown in the face of Christians who believe we have an inspired Bible. Many Atheist, Islam and Bible debunker sites bring up this example. Sad to say, most of the “Christian” apologetic sites which promote the new bible versions cave in here and say the number 42 is a copyist error.

Here is a typical response by those Christians who use and promote the modern versions. This one comes from Techtonics Apologetics. This “defender of the faith” answers: “ Was Ahaziah forty-two or twenty-two (per 2 Kings 8:26) when he ascended the throne? More likely 22, and 2 Chronicles has been hit by a copyist error. See our foundational essay on copyist errors for general background. In favor of the "22" reading in 2 Chronicles: The 2 Kings reading; some LXX and Syriac manuscripts.

This typical Christian response is not limited to this one example, but in many objections brought up by the infidels or the curious, this same rote answer is given. There is a copyist error. There is a typo in God’s book. The skeptics laugh and the modern version proponent looks like a fool.

2 Chronicles 22:2 tells us that Ahaziah was 42 years old when he began to reign. The Hebrew texts, plus Wycliffe 1395,Coverdale 1535, Bishop's Bible 1568, Geneva Bible 1599, the Revised Version, the American Standard Version, Douay 1950, the Spanish Reina Valera 1960, Italian Diodati 1602, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, the Jewish translations of 1917 and 1936, the 1998 Complete Jewish Bible, Hebrew Names Bible, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, Webster's 1833 translation, the New English Bible 1970, the New Jerusalem, KJV 21st Century, and the Third Millenium Bible all say Ahaziah was 42 years old when he began to reign.

       The inspired Hebrew text clearly says Ahaziah was 42 years old. The masoretic scribes were very scrupulous in copying their sacred trust. No word or number was written from memory but each word was carefully checked before he recopied it. The copies were checked and checked again and if there were a single error, the whole was discarded and and new one begun......"  (http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/22or42.html)

My Response:

How do you know that the above references (written by ordinary men) that you used in proving that Ahaziah was 42 years old are correct when the original manuscripts had been lost?  What makes you be so sure that Ahaziah was indeed 42 years old and not 22 or any other age?  You said the Christians make themselves look like "fools" when they attempt to answer away the apparent and irrefutable errors in the Bible.  Didn't you too just make an utter fool out of yourself too?

Face it and admit it!  The Bible's overwhelming errors and corruptions are unanswerable!  The Bible is corrupt no matter how you try to decorate it.


The authors of the sites in the quotes above admit that the entire Bible is NOT perfect, and contains man's corruption or alteration in it.  They also admit that the original manuscripts that came from GOD Almighty are lost.  I'd like to comment on their points of the type of errors that exist in the Bible today:

1-  There is no evidence that the errors are only limited to spelling of proper names and numbers.  They're only assuming this and are using it as fact.  And even if this was true, then as they openly admitted, this takes away the Bible's perfection.  The reader must remember that the Christians' entire polytheist trinity paganism comes solely from conclusions and interpretations!  There is not ONE SINGLE claim or hard evidence in the Bible about GOD Almighty being 3, or that Jesus is our Creator.  Jesus who ran away from King Herod to Egypt, and who begged GOD Almighty for Mercy and prostrated his face down to the ground before Him on the night of crucifixion can not be the Creator of the Universe.  The trinitarian pagans would happily try to convince you that trinity is right from their corrupted book, while at the same time, they openly admit that there are errors and man's alterations that exist in the Bible, and the original manuscripts had been lost.  If the original manuscripts had been lost, then what makes you be so sure that trinity is the correct conclusion?

2-  According to the Bible's theologians, no one even knows who wrote the copies that they're referring to.   In other words, we don't even know if these people were anointed from GOD Almighty or not, because we don't have any evidence that the letters found that make up the Bible today were officially written by men.

Is the entire Bible truely the word of GOD?

No credible Biblical scholar on this earth will claim that the Bible was written by Jesus himself. They all agree that the Bible was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him by his followers. So, if the authors of the Bible were people other than Jesus, then did they have Jesus or the Holy Spirit in them guiding their hands and dictating to them word for word what to write? As it happens, once again the answer is no. Who says so? The majority of today's credible Christian scholars do. For example:

Dr. W Graham Scroggie of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, a prestigious Christian evangelical mission, says:

"..Yes, the Bible is human, although some out of zeal which is not according to knowledge, have denied this. Those books have passed through the minds of men, are written in the language of men, were penned by the hands of men and bear in their style the characteristics of men...."

"It is Human, Yet Divine," W Graham Scroggie, p. 17

Another Christian scholar, Kenneth Cragg, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, says:

"...Not so the New testament...There is condensation and editing; there is choice reproduction and witness. The Gospels have come through the mind of the church behind the authors. They represent experience and history..."

"The Call of the Minaret," Kenneth Cragg, p 277

For example, we read in the Bible the words of the author of "Luke":

"It seemed good to me (Luke) also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, (Luke 1:3)"

If you consider the Bible the word of GOD, well, it is quite obvious that  Luke decided to write his Gospel because he wanted to please the president or the
leader at that time Theophilus.  This however has several problems: (1) It compromises GOD because there is a biger purpose than GOD to write the Gospel, (2) It shows that Luke wouldn't have written his Gospel if it wasn't for that leader, and (3) Luke was not inpired when he wrote his Gospel because he said that he decided to write it after he had full understanding of it, which means that he wrote it with his own human words and thoughts and not GOD's.

For a closer look at reliability of the NT and its development dont forget to check out Is the NT really reliable ?

Its a nice direct answer to the highly visited "Christian Think Tank" site.

Is the Bible a Guideline for Human Morality?



The lie of 1 John 5:7 verse.  It was later discovered to be a man made corruption inserted into the Bible:

This section was forwarded to me by my brother in Islam Haleem, a new convert to Islam; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him.  This page is located at http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/library/jesus-say/ch1.2.2.5.html

1.2.2.5 1 John 5:7

The only verses in the whole Bible that explicitly ties God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in one "Triune" being is the verse of 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 is the type of clear, decisive, and to-the-point verse I have been asking for. However, as I would later find out, this verse is now universally recognized as being a later "insertion" of the Church and all recent versions of the Bible, such as the Revised Standard Version the New Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New English Bible, the Phillips Modern English Bible ...etc. have all unceremoniously expunged this verse from their pages. Why is this? The scripture translator Benjamin Wilson gives the following explanation for this action in his "Emphatic Diaglott." Mr. Wilson says:

"This text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers even when the subjects upon which they treated would naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is therefore evidently spurious."

Others, such as the late Dr. Herbert W. Armstrong argued that this verse was added to the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible during the heat of the controversy between Rome, Arius, and God's people. Whatever the reason, this verse is now universally recognized as an insertion and discarded. Since the Bible contains no verses validating a "Trinity" therefore, centuries after the departure of Jesus, God chose to inspire someone to insert this verse in order to clarify the true nature of God as being a "Trinity." Notice how mankind was being inspired as to how to "clarify" the Bible centuries after the departure of Jesus (pbuh). People continued to put words in the mouths of Jesus, his disciples, and even God himself with no reservations whatsoever. They were being "inspired".

If these people were being "inspired" by God, I wondered, then why did they need to put these words into other people's mouths (in our example, in the mouth of John). Why did they not just openly say "God inspired me and I will add a chapter to the Bible in my name"? Also, why did God need to wait till after the departure of Jesus to "inspire" his "true" nature? Why not let Jesus (pbuh) say it himself?

The great luminary of Western literature, Mr. Edward Gibbon, explains the reason for the discardal of this verse from the pages of the Bible with the following words:

"Of all the manuscripts now extant, above fourscore in number, some of which are more than 1200 years old, the orthodox copies of the Vatican, of the Complutensian editors, of Robert Stephens are becoming invisible; and the two manuscripts of Dublin and Berlin are unworthy to form an exception...In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Bibles were corrected by LanFrank, Archbishop of Canterbury, and by Nicholas, a cardinal and librarian of the Roman church, secundum Ortodoxam fidem. Notwithstanding these corrections, the passage is still wanting in twenty-five Latin manuscripts, the oldest and fairest; two qualities seldom united, except in manuscripts....The three witnesses have been established in our Greek Testaments by the prudence of Erasmus; the honest bigotry of the Complutensian editors; the typographical fraud, or error, of Robert Stephens in the placing of a crotchet and the deliberate falsehood, or strange misapprehension, of Theodore Beza."

"Decline and fall of the Roman Empire," IV, Gibbon, p. 418.

Edward Gibbon was defended in his findings by his contemporary, the brilliant British scholar Richard Porson who also proceeded to publish devastatingly conclusive proof that the verse of 1 John 5:7 was only first inserted by the Church into the Bible in the year 400C.E.(Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, pp. 30-33).

Regarding Porson's most devastating proof, Mr. Gibbon later said

"His structures are founded in argument, enriched with learning, and enlivened with wit, and his adversary neither deserves nor finds any quarter at his hands. The evidence of the three heavenly witnesses would now be rejected in any court of justice; but prejudice is blind, authority is deaf, and our vulgar Bibles will ever be polluted by this spurious text."

To which Mr. Bentley responds:

"In fact, they are not. No modern Bible now contains the interpolation."

Mr. Bentley, however, is mistaken. Indeed, just as Mr. Gibbon had predicted, the simple fact that the most learned scholars of Christianity now unanimously recognize this verse to be a later interpolation of the Church has not prevented the preservation of this fabricated text in our modern Bibles. To this day, the Bible in the hands of the majority of Christians, the "King James" Bible, still unhesitantly includes this verse as the "inspired" word of God without so much as a footnote to inform the reader that all scholars of Christianity of note unanimously recognize it as a later fabrication.

Peake's Commentary on the Bible says

"The famous interpolation after 'three witnesses' is not printed even in RSVn, and rightly. It cites the heavenly testimony of the Father, the logos, and the Holy Spirit, but is never used in the early Trinitarian controversies. No respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th-cent. Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally the NT of Erasmus."

It was only the horrors of the great inquisitions which held back Sir Isaac Newton from openly revealing these facts to all:

"In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity in Jerome's time and both before and long enough after it, the text of the 'three in heaven' was never once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth and accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly have been so too with them, had it been in their books… Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part I can make none. If it be said that we are not to determine what is scripture and what not by our private judgments, I confess it in places not controverted, but in disputed places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It is the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least. Such men may use the Apostle John as they please, but I have that honor for him as to believe that he wrote good sense and therefore take that to be his which is the best"

Jesus, Prophet of Islam, Muhammad Ata' Ur-Rahim, p. 156

According to Newton, this verse first appeared for in the third edition of Erasmus's (1466-1536) New Testament.

For all of the above reasons, we find that when thirty two biblical scholars backed by fifty cooperating Christian denominations got together to compile the Revised Standard Version of the Bible based upon the most ancient Biblical manuscripts available to them today, they made some very extensive changes. Among these changes was the unceremonious discardal of the verse of 1 John 5:7 as the fabricated insertion that it is. For more on the compilation of the RSV Bible, please read the preface of any modern copy of that Bible.

Such comparatively unimportant matters as the description of Jesus (pbuh) riding an ass (or was it a "colt", or was it an "ass and a colt"? see point 42 in the table of section 2.2) into Jerusalem are spoken about in great details since they are the fulfillment of a prophesy. For instance, in Mark 11:2-10 we read:

"And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring [him]. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither. And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt? And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed [them] in the way And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed [is] he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed [be] the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest."

Also see Luke 19:30-38 which has a similar detailed description of this occurrence. On the other hand, the Bible is completely free of any description of the "Trinity" which is supposedly a description of the very nature of the one who rode this ass, who is claimed to be the only son of God, and who allegedly died for the sins of all of mankind. I found myself asking the question: If every aspect of Christian faith is described in such detail such that even the description of this ass is so vividly depicted for us, then why is the same not true for the description of the "Trinity"? Sadly, however, it is a question for which there is no logical answer.



More proofs on the lie of 1 John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16:

The following section was sent to me by a Muslim; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him.

Sir Isaac Newton On The Bible

In 1690, Sir Isaac Newton (died 1727) wrote a manuscript on the corruption of the text of the New Testament concerning I John 5:7 and Timothy 3:16. It was entitled, "A Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture."   Due to the prevailing environment against criticism, he felt it unwise to profess his beliefs openly and felt that printing it in England would be too dangerous.   Newton sent a copy of this manuscript to John Locke requesting him to have it translated into French for publication in France. Two years later, Newton was informed of an attempt to publish a Latin translation of it anonymously. However, Newton did not approve of its availability in Latin and persuaded Locke to take steps to prevent this publication.  Below are excerpts from "A Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture."

Newton on I John 5:7

Newton states that this verse appeared for the first time in the third edition of Erasmus's New Testament.  When they got the Trinity; into his edition they threw by their manuscript, if they had one, as an almanac out of date. And can such shuffling dealings satisfy considering men?....It is rather a danger in religion than an advantage to make it now lean on a broken reed.  In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity in Jerome's time and both before and long enough after it, this text of the "three in heaven" was never once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth and accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly have been so too with them, had it been in their books.  "Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part, I can make none.  If it be said that we are not to determine what is Scripture what not by our private judgments, I confess it in places not controverted, but in disputed places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It is the temper of the hot and superstitious art of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least. Such men may use the Apostle John as they please, but I have that honour for him as to believe that he wrote good sense and therefore take that to be his which is the best."

Newton on I Timothy 3:16

In all the times of the hot and lasting Arian controversy it never came into play . . . they that read "God manifested in the flesh" think it one of the most obvious and pertinent texts for the business. "The word Deity imports exercise of dominion over subordinate beings and the word God most frequently signifies Lord. Every lord is not God. The exercise of dominion in a spiritual being constitutes a God. If that dominion be real that being is the real God; if it be fictitious, a false God; if it be supreme, a supreme God."  Newton also wrote a discussion on two other texts that Athanasius had attempted to corrupt. This work has not been preserved. He believed that not all the books of the Scriptures have the same authority.

Reference A. Wallace, "Anti-Trinitarian Biographies," Vol. III, 1850.

Above words are taken from http://www.answering-christianity.com/sake.htm

Answer
Without being offensive, what is the question?

It appears from your statements that you are a Muslim and as I understand it, you believe in God or Allah.  I also understand that Muslims believe in Adam, Noah, Moses and Jesus, and that Moses and Jesus were prophets of God.  

Likewise, I understand that the Muslim religion believes the divine Word of God not only includes the Qur'an, The Zabur, The Injil, the Hadith and The Suhuf-i-Ibrahim, but also the Tawrat (the Pentateuch or the first five books of Moses) and the book of Psalms.

I have only briefly studied your religion, but understand that the diviven Scriptures are inspired and I thought this meant without-error.  If this is true, why do you use the Tawrat and Psalms to question other religions?