Contradictions in the Bible

[Atlas]

I'm too lazy to look it up myself... Beerina, would you mind posting references? Thanks.

Very interesting point.

I was interested in Beerina's point too. I found these items from before and after Noah.

Genesis 6
1 When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them,
2 the sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose.
3 Then the LORD said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years."
4 At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. ("men of reknown" sometime translated as "giants" - Atlas)
5 When the LORD saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil,
6 he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved.
7 So the LORD said: "I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created, and not only the men, but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them."
8 But Noah found favor with the LORD.

Here's a connection between Nephilim and Anakim.

"And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim; and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." (Numbers 13:33 RSV)

Here is more of the story but the reference is not explicit here.

Numbers 13
...
27 They told Moses: "We went into the land to which you sent us. It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and here is its fruit.
28 However, the people who are living in the land are fierce, and the towns are fortified and very strong. Besides, we saw descendants of the Anakim there.
29 Amalekites live in the region of the Negeb; Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites dwell in the highlands, and Canaanites along the seacoast and the banks of the Jordan."
30 Caleb, however, to quiet the people toward Moses, said, "We ought to go up and seize the land, for we can certainly do so."
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, "We cannot attack these people; they are too strong for us."
32 So they spread discouraging reports among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, "The land that we explored is a country that consumes its inhabitants. And all the people we saw there are huge men,
33 veritable giants (the Anakim were a race of giants); we felt like mere grasshoppers, and so we must have seemed to them."

Deuteronomy 2
...
7 The LORD, your God, has blessed you in all your undertakings; he has been concerned about your journey through this vast desert. It is now forty years that he has been with you, and you have never been in want.
8 "Then we left behind us the Arabah route, Elath, Ezion-geber, and Seir, where our kinsmen, the descendants of Esau, live; and we went on toward the desert of Moab.
9 And the LORD said to me, 'Do not show hostility to the Moabites or engage them in battle, for I will not give you possession of any of their land, since I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot as their own.
10 (Formerly the Emim lived there, a people strong and numerous and tall like the Anakim;
11 like them they were considered Rephaim. It was the Moabites who called them Emim.

2 Samuel 21
15 There was another battle between the Philistines and Israel. David went down with his servants and fought the Philistines, but David grew tired.
16 Dadu, one of the Rephaim, whose bronze spear weighed three hundred shekels, was about to take him captive. Dadu was girt with a new sword and planned to kill David,
17 but Abishai, son of Zeruiah, came to his assistance and struck and killed the Philistine. Then David's men swore to him, "You must not go out to battle with us again, lest you quench the lamp of Israel."
18 After this there was another battle with the Philistines in Gob. On that occasion Sibbecai, from Husha, killed Saph, one of the Rephaim.
19 There was another battle with the Philistines in Gob, in which Elhanan, son of Jair from Bethlehem, killed Goliath of Gath, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's heddle-bar.
20 There was another battle at Gath in which there was a man of large stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot--twenty-four in all. He too was one of the Rephaim.
21 And when he insulted Israel, Jonathan, son of David's brother Shimei, killed him.
22 These four were Rephaim in Gath, and they fell at the hands of David and his servants.

Found a decent link.

 

[Ossai]

Christian Dude

Guys, on this genealogy stuff. You are missing a few important facts. First if you look at genealogies all through scripture, you will find differences in them for the same people in when different books give the genealogy of the same person. The reason for this is in ancient Hebrew culture it was acceptable to skip over a dad or granddad or two if the writer didn’t think those people were important in the line he was talking about. So bad dudes got left out or guys that didn’t do a whole lot got left out all the time.

I call bullship . The ancient Hebrew culture did not skip over generations. Unimportant people were not regularly left out. Go reference the begots in the OT.

Now, for the differences in the genealogy for Jesus in Matthew and Luke. Fizzer is right, they are two different genealogies. Matthew’s is his legal one, written to the Jew to show Jesus’ legal claim to the throne. It is traced through his earthly, but not blood related dad Joseph. Luke is his genealogy through Mary his mom.

While this is standard Catholic doctrine, it very clearly contradicts the written word.

Luke is writing to show that Jesus is the perfect sinless man. It is Mary’s line that is important in this. Here are the two items that show this is true. If you look at the son of king David listed in each line, you will see that they are different sons, Solomon in Matthew and Nathan in Luke. One is a granddad in Joseph’s line, one is a granddad in Mary’s line. The other distinction that shows Luke is tracing Mary’s line is the verse Luke 3:23 where Luke says “Jesus... being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph”.

Lying by omission is still lying.
Here is the whole verse.

Luke 3:23 When he began [his ministry], Jesus was about thirty years old, being the son, as it was thought, of Joseph son of Heli

You have proven your dishonesty. Congratulations. Step up to the other contradictions and see what lies you can weave around them.

Ossai

 

[Dr Adequate]

I was interested in Beerina's point too. I found these items from before and after Noah.

Yes, but it says:

Then the LORD said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years."
4 At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons.

My copy of the Bible made the point clearer, but nonetheless you can see that there's wiggle room here, in that you can argue that the "sons of heaven" descended and impregnated some of Noah's female ancestors after the flood.

 

[Atlas]

Yes, but it says: My copy of the Bible made the point clearer, but nonetheless you can see that there's wiggle room here, in that you can argue that the "sons of heaven" descended and impregnated some of Noah's female ancestors after the flood.

Good point. Noah is not necessarily the choke point as Beerina described. It gives a twist to the Annunciation, as well.

If the "sons of God" were not of the highest moral stature and wanted to "do it" with Earth girls - what would stop them from lying and saying "This is from God, little girl."

I also wonder if this is a souce for tales of the incubus.

 

[Atlas]

...I also wonder if this is a souce for tales of the incubus.

Googling found no quick direct relationship but the incubus was certainly a supernatural creature.

Nightmare
No, a nightmare is not a dream about a scary horse. The origin is fairly simple, but not obvious. The night portion is straightforward, it comes from the word night. It's the mare part that makes people think it has to do with horses.
Mare is simply an Old English term for a demon. So a nightmare is a demon that visits you at night--a scary dream. A mare was a demon, known as an incubus (male) or succubus (female) that descended on a sleeper, paralyzing and suffocating them, and had sexual relations with the sleeper.

Origin: Europe. Closely related to the incubi/sucubi are the Slavic mora, the German mahr, and the Scandinavian mara, from which the word 'nightmare' is derived.

incubus c.1205, from L.L. (Augustine), from L. incubo "nightmare, one who lies down on (the sleeper)," from incubare "to lie upon" (see incubate). Plural is incubi. In the Middle Ages, their existence was recognized by law.

 

[Ossai]

Has Christian Dude left the building?

 

[Palimpsest]

Seems like it. Ah, well. Easy come, easy go.

 

[Ducky]

Seems like it. Ah, well. Easy come, easy go.

How utterly shocking that someone with extraordinary claims and religious/pseuoscientific rhetoric would run away from specific requests for evidence, from logical inquiry and proper discourse, and chalenges to their thought.

I am completely.....what's the word.........underwhelmed.

 

[Atlas]

How utterly shocking that someone with extraordinary claims and religious/pseuoscientific rhetoric would run away from specific requests for evidence, from logical inquiry and proper discourse, and chalenges to their thought.

I am completely.....what's the word.........underwhelmed.

I think he ended up be overwhelmed by all the questions. It ended up being too time consuming for him to pursue.

He seemed to show up first in support of kurious_kathy, joining 2 days after her. But he did try for a time to support his own appreciation of the spiritual realities with ideas and links. It probably seemed like a losing battle to him. kurious_kathy has outlasted him, but there was never any danger that she would try to present intellectually sound arguments... Not when she believes a 'sound' argument is the song, "Jesus loves me, this I know."

 

[Atlas]

Personally, I like the one where they mention the Titans of Olde or whatever, who came down and mated with mortal women; their sons became ye olde Men of Reknown. ...

I just ran across something else relating to this topic.

Azazel is an enigmatic name from the Hebrew scriptures, possibly referring to a person, angel or fallen angel, or place. The word's first appearances are in Leviticus 16, when in the ritual for Yom Kippur the scapegoat is to be taken to Azazel and cast into the wilderness, but the text is unclear as to the actual identity of Azazel.

According to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Azazel was a leader of the grigori (also known as "watchers"), a group of fallen angels who mated with mortal women, giving rise to a race of giants known as the Nephilim. Azazel is particularly noteworthy among the grigori because it was he who taught men how to make weapons of war as well as teaching women how to make and wear cosmetics. Eventually, Azazel's teachings created such iniquity that God decided to destroy all life on Earth with a great flood, sparing only Noah, Noah's family, and seven pairs of each species of "clean" animals, and one pair of each "unclean" species, all of whom escaped destruction by living for forty days and forty nights on an ark that God instructed Noah to build.

 

[Beerina]

If we were discounting ' silly ', there wouldn't be much point in going over the contradictions.


" God works in mysterious ways. "

Translation


" God can do all the silly stuff he wants. "

So you are suggesting Resolved: Noah was a descendent of these Titans/Angels/Whatever.

 

[Beerina]

Re: Regarding the flood

The flood story always interested me.

Firstly, I assumed that God had predetermined everything, knows every atom and every thought of every being, from before the time of man... yada yada....

And yet often he is wrathful, angry, etc...

How are you angry if you are pulling the strings on everything? If it is all "Your Plan", then how do you get teed off concerning any aspect of it?

It reminds one of a child who builds something with an Erector Set, finds it doesn't work, and gets mad and punches it, doesn't it?

Except it's worse since God knew exactly what his construct would do, and the buffoon still gets mad at what it does, anyway.

Ok, back to the flood. If the purpose of the flood was to kill off every sinner (mind you, you knew this was gonna happen, predestiny and all that), so you come up with basically what comes down to drowning the cat in order to remove sin from the world.

Well, it didn't work.

No, it didn't, did it? Although one might point out that God never said the world wouldn't descend into decadence and sin again -- only that destroying it was a terrible thing to do, so he'd never do it again.

Although why this doesn't cast doubt on God being good and perfect in his decision making, I don't know...

 

[Beerina]

Googling found no quick direct relationship but the incubus was certainly a supernatural creature.

...or succubus (female) that descended on a sleeper, paralyzing and suffocating them, and had sexual relations with the sleeper

Damn, if only that were true. Supernatural skanks whose inclination and special superpower is to force you to have hot sex with them against your will...

 

[ceo_esq]

Re: Re: Regarding the flood

It reminds one of a child who builds something with an Erector Set, finds it doesn't work, and gets mad and punches it, doesn't it?

If the Erector Set in question has free will, then perhaps. Otherwise, not really.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Re: Re: Re: Regarding the flood

If the Erector Set in question has free will, then perhaps. Otherwise, not really.

You left out:

" The child gives the Erector Set free will, but gets mad when the Erector Set exercises it .. " i.e. " You have a choice to love me, but if you don't, I'm going to kick the crap out of you.. "


Not much of a choice, huh ?

 

[ceo_esq]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Regarding the flood

" The child gives the Erector Set free will, but gets mad when the Erector Set exercises it .. "

"The law gave me the right to bear arms, but gets mad when I use it..." Hypocrisy, I tell you.

Seriously, when was the last time you got mad at someone for something that didn't involve an exercise of their free will?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Regarding the flood

"The law gave me the right to bear arms, but gets mad when I use it..." Hypocrisy, I tell you.

Seriously, when was the last time you got mad at someone for something that didn't involve an exercise of their free will?

Can't say for sure, but I can say it didn't involve their refusal to worship me..

 

[pgwenthold]

Re: Re: Re: Regarding the flood

If the Erector Set in question has free will, then perhaps. Otherwise, not really.

So tell me, counselor, what is the basis for your implication that God gave us free will?

How do you distinguish true free will from apparent free will?

 

[timokay]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Regarding the flood

So tell me, counselor, what is the basis for your implication that God gave us free will?

How do you distinguish true free will from apparent free will?

If I make a being that is "perfect", that is, it is without sin, and yet still sins....then it is not perfect, free will or no.

God goofed.

 

[ceo_esq]

So tell me, counselor, what is the basis for your implication that God gave us free will?

I didn't mean to imply that "God" actually gave us "free will", simply that something like that happened in the story of which timokay, Beerina et al. were trying to make sense.

How do you distinguish true free will from apparent free will?

I don't necessarily distinguish them, but does an Erector Set have either one? And I think that the more persuasive interpretation of the Bible is that it is set in a universe where human beings have genuine rather than merely apparent free will. I offer no opinion as to whether the same conditions obtain in real life as in the book.