how do you explain 101 cotrdictions in the Bible?

Once somebody accepts on wishful thinking (aka faith) that a god has something to do with some holy book, you’ll never convince them the book has contradictions. It’s always possible to invent some creative scenario that leaves open the possibility of inerrancy, and that’s all they care about.

If one book says there were 4000 men at some battle, and another says 40000, oh well then ,there must have been 2 battles. If superdude says you can’t trust anyone who calls himself the son of god, and later calls himself the son of god, oh well, then there’s some subtle Greek context that’s possibly ambiguous and that saves the day…and so on.

You can’t ever translate from one language to another and not lose meaning…context, connotation, and word choice combine to form “meaning”…when you consider the age of a document, the language shift that occurs, AND the foreign language such a document was in when written…it’s factually impossible to say that we know exactly what the meaning was of the “bible” as written (which were letters in any event)…and, the oldest copy of the new testament is only ~1200 years old or so…the new testament wasn’t in the dead sea scrolls, only the Torah.

It depends on how you look at the Bible. Most believers are not Biblical literalists so they are not troubled by apparent contradictions. It is the lessons and the gist of the stories where they find meaning, not in the details.

I found that Biblical literalists are capable of amazign mental gymnastics to explain how even the most contradictory passages do not conflict with each other. Because of this I don’t even bother debating this any more.

My philosophical problems with Christianity have to do with its main tenets, not its minutiae. Debating Biblical contradictions is just a distracting tangent.

Despite the language barrier in translation, a lot of the inconsistancies occur in misinterpretation and cherry picking.

it’s almost impossible to compare the old testament laws to the new testament. When Jesus came, he fullfilled the old covenant and created a new one… it’s a whole new game. There are new rules.

Where the old testament laws are still somewhat good rules to live by, they don’t really count as LAW after Jesus came and gave the 2 Commandments of Christianity in Matthew 22:37-39.

Simple the can’t. The bible was made up of a much of docs. And they don’t always go hand and hand. + what’s been added and taken from the bible I don’t see how anyone could trust it even if you believe in God

“it’s almost impossible to compare the old testament laws to the new testament. When Jesus came, he fullfilled the old covenant and created a new one… it’s a whole new game. There are new rules.”

Actually, the Bible says otherwise:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 5:17-19.

The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible has a list of contradictions in the bible here: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html

Those “contradictions” got there because the Bible shouldn’t even exist as it does today. It’s not a single book telling a single story. It’s a collection of writings from across several centuries, written by authors, many of which we know nothing about, and many of which knew nothing about each other. These writings were compiled into one work after much argument and politics, which is still going on today. And we’re supposed to believe this is the unified word of a single God? It’s a hodgepodge of cultures and viewpoints. Of course it’s going to have contradictions.

But plenty of people drink the special Kool-Aid and believe it anyway.