Bible Contradictions?

I finished reading this book the other day – “Keeping Faith in an Age of Reason“, in which Dr. Jason Lisle grabbed every supposed Bible contradiction he could find in the internet and responded to it. 420, so be exact.

As you might guess, Lisle concludes by saying that “the critic” should have been a little more careful in their study. To say the least.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the conclusion, where Lisle lists all the logical fallacies that the critic used (he counts about 615 errors in reasoning). And then he lists them in order of how common the error was.

About 1/3 of the errors came about because the critic didn’t read the text carefully or in context. I can’t count the number of times that the book says, “If the critic had read the very next verse…”!

In fact, I would suggest that many of the other errors came about for the same basic reason – not reading in context. The context explains the meaning of words (i.e. words with more than one possible meaning, depending on the context). Failure to recognize two different times (as in “Jim went to the store” and “Jim did not go to the store” could both be true, if they are two different days).

In that case, it could be that the vast majority of the errors in logic came about simply by not reading context.

Open your Bible, glance around the page, flip a page earlier and a page later, look to see if you’re in the New Testament or Old Testament, be aware of which book you’re in – some simple practices could make your Bible study go a whole lot easier. And, of course, help you avoid contradictions that aren’t contradictions at all.