60 Reasons Why the Bible Is Not A Perfect Text Written by Joe Pettit Keep in mind that I am trying to persuade a reader of this list that the Bible is not the inerrant and literal words of God. I am not trying to prove such a conclusion. The clever, although usually very implausible, use of verbal and historical gymnastics can probably get around most of the problems on this list. However, such acts of contextual and verbal contortion are always far less persuasive than the simple and single conclusion that the Bible is a human text that is responding to God in often profound, but also inconsistent, contrary, and necessarily flawed ways. Note: Most of what follows is a discussion of New Testament texts. I simply have not studied the Jewish scriptures as much as I have Christian texts. Also, some of the problems may seem insignificant, and they probably are, but the point is that even insignificant problems should never appear in a text that is literally and inerrantly from God; that is, they should not appear in a perfect text, whereas their presence in profound but flawed human texts is easy to explain. If, after reading this, you wonder what it is that I actually believe as one who calls himself a Christian, I have tried to make that clearer here [Sources: Most of the following is heavily dependent on Bart Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, and on Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005] Textual Problems Often, the texts of the Bible themselves are difficult, and likely impossible, to reconcile to each other. This is easy to explain if they were written by many different fallible people at many different times and places. It is very difficult to explain if the texts are from God. 1. The Order of Creation: In the first chapter of Genesis, animals are created before humans (1:20-24, 1:26-27), but in the second chapter, man is created before the animals (2:7, 2:19). 2. The Iniquity of the Father: In Exodus 34:7 we are told that the iniquity of the father will be visited upon the children and upon their children "unto the fourth generation." But in Ezekiel 18:20 we are told that "the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." Moreover, Ezekiel explicitly repudiates the Exodus interpretation. 3. Noah and the Flood: Upon careful examination, it becomes clear that there are two stories of Noah and the flood and that these stories have some rather significant differences. Most of us are familiar with the version that has Noah bringing one pair of every animal on to the Ark (7:8-15), where it rained for 40 days and forty nights (7:4, 8:6), and that after 54 days (two weeks after the 40 days were over) the waters had receded enough that the dove released by Noah did not return. However, there is another version of the story where Noah takes seven pairs of every "clean" beast (7:2) and only one pair of every unclean beast; where it first rains for 150 days, and then takes another 150 days (10 months from the start of the flood) for the first mountain tops to appear. Also, rather strangely, Noah and his family enter the Ark twice; once at 7:7 and then again at 7:13. There is a fine demonstration of how the two different versions of the Noah story are woven together at http://www.energion.com/rpp/flood.shtml . There is one additional problem with the Noah story. It is almost identical to another flood story told in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a text much older than the account of Noah. In the Epic we read of a man warned by a god to build a boat because another god who is tired of the noise of humanity is going to destroy every human being. After the man's boat comes to rest on a mountain, he releases a bird three times (just like Noah), only he first releases a dove, then a sparrow, and then a raven (Noah actually releases a raven as well at 8:7, we just never hear or read about it). The man sacrifices on a mountain to the god who saved him, just like Noah. It is difficult to avoid concluding that the authors of the Noah stories were "influenced" by the Epic of Gilgamesh. 4. Many Languages, or One? In chapter 10 of Genesis, we get a long account of the many peoples and many languages that descend from Noah and of the many lands that they occupied (10:5, 20, 31-32). However, after this, we are told in the set up for the Tower of Babel story that whole land had only one language and that they all managed to settle on only one plain