The Bible/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

 * Like everyone seems like to point out, it the Bible at first glance seems to contain a lot of contradictions or things that don't seem to add up that apologists exist just to tell their interpretations. However, I realized that the fact that there are many things hard to explain in the Bible does not make it invalid and wrong, rather it confirms that it truly happened. Think about it, if the whole thing was just baloney, wouldn't the early Church and the medieval Church would try to correct the contradictions that are hard to explain? But instead it just stays there. That means that the early Christians truly believed that the stories in the Bible truly happened to the extent that what could easily look as a contradiction just stays there. This realization is also one of the few things that convinced me that the Bible truly is the Word of God.- Counter Blitzkrieg
 * Erm, if it was based of true events there wouldn't be any contradictions because it would be true. If you say it's inaccurate reporting then how can any of the Bible be trusted? Since God doesn't seem to want to give any evidence for his existence without the Bible you have no way of knowing anything about him. Like say, his existence. And anyway, you cant use the Bible to prove the Bible, it's circular reasoning
 * I think that is a stretch. You are free to believe that but they have weeded out books that did not agree with the editing body at the time. The contradictions are more easily explained that the editors had no vested interests in them and thus did not weed them out. The King James version was translated with the needs of the English Monarchy and the Church of England in mind just as each version pandered to whoever funded their translation or collation. The Old Testament is all versions is a hodge podge of the Hebrew Bible with alterations made as well. The new testament is also a hodge podge of works from various sources that were collected to support the viewpoints of the church at the time the church canonized them.- King Manic
 * It might also be noted that various translations of the Bible were fiddled with by medieval scholars to try and iron out some inconsistencies that seemed to crop up in it. - Saintheart
 * Hey, you're right! And the Greek myths have contradictions as well - that must mean they're true! So do the Norse myths, and the Egyptian myths...
 * Not cool. If that's no good for you, then how about this: God's far more complex than us. When you're a kid, you don't get why your parents act the way they do, and God compared to us is more like a hamster or a mouse compared to a human. It says in the Bible, his way's aren't our ways. Some of the things in the Bible shouldn't make sense. With the Norse, Greek and Egyptian, etc. myths, they involve far less reason and sense. Apollo taking a magic chariot across the sky as the sun is one example of something ludicrous they believed happened everyday. At least with the Bible, the supernatural things are miracles and one time events, not natural phenomena. Besides, some of the contradictions just need to be put into context. -Dandelion Fire
 * And I suppose that man being made from dirt and woman being made from man's rib is not ludicrous at all. And please explain to me how contradictions can be explained in context. Some simply can't both be true.
 * Actually God supposedly does things every day that don't make any sense. In fact, he supposedly does EVERYTHING, which certainly doesn't make any sense if Apollo being the sun doesn't. -- Black Humor
 * I swear, I'd been stressing over the accusations made by Philip Pullman and many others that the Lord doesn't want humanity to be wise and think for ourselves when I suddenly remembered: when he offered King Solomon one wish, and Solomon wished for vast wisdom, the Lord could not have been more pleased! -Lale
 * If God wants us to be wise then why does he give us so much misinformation and then tell people to not question his word?
 * Speaking of The Bible, after reading first and second Samuel, I could never quite get over what David did to Bathsheba in Samuel 2. There were times I could succeed in not feeling anger whenever I thought of him, but, I always held a certain amount of venom towards him for a short time. I thought "well so what if they patched things up? Bathsheba still got downgraded from being that special woman in marriage to a loving, monogamous man, to simply being another one of David's wives". I thought "why didn't David dissolve the marriage so she could go out to be someone elses only wife, instead of living the rest of her days competing with his other wives for attention?" I knew that God said he'd give David's wives to Absalom, but it later describes Absalom as laying with his concubines instead, so I always thought David had circumvented that command somehow....And then it hit me. Those concubines must've been David's wives at one point, as they were described as widows after David puts them in a house and doesn't lie with them again, therefore, it seems Bathsheba was the only wife David had left, as she isn't forced to live in confinement like David's former wives. Upon this revelation, one wonders whether God taking away David's other wives was to serve the double purpose of punishing David AND compensating Bathsheba so that she'd once again have a husband all to herself, and not have to be reduced to competing with other wives. In any case, it was upon this revelation that I was finally able to get over it completely (instead of only partially), knowing that Bathsheba was able to get David's full UNDIVIDED attention. -- Fionordequester
 * Remember, Bathsheba wasn't innocent. While she didn't kill Uriah, she did cheat on him, so losing her firstborn and having to compete with rivals is quite fair.
 * On another note, Abraham's apparent willingness to sacrifice Isaac, even though God said that he would provide a sacrifice, always bugged me. Abraham was about ready to kill his son when he heard the ram. But then again, this is the same guy who lied to both Pharaoh and Abimelech about his wife (saying she was his sister) and who lost faith that God would provide a son through Sarah and slept with her servant Hagar. By this point in the story Abraham has a well-established track record of jumping the gun and making baseless assumptions even when God has already demonstrated his will and his power in Abraham's life on numerous occasions. The attempted sacrifice of Isaac is well within Abraham's character and experience (he did come from a society that practiced human sacrifice, after all).
 * I once heard a different interpretation of that story where Abraham is secretly testing God to see if he is the kind of deity that would demand a man to kill his son. Not sure if the text supports this at all, but it's given the story a greater poignancy and depth for me.
 * I was reading the Old Testament, and noticed the pattern of younger siblings being put over older siblings, especially with Abraham's descendents, but also with Rachel and Leah. Then an idea hit me - both the Jews and the Christians are called God's children, right? I'm not writing this to insult the Jews, because I think Judaism is awesome, but I think there's a parallel that has Jews as the firstborn like Ishmael, Esau, Leah and so one, while Christians are the second child, like Issac, Jacob and Rachel. -Dandelion Fire
 * There's the really common belief that Ishmael's children are the Muslims while Issac's are the Jews. I think it might be in the Koran, but when it comes to the Bible, that's Fridge Logic. -Dandelion Fire
 * Jesus is technically a bastard child. Going on the assumption that Mary was a virgin who had never done the deed, he quite literally had no father. Going on the assumption that Mary was a virgin--as in unmarried--he was also a bastard child.
 * I'll toss out this theory about Abraham and Isaac: it's one of many religious reforms that populate the bible and the post Jesus history of Christianity. In Abraham's day, he was immersed in a society that worshipped the Canaanite Gods. These God demanded Child sacrifice. So when JHWH ordered him to kill Isaac, he makes no protest, nor does Isaac. Off they go to do the deed in the prescribed manner, and at the last minute JHWH says "stop - don't do that anymore. Kill this ram instead" thus the substitution of killing livestock instead of humans. Later Jesus comes along when animal sacrifice is a major industry and he, too says "stop - don't do that anymore. Instead sacrifice your spirit / will". Pretty much any major shift in worship is the same thing - a method of worship becomes outdated, or morally repugnant, or obviously damaging to society, and someone invokes God to change it. Islam replaced the brutal fights over the divinity of Christ. Protestantism replaced Catholic secular power (to a certain extent). Other examples are left as an exercise to the reader.