Godless (39 page)
Deuteronomy 32:48-52 [God telling Moses that it was his and Aaron’s fault] “This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah…and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites.”
Numbers 27:12-13 [God to Moses] “Ye rebelled against my commandment.”
versus
Deuteronomy 1:37 [Moses talking to the people, shifting the blame] “Because of you, the Lord became angry with me.” (See also Deuteronomy 3:26 and 4:20-22.)
Psalm 145:9 “The Lord is good to all.”
Deuteronomy 32:4 “A God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”
versus
Isaiah 45:7 “I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.”
Lamentations 3:38 “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?”
Jeremiah 18:11 “Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you.”
Ezekiel 20:25, 26 “I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live. And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord.”
Regarding Isaiah 45:7, where God says “I make peace and create evil,” we notice that some versions dishonestly translate “evil,” or
ra
, as “calamity” or another softer word—although even this paints God as a troublemaker. However, that Hebrew word
ra
clearly means “moral evil,” as it is used in Genesis 3, the most important moral tale in the entire bible, the story of the fall of the human race: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil… And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5, 22) That word “create,” by the way, is
bara
, used in the first verse of the bible.
ra
, as “calamity” or another softer word—although even this paints God as a troublemaker. However, that Hebrew word
ra
clearly means “moral evil,” as it is used in Genesis 3, the most important moral tale in the entire bible, the story of the fall of the human race: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil… And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5, 22) That word “create,” by the way, is
bara
, used in the first verse of the bible.
James 1:13 “Let no man say…I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.”
versus
Genesis 22:1 “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham.”
Romans 15:33 “The God of peace.”
Isaiah 2:4 “…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
versus
Exodus 15:3 “The Lord is a man of war.”
Joel 3:9-10 “Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.”
I Samuel 21:1-6 “ Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest… So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread.”
versus
Mark 2:26 “How he [David] went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
Some apologists claim that “days of Abiathar” (a priest after the time of David) is metaphorical. If this defense is allowed, then there could be no possible contradiction anywhere, inside or outside of the bible. We can simply claim metaphor where we don’t like what the actual text says.
Before 4 B.C.E.: Matthew 2:1 “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king…” (King Herod died in 4 B.C.E.)
versus
After 6 C.E.: Luke 2:1-4 “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)… And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem…” (Cyrenius became governor of Syria in 6 C.E.)
Cyrenius is also spelled “Quirinius.” For an in-depth analysis, see
The Date of the Nativity in Luke
, by Richard Carrier (
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html
).
The Date of the Nativity in Luke
, by Richard Carrier (
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html
).
John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.”
Acts 10:36 “The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ.”
Luke 2:14 “…on earth peace, good will toward men.”
versus
Matthew 10:34 “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
Luke 22:36 “Then said he unto them…he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.”
John 8:14 “Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true.”
versus
John 5:31 “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.”
“Record” and “witness” in the above verses are the same Greek word (
martyria
).
martyria
).
Matthew 5:22 “Whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.” [Jesus speaking]
versus
Matthew 23:17 “Ye fools and blind.” [Jesus speaking]
Psalm 14:1 “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
John 1:18 “No man hath seen God at any time.”
Exodus 33:20 “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”
John 6:46 “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God [Jesus], he hath seen the Father.”
I John 4:12 “No man hath seen God at any time.”
versus
Genesis 32:30 “For I have seen God face to face.”
Exodus 33:11 “And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”
Isaiah 6:1 “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.”
Job 42:5 “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.”
Deuteronomy 6:4 “The Lord our God is one Lord.”
versus
Genesis 1:26 “And God said, Let us make man in our image.”
Genesis 3:22 “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil.”
I John 5:7 “And there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”
It does no good to claim that “Let us” is the magisterial “we.” Such usage implies inclusivity of all authorities under a king’s leadership. Invoking the Trinity solves nothing because such an idea is more contradictory than the problem it attempts to solve. (By the way, the text of I John 5:7 does not appear in any ancient Greek manuscript. It was added much later by the Catholic Church into the Latin Vulgate. See
Misquoting Jesus
by Bart Ehrman for documentation of this fraudulent tampering with the bible.)
Misquoting Jesus
by Bart Ehrman for documentation of this fraudulent tampering with the bible.)
Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
Romans 3:10 “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”
Psalm 14:3 “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
versus
Job 1:1 “There was a man… whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright.”
Genesis 7:1 “And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.”
Luke 1:6 “And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.”
II Kings 24: 8 “Jehoiachim was 18 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months.”
versus
II Chronicles 36:9 “Jehoiachim was 8 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 3 months and 10 days.”
II Kings 8:26 “Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign.”
versus
II Chronicles 22:2 “Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign.”
All scholars, including inerrantists, admit that the previous two numerical examples are indeed discrepant in the oldest documents we possess, but some claim this is merely due to a copyist error, not a contradiction in the original text. (A piece of papyrus flaked off or a scribe’s vision was weak.) Of course, we don’t have the “originals” (if indeed they were written rather than oral), so there is no way to confirm this convenient assumption. Also, it should be pointed out that an omnipotent, omniscient, all-caring deity might have guaranteed that his all-important message be conveyed in a less sloppy manner. Although the New International Version, for example, changes the text of II Chronicles 22:2 from “forty-two” to “twenty-two,” presumably to avoid the appearance of a contradiction, they are honest enough to include a footnote saying: “Hebrew forty-two.”
Numbers 30:2 “If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath… he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.”
Genesis 21:22-24, 31 “…swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me… And Abraham said, I will swear… Wherefore he called that place Beersheba [“well of the oath”]; because there they sware both of them.”
Hebrews 6:13-17 “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself…for men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath.”
See also Genesis 22:15-19, Genesis 31:53, and Judges 11:30-39.
versus
Matthew 5:34-37 “But I say unto you, swear not at all; neither by heaven… nor by the earth… Neither shalt thou swear by thy head… But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”
James 5:12 “…swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.”
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