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Supposed Biblical Discrepancies
Bibliology - Pastor Ronnie Wolfe - Lesson #10
July 18, 2001
- ABRAHAM WAS A MYSTICAL PERSON OR AT LEAST UNEDUCATED
- Many have believed and taught that Abraham was not a real person.
- Others believe that, even if he was a historical character, he was a
backward and unlearned man.
- But Adolph Sapher in his book The Divine Unity of Scripture
quotes Professor Sayce, who says, @Long
before the Exodus, Canaan had its libraries and its scribes, its schools and
literary men.@
ABSENCE OF THE HITTITES
It has been believed that these people, the Hittites did not actually
exist, because the Bible was the only known record of their existence.
AThe various biblical
references to the Hittites used to be treated with great skepticism, but
thanks to our ability through archaeology to resurrect an ancient people,
today the Hittites and Hittite culture are well known.@
(Unger= s Bible Dictionary, 1988).
The various biblical references to the Hittites used to be treated with
great skepticism, but thanks to our ability through archaeology to resurrect
an ancient people, today the Hittites and Hittite culture are well known.
A Archaeological Discovery. It
is now known that the center of Hittite power was in Asia Minor. There an
empire that once vied with Egypt and Assyria, but had been long forgotten,
has been discovered by modern archaeologists. A missionary at Damascus named
William Wright and the orientalist A. H. Sayce were among the first scholars
to piece together the picture of this ancient imperial people from scattered
monuments (Wright, The Empire of the Hittites [1884]; A. H. Sayce, The
Hittites, the Story of a Forgotten Empire, rev. ed. [1925]). Knowledge was
vastly increased when a German professor named Hugo Winckler discovered
thousands of cuneiform tablets at Boghaz-keui, the Hittite capital located
on the great bend of the Halys River, ninety miles E of Ankara. This
phenomenal discovery was made in 1906-7 and 1911-12. A Czech scholar,
Friedrich Hrozny, and other linguists have deciphered Hittite cuneiform used
between 1900 and 1100 B.C. This accomplishment has opened up a vast Hittite
literature consisting of their annals, religious texts, and myths in
Sumero-Akkadian characters received from the Hurrians (Horites). Portions of
Hittite legal codes have also been discovered. Though many Hittite
excavations have been conducted, pride of place goes to the work at
Boghaz-keui, the four-hundred-acre capital of the Hittite empire. From 1931
to 1939, Kurt Bittel led German Oriental Society digs there and resumed them
again in 1952. Since then annual excavations have been conducted at the
site.@ (From The New Unger's Bible
Dictionary. Originally published by Moody Press of Chicago, Illinois.
Copyright (c) 1988.)
But the Bible commands faith, not skepticism. We must not have to wait
for archeological proof of historical facts in order to believe the Bible.
JESUS AS DAVID= S SON
Matthew 22:42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They
say unto him, [The Son] of David.
Compare: Luke 20:41 And he said unto them, How say they that Christ
is David= s son?
Dr. Robert H. Mounce says in an article entitled, Clues to
Understanding Biblical Accuracy, A
From a strictly literal standpoint Jesus must have said one or the other or
neither.@
But he left out an alternative: Jesus could have said both in the
entirety of his message, and Matthew could have chosen to quote one part,
while Luke chose to quote another part.
THE MOLTEN SEA PROBLEM
2 Chronicles 4:2 Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from
brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a
line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
Dr. Mounce says, A Since the
circumference of a circle is pi x D (3.14159 times the diameter), it would
be impossible for a round vessel to have a diameter of ten and a
circumference of thirty.@
Of course, they did not know about pi in those days, or perhaps they
did. But even if they did not, they would have measured the circumference
easily.
A cubit is 18 inches
A handbreadth is 4 inches B
the thickness of the wall of the vessel (2 Chron. 4:5)
Ten cubits = 180 inches
Thirty cubits = 540 inches.
If we subtract the thickness of each side of the vessel=
s walls (2 handbreadths, or 8 inches), we can do some modern calculations.
The diameter would be measured using the outside of the walls and would
equal 180 inches.
The circumference would be measured from the inside of the walls must
equal 540 inches (thirty cubits).
Will this work with modern calculations?
The formula is pi x D.
Now if pi = 3.14159, we want 3.14159 to represent pi.
The diameter is 10 cubits, or 180 inches.
Now in order to get the circumference, we must measure from the inside
of the walls of the vessel. If we take the thickness of the wall on each
side of the vessel, we must subtract two handbreadths, 4 inches each, which
is 8 inches.
This leaves us with 172 inches, because 8 subtracted from 180 = 172.
Now we will substitute 172 for the D, which stands for diameter.
So now let= s do the modern
math.
The formula is pi x D = C (or the circumference).
So let= s substitute.
3.14159 x 172 = 540.08. I think this is close enough to 540 inches, don=
t you?
Enough of that proof. The Bible is true concerning this.
THE MISSING THOUSAND
Numbers 25:9 And those that died in the plague were twenty and four
thousand.
Compare: 1 Corinthians 10:8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some
of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
Which is right?
This is just a simple method of rounding figures. Did you know that the
government is seriously thinking of doing away with the penny? They will
round everything up or down to the nearest nickel, and it will equal out in
the long run.
When I was doing accounting, all of our financial statements left off
the pennies. We recorded everything in dollars only. We would round up if
the cents were .50 or above and down if the cents were less than .50. We
would usually PLUG a figure of about 1.00 to make everything balance.
This is what happened here. One was rounding up, the other one down.
Perhaps 23,500 people were killed. That is right on the line for rounding up
or down. Moses went down, Paul went up.
THE SIZE OF THE MUSTARD SEED
Matthew 13:31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The
kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and
sowed in his field: 32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but
when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so
that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
Everyone knows that there are seeds smaller than the mustard seed.
So, how could this be right?
First, it could mean that this is the smallest of the seeds that the
farmers would sow in their fields.
Second, Jesus could be saying, according to some scholars, that the
mustard seed is among the smallest of the seeds.
Either way, we know that the Lord did not make a mistake when he spoke
these words.
OTHER SO-CALLED MISTAKES
Among other so-called mistakes in the Bible are length of the reign of
certain kings in the Old Testament, and the mention of certain names of
kings that secular history does not know.
Then there is the so-called mistake of Peter as he denied the Lord. Did
the cock crow twice or once? And on it goes.
WHERE DOES THIS LEAD?
The mistake of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is where it has
already led, and this will lead ultimately to the complete destruction of
the Christian faith in the mind of the skeptic.
In a book called Scripture, Tradition, and Infallibility, Dr.
Dewey Beegle says that a belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ
is not essential for salvation.
He speaks of a man by the name of Willi Marxsen, profesor of New
Testament at the University of Munster, West Germany, in this way:
A Neither this writer nor any
other Christian has the authority to declare that Marxsen cannot possibly
have genuine faith because he cannot bring himself to believe in the bodily
resurrection of Jesus.@
But notice Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved.
The assumption here is that if you do not believe in your heart that God
hath raised Jesus from the dead, you shall not be saved.
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