But the crowd doesn’t 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 living bread.

John 6.29-36.

To recap: The crowd of Galileans whom Jesus and his students fed literal bread were fixated on this literal bread. Plus the idea Jesus is the Prophet-Like-Moses who, according to Pharisees, would feed them literal bread during the End Times—but not so much that as the bread. (Hey, unlimited food is a big deal to a poor community!) Whereas Jesus told ’em to not seek bread; seek “the living bread,” i.e. him.

Well they didn’t want him. They wanted actual, literal bread. They wanted a thing, not a person. They wanted to fill their bellies, not to pursue a relationship with the Son of Man.

So the discussion with these Galileans deteriorated from there. I should point out John refers to them in this story as Ἰουδαῖοι/Yudéï, “Judeans,” and no, he’s not mixing up the province they’re in. The word means both “Judeans” and “Jews,” and of course they’re Jews—and they’re descended from Judeans. About a century before, some Judeans chose to go north—farther north than the province of Samaria—and re-settle any available territory which used to be part of the kingdom of northern Israel. This became the Galilee. They’re Galilean Jews, same as Jesus.

Anyway. In verse 29, which I’ll repeat today, Jesus tells ’em they have to trust the Son of Man, i.e. “that man he sends.” (Jesus likes to refers to himself in the third person, y’know. And it doesn’t confuse the Galileans at all; they respond to Jesus in verse 30 about trusting “you,” i.e. the man God sent. All my life I’ve heard Christians claim part of the reason the Galileans reacted to Jesus the way they did, was Jesus was somehow way too difficult for them to understand; that his metaphors went right over their heads. That’s not what the text shows at all. They were following Jesus’s train of thought just fine. Following him personally, however, they balked at. Free bread is one thing, but following Jesus? They didn’t wanna sign up for that.

I’ve also shared John 6 with pagans. And they understood it just fine as well. John didn’t write it in complex, hard-to-translate Greek; beginning Greek students can translate this no problem. Nope; it’s not at all about misunderstanding Jesus. It’s about understanding him—and then rejecting him.

John 6.29-36 KWL

29In reply Jesus tells them, “This is God’s work.

So you should trust in that man he sends.”

30So the crowd tells Jesus,

“So what sign do you¹ do

so we might see it

and might trust you¹?

What are you¹ doing?”

31Our forefathers ate manna in the wilderness,

just as it’s written,

‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Ps 78.24

32So Jesus tells them, “Amen amen!

I promise you Moses didn’t give you² bread from heaven.

But my Father gives you² true bread from heaven.

33For God’s bread is the one

who comes down from heaven,

and who gives life to the world.”

34So the crowd tells Jesus,

“Master, always give us this bread!”

35Jesus tells them, “I’m the living bread.

One who comes to me ought not hunger.

One who trusts in me ought not thirst.

36But I tell you² that you² also saw me—

and you² don’t trust me.”

Jesus himself, right there in verse 36, says so. They saw him. This crowd was right there when he and his kids fed 5,000-plus people. They know what he did; they know what he can do. But they don’t trust him enough to follow him any further. They only wanted bread. Same as any selfish, materialistic Christian who only follows Jesus for prosperity, political might, a mansion in heaven, social acceptance, to feel spiritual, to feel justified, or any of the other ulterior motives which cause people to embrace Christianity—but not Jesus.

Lead us not into temptation.

Matthew 6.13, Luke 11.4.

This part of the Lord’s Prayer gets controversial, because it sounds like our Lord’s brother James totally contradicted it when he wrote,

James 1.13-15 NRSVue

13No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. 14But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; 15then, when that desire has conceived, it engenders sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.

So because James said God tempts nobody, people don’t know what to make of it when Jesus has us pray,

Matthew 6.13 NRSVue

“And do not bring us to the time of trial,

but rescue us from the evil one.”

Luke 11.4 NRSVue

“And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

’Cause praying that God not lead us into temptation, implies sometimes he might lead us into temptation.

Okay. The word in the Lord’s Prayer which popularly gets translated “temptation” in both Matthew and Luke, is πειρασμόν/pirasmón, “temptation, trial, test, tribulation.” Yep, the translators got it right. It’s the noun-form of the verb James used, πειράζω/pirázo, “to tempt, try, test, tribulate.” Means the same thing.

But while James said God tempts nobody, we got various scriptures where it kinda looks like he does. Look up any Old Testament verses which include the word נָסָה/nása, which means the same thing as pirázo: Test. Try. Prove. Experiment. Tempt. Here, lemme quote just a few.

Genesis 22.1-2 NRSVue

1After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

Deuteronomy 8.3 NRSVue

“He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

Deuteronomy 13.1-3 NRSVue

1“If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, 2and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, ‘Let us follow other gods’ (whom you have not known) ‘and let us serve them,’ 3you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.”

Heck, King David ben Jesse even told God to put him to the test:

Psalm 26.2 NRSVue

Prove me, O LORD, and try me;

test my heart and mind.

Not sure whether David passed that particular test; he was a horny fella. Definitely loved God though.

Anyway. How do we deal with this particular bible difficulty? Real simple: We remember James is wisdom literature.

Which of Jesus’s temptations came second?

Matthew 4.5-10, Luke 4.5-12.

In Matthew, the order of Jesus’s temptations is

1. Stones to bread. Mt 4.3-4
2. Jumping from the temple. Mt 4.5-7
3. Bowing before Satan. Mt 4.8-10

And in Luke, it’s

1. Stones to bread. Lk 4.3-4
2. Bowing before Satan. Mt 4.5-8
3. Jumping from the temple. Lk 4.9-12

The gospels are agreed that stones to bread came first, but not about whether bowing before Satan or jumping from the temple came second and third.

Does it matter? Not really. But if you’re a biblical inerrantist, and insist the bible has no errors, one of the gospels mixed up the order.

And if you’re a biblical inerrantist, you’re gonna downplay this fact as much as you possibly can. Because there’s no reasonable explanation for how one of the gospels isn’t wrong about the order of the temptations.

So instead… you’re gonna do the very same thing non-inerrantists like me do. You’re gonna say the order isn’t important. That the authors of the gospels likely put the temptations in the order they did, intentionally—because they were writing to different audiences, and wanted to emphasize different things. The author of Matthew wanted to move from near venues to far—from right there in the wilderness, where Jesus chose to fast; to Jerusalem, the capital of Judea; to the Roman Empire and the world. And Luke chose to end his version of the temptations story in Jerusalem, the epicenter of the Judean religion, to emphasize Jesus’s special relationship with his Father—“if thou be the Son of God,” Lk 4.3, 9 KJV as Satan kept saying.

And okay, this explanation might work for you. But back when I was a little kid, and my pastors and Sunday school teachers kept insisting the bible is inerrant, this explanation absolutely didn’t work for me. Kids are literalists! We knew—from the many times we tried to fudge the truth, and subsequently, correctly got in trouble for it—you don’t get to play fast and loose with the order of events when you tell a story. Parents, historians, cops, and courtrooms don’t allow it. Nor should they! So why does Matthew or Luke get to?—and how can you say the bible’s inerrant when you’re saying one or the other of them deliberately introduced an inaccuracy?

Nope, doesn’t work. That is, till you’re older, throw up your hands in frustration, and decide what the heck; we’re gonna accept that either Matthew or Luke changed the order around… yet still call ourselves literalists and inerrantists, because the Fundamentalists in our churches seem to be really insistent that we remain literalists and inerrantists. If we’re not, they might call us heretics, or get us removed from our ministries. So, best to keep up that appearance as best we can, and call ourselves literalists and inerrantists even though we’re not really.

Oh, and please don’t bring up Jesus’s two genealogies either.

The bible’s not a biology textbook!

Leviticus 11.13-19, Deuteronomy 14.11-18, Jonah 1.17, Matthew 12.40

During a talk with a fellow Christian, we went off on a bit of a tangent.

ME. “…Like when Jonah got swallowed by the whale…”

HE. “Sea creature.”

ME. “Whale. How’re you getting ‘sea creature’ from kítus?”

HE. “From what?”

HE. “Kítus. The Greek word for ‘whale.’ The word Jesus used when he talked about Jonah being in the whale’s belly three days and nights. Mt 12.40 It’s the word we get our adjective ‘cetacean’ from, which refers to whales, dolphins, porpoises, and other marine mammals.”

HE. [confused; betcha he didn’t expect me to know what I was talking about] “But Jonah said he was swallowed by a great fish.” Jh 1.17

ME. “Sure.”

HE. “Well a whale’s not a fish.”

ME. “But it was a fish in Jesus’s day.”

HE. “Whales used to be fish…?”

HE. “Because the ancients classified them as fish. They figured if it lives in the sea, it’s a fish. Then somebody eventually realized some of these ‘fishes’ have lungs, and decided if you have lungs you’re not a fish, and humanity redefined ‘fish.’ Well, bible’s still using the old definition. So in the bible, whales are big fish.”

HE. [still confused] “But whales aren’t fish.”

ME. “Aren’t fish anymore. They were fish back in Jesus and Jonah’s day.”

HE. “So are you saying the bible’s wrong, or we are?”

ME. “Neither. The bible doesn’t define fish; it explains God. We define fish. You remember Adam got to name the animals. Ge 2.19-20 We get to decide what’s a fish and what’s not. And if we redefine fish, we can do that; it doesn’t violate the bible to do that. The only problem is when we try to update the bible to fit our definition of fish, and make the bible look inconsistent when it’s really not.”

This very issue came up again this weekend. My pastor had a little quiz about bible literacy, and I pointed out to him Jesus said Jonah was swallowed by a κήτους/kítus, “whale.”

Matthew 12.40 KJV

For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

It’s right there in red and white. Well, unless you’re reading a more recent translation which renders kítus as “sea creature” or “big fish.”

Amplified, LSB, NASB, NRSV: “sea monster”

CEV, GNT: “big fish”

CSV, NET, NIV: “huge fish”

ESV, MEV, NKJV: “great fish”

ISV: “sea creature”

But I remind you: None of these translations are accurate. None. They’re all conforming to the דָּ֣ג גָּד֔וֹל/dag gadól, “great fish,” of Jonah:

Jonah 1.17 KJV

The LORD arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah.

Jonah was in the fish’s bowels three days and three nights.

But to Jesus’s mind (at the time) a whale was a great fish. And isn’t Jesus in a position to know which species of “fish” swallowed Jonah? He said kítus, “whale”; so it was a whale.

My point is, if you know your history, there’s not actually a bible difficulty here! The problem is people don’t know history, and think there’s a difficulty if Jesus says “whale”… so y’notice a fair number of bible translators have changed the Lord Jesus’s words so that there’s no difficulty anymore. Which reveals all sorts of disturbing things about them. Namely a bothersome amount of intellectual dishonesty.

What became of Judas Iscariot.

Matthew 27.3-10, Acts 1.15-26.

Technically Judas bar Simon of Kerioth, the renegade follower of Jesus whom we know as Judas Iscariot, isn’t part of the stations of the cross. Whether we’re using St. Francis or St. John Paul’s list, neither of ’em figured his situation is specifically worthy of meditation. Although we should study Judas some, ’cause he’s an example of an apostle gone wrong—an example we really don’t wanna follow. Nor repeat. But Jesus was too busy going through his own suffering to really focus on what was happening with Judas.

Judas came up when he handed Jesus over to the authorities… and in three of the gospels, that’s the last we ever hear of him. The exceptions are Matthew—and since the author of Luke also wrote Acts, it’s kinda in another gospel, ’cause Acts is about how the Holy Spirit and apostles started Jesus’s church. But that’s a whole other discussion.

Here’s the problem: For the most part, the Matthew and Acts stories contradict one another.

Not that inerrantists haven’t tried their darnedest to sync them up, and I’ll get to how they’ve tried it. But first things first: The passages.

Matthew 27.3-10 KWL

3 Upon seeing Jesus is condemned,

a repentant Judas his betrayer returned the 30 silvers

to the head priests and elders,

4 saying, “I sin by betraying innocent blood.”

They say, “What’s it have to do with us?

It’s your problem.”

5 Throwing the silver into the temple, Judas leaves,

and goes off to hang himself.

6 The head priests, taking the silver, say,

“We can’t put this in the treasury,

since it’s the value of blood.”

7 Convening, they decide to buy with it the potter’s field,

for burying strangers.

8 Thus that land is called Bloodfield to this day;

9 then the saying of the prophet Jeremiah is fulfilled,

saying, “They take the 30 silvers,

the value of the one they valued,

who was valued by Israel’s sons.

10 They give it for the potter’s field,

just as the Lord directed me.”

 

Acts 1.15-20 KWL

15 In these days, Simon Peter gets up

in the middle of the family to say,

“The crowd is more than 120 people I can name.

16 Men! Family!

We have to fulfill the scripture

the Holy Spirit foretold through David’s mouth

about Judas, who became the guide of those who arrested Jesus.

17 Judas was counted among us.

He received a place in this ministry.

18 He thus got himself a plot of land

from his unrighteous reward,

and was found face-down,

burst open, his innards all spilled out.

19 All Jerusalem’s dwellers came to know it,

so the plot’s called in their dialect Khaqal-Dema,” i.e. Bloodfield.

20 “It’s written in the book of Psalms:

‘Make his house desert, and don’t let settlers in it.’ Ps 69.25

And alternately, ‘Another person: Take his office.’” Ps 109.8

When Abraham didn’t yet know God’s name. (Or did he?)

Genesis 12.8, Exodus 6.2-3.

Here’s a bible difficulty which tends to stymie a number of biblical literalists. Not all of ’em; most of them realize there’s a really simple solution to it. But some of ’em are in serious denial.

Genesis 12.8 ESV

From there [Avram] moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD.

 

Exodus 6.2-3 ESV

2 God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.”

God, the Creator, is identified as the LORD in the very second chapter of the bible—

Genesis 2.4 ESV

These are the generations

of the heavens and the earth when they were created,

in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

Throughout that book, the author of Genesis calls God “the LORD” or “the LORD God,” because he’s identifying which god he means. It’s not just אֵ֣ל/El, the generic Canaanite word for “god”; it’s not the Hebrew plural form of that word, אֱלֹהִ֑ים/Elohíym, which usually means the God, although of course it can sometimes mean “gods,” plural. The author is indicating this is the specific God who identified himself as יְהוָ֥ה/YHWH to Moses ben Amram—the God who rescued Israel from Egypt, who’s also the God who called their ancestor Avram ben Terah out of Sumer and renamed him Abraham, who’s also the God who created the sky and land. He’s not just one of the chief gods of a pagan pantheon; he’s the God, the only god they worship, ’cause he’s the only one who actually actively does stuff. He’s the living God.

But in Exodus, this specific God tells Moses that Abraham, and all the Hebrews since, didn’t know him by that name YHWH, which we traditionally translate “the LORD.” They knew him as אֵ֣ל שַׁדָּ֑י/El Šaddáy. Properly it means “Sovereign God,” but for the longest time people didn’t wholly know what šaddáy means (and it didn’t help that the Septuagint regularly translated it ὁ θεός μου/o Theós mu, “my God,” or ὁ θεός σου/o Theós su, “your God”). Most figured it means “high” or “mountainous.” Since sovereignty implies almightiness, “almighty” is fine; we needn’t nitpick the traditional translation. Anywho, God says they knew him as El Šaddáy, not YHWH.

Despite all the many, many instances of YHWH in Genesis—128 times in my copy of the Biblia Hebraica. That’s a lot of times they identify God by a name he’s not yet revealed!

But biblical literalists insist, on the contrary, it was revealed. It’s in Genesis, after all. People called the LORD by name!

Genesis 4.26 ESV

To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.

Seth was the son of Adam, the very first human; so all the way back then it looks like people identified the name of their Creator as YHWH, the LORD, and were using that name to invoke him. So… we got a difficulty here. What’s the way out of it?

Yes of course literalists have an answer. It’s that the LORD doesn’t really mean to say his name was unknown to the people before Moses.

Errors in the bible.

Years ago I was asked whether I believe in biblical inerrancy, the idea the bible contains no errors. Nope, I said. It’s got errors. We learned about ’em in bible college.

He was outraged. I learned about them in bible college? What kind of godless so-called “bible college” did I attend? Well it was an Assemblies of God school, which outraged him all the more because that’s his denomination, and he had presumed Assemblies professors would never, ever teach such a thing. (Actually that particular professor was Presbyterian, but I didn’t tell him that.)

I pointed out, same as my professor pointed out, that if he hadn’t told us about the errors, plenty of nonchristian apologists will gleefully inform us about ’em, just to freak us out. Better we learn about them and deal with them, than never learn about them… then have a massive faith crisis when we stumble across them. (Or when some antichrist forces us to look at them for fun.)

It’s for this same reason I’m writing about them here. They exist. Deal with ’em.

’Cause as you know, plenty of Christians refuse to deal with them. In fact this is part of the reason the New International Version is so popular: Its editors deliberately edited out most of the errors. I’m not kidding. They straight-up changed the text… and now they can claim the NIV is error-free. And anyone who carries an NIV can claim, “I don’t know what you mean about errors in the bible; my bible doesn’t have any such errors.” Well of course.

How can they defend this behavior? Meh; they don’t even try. They just figure it’s their duty as good Christian inerrantists to delete the discrepancies, lest antichrists use the discrepancies against us. How they did it—yet can claim any degree whatsoever of intellectual honesty—is by sliding ’em downward, into the footnotes. When 2 Kings 8.26 says Ahaziah ben Jehoshaphat became king at 22 years old, but 2 Chronicles 22.2 says he was 42, the NIV makes ’em both say 22, then includes this footnote in 2 Chronicles:

Some Septuagint manuscripts and Syriac (see also 2 Kings 8:26); Hebrew forty-two

My copy of the Septuagint says he was 20, not 22; so that’s an inconsistency as well.

But to be fair it’s not just the NIV which translated this verse this way. The Amplified Bible (current edition), CSB, ESV, ISV, Message, NASB, NET, NLT, and Voice have decided to ignore the original text, and go with a translation consistent with their personal beliefs about inerrancy. I leave it to you as whether it’s truly inerrantist of them to change the bible to suit themselves. Because changing the verse to read “22” instead of the original text’s אַרְבָּעִ֨ים וּשְׁתַּ֤יִם/arbayím u-settím, “forty and two,” is actually a clear declaration the original text is wrong—and a clear attempt to hide this fact.

And what’s to say 42 is the wrong number, not 22? Maybe Ahaziah was actually 42 years old. You don’t know.

Africanus and Eusebius on Jesus’s two genealogies.

Eusebius Pamphili was the bishop of Caesarea, Judea, from 314 to 339. He wrote the first full-length Christian history of the church, Historia Ecclesiae/Church History, sometimes called Ecclesiastical History, in part to defend the church as well as give its background.

Today’s excerpt is from Church History 1.7, in which he explains why Jesus has two genealogies. Popularly, Christians claim one belongs to his mom, and the other to his adoptive dad. Sometimes they vary about which belongs to whom; frequently Matthew is considered Mary’s, because it appears to have the more legitimate royal claim. (Though I remind you God can anoint anyone king he pleases, as he did Saul, David, Jeroboam, and Jehu; Jesus’s only ancestral “requirement” was he be David’s descendant, and he is in both genealogies.)

To help, Eusebius borrows a big long excerpt from fellow Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus, from his letter to Aristides of Athens, now lost. (Some Christians have tried to piece it back together from the various ancient Christians who quoted it, but it’s just a bunch of big fragments; not the whole letter.) Sextus Julius’s nickname Africanus/“the African,” refers to his birthplace in Libya, though he considered himself from Jerusalem, and lived in Nicopolis (formerly Emmaeus; different Emmaeus than the one in the bible), in Palestine. We don’t know his dates. The usual guess is the early 200s, but Aristides died in 134, so either the guess is wrong or the letter to Aristides is bogus.

He did correspond with Origen of Alexandria, and wrote two other works—the the Chronographiai, his five-volume history of the world (in which he figured creation happened in 5500BC); and Kestoi, a scientific encyclopedia.

As far as we know, Africanus was the first guy to try to explain this particular bible difficulty in writing. No doubt plenty of Christians tried to explain it away with best guesses. Africanus’s explanation became the standard explanation of ancient Christians, but as you might notice, not many people today seem to know of it.

I’m not 100 percent sold on this explanation, myself. But regardless, here it is.

The two creation stories.

I was raised to be a young-earth creationist, as are many conservative Evangelicals in the United States: We’re taught God created the universe only 6 millennia ago, precisely 4 millennia before Jesus was born, so 4004BC. And if a scientist or historian tells us otherwise, it’s either because they’ve been duped by nontheists, or because they’re nontheist themselves.

Young-earth creationists (YEC for short) claim their views are based on a literal interpretation of Genesis. It says God created the cosmos in 6 days, and if we truly believe bible, we gotta likewise believe God created the cosmos in 6 days. There’s no room for any other interpretation.

The universe… if we take Genesis literally. NIV Faithlife Study Bible

Problem is, when we do take the creation stories of Genesis literally, we might notice it’s not describing the cosmos as we know it. It’s describing the cosmos as ancient middle easterners knew it, meaning a flat earth, with a solid-wall dome above it, and the sky in between; Ge 1.6-8 and the sun and moon and stars and planets inside this dome. Ge 1.16-19 If you truly wanna be literal, you’re gonna be a flat-earther. (And no surprise, some YEC adherents are flat-earthers.)

Of course if you’re truly trying to be literal, you’re gonna notice Genesis doesn’t just have one creation story in it. It has two.

Yeah, a lot of you knew this already, ’cause you’ve read Genesis dozens of times, and duh, of course there are two creation stories in it. But you’d be surprised how many conservative Evangelicals, no matter how many times they’ve read Genesis, have been totally oblivious to the fact it starts with two creation stories. It’s simply never occurred to them. They’ve been taught, since they first became Christian, that the bible only tells one unified consistent story throughout, and any “bible difficulties” are easily explained away. These beliefs function as some mighty effective blinders.

Bible “difficulties”: The passages which won’t do as we want.

Whenever you hear Christians refer to “bible difficulties,” you’d think we meant scriptures which’re hard to translate, hard to interpret, hard to understand, or hard to follow. Often we do. Certainly I do.

But why do Christians consider these scriptures difficult? Three reasons.

1. We believe the bible contains no errors—but these passages appear to be in error, or appear to contradict other scriptures. Like Jesus’s two different genealogies.
2. We have certain beliefs, doctrines, traditions, or assumptions—and these passages appear to violate them. Like Christians who don’t wash feet, Jn 13.14 or Christian men who don’t kiss one another hello. Ro 16.16 We don’t wanna say these passages don’t apply anymore… but honestly, we don’t wanna follow ’em either.
3. These passages actually are obscure, and Christians throughout history (and Jews too) have found ’em hard to interpret.

The most common reason would be the first one: Discrepancies. Scriptures which appear to contradict other scriptures… or reality itself.

Nearly every Fundamentalist insists the bible has no such contradictions. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Have these guys ever read the bible?” Tried to line up the resurrection stories, or Jesus’s aforementioned genealogies?

Plus several orthodox Christian teachings—based on bible, I remind you—are kinda contradictory as well. Like how God’s kingdom is here, yet not yet here; like how God is one yet three. Fundies know all this stuff, but regardless: One of their fundamentals, one of their non-negotiable beliefs, is that the bible has no errors. Contradictions would be errors; therefore no contradictions.

Hence Fundamentalists have written big giant books about bible difficulties. In which they try to explain away any discrepancies, plus any other problem scriptures, as best they can. Sometimes reasonably, ’cause these passages only look like discrepancies but aren’t really. Other times Fundies really stretch reality in order to defend their doctrine.

The Adulterer Story… if it even happened.

John 7.53 – 8.11.

Today’s passage is called the Pericope Adulterae, the Adulterer Story, about a woman caught committing adultery, and Jesus was expected to judge her, and didn’t. It’s a really popular story in Christendom, and even pagans know the line, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Jn 8.7 KJV It’s used as the basis for a lot of live-and-let-live, “who am I to judge?” beliefs.

Two things though.

• That’s not what Jesus meant by “He that is without sin.” I’ll get to that.
• This entire story isn’t found in the earliest copies of John. Nor the gospels. It got added in the 300s. It’s a textual variant.

That second thing tends to really freak out Christians when I point it out to them. But just about every copy of the bible but the KJV points this out. The whole passage is put in brackets, or prefaced by “The oldest copies of John don’t have this story.” Some more daring bible translations even put the whole thing in the footnotes, and John 7.52 is immediately followed by John 8.12.

Here’s the story as the UBS has it. Lighter-text parts come from the Textus Receptus, which is where the King James Version’s translators got it.

John 7.53 – 8.11 KWL

53 Each person went to their house, 1 and Jesus went to Mt. Olivet.

2 At dawn Jesus went again to temple, and all the people came to him. He sat to teach them.

3 Scribes and Pharisees brought Jesus a woman caught red-handed in adultery.

They stood her in the middle 4 telling Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultering.

5 In our Law Moses commanded us to stone such people to death. Lv 20.10 So what do you say?”

6 They said this to test Jesus, so they could have an accusation on him.

Stooping down, Jesus was writing on the ground with his finger,

as if he weren’t listening, 7 while they continued to question him.

Then Jesus stood and told them, “Whoever among you haven’t sinned: Throw the first stone at her.”

8 And again Jesus bent down to write on the ground.

9 The listeners, one by one, convicted by their consciences, left, beginning with the elders.

Only Jesus, and the woman in the middle, were left.

10 Standing, seeing no one but the woman, Jesus told her, “Woman, where are they?

No one condemns you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.”

Jesus told her, “I don’t condemn you either. Go, and don’t sin from now on.”

How does one answer a fool?

Proverbs 26.4-5.

Whenever someone claims the bible never, ever contradicts itself, I like to take ’em to this pair of proverbs.

Proverbs 26.4-5 KWL

4 Don’t respond to a fool’s foolishness, lest you be compared to them.

5 Respond to a fool’s foolishness, lest they become wise in their own eyes.

Thing is, whenever I do this, the person immediately attempts to explain how they don’t contradict one another. Oh, they’ll do a terrible job of it. It’ll get ridiculous and illogical. But they do try.

Because at some point in their past, they heard the bible never contradicts itself. They liked the idea. So they made it a core belief: One of the things which defines their Christianity, which defines their trust in the bible, is this ground-floor idea it never contradicts itself. Shake that belief and now they gotta rethink their belief system from the ground up.

But there’s something in human nature where it’s just easier to go into full-on denial: “No it doesn’t contradict itself, and here’s why…” Instead of deal with the problem, they’d rather pretend it isn’t there.

Except it is. And it’s gonna bug them. And it’s either gonna unravel their Christianity, and even their trust in God; or it’s gonna kill their faith altogether, and they’re gonna pretend they trust God, but they no longer do.

Or, which is wisest, they’re gonna deal with the contradiction. ’Cause the editor of Proverbs put these two proverbs of Solomon right next to one another for a reason. And the reason is really simple: Depending on the circumstances, sometimes we follow verse 4, and sometimes verse 5.

Yep. The editor was trying to teach us situational ethics. Something a number of Christians insist isn’t a biblical idea; insist it’s even antithetical to the sort of absolute truth in the bible. Well, it’s not. And it’s probably a good idea to start doubting those absolutists, ’cause not everything they claim to be absolute, is. They’re way too quick to build their houses on sand.

Stick together.

Ephesians 4.1-16.

Now that God’s provided his adoptive kids with his superabundant riches, it’s time for us to live like his kids. So here’s the part of Ephesians where Paul moves away from the salvation theology, and gets into how we Christians are supposed to behave towards one another. We’ve been predestined for God’s kingdom; now let’s walk like inheritors of his kingdom.

Paul especially emphasized the unity we oughta see among Christians, who are after all sharing the same Master.

Ephesians 4.1-6 KWL

1 So I, the captive in the Master, encourage you to walk the calling you were called to,

appropriately: 2 With all humility and gentleness.

With patience, putting up with one another in love.

3 Eager to defend the Spirit’s unity, in peace’s joint captivity: 4 One body. One Spirit.

Just as you were also called in one hope of your calling.

5 One Master. One faith. One baptism. 6 One God,

and Father of everyone, over everyone, and in everyone.

Most of the time preachers apply this to Christians who are members, or regulars, of the same church. We’re supposed to love our fellow church members, be patient with them, live in unity with them. Which is true; we should. But that’s not at all the idea Paul had in mind.

Multiple denominations of Christians wouldn’t exist for another two centuries or so, and it’s likely Paul never expected them to ever exist. Even though multiple denominations in the Hebrew religion existed—Pharisees and Sadducees and Samaritans—the early Christians didn’t expect the body of Christ to be likewise fragmented. It’s a violation of Jesus’s will, y’know. Jn 17.20-23

So when Paul wrote this, it applied not just to Christians who shared a church body, but every Christian everywhere: We’re to put up with any and every fellow Christian, no matter what their stripe, whether we fellowship in the same congregation or not. Every denomination and theology. We’re to encourage unity with all of them, because that’s what Jesus wants. Because all of us do have one body, one Spirit, one Master, one faith, one baptism, and one God.

True, you get certain Christians who insist we can’t interact with certain churches. Because they insist they get to define orthodoxy, and if you’re not orthodox enough for them you’re not a true Christian. I would say otherwise: Only Jesus gets to define who’s his and who’s not, and when Jesus told us how to identify true followers, true teachers, and true prophets, he didn’t tell us to look for orthodoxy; he told us to look for fruit. Fruity Christians have the Holy Spirit in them, so they belong to Jesus. Fruitless Christians, no matter how orthodox their beliefs, aren’t obeying Jesus, and aren’t really his.

And y’notice Paul mentioned a few of the Spirit’s fruits in the above passage: Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Love. Peace. If you can’t be bothered to try these things, of course your church isn’t gonna hold together. Or interact with other churches. Or interact with anybody; you’ll turn into one of those isolationist cults who only come out in public to wave “God Hates Fags” signs. You’ll think you’re the only ones going to heaven, ’cause the rest of “Christendom” can’t possibly. And it’s gonna suck to be you when you finally stand before Jesus.

No one has ever seen God. Except 74 ancient Hebrews.

Exodus 24.9-11 • John 1.18 • 1 John 4.12-13.

Most of the reason we Christians are pretty sure John bar Zavdi wrote both the gospel with his name on it, and the letters with his name on them, is ’cause the same ideas and themes (and wording, and vocabulary) come up in them. Including today’s bible difficulty, the idea nobody’s ever seen God. John wrote it in both his gospel and his first letter.

John 1.18 KWL

Nobody’s ever seen God.

The only Son, God who’s in the Father’s womb, he explains God.

1 John 4.12-13 KWL

12 No one’s ever seen God, yet when we love one another, God’s with us.

His love’s been expressed in us, 13 so this is how we get to know we’re with him and he’s with us.

He’s given us his Spirit.

The reason it’s a difficulty? Because people have seen God. In Exodus 24, we have this interesting little story:

Exodus 24.9-11 KWL

9 Moses, Aaron, Nadáv, Avíhu, and 70 of Israel’s elders,

went up 10 and saw Israel’s God:

Under his feet was something like a manufactured sapphire pavement,

pure as the skies themselves.

11 As for the Israeli nobles, God didn’t strike them down:

They saw God, and they ate and drank.

Wait, what?

Yeah, nobody bothers to read their Old Testament, so it stands to reason they’d utterly miss this one. Or any of the other God-appearances in the scriptures.

In the OT, on a regular basis, humans freak out when there’s a chance they might see God. Jg 13.22 ’Cause a rumor was going round that if they did see God, they’d die. God’s pure, holy awesomeness would consume them like a volcano taking out stupid tourists. Although you do get the occasional dark Christian claim that God would be unreasonably pissed about it, and destroy them for daring to approach his majesty. Pretty sure that second idea only reflects their twisted secret wishes about how they’d like subordinates to approach them. God’s cool with his kids approaching him. Ep 3.12, He 4.16 But I digress.

Yeah, it was a rumor. And sometimes rumors are true. The LORD himself warned Moses he’d only get to see God’s back, because his front was much too much for the prophet.

Exodus 33.20 KWL

God said, “You aren’t able to see my face.

For a human cannot see me and live.”

And yet we have this story in the middle of Exodus, where apparently 74 people saw God, had lunch with him, and lived to tell of it.

And it’s not the only instance! Abraham had lunch with God too. Ge 18.1-7 Well, more like served him lunch. Isaiah and Ezekiel saw God on his throne. Jeremiah even experienced God touching him. Jr 1.9

Whenever I point out this rather vast discrepancy, Christians flinch, then usually respond one of two ways. Either they dismiss the passages where people got to see God, or they dismiss the passages where seeing God would get you struck down. The authors of the bible must not really have meant what the text clearly says.

Jesus’s two genealogies.

Matthew 1.1-17, Luke 3.23-38.

Most Christians are aware Jesus has two genealogies.

These aren’t genealogies the way we do ’em. We do family trees: We include ancestors from all sides of the family, fathers and mothers both. Often we include aunts, uncles, and cousins; if we’re not particular about blood relations we’ll even include step-parents. Our family trees can get big and complicated.

Hebrew genealogies don’t. They turn into trees downward, when they’re listing one person’s descendants, as you can see from the first chapters of 1 Chronicles. But when they’re listing ancestors, they’re straight lines: You, your father, your father’s father, that grandfather’s father, that great-grandfather’s father, and so on back.

Thing is, Jesus has two of these lists. In Matthew 1, it’s a list of ancestors from Abraham to Joseph. And in Luke 4, it’s a list of male ancestors backwards, from Joseph to Adam to God. And they don’t match.

Parts do. But a whole lot of it doesn’t. I’ll let you read it.

Matthew 1.1-17 KJV 1The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; 3and Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; 4and Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; 5and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; 6and Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; 7and Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; 8and Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; 9and Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; 10and Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; 11and Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: 12and after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel; 13and Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; 14and Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; 15and Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; 16and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.

Luke 3.23-38 KJV 23And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, 24which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph, 25which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge, 26which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, 27which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, 28which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, 29which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, 30which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim, 31which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, 32which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, 33which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, 34which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, 35which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, 36which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech, 37which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, 38which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.