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.
- We believe
the bible contains no errors —but these passages appear to be in error, or appear to contradict other scriptures. LikeJesus’s two different genealogies. - 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. - 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
Plus several
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.