In an archived article of some 3 or 4 years ago, a “Christian turned atheist” lists 10 errors in the Holy Bible which caused the change of heart in accepting it as the inerrant words of God. None of the 10 specified in the article are new and thorough explanations have been forth coming, yet those who present these as facts, continue to ignore the true facts. It consumes time and space to present clear explanations of some of them, so they will have to be addressed one or two at a time.
The first one listed is:
The genealogy of Christ. Matthew 1 and Luke 3 give two very different genealogies for Joseph, Mary's husband. In fact, even Luke admits that he isn't sure that Joseph was actually Jesus' father (Luke 3:23, NIV). You would think that someone who was directly inspired by god would know what he's writing.
First of all, Luke did not say, even infer, that he thought Jesus was Joseph’s son. The NIV which the writer uses to make the claim, doesn’t even make that inference. He simply said that “so it was thought’. That, in itself shows that he knew better. Here is the NIV and NKJV renderings:
Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, (NIV)
Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, (NKJV)
That little barb was simply an added attraction by the writer of the article, but little did she realize that this knowledge was the very reason Luke wrote the different approach to the lineage of Christ. And in fact, it may be partly the reason Luke was the only Gentile who received inspiration to write two books of the Bible.
The Jewish custom was that, regardless of what the circumstances, the legal genealogy of a child was given using the head of the household, in this case Joseph. Matthew, a Jew himself, wrote the genealogy of Jesus, using Joseph’s line. Luke, not restricted to that custom, gave it as it actually was, not through Joseph, who was actually the step-father of Jesus. And, Luke lists the genealogy from Mary. This answers the reason why there are two difference genealogies.
The other reason, no doubt, that Luke was inspired to write the gospel of Jesus life and the book of ‘Acts of the apostles’, was simply because he was a Greek and was a constant companion of the Apostle Paul. His writings were possibly more readily understood by the Gentiles of the area, plus the fact that considerable prejudices had been between the Jews and Gentiles for centuries and they may have given more credence to Luke as their writer.
But regardless of why he wrote or why God chose him to be inspired to write those two books, there is a perfectly good explanation as to why there are two genealogies extant for the lineage of Jesus.
The second ’error’ specifies the following:
Scientific errors. I find it suspect that those who take the Bible literally as a scientific text for the larger, cosmological arguments can simply ignore the number of small scientific mistakes the Bible makes. For example, rabbits don't chew their cud and the bat is not a bird. Those are only two. For more scientific and mathematical mistakes in the Bible.
They all love these two examples, feeling they have proof positive of biblical errors. Neither of these prove any such thing. First, the bird bit. Ancients called any thing that could fly, birds. Now, the bat was never called a mammal during Biblical times. Had Moses excluded them from the other flying creatures, no one would have known they were forbidden to be eaten. He included them in the group which ate flesh or other living creatures. They are classified as mammals only because they give birth to their young. They have much greater flying abilities than most birds have.
And as far as the rabbits not chewing their cud…untrue! They are not ruminants but they do assuredly re-chew their food. Read this:
Rabbits are hindgut digesters. This means that most of their digestion takes place in their large intestine and cecum. In rabbits the cecum is about 10 times bigger than the stomach and it along with the large intestine makes up roughly 40% of the rabbit's digestive tract.[6] The unique musculature of the cecum allows the intestinal tract of the rabbit to separate fibrous material from more digestible material; the fibrous material is passed as feces, while the more nutritious material is encased in a mucous lining as a cecotrope. Cecotropes, sometimes called "night feces", are high in minerals, vitamins and proteins that are necessary to the rabbit's health. Rabbits eat these to meet their nutritional requirements; the mucous coating allows the nutrients to pass through the acidic stomach for digestion in the intestines. This process allows rabbits to extract the necessary nutrients from their food. (Wikipedia-Rabbit)
No supplementary comments are needed on the rabbit. But this only shows that Moses knew more than perhaps 90% of today’s population, about rabbits. The reason more do not know of this rabbit fact is that they pass these cecotropes at night and re-chew them.
You see, even though there are dozens of things which are challenged regularly by those who refuse to accept the Holy Bible as God’s word, or even that God exists, a single one has yet to prove valid. To have been written when it was, by multiple men at different ages and different locations, and yet cannot be proven to contain one iota of error, should be enough to convince anyone who is not sincerely striving to find an ‘out’ for obeying God.
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