Last updated: 2008-08-03
This website represents one man's look at a fairly random selection of alleged Biblical contradictions, errors, and other problems. There are a few caveats that I should make my readers aware of:
Problems are arranged according to how severe they are for the doctrine of infallibilism: that is, the view that the Bible contains no errors. You might want to read my thoughts on how Christians should respond to these problems. I don't argue that Biblical errors are necessarily fatal for Christianity, merely a certain fundamentalist brand of it.
Problems here might have solutions, but not very plausible ones. Usually the "solution" involves reading the text in a very unnatural way.
Sometimes I can't make up my mind if a problem is really "Minor" or not...
Problems here have solutions of at least some plausibility.
Problems here seem easy to answer, and I would never use them to argue that the Bible has errors. These are mostly here because they appear on some other website or websites.
Because I'm just an amateur Bible scholar, and some problems are hard to decide...
I started this page in March, 2008. My intention is to examine more alleged problems with the Bible as and when I find them. Email me at the following address (image is to foil spambots) with any suggestions:
Various Christian and atheist (and indeed, Muslim) sources discuss hundreds of different Biblical problems. But I'm likely to focus on ones that I find interesting.
There are many pages listing Biblical problems. However, although it should be obvious that some problems are more serious than others, most sites opposed to "infallibilism" tend to throw them all at you at once, as if to impress you with their sheer number. I take a different approach, and try to classify problems according to how bad they are.
Ultimately, like those other sites, this website argues against "infallibilism". There are definitely errors in the Bible. Whether this alone renders the whole text worthless or not is up to you. I don't see any automatic reason why it should.
If you like, you can read more about my motivation for writing this site.
I have made much use of the following websites:
I should also thank the makers of the English Standard Version, my main Biblical source. It's not the Bible I would recommend personally, but I use it here because it's one that's broadly acceptable to most conservative Christians. The Bible I would actually recommend is the New Revised Standard Version, which is similar in style but makes no effort to harmonise contradictory passages. I've also started using the NIV Study Bible, the notes of which often give the most plausible infallibilist explanations, though the NIV itself is not to be trusted.
errancy.org - copyright notices