Does God need anything?

Contradictions, , , ,

No.

One time when God was telling his people why he wasn’t happy with them, he assured them that it had nothing to do with them not sacrificing enough animals to him. He explained that he didn’t need anyone to give him animals for food, because he doesn’t eat the flesh of bulls. And anyway, all the wild animals in the world belong to him already. So even if he did get hungry, he wouldn’t have to demand food from someone else.

So God doesn’t need to be fed. God doesn’t need anyone to make him a house, either. In fact, God doesn’t need anything from anyone. Why would he? He’s the all-powerful creator who provides everything humans need, not the other way around.

Yes.

God needs food. He demanded, many times, that his people regularly give him food offerings, which are the food of God. (And don’t forget the salt!) When his people don’t do what he wants, he just devours their fields. God also needs water. He needs to drink from a brook, so he’ll be refreshed enough to continue heaping up the dead.

Jesus, who the Bible says is God, ate food during his days on earth. And he got hungry when he went without food. Even now, Jesus expects people to let him into their homes so he can eat them eat with them. But does he actually need food? Yes, he said he plans to send people to hell for failing to give him free food, drink, shelter, clothes, and healthcare when he needs it.

God also needs money. He once cursed his chosen nation for “robbing” him because they weren’t giving him as much of their wealth as he wanted. I’ve never heard of God actually buying anything with money, but he must need money for something. Why else would people be telling people to give their money to God? I mean, unless “giving money to God” was some kind of scam, or something…

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The Story of the House of Saul—
The Children's Teeth Are Set on Edge

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During David’s reign, there was a famine in Israel. After it had gone on for three years, David asked God why there was a famine. God explained that he was punishing dead king Saul for trying to kill all the Gibeonites after Joshua had promised they wouldn’t be killed.

King David asked the remaining Gibeonites how he could make amends. They said they would like it if he helped them kill seven descendants of Saul. (Whose whole family had already been killed off.)

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The Children’s Teeth Are Set on Edge →
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Do people need to worry about not having the resources they will need?

Contradictions,

No.

Jesus advised people not to worry about what they would eat or drink or wear. Why worry about those things? There’s more to life than having the things you need to live! He says you should follow the example of the birds and the flowers. Birds don’t bother with farming or storing up food, and they’re doing fine, aren’t they? Flowers don’t bother making clothes, and they still look great, don’t they?

Jesus said the reason the birds and flowers don’t have to worry about agriculture and tailoring is that God cares about them. And God cares about us a lot more, so he’ll definitely provide us with everything we need without us having to work for it. So just don’t worry about it. Never plan ahead. Worrying is for pagans. And being worried wouldn’t actually change anything anyway.

Paul agreed that you shouldn’t worry about anything. You should just let God take care of everything.

Yes.

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The real origins of the Bible

The bad book

Who wrote it?

Christians say the Bible was written by people who were there to witness the events it describes. But it’s unrealistic to think that, for instance, there were four people who were all perpetually present to personally witness all the important events throughout the entire life of Jesus. (Including the things that happened before they met him!) And some stories in the Bible couldn’t have had any witnesses, because they’re about people staying out in the wilderness alone, or about private meetings the author wasn’t invited to, or about what God was up to in heaven, etc.

Anyway, we know that hardly any of the Bible was actually written by the people it’s traditionally attributed to:

Who wrote the Old Testament?

For some reason, a lot of people apparently think Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. I don’t know why anyone would think that. The Bible doesn’t say Moses wrote all that. It does say (always in the third person!) that he wrote down the law, but that’s no reason to think he wrote down all the stories in those books. (And even if he had, Moses wouldn’t have been an eyewitness to any of the events of Genesis anyway.)

If you look at what’s in those books, you’ll see they clearly can’t have been written by Moses. The book of Numbers declares that Moses was “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth“. That is not something the most humble person on earth would say about himself. Neither is what Deuteronomy says about him, that there has never been another prophet as great as God’s personal friend Moses was.

It doesn’t even make sense for that book to be talking about whether there has been a prophet so great since Moses, unless it was written a long time after Moses died.1 And it was written after Moses died. It says so right there in that same chapter. The last chapter of Deuteronomy says Moses died, and was buried, and was mourned, and was succeeded by Joshua, and the people listened to Joshua… Did Moses write all that before or after he died?

People also say (or used to say) that Joshua wrote the book of Joshua, even though just like with Moses, the book of Joshua tells about Joshua’s death, and things that happened after Joshua was dead.

Even more absurdly, people apparently think the books of Samuel were written by Samuel. I’ll just point out that Samuel dies well before even the first of those books is over, let alone the second. Do people think those books were written by ghost-Samuel or something?

The so-called books of Moses, Joshua, and Samuel often use the words “to this day“, even when comparing “this day” to when those people died. That only makes sense if those books were written long after the death of Moses, Joshua, and Samuel.

Joshua and the preceding books mention a lot of places that didn’t all exist as inhabited towns at the same time until the 7th century BC. Joshua’s list of towns perfectly matches the geography of Judah during the reign of Josiah, but it’s unrealistic as a description of the land several centuries earlier, when Joshua is supposed to have lived. Even Genesis makes geographical assumptions that wouldn’t be true until at least the 7th century BC.

Judges is written from the perspective of someone who is used to Israel having a king. But a lot of the stories in that book are set long before Israel became a monarchy, so the author can’t be someone who was there to witness those events.

A lot of people think of the Psalms as having been written by David, even though the majority of the psalms aren’t actually labeled that way in the Bible. And the Bible says a lot of them are by other people. And some of them were clearly written after the exile.

Jews traditionally attribute the Psalms to a certain nine individuals plus the sons of Korah. The book of Psalms itself attributes psalms to only some of those people, and does not say any of them were written by Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, or Jeduthun. It says a few were written for Jeduthun, but not by Jeduthun.

The book of Proverbs actually claims to have been written partially by Solomon, unlike all those other books that people just assume were written by biblical characters for no biblical reason. Parts of Proverbs claim to have other authors, though. Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs pretty strongly imply that Solomon wrote them. But that doesn’t mean he actually did write them. There are words and phrases in these three books that the Hebrews didn’t start using until after the exile of Judah, hundreds of years after Solomon.

The book of Isaiah sure doesn’t seem like the whole thing was written by Isaiah. Starting with chapter 40, the writing style and theological ideas suddenly change, and it stops mentioning anything about Isaiah, and now it’s suddenly set during the exile, and predicting that the exile is going to end soon. And then the setting for the last 11 chapters is when people have already started returning from exile. The exile didn’t even happen until a hundred years after when Isaiah is traditionally said to have finished writing this book.

The book of Lamentations is traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, even though the book itself doesn’t say anything about Jeremiah, and it often seems to disagree with the book of Jeremiah.

Why does the book of Daniel make some “predictions” that are more or less accurate for a while, but then suddenly stop getting anything right about the future? Probably because that turning point is when the book was actually written. That’s four centuries after when its supposed author Daniel supposedly lived.

And if this is the Daniel that Ezekiel mentions, that would mean Ezekiel too must have been written hundreds of years later than it’s supposed to have been written.

The book of Jonah is apparently said to be written by Jonah, though I certainly never got that impression from reading the actual book. It was actually written by someone who lived so long after the alleged events of the story, he didn’t realize that “the great city of Ninevah” barely even existed anymore by the time he was writing about.

Who wrote the New Testament?

Christians tend to think the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. They were actually written anonymously. No one ever referred to their authors by name until more than a century after the death of Jesus, and over 50 years after the gospels were written. By the time people decided to name them, they had no reliable way to know who actually wrote them, so they had to guess. And they guessed wrong. People decided the gospels were written by the apostle Matthew, Peter’s follower Mark, Paul’s friend Luke, and the apostle John.

The author of Mark was too ignorant of the local geography and Jewish culture to have actually been a Jew who lived where Jesus lived. Most of the book of Matthew is just copied nearly verbatim from Mark,2 which an actual disciple of Jesus would not have had to do. “Luke” is also the author of Acts, whose identity was guessed based on letters allegedly written by Paul that turned out to be fake. The author of Acts got an awful lot of things wrong about Paul’s story3 for someone who was supposedly a close companion of Paul. (And Luke wouldn’t have been an eyewitness to Jesus’s life anyway.)

Five books of the Bible (one of the gospels, three epistles, and Revelation) are traditionally attributed to Jesus’s disciple John. But none of the books themselves actually claim to be written by him. The apostle John was uneducated and probably couldn’t even write. The person who first attributed the fourth gospel to John seems to have confused him with a different John from a later time. Whoever actually wrote the gospel of John didn’t realize that the Jews didn’t start excluding Christians from their place of worship till over 50 years after Jesus died.

A lot of the books of the Bible were not written all by one person at one time, but had parts added to them hundreds of years after they were initially written. For instance, the story where Jesus convinces people not to enforce God’s law can’t be found in any of the earliest manuscripts, nor are there any records of anyone in the first few centuries of Christianity mentioning that story, because somebody made that part up later.

Same with the part that says Christians won’t get hurt if they handle snakes or drink poison, which has led to the deaths of a lot of Christians who believed it. And the part where people see Jesus alive again after he died, which was retroactively tacked onto the end of the earliest gospel. And the part that says there’s a trinity, which is so undeniably fraudulent that modern Bibles now generally leave it out.

Careful study of all the existing New Testament manuscripts has found that the part where Jesus says your should love your enemies is most likely not authentic. And possibly also the part where he says to sell everything and give to the poor because it’s particularly hard for the rich to get into his kingdom.

The first 13 epistles in the New Testament claim to be written by Paul, but for several of them, that seems unlikely. As the letters themselves acknowledge, there were fake letters “from Paul” going around. Some of the epistles attributed to Paul make it seem like he was on better terms with the original apostles than the genuine epistles show he really was. And some of the letters have Paul suspiciously insisting that he’s a real apostle, when he’s supposed to be writing to close friends who wouldn’t need to be convinced of that.

The letters to Timothy and Titus sound in many ways like they were written when Christianity was more developed than it was during Paul’s life. 1 Timothy has Paul quote “scripture” saying the worker deserves his wages, even though that’s not in the Old Testament. It’s from the gospel of Luke, which wasn’t even written till after Paul died. Clearly Paul didn’t actually write that. That letter must have been written by someone who lived in a time when the gospel of Luke existed, and was considered scripture. 2 Timothy and Titus have similar anachronisms.

The book of Hebrews is traditionally labeled as another letter from Paul for some reason, but that one doesn’t even claim to be from Paul. It’s anonymous, and there’s very little in the letter that even suggests that Paul might have written it.

One book in the New Testament is a letter claiming to be from James (Jesus’s brother). But considering his background, it’s unlikely that James would have been capable of writing so well in Greek. Same with the apostles John and Peter, who the Bible specifically says were uneducated.

There are two epistles that claim to be from Peter. The first one mentions widespread serious persecution of Christians as something that was already happening, even though during Peter’s life, it wasn’t. Persecution of Christians for being Christians didn’t begin until around when Peter died, and it didn’t start happening “throughout the world” till decades later.

The second of those letters very unrealistically refers to Paul’s letters as scriptures. The real Peter considered Paul a heretic, died long before any of the epistles were considered scriptures, and probably would never have even seen Paul’s letters.

The book of Revelation gives its author’s name as John, unlike the other books of the Bible that are attributed to John. But it doesn’t seem like it was written by whoever wrote those other books, since it’s written so differently. Revelation is not as well written in Greek, it uses different spellings and word choices, it doesn’t use the same rhetorical devices and themes, etc.

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Which creature is the greatest?

Contradictions,

Genesis says God created humans in his own image to rule over all the animals. Sound like we’re the greatest of God’s creatures, then.

David says humans may be insignificant compared to God, but God has indeed crowned us with glory and honor, and made us rulers over the rest of his creation, putting all the animals under our feet.

Except he says humans are a little lower than the angels. So we’re actually not quite the greatest of all creatures, then. Angels are.

Then there’s Solomon, who wisely points out that humans don’t even have any advantage over animals.

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The Story of Mephibosheth and Ziba—
A Lame Deal

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Mephibosheth was the son of David’s best friend Jonathan, so David was good to him and let him live in his palace. When David fled from Absalom, Mephibosheth stayed at the palace, rather than going with David. Mephibosheth’s steward Ziba told David that the reason Mephibosheth had stayed behind was that Mephibosheth was planning to take over the kingdom. So David decided to take away everything he had given to Mephibosheth and give it to Ziba. But Ziba was lying.

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A Lame Deal →
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Do God’s people love or hate their siblings?

Contradictions, , ,

There are a couple of epistles that say you should love them. The book of Hebrews says to keep loving one another as brothers and sisters. (Maybe that’s not actually about actual siblings, but it still only makes sense if you should love your actual siblings.)

1 John says has quite a bit to say in favor of loving your siblings. It says if you love your brother or sister, you live in the light, and there’s nothing in you that will make you stumble. But if you hate your brother or sister, you’re walking blindly in the darkness. It says God has commanded that we must love our brothers and sisters. If people don’t love their siblings, you know they’re liars, murderers, and children of the devil, who don’t love God and will not have eternal life.

Jesus himself says just being angry with your brother or sister will bring God’s judgment on you. He seems to think God takes grudges between siblings more seriously than things that God actually made laws about.

But Jesus also says people who don’t hate their brothers and sisters can’t be his disciples. And Paul says the debt to love one another is a debt that should remain outstanding. In other words, don’t love anyone.

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The Bible misquotes itself

The bad book,

The Bible contains a lot of attempts to quote earlier parts of the Bible. Most of the time, those quotes are either misinterpreted, misquoted, or don’t even appear in the earlier scriptures at all.

Made-up quotes

The gospel of Matthew claims that the prophets said the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. But it doesn’t say that anywhere in the Old Testament. (Maybe the author was thinking of the part where it says somebody will be a Nazirite… which is not the same thing as a Nazarene. And was not said by the prophets. And was clearly about Samson, not Jesus.)

The gospel of John says people knew that when the Messiah came, no one would know where he was from. And that he definitely wouldn’t come from Galilee. I don’t know where they got those ideas. There is nothing like that in the books of the prophets.

Jesus claims that the Old Testament Law says the priests are allowed to “desecrate the Sabbath“. That would be a pretty weird rule. I don’t think that’s in there.

Jesus told his disciples that everything that was written by the prophets about him (also in the books of the law and the Psalms) was about to be fulfilled: He would be handed over to the Gentiles to be tormented and killed. He would come back to life on the third day. And forgiveness through repentance would be preached everywhere in his name. Paul said the prophets predicted something like that as well. None of that is actually in the Old Testament, though.

Jesus also claimed that Judas had to be doomed to destruction so the scriptures would be fulfilled. But there doesn’t seem to be anything about that in the Old Testament scriptures.

Peter claims that all the prophets said that anyone can get their sins forgiven by believing in Jesus. Really, all of them? I’m not sure I can find even one Old Testament prophet who even sounds like he was saying that.

Paul, who never actually met Jesus and never really learned anything about him from anyone who had known him, claims that Jesus said it’s more blessed to give than to receive. I’m pretty sure being blessed itself involves receiving what you want, so that statement doesn’t make much sense. I won’t blame that one on Jesus though, since it doesn’t appear in the gospels. I’ll assume Paul made it up.

Paul attempts to quote a passage about a deliverer coming from Zion and changing Israel’s behavior. Paul seems to think that’s a prediction about Jesus enabling both Jews and Gentiles to be saved, or something. But that passage doesn’t even appear in the Old Testament at all. The closest thing I can find is Isaiah talking about a redeemer coming to Zion in response to Israel’s behavior changing.

Paul also has a quote that he claims “is said”, about Christ shining on a sleeper who rose from the dead. I don’t know what he’s trying to quote, but that’s obviously not in the Old Testament.

1 Timothy has Paul quote “scripture” saying the worker deserves his wages, even though that’s not in the Old Testament. It’s from the gospel of Luke, which wasn’t even written till after Paul died. Clearly Paul didn’t actually write that. It was written by someone who lived in a time when the gospel of Luke existed, and was considered scripture.

James claims that scripture says God “jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us”. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but it’s not actually in the Old Testament.

Misquotations

Joshua claims that Moses promised that a certain part of the promised land would belong to Joshua. Moses did say something like that in the Bible… except he was promising the land to Caleb, not Joshua.

When the Jewish religious leaders ask Jesus if he’s the son of God, he falsely accuses them of stating that he’s the son of God. Then they falsely accuse him of stating that he’s the son of God, when all he’d said was that they said so. They’re each disastrously misquoting what the other just said.

Peter quotes something from Deuteronomy about a prophet who was to be Moses’s successor, which Peter would like you to think means Jesus. It says the Israelites must listen to this prophet. But Peter tacks on a specific threat toward people who don’t obey the prophet, like it’s part of the quote, even though that part is not in the original passage in Deuteronomy.

The book of Acts has James quote a Greek mistranslation of Amos, even though both he and the people he was talking to really should have known that the original Hebrew said Edom, not “Adam” or “man”. He takes Amos’s statement about God’s people possessing the remnant of Edom and other nations, and changes it into a statement about all of mankind seeking God.

Paul criticizes the sin and hypocrisy of some of his followers by trying to quote a biblical passage about certain people causing Gentiles to blaspheme God’s name. It sounds like he’s trying to quote something from Ezekiel. But of course Ezekiel wasn’t talking to, or about, the same people Paul was. And the Gentiles Ezekiel mentioned were unimpressed with God because of God’s own actions, not because they disapproved of anyone’s sin or hypocrisy.4

Paul correctly quotes5 a psalm that says God put all of somebody’s enemies under that person’s feet. But then he tries to say it again and gets it wrong, this time saying that God put everything under that person’s feet. And then he has to spend almost twice that many words trying to explain away the inconsistency he just created by saying it wrong.

The book of Hebrews says Moses said he was “trembling with fear” at the sight of the scorched forbidden mountain where God tried to talk to his people. But the closest thing to that in the Old Testament is when Moses says he feared God’s wrath a while later, when God was threatening to kill all his people over a golden calf.

Isaiah states that no one has seen or heard any god besides God that ever does anything for anyone. But when Paul claims to be telling what’s written there, he roughly quotes the first half of the sentence, adds something about minds conceiving things as if that was part of the quote, and then makes up his own ending for the sentence, without even mentioning other gods, which are what the original verse was about.

A psalm says God will vindicate his people. But Hebrews misquotes that verse as if it was about God punishing people.

Hebrews quotes part of a verse from Habakkuk, but makes up something about people shrinking back and adds that to the quote.

It also claims that Enoch never actually died… based on a quote that could easily mean he did die. Even if you ignore the fact that the actual verse in Genesis says “he was no more“, rather than “he could not be found”.

Peter misquotes Proverbs, claiming it says it’s hard for the righteous to be saved. What it actually says is that everyone gets what they deserve.

Misquoting the rules

There’s a verse in Deuteronomy about God giving people bread to somehow teach them that they need something other than bread. Jesus uses this verse as an excuse for refusing to eat bread. He’s misquoting it as if it was a command to not eat bread, or something.

When Jesus shares his thoughts on the Law, he shows not just his contempt for God’s Law, but his ignorance of it. He claims that the Law says a divorce must involve a man giving his wife a certificate of divorce. The closest thing to that in the Old Testament is a law about remarriage, which just mentions in passing that the divorce certificate thing is something that could happen. And then the actual law is about something else, that could happen after that.

Jesus also claims that the Law says you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. His focus is on the part about your enemy… which is the part that isn’t actually in the Old Testament verse he’s trying to quote.

Peter quotes little pieces of two different psalms out of context, to try to make it sound like David had been writing instructions for the twelve apostles so they would know what to do now that there were only eleven of them. The two supposed instructions contradict each other (which Peter doesn’t acknowledge), and the first of those verses isn’t even quoted correctly. They’re both actually about David’s enemies, but the first one is specifically about multiple enemies. Peter changes it to make it sound like it’s about one person, Judas.

There’s a passage in Isaiah where the Israelites complain that God is acting like they don’t know anything. He’s patronizingly teaching them basic moral rules that are obvious to them. God just sees his people scoffing and not listening to him, so he chooses to respond by going too far in the other direction. He decides to talk to them in foreign languages so they can’t understand him, and can’t benefit from his instructions.

So that was stupid, but when Paul tries to quote that passage, he gets it wrong and ends up making God look really stupid. He makes it seem like God was expecting the people to understand him better because he used a language they didn’t know. And this somehow leads Paul to the conclusion that people should only speak in tongues to unbelievers. Even though Isaiah had said nothing about people speaking in tongues, or about unbelievers.

Paul quotes three passages to try to back up his opinions about Christians being “yoked together with unbelievers“. But he does it so badly you can’t tell exactly what passages he’s trying to quote. Obviously there aren’t any Old Testament passages that are actually about Christians. And two of the “quotes” Paul gives just have absolutely nothing to do with anything he was saying at all.

The other quote he gives is about people coming out from another nation and separating themselves and avoiding unclean things. He seems to be trying to quote a verse where Isaiah tells Jewish priests (not Christian laymen) to come out of something (it doesn’t say what) and avoid unclean things (not people). And that doesn’t say anything about what people believe.

The author of Hebrews is apparently trying to quote Proverbs when he says to make level paths for your feet. But in Proverbs, it doesn’t actually say anything about making them level.

Misquoting Jewish scriptures to make them sound Christian

Jesus told one of his disciples that he would see heaven open, and angels ascending and descending on Jesus. He said that like he was quoting a passage from Genesis, but that passage doesn’t say anything about angels climbing on Jesus. It says they were climbing on a stairway. It doesn’t say anything about heaven opening, either.

When some Jews don’t find Paul’s arguments for Christianity convincing, Paul decides that when God told Isaiah he would be appointed to preach to the Gentiles and bring salvation to the world, God must have actually meant to say that to Paul. And he leaves out the “also” part, so he can conclude that all the Jews will be excluded from all this.

Paul appears to be quoting the Old Testament when he says God will repay everyone in the afterlife according to what they’ve done. Except the Old Testament verses he appears to be quoting don’t actually say anything about the afterlife.

Paul and Peter both try to quote what Isaiah said about a stone, but they don’t get it quite right. In particular, unlike Isaiah, they talk about the stone like it’s a person, because they want that verse to be about Jesus.

Paul quotes David as saying Jesus gave gifts to people, when what David actually said was that God received gifts from people.

The book of Hebrews tries to prove that Jesus is willing to call Christians brothers and sisters, by quoting something David said about the Israelites without mentioning brothers and sisters, and misattributing that quote to Jesus.

Hebrews also misattributes to Jesus another misquotation of David. Instead of what David said about opening his ears, it says something about God preparing a body for Jesus. It doesn’t even make sense to quote this passage about God not wanting sacrifices, when it’s trying to make it seem like this is about God preparing to sacrifice Jesus.

Hebrews has a quote saying the one who is coming will come in just a little while, and will not delay. The closest thing to that in the Old Testament doesn’t say anything about anyone coming. It’s just about the time of the end coming.

The book of Revelation misquotes Daniel saying he looked and saw someone coming with the clouds. Instead, it tells people to look and see Jesus coming with the clouds.

A psalmist claimed that God wanted him to break the nations with a rod of iron. Revelation repeatedly misquotes that psalm, as if it was about Jesus and some other person ruling the nations with an iron scepter.

Changing passages to make them seem like fulfilled prophecies

When Jehu killed one of Ahab’s sons and then had him thrown into Naboth’s vineyard, he attempted to quote a prophecy that he thought he was fulfilling. The actual prophecy was a lot more clear that it was about Ahab dying in the vineyard, not Ahab’s son dying and then getting thrown into the vineyard.

Some of the gospels claim that Jesus came from a virgin birth. And they claim that the prophet Isaiah had predicted that would happen. But Isaiah never actually said anything about a virgin giving birth. Thinking Isaiah was predicting the miraculous birth of an important individual in the distant future misses the point of what he was saying. Isaiah’s point was to give an idea of how soon the kingdom of Israel was going to end. He was definitely not talking about someone who wouldn’t even be born till hundreds of years after Israel was conquered.

If Isaiah had actually intended to predict a miraculous virgin birth, he would have made that clear by using the Hebrew word that specifically means a virgin. Instead, he used a Hebrew word for a young woman. So where did the gospel writers get that whole idea about a virgin? It looks like they got it from a previous mistranslation of the scriptures. This mistranslation of “young woman” as “virgin” first occurred a few hundred years after Isaiah and a few hundred years before Jesus, in the first-ever attempt to translate the Bible.

(Now, since the New Testament needs the Old Testament to provide a prediction of a virgin birth for Jesus to fulfill, most Christian Bibles opt to also translate that part of Isaiah from that Greek mistranslation instead of from the original Hebrew, which makes it harder to notice the misquotation.)

Two of the gospels say Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Though their two stories of Jesus’s birth have almost nothing in common besides that. It’s like they both independently decided to make up an origin story for Jesus, just so they could say he was born in Bethlehem, to make it seem like he had fulfilled a messianic prophecy. But the prophecy the gospel writers are trying to “fulfill” might not even be about the town of Bethlehem. Micah actually referred to the clan of Bethlehem Ephrathah.

(The gospels also ignore the original context of the Old Testament passage, where Micah says the guy he was talking about is going to rescue Israel from the Assyrians, making it clear that this is not about Jesus.)

The gospel of Mark claims to be quoting a prediction of John the Baptist from Isaiah. But he starts it with a verse that comes from Malachi, not Isaiah. Then when he gets to the part that actually is from Isaiah, he says it like the one calling is in the wilderness. The original passage appears to have meant that the way would be prepared in the wilderness. This doesn’t look like it was even meant to be a prediction. And if it was, it’s an excessively vague one, that could have just as well meant a lot of other things.

The gospels have Jesus misquote Malachi, mentioning a messenger sent by God to prepare the way for someone else. Malachi actually said the messenger was to prepare the way for God, and didn’t say anything about a man coming.

The gospel of Luke says Jesus read a passage from Isaiah and claimed to have “fulfilled” it. Even though it was just Isaiah talking about what God had told him to do, not predicting what somebody else would do. Jesus also throws in a line about healing the blind, which isn’t actually in the original passage. Which is too bad, because that was the main thing that made it sound like it could be about Jesus.

The gospel of Matthew misquotes a verse from Isaiah in order to claim that it’s about Jesus healing people. But even Matthew’s version of that verse doesn’t accurately describe what the gospels say about Jesus. He makes it sound like Jesus ended up suffering from all the conditions he took away from other people!

The gospel of John suggests that Jesus’s temple tantrum was a fulfillment of a scripture about being consumed by zeal for God’s house. Paul thinks the other part of the quoted verse, about someone getting insulted, is about Jesus too. But if you look at the psalm they’re quoting from, what the New Testament writers imagine is about Jesus is clearly just David describing his own current situation, as usual. John even misquotes it, putting it in the future tense to make it sound more like a prediction.

Matthew gives a mangled attempt at a quote that he thinks is from Jeremiah. He claims this was fulfilled when Judas gave the 30 pieces of silver back to the priests and they bought a potter’s field with it. Jeremiah did mention buying a field, but not from a potter or for 30 pieces of silver.

Perhaps what Matthew was trying to quote was Zechariah’s confused shepherding story, where he gets paid 30 pieces of silver for his work, and then “throws it to the potter”. Either way, neither of the prophets’ stories really matches the gospel account very well.

Paul attempts to quote a verse from Isaiah, which he thinks is about a descendant of David ruling over foreign nations. Why should anyone take that to be about Jesus, rather than about one of the actual kings descended from David who reigned after Isaiah said that? Maybe none of them ruled over foreign nations? Well, Jesus didn’t rule over any nations. (Not that the original passage actually said anything about ruling in the first place.)

Continue reading The Bible misquotes itself →
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Can any detached branch bear fruit?

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Jesus says no branch can bear fruit by itself. A branch can only bear fruit if it remains in the vine. (So if it’s a detached tree branch that was never even part of a vine to begin with, it definitely can’t bear fruit, then.)

But the Old Testament says Aaron’s staff once sprouted, budded, blossomed, and produced almonds, which are fruit seeds. So either Jesus proves the Old Testament is wrong, or the Old Testament proves Jesus is wrong.

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The Story of King Absalom—
A Man’s Enemies Are the Members of His Own Household

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David’s son Amnon was obsessed with his beautiful sister Tamar. Amnon’s nephew advised him to pretend to be sick. Then he could request a meal to be served to him in bed by his sister. So he did. When Tamar went to Amnon’s bedroom and tried to give him some food, he wouldn’t eat it. Instead, he told her to get in bed with him.

Tamar said she couldn’t do that right now, because that would be foolish and wicked and disgraceful. They should get married first! She was sure their righteous father David would allow his children to marry each other. But Amnon ignored her proposal, raped her, and sent her away. Absalom, another son of David, saw Tamar crying, and he told her to shut up. He said she should stop taking Amnon’s actions so seriously, because he was just her brother.

King David was not happy with what Amnon had done. Two years later, Absalom had Amnon killed. David heard that all his sons had been killed, and he wasn’t happy about that, either. When he found out that only Amnon was dead, he was just slightly more happy. Absalom wasn’t allowed to see his father for two years. Then Absalom set Joab’s barley field on fire, which convinced him to let Absalom visit David.

Absalom became popular (despite his disgracefully long hair) by kissing all the men who came to see King David. Then Absalom was able to get the people to declare him king of Israel. When David heard that his son was trying to overthrow him, he and most of his household ran away. But he made ten of his girlfriends stay behind to take care of his palace.

Continue reading The Story of King Absalom—
A Man’s Enemies Are the Members of His Own Household →
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