02.02. IS MY BIBLE SCARRED BY DISCREPANCIES?

IS MY BIBLE SCARRED BY DISCREPANCIES? When Paul, at Jerusalem, was before Felix the governor, he answered the charges of Tertullus that he was “a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ring-leader of the sect of the Nazarenes” by denying every charge, and adding—

“But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.” (Acts 24:14). In discussing the inspiration, authenticity and authority of the Bible, we face the charge of “discrepancies,” of which the critics of the Christian Scriptures have made much; and we stand with Paul in Bible defense, declaring our convictions that the charge is unfounded and false. With him we believe “all things which are written in the law and in the prophets,” and we are ready not only to give frank consideration to the indictment of “discrepancies” but to show that the charge itself is begotten by superficial thinking and born of a skeptical spirit.

Following the lines of the apostle’s statement, we propose to discuss this question under three heads: A Confession of Faith, A Call to Worship, and An Unshaken Confidence. A CONFESSION OF FAITH The apostle’s words involved such a confession.

Paul believed “all things” that were “written in the law and in the prophets.” In other words, Paul had what he regarded as “an inspired Bible.” On many occasions he made perfectly clear his confidence in inspiration. His statement in Acts is confirmed as often as the apostle touches upon the subject. Writing to the Corinthians he says—

“Now we have received***the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God; which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth;***” (1 Corinthians 2:12-13). In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians he defends his claim of “Christ speaking in him,” (2 Corinthians 13:3), while to Timothy he declared—“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” (2 Timothy 3:16). In other chapters we call attention to the fact that this is practically the uniform claim of all Biblical authors; and since that is readily conceded, we need not here and now burden you with proof texts.

John placed such emphasis upon the Spirit’s authorship of the Apocalypse that he wrote these warning words against its sacrilegious touch:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18-19). In other words, no Old Testament prophet or New Testament apostle will consent to the charge of falsity, misrepresentation, or discrepancy, if lodged against the Holy Word. As the tables of the Law were protected by the four sides of the Ark, and defended by the Divine Person whose presence was seen in the Shekinah Glory, so the entire Old and New Testaments are within the sacred enclosure of Divine Inspiration, and only the sacrilegious dare to lay upon them critical and destructive hands; and, whether they believe it or not, all such despoilers approach this evil work at the expense of their own souls. This confession has been the warp and woof of organized Christianity. The believers of all ages have exercised a kindred faith in the integrity of the Scriptures. That such was the view of the apostles we will make clear in this treatise; that such was the opinion of the early church fathers, no man would have the temerity to dispute. Rudelbach says “Hardly is there a single point with regard to which there reigned in the first eight ages of the church a greater or more cordial unity.” And as to the more recent declarations, church history is replete. The French Confession said,: “We believe at the word contained in these books has proceeded from God. It is not lawful for men nor even for angels to add to it, to take away from Lit, nor even to change it.” The Belgic Confession declared: “We believe that the Holy Scriptures fully contain the will of God and that whatsoever men ought to believe unto salvation is sufficiently contained therein.” The Westminster Confession asserted: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced therefrom, unto which nothing at any time is to be added.” The Church of England said: “The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man.” The Congregationalists said: “Like our Pilgrim Fathers, we acknowledge no rule of faith but the Word of God, and declare our adherence to the faith and order of the apostolic and primitive churches.” The Baptists have never, unless it be now, stood elsewhere than on this ground—“We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its Author; salvation for its end and truth without any admixture of error for its matter.”

If you please the Methodists, (certain present unbelieving Bishops to the contrary notwithstanding), lack the temerity to attempt even to change their declaration that “The Holy Scriptures contain all the things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man.” The perils of departure from this opinion have been written in the blood-ink of both believers and unbelievers. More than a century and a half ago France, temporarily captured by Rationalists, rejected the doctrine of Revelation, and the history of that movement was written in rivers of human blood. For the last twenty years Russia has also sought to substitute for Revelation atheistic Evolution, and the death of thirty millions, of innocents by reason of imprisonment, starvation, freezing and shooting, is only a slight reflection of the terror and afflictions that have befallen the nation. When Germany developed, as her teachers, the opponents of Revelation, she introduced an educational program that wrecked her government by 1918 and threatened a world with ruin.

It is no light matter, therefore, to charge the sacred Scriptures with sin of any sort; and the indictment of “multiplied discrepancies” is a monstrous charge!

Discrepancies, could they be proved, would end the Bible’s Sacred Influence.

It is very doubtful if Biblical critics would be willing to face the results of their own unbelief.

Joseph Fort Newton, made famous, over night, by his call to the City Temple, London, England, was never charged with conservatism. In fact, the world stood amazed to have so confessed a liberal step into the shoes of the great Conservative Joseph Parker. That could not have occurred without the mediation of Reginald Campbell in “breaking in” of those shoes to modernist foot-form; and yet Dr. Newton was recently quoted as having recited afresh the famous parable of how England awoke one day to find the Bible and all trace of its influence absolutely erased from the public mind, and is reputed to have said—

“Something like this has happened in America. We are faced by an amazing spectacle—a generous, charming, candid generation without the Bible. Life has become cheap, literature is filthy and law is no longer respected. Our most brilliant writers seem to find life a kind of disease. Its activities—religion, culture, ambition, sex, song—are so many forms of dope that men take to deaden the pain, or the folly, of living.” And so this critic of the Scriptures, seeing that the attacks of his fellow-despoilers have succeeded beyond expectation, cries out for the recovery of that which he himself sought to discredit, admitting—

“There is a spirit in the Bible which, if it gets into men, makes them tall of soul, tender of hear, just, gentle, patient, strong, faithful in life and fearless in death.” And then he dares to cry: “We must recover the Bible!” But to some of us “recovery” is not the word! We have never lost it! We have stood, and shall stand, with the apostle’s confession of Faith “believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.” With the apostle we find in this fact— A CALL TO WORSHIP We esteem the sacred Word as our fathers did. The “fathers” referred to by the apostle Paul were not the early church fathers. They were rather the Old Testament prophets instead. If one would know what their faith in the Bible was, let him consult them. The task of inquiring of all the Old Testament writers is too extensive for the limits of a single address; but certainly if one select the most outstanding from among the lawyers, poets and prophets who contributed to the Old Testament creation, it should prove satisfactory even to the critical.

We propose, therefore, to consult Moses, David and Isaiah—Moses, the chief of its law givers; David the sweetest singer in Israel, and Isaiah the tallest among the prophets. In Exodus 4:15 we have the Moses’ view. He held that his own words were from the Lord Who, addressing him directly, said—

“* * * And I will be with thy mouth, and with his (Aaron’s) mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do.”

There are literally hundreds of statements in the five books of Moses to the same effect.

How significant that in the last words of David there is found this remark—

“The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.” (2 Samuel 23:2). In that circumstance you have a reason for the immortality of David’s utterances and an explanation of their immeasurable effect. But we turn to the tallest prophet. Among the major prophets even, Isaiah, like Saul, is from his shoulders and upward above the heads of his contemporaries. At the very center of his great prophecy he puts this statement—

Then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying” (Isaiah 38:4).

Forty times in this volume the prophet lays claim to being the mouthpiece of the Most High, voicing what God had given him.

These three incomparable authors are both fine and fit representatives of the inspired company who collaborated in creating the Old Testament Scriptures. For 2100 years, and more, that sacred Canon has remained unchanged. The Septuagint Version for that entire length of time has been the unchanged basis of the Best translations, and also the very Book From which Christ quoted again and again, always to approve the utterance and affirm its reliability. To Him these Scriptures “could not he broken.” In His hand they were “the Sword of the Spirit” with which He resisted all attacks upon their content. “It is written” was the statement with which He put to flight Pharisees, Sadducees and Satan himself. Never once did He even intimate the untrustworthiness of the sacred Word. The New Testament writers entertained a kindred confidence. To them neither the Jewish Scriptures nor other inspired confederates were guilty of introducing actual discrepancies. On the contrary, they counted all such charges a contortion of the Divine intent.

Peter in his second epistle 2 Peter 3:16 voices his mind in the matter. He pays tribute to Paul as a “beloved brother” to whom “wisdom” had been given in “the things written.” While he admits that some things in the Pauline Epistles may be hard to understand, he does not concede mistake or discrepancy; but charges, instead, that they are “wrested” by the unlearned and unstable, “as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.”

Paul’s confession, therefore, is consonant with that of his co-apostles. In fact, his declaration constitutes a part of the apostolic faith, “the faith once delivered,” the faith in which the heaven-taught stood and to which they bore glad testimony. In fact, that faith took the form of— AN UNSHAKEN CONFIDENCE

Discrepancies they never discovered, and true believers do not now admit them. However, our faith is not the product of mere prejudice. Our confidence is not born of personal preference; it rests in fact, and is wholly capable of adequate defense. In three statements, with their development, let me conclude this discourse—(1) There are apparent discrepancies in .Scripture; (2) Each and every one of them is capable of comparatively easy explanation; (3) In the light of reason the Bible is an infallible revelation.

There are apparent discrepancies in Scripture.

Superficial critics have searched out what seemed to them a veritable multitude of such; but the contention of the intelligent believer is that these discrepancies exist in the critics’ mind, not in the sacred Book. No less a scholar than Dean Farrar, speaking of the writers of the Bible, and especially of the authors of the New Testament, says:

“That they did err, I am not so irreverent as to assert; nor has the widest learning and acutest ingenuity of Scepticism ever pointed to one complete and demonstrable error of fact or doctrine in the Old or New Testament.” In this view, Prof. A. B. Davidson is known to have heartily concurred; so James Orr! Simpson, and other equally great and notable scholars, who have taken the same position, are a multitude which it would be difficult to enumerate.

However, to be perfectly fair to the attorneys for the prosecution, we propose to accept for the consideration of the Court of Public Opinion, seven of their best exhibits. We elect this number, first because it is God’s numeral for perfection, and second because it will certainly suffice to include their strongest cases against Bible infallibility. Three of these we take from the Old Testament, and four of them from the New.

Some years since there came a call on my phone from the keeper of a rooming and boarding house, situated under the eaves of the State University of Minnesota. The speaker said: “Dr. Riley, I make my living by the care of students. Boys and girls who elect to live with me through their college days become extremely dear. I feel toward them almost as one might feel toward her own flesh and blood, and I confess a genuine interest in both their mental and spiritual reactions. It is not at all an unusual thing for certain skeptical professors at the University, to disturb the faith of these children and, oftentimes I am sorry to say, destroy it.” “The questions raised by such teachers are often thrashed out at my table, and today they have one for which I feel myself insufficient; hence my appeal to you. A professor this morning called attention to the statement in 1 Kings 15:28—

“ ‘Even in the third year of Asa king of Judah did Baasha slay him, and reigned in his stead.’ ” And then in 1 Kings 16:1-34 he called attention to 1 Kings 16:8—

“ ‘In the twenty and sixth year of Asa king of Judah began Elah the son of Baasha to reign over Israel in Tirzah, two years.’ ”

“And in 1 Kings 16:15—

“ ‘In the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of Judah did Zimri reign seven days in Tirzah****’ ”

“And he laughed at such a record, showing a king dead twenty-three and twenty-four years respectively, and yet sitting on the throne. How do you reconcile the discrepancy?”

I was able to answer, “There is none! If the professor had taken pains in Bible study he would have discovered that Asa reigned as king of Judah forty-one years, and the context shows that it was not Asa king of Judah at all who was slain by Baasha, but it was Nadab instead. Read 1 Kings 16:27. That discrepancy was not in 1st Kings but in the mind of an inattentive teacher.

However, to be perfectly fair, we take up now the stronger cases of the prosecution— In 2 Samuel 24:24 we have this statement: “And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it (the threshing floor) of thee. * * * So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.” In 1 Chronicles 21:25 we have—

“So David gave to Oman for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.” The context goes to prove that this is the same threshing floor. That looks bad for the Bible! Surely here there seems to be a plain contradiction. Our answer is, “Yes, but only a seeming one!” Sir Robert Anderson, one of the world’s greatest detectives—a long time Head of Scotland Yards—and at the same time one of the world’s most consistent Christians and astute students of Scripture, says of this discrepancy:

“It is extraordinary that any honest and intelligent mind could find a difficulty here. Fifty shekels of silver were presumably a fair price, though to us it seems very little, for the oxen and for the temporary use of the threshing floor, for the purpose of the sacrifice. And this was all that the king had in view at the moment.

“But does anyone imagine that the fee-simple of ‘the place’—the entire site of the Temple— was worth only fifty silver shekels? David went on to purchase the entire homestead out and out; and the price he paid for it, was 600 shekels of gold. And this is what the ‘Chronicler’ records.” 1 Chronicles 21:25.

Turn with me now, if you will, to Genesis 1:1-31 :— the storm center of modern criticism, and you will find in Genesis 1:31, the statement that the Lord completed His creative acts on the sixth day.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” (Genesis 2:1-2).

One moves only to Genesis 2:4 when he reads—

“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Critics say: “There it is again! Moses gets into a shindy with himself. In one chapter he tells you it took six days, and in the next he states that it was done in a day.” That would make of Moses a man, non compos mentis. In view of his matchless mind, there must be a sane explanation; and Moses himself makes it.

Turn to Psalms 90:1-17 :—A Prayer of Moses the man of God—and read:

“ * * A thousand years, in thy sight, are but as yesterday when it is past,” (Psalms 90:4) and concede, as the greater scientists, who were also the greatest of Bible believers—have uniformly agreed, that God’s creative day is not man’s solar day at all; and there is no trouble to enclose six shorter periods in one longer one. And since “day” is always an elastic word in Biblical uses, there is no inharmony whatever between Genesis 2:1 and Genesis 2:4.

But, we turn, from the Old Testament Scriptures to the New Testament, to take up four apparent discrepancies. The first relates to the birth of our Lord. Matthew and Luke record His ancestry, and they are not in agreement. Many have stumbled over this, supposing it to be a discrepancy, in fact a contradiction. But here the explanation is extremely simple, for one traces His lineage through his Mother back to Abraham, or for fourteen generations, while the other traces it through His legal father, Joseph, forty-two generations back to Adam. Who would expect identity save the most superficial student?

But, we proceed, and take a second point. The Healing of the Bind man outside Jericho. This incident is recorded by Matthew 20:29-34, Mark 10:46-52, and Luke 18:35-43. Matthew mentions two men as healed; Mark and Luke speak of only one: but that is not a contradiction nor a discrepancy. Mark and Luke fix attention upon the well-known man Bartimaeus and make no report of the other instance. Christ might have healed scores of blind men, but not all are reported. But there is a greater difficulty involved. Luke says the healing occurred as the Lord was approaching Jericho, while the other Gospels report it as having occurred when He was leaving the town. That looks serious, doesn’t it?

Either of two explanations would suffice. If the translation “come nigh” means “in the vicinity,” there is no inharmony; or if a practical duplicate of healing of the blind took place one as He entered the city and one as he left, as was likely, you have no discrepancy.

Still further—Take the instance of the superscription placed on the Cross, and the report of the separate evangelists. Matthew says: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews”; Mark says: “The King of the Jews”; Luke says: “This is the King of the Jews”; John says: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” The wonder is not the discrepancy; the marvel is in the harmony, when four men recorded the impression made by that inscription. Naturally a man will set down the thing that impresses him; and in defense of plenary inspiration let it be remembered that there is not a particle of inharmony in these four reports. John seems to have given the whole of it, while each of the others records what he regarded as the essential part.

Finally—take the accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels. Matthew says “they saw an angel”; Mary said “They saw a young man”; Luke reports that, entering the sepulchre, they saw two men.” Is this “a contradiction” or “a discrepancy”? Hardly!

Angels take the appearance of men and are commonly so reported. The presence of one man does not exclude that of another. The full reading of the four rather indicates what one writer has called a simple solution—that there was an angel outside of the tomb when the women approached it and another sitting in the tomb as they entered it. If the former followed them in, you would have a full explanation of John’s statement that there were two angels—one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

Let it be remarked again that the so-called mistakes and discrepancies of Scriptures are creations of uninformed minds or prejudiced attitudes. As the mists of the morning vanish when the sun looks full upon them, so the mistakes of Scripture flee the sacred pages upon careful and intelligent study. In the light of Reason Revelation shines Resplendent.

There are men who imagine that the use of Reason undermines Revelation, that the study of Science cuts the foundations from Scriptures, that keen and careful study discredits the Holy Book. But the exact opposite is true. The greatest Bible students have ever been, and will ever remain, the most ardent believers. The Bible itself teaches us to “prove all things” and to “hold fast only to that which is good.” Therein is set forth a principle and a practice to which only knaves and fools would ever object.

We accept the Bible, then, as God’s Revelation to men first—because, as the Master said of it—“The Word is truth”; and second—because, when applied to life, it proves the “power of God unto salvation.” To believe what it says concerning Jesus is to discover a Saviour from sin. To believe what it says concerning the efficacy of His sacrifice on Calvary’s Cross is to discover, in His shed blood, the element of “cleansing from all sin.” To believe what it says concerning His Resurrection from the grave is to be filled with the hope of the saints’ resurrection from the same Charnel House; and to believe what it says concerning His soon and glorious return is to anticipate that Blessed hour when the sin-cursed world shall be snatched from the hands of the Adversary, and sin-cursed rulers shall abdicate in His behalf, and sin-cursed society shall not only come into a Utopia of uniform blessing, but also into a millennial reign which shall never end; but, after a thousand years, will be translated into the heavenlies “where there shall be no curse,” where “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Revelation 21:4).