Incorrect Bible Quotes

But you'd get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word." "I thought God gave everyone free will. Which would presumably - and evidently - include the freedom to be incorrect when translating one language into another." "Stop making me think. I'm believing over here.

Ewww... intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed, Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads. There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90 percent of the responses to the ID position... This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults... The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or whether it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end. — Tech Central Station contributor Douglas Kern, 2005

Claiming to be offended is a great way to elevate yourself at the expense of others: “Look at me! I'm a much better person than you! And I judge you! I condemn you! Shame! Shame! SHAME! I shame you for being a bad person. That means I'm a good person! Look at how really really offended I am! That means I'm a really really good person!” According to the bible, Jesus said "let he who is without sin throw the first rock." But a lot of people seem to think he said: "If you throw rocks at someone else, it proves that you're without sin.

Questions are to sales as breath is to life. If you fail to ask them, you will die. If you ask them incorrectly, your death won't be immediate, but it's inevitable.

The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University’s Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.)

In addition, many things that women have been taught about their bodies and medical conditions that affect the vulva and vagina are incorrect.

(For instance, it is a “hate crime” to quote certain politically incorrect verses from the Bible, especially the Old Testament, in any public arena.)

In fact, many of the most famous anti-Christian polemicists of the last 200 years—who sought to use science to justify their unbelief—never themselves set foot in a laboratory or conducted a single field observation. That includes the Marquis de Sade (a writer), Percy Bysshe Shelley (a poet), Friedrich Nietzsche (a philologist by training), Algernon Swinburne (a poet), Bertrand Russell (a philosopher), Karl Marx (a philosopher), Robert Ingersoll (a lecturer), George Bernard Shaw (a playwright), Vladimir Lenin (a communist revolutionary), Joseph Stalin (a communist dictator), H. L. Mencken (a newspaper columnist), Jean-Paul Sartre (a philosopher), Benito Mussolini (a fascist dictator), Luis Buñuel (Spanish filmmaker), Clarence Darrow (a lawyer), Ayn Rand (a novelist), Christopher Hitchens (a journalist), Larry Flynt (a pornographer), George Soros and Warren Buffett (investors), and Penn and Teller (magicians).

It is man and not the Bible that needs correcting. Greater and more careful scholarship has shown that apparent contradictions were caused by incorrect translations, rather than divine inconsistencies.

The success of Communism naturally depends on altering human nature because few things are more inherent in human nature than the ownership of property. This basic human right is as ancient as the ten commandments where God ordained that 'Thou Shall Not Steal'. The commandment implicitly acknowledges that persons have possessions and that they have an inherent right to that property. So it is thus not permissible for others to take it away from them. But Marx & Engels weren't about to admit the right to private property that we find even in the bible.

Boehme makes such leaps, such contradictions, such confusions of thought. It is as though he wishes to vault directly into heaven upon the strength of his logic, but his logic is deeply impaired." She reached across the table for a book and flung it open. "In this chapter here, for instance, he is trying to find keys to God's secrets hidden inside the plants of the Bible- but what are we to make of it, when his information is simply incorrect? He spends a full chapter interpreting 'the lilies of the field' as mentioned in the book of Matthew, dissecting every letter of the word 'lilies,' looking for revelation within the syllables... but Ambrose, 'the lilies of the field' itself is a mistranslation. It would not have 'been' lilies that Christ discussed in his Sermon on the Mount. There are only two varieties of lily native to Palestine, and both are exceedingly rare. They would not have flowered in such abundance as to have ever filled a meadow. They would not have been familiar enough to the common man. Christ, tailoring his lesson to the widest possible audience, would more likely have referred to a ubiquitous flower, in order that his listeners would comprehend his metaphor. For that reason, it is exceedingly probable that Christ was talking about the anemones of the field- probably 'Anemone coronaria'- though we cannot be certain...

But won’t political involvement distract us from the main task of preaching the Gospel? At this point someone may object that while political involvement may have some benefits and may do some good, it can so easily distract us, turn unbelievers away from the church, and cause us to neglect the main task of pointing people toward personal trust in Christ. John MacArthur writes, “When the church takes a stance that emphasizes political activism and social moralizing, it always diverts energy and resources away from evangelization.”83 Yet the proper question is not, “Does political influence take resources away from evangelism?” but, “Is political influence something God has called us to do?” If God has called some of us to some political influence, then those resources would not be blessed if we diverted them to evangelism—or to the choir, or to teaching Sunday School to children, or to any other use. In this matter, as in everything else the church does, it would be healthy for Christians to realize that God may call individual Christians to different emphases in their lives. This is because God has placed in the church “varieties of gifts” (1 Cor. 12:4) and the church is an entity that has “many members” but is still “one body” (v. 12). Therefore God might call someone to devote almost all of his or her time to the choir, someone else to youth work, someone else to evangelism, someone else to preparing refreshments to welcome visitors, and someone else to work with lighting and sound systems. “But if Jim places all his attention on the sound system, won’t that distract the church from the main task of preaching the Gospel?” No, not at all. That is not what God has called Jim to emphasize (though he will certainly share the Gospel with others as he has opportunity). Jim’s exclusive focus on the church’s sound system means he is just being a faithful steward in the responsibility God has given him. In the same way, I think it is entirely possible that God called Billy Graham to emphasize evangelism and say nothing about politics and also called James Dobson to emphasize a radio ministry to families and to influencing the political world for good. Aren’t there enough Christians in the world for us to focus on more than one task? And does God not call us to thousands of different emphases, all in obedience to him? But the whole ministry of the church will include both emphases. And the teaching ministry from the pulpit should do nothing less than proclaim “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). It should teach, over the course of time, on all areas of life and all areas of Bible knowledge. That certainly must include, to some extent, what the Bible says about the purposes of civil government and how that teaching should apply to our situations today. This means that in a healthy church we will find that some people emphasize influencing the government and politics, others emphasize influencing the business world, others emphasize influencing the educational system, others entertainment and the media, others marriage and the family, and so forth. When that happens, it seems to me that we should encourage, not discourage, one another. We should adopt the attitude toward each other that Paul encouraged in the church at Rome: Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God…. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother (Rom. 14:10–13). For several different reasons, then, I think the view that says the church should just “do evangelism, not politics” is incorrect.

This is how it works: something gets translated incorrectly, making it necessary to introduce the idea of mystery. It reflects attempts to help the whole story hang together properly, after having presented the Bible as saying things that, in fact, it had never said.

Does What I Think Really Matter? Ronnie Littleton Pause for just a moment and try to not think. Keep trying. It appears to be impossible to stop thinking, doesn’t it? Thinking is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. Not only that, our thoughts actually shape who we are, what we believe, what we do, and how we treat others. If our thoughts are this powerful, it seems obvious that we should avoid incorrect thoughts, for incorrect thoughts will lead to problems as we make decisions and form opinions based on bad information. On the other hand, correct thoughts will lead to good outcomes. This is why the Apostle Paul commands believers to transform their thinking (Rm 12:2). George Washington, our first president, became ill in 1799. One of the treatments prescribed for his illness was bloodletting—cutting open a vein to allow a specific amount of blood to flow out. Bloodletting was a fairly common practice at the time. It was believed that bad blood was the cause of fever, and that by letting some out, the fever would be relieved. We now know that this was not just incorrect thinking, it was dangerous. A wrong belief led to a wrong practice that may have actually hastened Washington’s death. The treatment was intended to heal, but was actually harmful. The physician who treated Washington had a good motive for his actions, and no doubt his course of treatment would have been supported by his medical colleagues; good motives and consensus of opinion, however, cannot make up for bad ideas. Since our ideas, opinions, and feelings have a big impact on what we do, and since they may be mistaken even if they match what everyone around us believes, where can we turn to know for certain what is right? One thing we can do is train ourselves to think logically. Logic is the study of reasoning principles—in other words, how we make valid inferences. In many cases it allows us to identify where our thinking has gone wrong and where we have bought into beliefs that are false. Nothing that is true can be illogical, so the use of logic is a filter for untruth. Logic and truth are not the same things, however. Think of logic as the plastic container that holds the milk in your refrigerator. The milk represents truth (a belief that corresponds to reality). If the plastic jug is full of holes, it could never hold the milk. On the other hand, if the container is sound, it will hold the milk. Now, just because the milk jug is valid does not necessarily mean that it has any milk in it, or that the milk is okay to drink. In a similar way, you can be a very logical person and yet miss the truth because of biases or inadequate information. In such cases, your wrong ideas may lead to bad consequences, such as wrong beliefs about God. Thus, we must always think logically and consult the sure source of ultimate truth: the Bible. Since what you think matters now and forever, you cannot afford to do otherwise.

How then does a Christian, or anyone else, choose among the various claims for absolute authorities? Ultimately the truthfulness of the Bible will commend itself as being far more persuasive than other religious books (such as the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an), or than any other intellectual constructions of the human mind (such as logic, human reason, sense experience, scientific methodology, etc.). It will be more persuasive because in the actual experience of life, all of these other candidates for ultimate authority are seen to be inconsistent or to have shortcomings that disqualify them, while the Bible will be seen to be fully in accord with all that we know about the world around us, about ourselves, and about God. The Bible will commend itself as being persuasive in this way, that is, if we are thinking rightly about the nature of reality, our perception of it and of ourselves, and our perception of God. The trouble is that because of sin our perception and analysis of God and creation is faulty. Sin is ultimately irrational, and sin makes us think incorrectly about God and about creation. Thus, in a world free from sin, the Bible would commend itself convincingly to all people as God’s Word. But because sin distorts people’s perception of reality, they do not recognize Scripture for what it really is. Therefore it requires the work of the Holy Spirit, overcoming the effects of sin, to enable us to be persuaded that the Bible is indeed the Word of God and that the claims it makes for itself are true. Thus, in another sense, the argument for the Bible as God’s Word and our ultimate authority is not a typical circular argument. The process of persuasion is perhaps better likened to a spiral in which increasing knowledge of Scripture and increasingly correct understanding of God and creation tend to supplement one another in a harmonious way, each tending to confirm the accuracy of the other. This is not to say that our knowledge of the world around us serves as a higher authority than Scripture, but rather that such knowledge, if it is correct knowledge, continues to give greater and greater assurance and deeper conviction that the Bible is the only truly ultimate authority and that other competing claims for ultimate authority are false.

Something should strike us as deeply troubling about such a movement. Is the authority of the Bible really primary for egalitarians? Or is there a deep-seated mentality that actually puts feminism first and the Bible second? The more I have read these egalitarian arguments, the more I have found myself wondering this: Are these writers actually operating from a deep conviction that says, “I know that egalitarianism is right, now let me see if I can find any ways to support it from the Bible. If one approach does not work, I’ll try another, and if twenty-five approaches do not work, I will look for a twenty-sixth, because the one thing I cannot accept is that egalitarianism is wrong”? I cannot say for sure. But I can think of no other viewpoint or movement within the whole history of the Christian church (except theological liberalism itself) that has generated so many novel and ultimately incorrect ways of interpreting the Bible.

So both Boomsma and Jewett say that Paul was adopting incorrect Jewish understandings of Genesis 2–3 that were current in his day. This position allows the church today to disobey the reasoning of 1 Timothy 2:11-15, saying it was a mistake. But Christians who take the entire Bible as the Word of God, and as authoritative for us today, do not have that option. The apostle Paul’s interpretation of Genesis 2 as found in 1 Timothy 2 is part of the Word of God. Therefore it is “breathed out by God” and cannot contain erroneous interpretations of Genesis. To say that Paul made a mistake in writing 1 Timothy 2 is another step on the path toward liberalism.

the inerrancy of the Bible relates to the authors’ original intent, not necessarily to our interpretation of a passage. Moreover, the inerrancy of an author’s writing must be understood in accordance with the genre of literature the author was using and the culture the author was writing within. For example, we cannot say that an ancient author was incorrect in what he said just because he did not employ the same standard of precision we employ in our culture.

First, without exception, biblical authors presupposed a premodern view of the world. To illustrate, as with all people in the ancient Near East, the Hebrews believed that the sky was “hard as a molten mirror” (Job 37:18). It had to be hard, in their view, for it was a “dome” that “separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome” (Gen. 1:7). This dome rested on “pillars,” as did the earth as it sat upon the “waters” that encircled it (Ps. 75:3; 104:2–3, 5–6; cf. Job 9:6; 26:11). “Windows” in the solid dome were opened when Yahweh wanted it to rain, allowing the waters “above the dome” to fall to the ground (Gen. 7:11). The sun, moon, and stars were all “lights in the dome” that were placed there to function as “signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14). The Lord, along with other heavenly beings, sat in a chamber above the dome. From this location God threw lightning bolts (Ps. 18:12–14), shook the pillars (earthquakes? Job 9:6), and caused the wind to blow (Ps. 107:25). We modern people routinely assume this language is merely poetic, but at the time it was the way people really understood the world. It is completely understandable that God would leave the primitive worldview of ancient authors intact as he used ancient authors to communicate his Word. How else could he effectively communicate to the people of the time? Had God attempted to communicate a scientifically accurate view of the world, the theological truth he wanted to convey would not have been communicated. At the same time, we must frankly admit that given what we know about the world today, the view of the cosmos presupposed in the Bible is inaccurate. The earth does not rest on pillars, and the sky is not hard! The Bible’s theological message is unfailing though its view of the cosmos is scientifically incorrect. A

Harris’s basic arguments are hardly original, but they have an unfortunate pedigree. For more than three hundred years, from the French philosophes to Marx, Lenin, and the “death of God” theologies of the 1960s, we have been assured that, freed from the superstitions and imbecilities of organized religion, rational secularists could make the world into a utopia. The results have invariably been horrific—from the Terror of the French Revolution to the terrors of Nazism and Communism. Contrary

I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly and sometimes (many times!) incorrectly?

To speak of a completed Talmud is as incorrect as to speak of a biblical canon. No religious body, no solemn resolution of a synod, ever declared either the Talmud or the Bible a completed whole. Canonizing of any kind is distinctly opposed to the spirit of Judaism. The fact is that the tide of traditional lore has never ceased to flow.

the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.