SHOWING THAT THE BOOKS, SAMUEL, KINGS AND CHRONICLES, ARE NOT DIVINELY INSPIRED

Despite being claimed to be the word of God, the Bible has errors.  And bad fruits - for lies are told to paper over the lies and mistakes.

Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible by John W Haley claims that there are no contradictions or errors in the Bible.

Haley lied his way through the errors of the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles.  Those books were political propaganda and their presence in the Bible is abhorrent to an age that sees the need for state and faith to be separated.

313 and 320 state that many names were put down wrongly because the transcribers made mistakes. Haley who agreed with Jesus who said that if a person cannot be trusted in small things he cannot be trusted in greater pretended that there was no threat to divine inspiration in this! Haley has no choice for to support their authenticity would involve admitting that contradictions exist and are rife in the Bible as its text currently exists. Why didn’t the authorities correct the mistakes centuries ago? They seem to have believed that they were not mistakes and were reluctant to touch them. God should have been able to preserve his word. A God who writes a Bible and then lets it be corrupted is a bungler.

323. Asa removed pagan shrines from everywhere in the land (2 Chronicles 14) and then we are told that he did not (1 Kings 15). Does: “But the high places were not removed. Yet Asa’s heart was blameless with the Lord all his days” (AB) sound like it only means that some of the high places remained like Haley says? Of course it does not. And especially when we read that he was able to drive all the homosexuals and prostitutes out of the land. That shows he could have torn every one down. The land was religious when it cooperated with him and so spies would have abounded.

Page 335. Haley says that when Eli corrected his sons (1 Samuel 2) and then we are told that he did not (1 Samuel 3) that the Bible means he corrected them but that he was too soft or waited until they were hardened in sin when it was too late. But they had already heard it all before. Why preach at anybody who knows they do wrong? Haley’s explanation is junk. A soft correction or a severe one is still a correction.

Page 336. Haley declares that when the Bible says Elhanan slew Goliath (2 Samuel 21) though it was David who did that that it could have been Goliath’s son of the same name. But when the book mentions a Goliath who could have been anybody so casually it must be referring to the one the readers all know, the one David killed, the famous one. Nor would the author call David his name most of the time and then turn to Elhanan so Elhanan is not another name for David.

Page 339. Haley says that Hiram’s mother was a Naphtalite (1 Kings 7:14) and a Danite (2 Chronicles 2:14) at the same time. The tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Dan were two distinct tribes. It is most likely that this is a contradiction for the author of one account knew what the other had written and still wrote different. The earlier author would have known better.

Page 351. We read that alleged contradictions between lists of ancestors are often down to father and son being used loosely for ancestor and descendant or for father and son. Haley is trying among other things to resolve the conflict between Samuel and Chronicles concerning who the father of Kish was. Why make the lists if you are going to do that? What function would they serve then? There is no point in a genealogy that says x was the father of y and z was the descendant of x for that is breaking the genealogy for a genealogy with gaps as wide as that could easily be wrong for z could have been adopted or something or perhaps his mother fooled around. Haley is lying yet again. Pages 396-400 blames discrepancies in times on copyist’s mistakes. This is dreadfully dishonest. Haley would not care who he accuses as long as defends the Bible. He says that the Hebrews had a peculiar way of calculating regal years or the length of a reign. They would have counted from the beginning of the year a reign began rather than from the time in that year in which it began. On page 396, he says it seems that this is the case. He’s only speculating. Is it really likely that Israel would do that? And then he says that if their times are incorrect it does not disprove inerrancy for the writers are to be judged by their own standards and not ours (page 397). But it is a sin to be unnecessarily inaccurate. The writers did not think of future generations in which that would not be acceptable. Haley hoped that we would not probe his silly argument too deeply and discover that it really attributes sin and sloppiness to God.

Page 389, Reason and Belief, page 39 observes that 2 Samuel 24:9 says that 800,000 men of Israel lifted the sword while the parallel in 1 Chronicles 21:5 the figure is 1,100,000. Haley says the solution is that it was based on oral tradition and not on disagreement. So disagreements are not disagreements now! And why are the accounts so close if they are dependent on oral tradition? He then says that there was the fighting army who were 800,000 but when the standing army, the standbys, were included the figure was 1,100,000. This is nonsense for the verses were about those who had the sword and used it and the wording in both verses was very close.

Reason and Belief points out the contradiction between Michal being said to have been without children all her days and several chapters later it is said she had five sons. Haley on page 385 says that the first verse was corrupted and never originally said it was Michal who had no children. As usual, there is no evidence given for this mistake. So Haley admits that the Bible as it stands is contradictory but he denies God made an error and blames the copyist. Haley says that the original said Merab. The copyist would not have made such a mistake for Michal was the daughter of Saul and it would be as silly as explaining a modern contradiction on the basis that the author or copyist wrote down Sophie Wessex instead of Diana, Princess of Wales, by mistake. They are too well known for that to happen.

Page 403. There is a contradiction between the Bible saying that all the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:7, 8) were killed and then that some survived (1 Samuel 30:1,17). Haley says that all the Amalekites being killed means all the caught for some escaped to do more damage later. But Israel was stronger than they were when it was able to win the war against the Amalekites. It could have wiped them out to the last man. This tells us that all is literally all. Take all to mean all when it could be all. We would be reading that God was angry with Israel for not killing them all if they had let some escape. And it was a surprise attack. God strictly wanted all the Amalekites dead for he emphasised that literally all had to be killed and to the prophet. Would God then instruct Israel to attack them at a time that they could not slaughter them all? No way! God does not command the impossible. When God complained about them taking the flocks and cattle of the Amalekites and not destroying them and never mentioned that they let the some of the Amalekites go then they left no survivors. Not enough of Amalekite men would have survived to attack the cities of Ziklas and Negeb knowing that David and his men were on the way (1 Samuel 30). They even took David’s wives. There is a contradiction.

The Bible is a pile of contradictions.  And we must remember that some things that look like they are solved may not be.