CHAPTER XXII.—BIBLE CONTRADICTIONS-TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN.
It is difficult to conceive how any real benefit or any reliable instruction can be derived from a book which contains statements with respect to doctrines or matters of fact that are contradicted on the next page, or in some other portion of the book; because it not only confuses the mind of the reader, but renders it impossible for him to know, as he reads a statement in one chapter of the book, that it is not contradicted and nullified in some other chapter, until he has sacrificed sufficient time to commit the whole book to memory: and but few persons have ever achieved that herculean task. Hence it must be an unreliable book as an authority. We know it has been stated by many admirers of the "Holy Book" that it contains no conflicting statements when properly understood. But who is to decide when it is properly understood? Here, again, is a conflict of ideas. All words have certain specific meanings attached to them by common consent. And certainly any man of good sense would not attempt to attach any other meaning to them, without stating the fact and clearly defining his new meaning, if he expects any reader to understand him, or any two readers to understand him alike; and, if he writes without giving a hint that he has invented or employed new meanings for the words he uses, we are compelled to assume that his words and language have the ordinary and universally adopted signification. With this view of the case (as the writers of the Bible have given no hint that they employed new meanings), it is false to assume or say there are no contradictions in the Bible, when, if we accept language with its ordinary and established signification, an honest and unbiased investigation will show that it contains several thousand statements which conflict with each other or with science, history or moral truth, and hence must be totally unreliable as an authority. To prove this, we will now enter upon the unpleasant task of arranging and classifying a large number of these contradictions found both in the Old and New Testaments.
I. CONTRADICTIONS IN MATTERS OF FACT AND IN DOCTRINES.
1. Was it death to eat the forbidden fruit? Yes: "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die" (Gen. II. 17). No: "And all the-days of Adam were nine hundrcd and thirty years" (Gen. v. 5).
2. Can a woman, according to scripture, ever speak on religious matters? Yes: "The same man had four daughters—virgins—who did prophesy" (Acts xxi. 9). No: "I suffer not a woman to teach, but to be in silence" (1 Tim. ii. 12).
3. Should a man ever laugh? Yes: "There is a time to weep and a time to laugh" (Eccles. iii. 4). No: "Sorrow is better than laughter" (Eccles. viii. 3). Yes: "I commend mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry" (Eccles. vii. 15).
4. What is our moral duty relative to trimming the hair on our heads? "There shall no razor come upon his head,... let the locks of his head grow" (Num. vi. 5). "If a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him" (1 Cor. xi. 14).
5. Is there any remedy for a fool? Yes: "The rod of correction will drive it far from him" (Prov. xxii. 15). No: "Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, yet will his foolishness not depart from him" (Prov. xxvi. 6).
6. Should we pay a fool in his own coin? Yes: "Answer a fool according to his folly" (Prov. xxvi. 5). No: "Answer not a fool according to his folly" (Prov. xxvi. 6).