Tag Archives: Contradictions in the Bible

Introduction to Forthcoming Contradictions in the Bible

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Steven DiMattei

Seldom do readers of the Bible actually think about the compositional nature of the text they hold in their hands. Many Jews and Christians are completely unaware that the Bible is composed of a vast collection of different texts, themselves composed from a variety of texts and traditions, all of which were written over a period of roughly one-thousand years, by varying authors, and under diverse historical circumstances and religious and political convictions. Many of the Bible’s books—or more precisely the texts and traditions that went into the composition of its books—went through lengthy periods of continual revision, often supplemented with other texts and traditions, and redrafted to suit an ever-changing audience’s political and religious needs. In today’s culture, most biblical enthusiasts merely invoke the name “the Bible” in a variety of contexts with little or no real knowledge of the nature of the biblical text itself. Those few who … Read more

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Did Moses Write the Torah? (1)

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Steven DiMattei

The traditional view held in both Jewish and Christian circles was that the Pentateuch, the Torah, was penned by Moses under divine inspiration. This traditional claim, however, should be tempered by a couple of initial observations. First, the Torah as a whole makes no such claim. Nowhere does the Pentateuch claim to have been written by Moses, or anyone else for that matter. In fact, the sparse references to Moses writing in the Pentateuch are rather specific in nature. For example certain passages, that is certain authors, claim: that Moses writes a memorial reminding later generations that the Amalekites must be exterminated (Ex 17:14); that Moses writes “the words of Yahweh” (Ex 24:4), which contextually could refer to the Covenant Code of Exodus 21-23 or merely the Ten Commandments (there are various traditions combined in this section of Exodus); that Moses is instructed to write “these words” (Ex 34:27) which … Read more

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Contradictions in the Bible: an introduction

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Steven DiMattei

My current research and writing projects display an interest in the textual history of the Bible. In other words, how did the various and once independent texts and traditions that now make up what later generations of readers dubbed “the Bible” come about? And more significantly, how do these once independent texts now interact with each other in their new composite framework? Thus the title of the other project that I am working on: The Bible’s Many Authors and the Contradictions They Left Behind. I’d like to post parts of the introduction to this project and then continue by actually posting various textual contradictions and explaining how they came about and what they tell us about the Bible’s composite nature. I hope to generate some sort of feedback and discussion as we move along. We will limit our inquiry to the Torah.

There are literally thousands of contradictions in … Read more

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