The Bible Slam: Numbers Chapter 02

The Bible Slam: Numbers Chapter 02

Other than saying where each tribe is to pitch its tents around the tabernacle, this chapter is the same thing as chapter 1.   For an inerrant book from the creator of the universe, you'd think there'd be a better editor.

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Discussion Points.

Chelev makes an excellent point about the zodiac signs. Beyond that, this chapter is boring, considering it's the same thing already written. If you want to read it, head on over to the King James version, Skeptics Annotated.   Frankly, it's so turgid that even Skeptics Annotated had no comment.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the alleged population is fanciful, at best, and the size of the military dwarfed many of today's modern armies.

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  • http://www.toysperiod.com Vincenti Winchester

    The more I read from this fellow, the more I want to shake my head.

    I know he means well. Well, maybe not.

    I would ask the Bible Slam author to pick up any scholarly work purporting to determine if an ancient text is authentic, especially if it claims to be revelation.

    One of the principal STRENGTHS of an authentic piece of revelation is that it DOES HAVE MISTAKES.

    If such a work were perfect, that would mean that it had been REWORKED, that is edited. A person taking "dictation" from God is still a person. Even our best authors have to re-work texts dozens of times before they are satisfied.

    By allowing human errors to creep into a text WITHOUT correction, the scholars (even secular atheists) tell us that it is much more likely that the work is authentic than not.

    For example, the inconsistencies in the New Testament, contrary to weakening the strength of the works as a chronicle of what actually happened, in effect strengthen the case for them.

    Had the New Testament books been perfectly in line with each other, organizational fraud might be charged.

    But, because the books have inconsistencies (perceived by first level readers as mistakes), experts tell us that the books are the best memory of the people involved, and were NOT tampered with after they were released, despite the fact that there were people still living who had witnessed the events.

    They were close enough to what people saw so as to be 100 percent acceptable to them.

    Therefore, we have the best of both worlds. That is, first, stories that aren't 100% consistent, thus demonstrating in the eyes of scholarship that they have not been fraudulently edited; AND, second, we have evidence that they are close enough to the actual happenings, so as to pass the test of those who were still alive at the time at least the first of the four gospels was released. And, all of the gospels had been released by the time the second generation after the eye witnesses had perished.

    So, once again, what would the Bible Slam man wish to see.

    1) Perfect texts that prove according to modern scholarship that the Bible is a fraud, or,

    2) Imperfect texts demonstrating the Bible authenticity as revelation or "best try" memory?

    Personally, after reading what the scholars have to say, the mistakes are reassuring, even though I am not a literal interpretation of the Bible kind of guy.

  • admin

    Thanks for your comments, Vincenti.

    The whole point is to make this entertaining enough to encourage people to actually read the Bible, comment about what they are reading, and to consider whether or not it is the "inerrant word of God," as some fundamentalists would like us to believe (see the about section linked above). We are not saying that it is not authentic.

    So it would seem that you and I both agree that it is not the "inerrant" word of God, but merely a recital of an ancient people's understanding of their world.

    Peace,
    Deborah