Top Bible Questions: Does the Bible contain errors?

When we ask this question, we must be careful how we ask it. If we are wondering about mishaps by God or untrue promises of God in the Bible, we will not find them. If we are looking for human error, you might find it, though the discrepancy might not be what it seems.

We have to remember how the Bible came into existence in the first place. It did not come down on a cloud from heaven written by God Himself and perfect in every way. It was written by many authors from different backgrounds over almost two millennia. The text was then copied over centuries, translated by different scribes in different languages and these are the manuscripts English Bible translators use. It is a miracle we have a complete text at all! When we keep this in mind, though God’s inspiration was certainly behind its writing and composition, humans have made the Bible what it is today. So when we see a supposed error, or misalignment we have to consider many different aspects to determine if something in Scripture is “wrong”. 

There are many categories of errors or discrepancies that may pop up in a bible study but here are a few: 

• Presuppositional
• Context
• Translation error
• Language 
• Historical error
• Geographical error

Although this list is not comprehensive, it gives us a good place to start. When we are dealing with language, language is dynamic and changes literally daily and so we must determine if an error has to do with the way people spoke back then is different than how we speak now. There might also be some supposed historical errors but are not errors at all but simply the manifestation of what was known to the people at the time of writing. Since we know more about the world than the ancient authors it may seem like they got things wrong but it is simply a knowledge issue, not a factual issue. 

With all the supposed contradictions and errors that might come up in Scripture, there are very few that have any spiritual weight to them at all. Meaning even if there are errors (which I don’t believe there are), they would not affect our faith. If our faith is determined by where, for example, Jesus spoke a certain teaching, then our faith is not very strong. Our faith is not determined by the length of a king’s reign (another supposed contradiction) in Israel but by what we believe about Jesus and his resurrection. It should also rest in what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is breathed out by God”. We believe that all Scripture comes from the very presence of God and that it is perfect in the way God wanted us to have it.