Internal Consistency???

[David Koot]

Does the Bible have internal consistency? Or are there significant contradictions? Is it really not much different from the Reader's Digest?

Dave

[olger]

The Bible is held together by an extraordinary power. I discovered this when I tried to disprove the Advent message for 2.5 years.

[bevin]

I think it is worth while pointing to some of the biggest issues, and seeing in them the consistency of being written and promulgated by humans, albeit inspired.

Here are some that come to mind

In the OT, there is a complete switch from an Israel that gets better and better (Isaiah) to one that is never going to be the great and attractive nation protrayed in Isaiah (Jeremial, Daniel)

In the Gospels, there are discrepancies about what happened and when.

Between the Gospels and the later letters, there is the change from a very disorganized movement to a hierachically organised church

In the Letters, there are huge disagreements about how to treat the Gentiles

There is an underlying theme here - and EGW captures it nicely in the whole Great Controversy theme - but the theme is not consistently portrayed in the individual tunes.

As such, it matches the Readers Digest in its level of consistency. Individual items in fact conflict, but the big picture is consistent to the extent that any human historical/social activity is consistent

/Bevin

[Gregory Matthews]

I do not expect to find total internal consistency in anything that has a human element in it.