Does the Bible contain errors? Often the answer depends on the eye of
the beholder. For those determined to undermine Scripture, yes, it does
contain errors and no answer will satisfy them. For others, though, careful
study and patience usually resolve any problems.
As noted author Josh McDowell explains regarding the Bible: "It is a mistake
for the critic to assume . . . that what has not yet been explained
never will be explained. When a scientist comes upon an anomaly in nature,
he does not give up further scientific exploration. Rather, he uses the
unexplained as a motivation to find an explanation . . .
"Likewise, the Christian scholar approaches the Bible with the same presumption
that what is thus far unexplained is not therefore unexplainable. He or
she does not assume that discrepancies are contradictions. And when he
encounters something for which he has no explanation, he simply continues
to do research, believing that one will eventually be found . . .
"Like his scientific counterpart, the Bible student has been rewarded
for his faith and research. Many difficulties for which scholars once had
no answer have yielded to the relentless pursuit of answers through history,
archaeology, linguistics, and other disciplines. For example, critics once
proposed that Moses could not have written the first five books of the
Bible because there was no writing in Moses' day. Now we know that writing
existed a couple of thousand years or more before Moses.
"Likewise, critics once believed that the Bible was wrong in speaking
of the Hittite people, since they were totally unknown to historians. Now
historians know of their existence by way of a Hittite library found in
Turkey. This gives us confidence to believe that biblical difficulties
not yet explained do have an explanation, and we need not assume that there
is a mistake in the Bible" (The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1999,
pp. 46-47).
