The Argument from Biblical Defects is Sound

There is no problem on the issue of two genealogies of Matthew & Luke; the source Pro gave didn’t even lead to right article,moreover it’s irrelevant if some early groups had trouble grasping the topic. Let me quote an excerpt from the link I gave earlier.“Genealogy was serious business for Jews returning from exile in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. The first eight chapters of 1 Chronicles are taken up with genealogies beginning with those found elsewhere in the Bible (mainly in Genesis) and branching out into all twelve of Jacob’s sons. Some families receive more thorough coverage than others, and the most attention is paid to the priestly families and the descendants of David. These genealogies are clearly derived from different sources. Some give the names in descending order (like Matthew, beginning with the most ancient) while others list ancestors in ascending order (like Luke, beginning with the most recent). Occasionally the Chronicler will include a brief bit of history about one of his subjects (e.g., Jabez, 1 Chr 4:9-10), but mostly there are only lists of names.It is in fact likely that both accounts of Jesus’ genealogy skip generations here and there. This is not entirely unheard of in ancient genealogies in general and in Jewish genealogies in particular. A generation might be skipped for any number of reasons. Most obviously and mundanely, the genealogist simply may not have had the necessary data to include every generation. Another mundane explanation may be that a person’s father died young, perhaps even during the son’s formative years. In that case, a man might be reckoned “the son” of someone who was actually his grandfather. It must be noted, of course, that in Hebraic thought one’s “father” need not be one’s immediate male ancestor—any male ancestor up the line can qualify for that title. That is why Matthew can call Jesus both “son of David” and “son of Abraham.”Some have suggested there are gaps in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew in order to reproduce the pattern of “fourteen generations” to which the author explicitly calls attention (Abraham to David, David to the Exile, the Exile to Christ). This phenomenon may be related to the numerical value of the name David, the sum of whose Hebrew letters (דוד) add up to fourteen. Although less often suggested, Luke’s list of seventy-seven names might have been intended to represent eleven sets of seven names each. According to Metzger, with a reading for Luke 3:33 that involves three names rather than two, Luke’s genealogy”I did address the argument that a particular prophesy in Isaiah is a failed one. The passage rather seems to be end times prophesy. Here is an article addressing that. http://tinyurl.com... Then pro denied the evidence for Nebuchadnezzar that they could be manipulated, but that’s argument from silence. If you appeal to the same sources, you can’t deny some selectively at the same time.Let me answer Pro’s point 3.4 further, regarding the alleged textual variances- to make give a detailed insight. The following is the excerpt from James White from a debate transcript; He has quoted Ehrman himself to strengthen his point. James said: "There are about 1,500 to 2,000 viable, meaningful textual variants that must be examined carefully, comprising maybe—at most—1% of the entire text of the New Testament. Of these, historically, scholars have believed the vast majority are scribal errors of sight or hearing. Let me quote one scholar on this:"Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant; in fact most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple— slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another when scribes made intentional changes, sometimes their motives were as pure as the driven snow. And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the “original” text. This oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (very closely) related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the basis for our interpretation of his teaching."The gentleman that I’m quoting is Bart Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus. [audience laughter] Now, what of the assertion that the text of the New Testament was corrupted before our earliest manuscript evidence? We have a dozen manuscripts within the first 100 years after the writing of the New Testament. All are fragmentary, but grand total they represent a majority of the books in the New Testament and about 4/10 of the text of the New Testament. We have more than 120 manuscripts within the first 300 years. Now, a key fact that must be kept in mind, regarding the New Testament manuscript tradition, is the existence of multiple lines of transmission. Let’s illustrate what we mean. The earliest manuscripts in our possession demonstrate the existence not of a single line of corrupt transmission, but multiple lines of transmission of varying accuracy. Many of these lines intersect and cross defying easy identification. But the important thing to remember is that multiple lines are a good thing. They ensure a healthy manuscript tradition that is not under the control of any central editing process. One of the examples often noted related to the early transmission of the text is a relationship between this manuscript, P75 (from around A.D 175) and this manuscript, Codex Vaticanus (from A.D. 325).These two manuscripts are clearly very closely related in their text. Indeed, they may be more alike than any other two ancient manuscripts in the portions where Vaticanus contains the same sections of Scripture as P75—Vaticanus is a much larger manuscript obviously. But remember, 150 years separates the copying of these two manuscripts. And yet we know that Vaticanus is not a copy of P75, for it actually contains readings that are earlier than some in P75. This means we have a very clean, very accurate line of transmission, illustrated by these two texts, that goes back to the very earliest part of the 2nd century itself. What this illustrates needs to be kept in mind—the burden of proof lies upon the skeptic, who asserts corruption of the primitive New Testament text since the extant manuscripts demonstrate multiple lines of independent transmission. The skeptic must explain how the New Testament text can appear in history, via multiple lines of transmission, and yet each line presents the same text, yet without any controlling authority."Source: James White Vs Bart “Does the Bible Misquote Jesus?” mp3 and transcript pdf here http://www.apologetics315.com...The crucial point to understand from the Christian answer here is to see the meaning, definition of certain doctrines of the Biblical text. Be open to possible interpretations, by not assuming a particular interpretation to be the only possible Christian position. I think it’s quite evident that there are no such contradictions in the Bible that are irresolvable problem in the central doctrine. Whatever the alleged discrepancies skeptics find are extremely peripheral; that is to say- even if they happen to be irresolvable, they don’t affect the Biblical doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy; however as I have presented, there are no such errors or defects as the skeptic assume in the given argument.