You know, a few years ago, I saw this poster from Sam Harris and the Reason Project. He was sponsoring it and it was talking about all of the different biblical contradictions. Now, here's kind of how it went. There was this infographic from years and years ago where this guy had mapped out all of the different references in the Bible. So there was a a bar for all the different books in the Bible and a line from one to another every time it made a connection and there was something like 60,000 connections between all the different books of the Bible. But the Reason Project took it and took out all of the references except for the ones that seem to be contradictions and they narrowed it down from these thousands and thousands of verse references to a list of 439 that were apparently contradictions. And the cumulative case they made was, well, if the Bible has all these contradictions, then you can't really trust it. But I'm going to show you that that's not exactly true. You know, there's all kinds of things on this list. There is biblical contradictions that really aren't contradictions, but there's actually some ones in there that are legitimate questions and need answering and possibly some that don't really have an answer at the current moment. But to show you the level of quality that Sam Harris apparently accepts in his work, I'm going to show you a couple of the low-hanging fruit. And maybe this is perhaps why you can't really find it online anymore. First, I want to show you two things about this poster that I think take away from the overall claim it makes. There's 439 contradictions on this list and yes, I looked at all of them and I can't believe that there's at least a few that are exactly duplicates of one another. And some of them are directly in line with one another. You'll have one and the one right after it is the exact same, exact same question, exact same verse references. Now that's not all over the poster, but the fact that it's on there in the first place is a travesty. And the second thing is there's an apparent contradiction between two books of the Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah. Not to go into all the details now, it's a list of all of the descendants of Israel that returned from Babylon because they were in captivity for a while and they returned back to Israel. It's listed in Ezra and it's later listed in Nehemiah and in some cases the numbers don't match. But instead of saying that this is just one contradiction and treating it like it should be, respectfully like that, they actually listed it out as 18 different contradictions because there's 18 different lines that don't quite match up in this one contradiction. Assuming it actually is a contradiction but more on that later. One last thing, for their research they used the King James version so I'm going to be using that to respond to them. When was Jesus born? Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea and the days of Herod the King behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. There wasn't the days of Herod the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Abaya and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. All three of these verses refer to the time that Jesus was born. The first two seemed to say that Herod was the King and the second one says that Caesar Augustus was the King. So which was it? And no, I'm not making this up. This is actually on the list. In those times Herod was the King of Judea. That's true. But Judea was a kind of client kingdom of Rome. Rome conquered a lot of land and they allowed a lot of people to be somewhat of a governor over a smaller area. So Caesar Augustus was God to the Romans and he was the leader of the overall Roman Empire. But Herod, Herod the Great and his line of Herod kings after him ruled over Judea, which was just part of Rome. I mean it's really that simple, but they put it on this poster anyway. How many believers were there at the time of the ascension? And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples and said the number of names together about 120. After that he was seen of above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remained into this present, but some are fallen asleep. So the last act of Jesus on earth was to ascend into heaven, but was it 120 disciples that were present or over 500? Well this isn't a contradiction even though it seems like one. I was going to go into two different ways of addressing this, based on the facts that I had from the reason project, but then I just decided to read from the beginning of Acts 1 and all of this just fell apart. Acts 1 has an introduction written by Luke for a man named Theophilus and he tells him about what happened in the days of Jesus being on earth. He directly mentions the apostles that Jesus had chosen. Now there were more people named as apostles than just the 12, but this specifically refers to the apostles that Jesus had chosen, meaning the 12 or the 12- Judas really. Jesus was with them for 40 days, doing a lot of miracles and he was assembled together with them while he answered their questions. The they in verse 9 still refers to the 12 apostles, there's no reason to assume that it wasn't, and then they saw Jesus ascend, so according to Luke who wrote Acts the 12 were the ones present at the ascension. Then one whole day later in Jerusalem they went to an upper room with others, so nothing after this point has to do anything with the ascension. This is one day later because they traveled from the mount of olives to Jerusalem. Even further it says in those days, not on that day when referring to Peter standing up in the midst of the disciples, meaning that it wasn't even the next day, but perhaps sometime later like a week. So if these verses actually referred to the same thing at the same time, this might be a contradiction, but they don't actually. They referred to two completely different things. The 500 disciples that Paul refers to probably happened sometime in the 40 days that Jesus was on earth with the disciples, but this group of 120 has nothing to do with the 12 apostles or those 500 men. Did Jesus tell his disciples everything? Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things I have learned of my father I have made known unto you. I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. It seems like a contradiction because Jesus at first says he's told his disciples everything and then seems to contradict himself, but that's really not what's happening. Again, context saves the day. Jesus makes it clear that the disciples are no longer like servants, because they now understand his purpose on earth, that's not a claim of absolute knowledge, but just of understanding him. And as for the second part, Jesus is using the past tense, whatever he's learned from the Father so far, he's made known. In other words, he hasn't kept anything from the disciples so far. But then in John 16, he's talking about the Holy Spirit coming in future events, and then he says they'll have much to learn from him. Where's the contradiction? In doing research for this video, I came across something the Bible that seemed like a contradiction at first, so I decided to add a bonus. The 12 were the ones present at the ascension, so how is it that Paul says that Jesus appeared to him last? This is referring to 1 Corinthians 156 again because Paul says that he was the one Jesus last came to as one born of untimely birth. In Acts 9, Paul's conversion is detailed. On the road to Damascus, he's traveling with others and a voice from heaven comes to him. He says that none of them can see God, but all of them have heard the voice. A light fell upon him, and he was blinded, probably by the glory of God. So Paul saw the glory of heaven, which blinded him, but it wasn't a bodily appearance of Jesus, like it was for the others. And Paul was on the road to Damascus after a Matthias was picked to replace Judas, and that happened after the bodily ascension, so in the timeline it makes sense. He was the last one to have Christ appear to him in some way, but it wasn't a bodily appearance like the others. It was some kind of radiant light that blinded him. The point of Sam Harris's infographic, and really any atheist when they're attacking biblical anerity, is to say that the Bible can't be trusted, and so therefore it's not true, and Christianity therefore is false. But really, Christianity depends on the death and resurrection of Christ, not on the Bible. Yeah, forgetting the whole Bible, we can actually almost build the entire gospel story just from extra-biblical sources, but more on that here. For now, these contradictions I've covered have nothing to do with the death and resurrection of Christ, and they don't undermine that in any way, so they're really inconsequential, even if they had some kind of effect. But as I've shown you, they don't have any effect at all, because they're not actually contradictions. I'll see you next time.