Q.
128
Are there any mistakes in the Bible? Like
what?
David J. Lose
A.
That depends upon what you mean. If by “mistake” you mean that
biblical authors wrote something they didn’t intend, then no. But
if you mean that there are things in the Bible that aren’t factually
accurate, then the answer is yes.
Before getting too upset by this, it’s important to keep in mind that
factual accuracy, as we understand it today, is a relatively modern invention.
Prior to the Enlightenment and the rise of a scientifi c worldview, people didn’t
think in terms of facts that could be verifi ed but rather in terms of truth that
could be believed.
Nowhere in its pages does the Bible claim to be a science or history text-
book. Rather, it is a collection of the confessions of Israel and the early church
about what God was up to in the world. Near the end of his gospel, John
doesn’t say he wrote “in order to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus
is the messiah.” Instead he writes, “so that you may believe.. .” (Jn. 20:30–31).
The question to ask, then, when one encounters an apparent mistake is
not, “Is this accurate?” but rather, “What is the author trying to confess about
God?”
For instance, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all say that Jesus was crucifi ed on
the Passover. John, however, says it was the day before the Passover. Did John
make a mistake? No, he was making a confession that Jesus is the Passover
lamb who takes away the sin of the world, and so in his account Jesus dies the
evening before Passover, at the exact time the Passover lambs were slaugh-
tered. John didn’t make a mistake; he made a confession of faith.Rebecca Bowman Woods
A.
The biblical text has a long and sometimes controversial history.
Original manuscripts were copied and recopied over centuries.
According to scholar and author Bart Ehrman, in his book Misquot-
ing Jesus, there are more than fi fty-seven hundred Greek manuscripts of the
New Testament alone. So it’s no surprise that errors were introduced. And
that’s before the texts were translated into Latin, and later, the King’s English.
On top of errors introduced in the process of reproducing and translat-
ing, some copyists made editorial changes—adding their own interpretations
and embellishments, and deleting or changing passages to make the text more
socially acceptable.