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Q.
Are there any mistakes in the Bible?
For example, check out Romans 16:7. Does your Bible read “Greet
Andronicus and Junias,” or “Greet Andronicus and Junia”? It’s not simply a
letter being added or subtracted. Junia was a common Latin name for women;
Junias is assumed to be a man’s name, but there are no instances of this name
in ancient literature.^2 Why does it matter? Because Junia is the only female
apostle mentioned in the New Testament. Erasing her, and the scriptural argu-
ment that women were apostles, was as simple as adding a letter.
All of this can hardly be reassuring to anyone who wants to read and
interpret the Bible with confi dence and use it as a basis for living. I recom-
mend buying a good study Bible, translated and compiled by a panel of
scholars (not just one or two). Study Bibles have footnotes explaining where
variations in the text are signifi cant. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t
enjoy reading The Message or the traditional King James Version, or other para-
phrases or translations.
Jason Boyett
A.
Some Christians believe that because the Bible was inspired by
God, it cannot contain mistakes or contradictions. Why? Because
God is perfect, and something God “wrote” must be perfect. But,
inspiration aside, we should remember that scripture was written by men over
centuries, during a primitive time. It seems logical that some passages may not
agree with each other.
Some mistakes can be explained based on the primitive science of the
time—for example, biblical writers thought the sun revolved around the earth.
Today we know better. But other mistakes are due to factual inconsistencies
from one passage to another. A famous one is the account of the “Cleansing of
the Temple.”
Matthew, Mark, and Luke report that this event occurred in the week
before Jesus was crucifi ed, at the end of his ministry (Mt. 21:12–13). But in
John, this event takes place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Jn. 2:12–25).
The rational explanation is that John got the chronology wrong, or altered the
timeline for theological/literary reasons. But biblical literalists, attempting
to prove the Bible is without error, explain the contradiction by saying Jesus
cleansed the temple twice—once at the beginning of his ministry and then
again at the end.
Remember that the gospel accounts were written decades after the time
of Christ and passed along largely via storytelling. It seems reasonable that
some of the details among different accounts wouldn’t match up exactly. Less
- Heidi Bright Parales, Hidden Voices: Biblical Women and Our Christian Heritage
(Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 1998), 65–66.