>You have to show contradiction in two texts of the Bible that speak
>against each other...
>
>A historical innacuracy...
>
>one text contradicting another...
>
>
>find one...
>Richard
So now I will accommodate Richard by "find[ing] one":
The following argument, which I presented in a written debate with a Church-of Christ preacher establishes chronological error in the book of Genesis. BTW, this debate is sitting unfinished, because the preacher dropped out. At any rate, I would appreciate Richard's solution to the problem.
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How Many Went into Egypt?
Farrell Till
My task is to prove that "the Bible contains numerical contradictions." The word Bible, of course, needs no expla- nation, so the only key terms requiring definition are "numerical" and "contra- dictions." Numerical is an adjective that means "relating to or having the nature of numbers," and contradictions, as I will be using it, means "discrepancies" or "inconsistencies." I am affirming, then, that the biblical text is sometimes incon- sistent or discrepant in its use of numbers.
The records involving the descent of Jacob's family into Egypt are typical of the numerical inconsistencies that characterize many OT stories. Genesis 46:26 states that 66 souls "came with Jacob into Egypt," so that Joseph and his two sons who were already in Egypt, along with Jacob himself, made a total of 70 Israelites who went into Egypt (Gen. 46:27). In his famous speech in Acts 7, however, Stephen said that "threescore and fifteen" or 75 souls went into Egypt (v:14). Inerrantists have stretched imagination to the limits to try to explain this discrepancy, so I suppose that Mr. Hatcher will be prepared to give a standard Gleason Archer/John Haley "explanation" to the problem.
For this reason, I will ask Mr. Hatcher not to waste too much time on this familiar discrepancy so that we can focus attention on another, less known, numerical discrepancy in this same story. The problem concerns the accuracy of Genesis 46 in its listing of the family members who made the trip into Egypt with Jacob. As previously noted, sixty- six members of his family allegedly accompanied him on this trip (Gen. 46:26). All of these people were indi- vidually listed in verses 8-24, and among them were Hezron and Hamul (v:12), the great-grandsons of Jacob through Perez, one of his twin grandsons born to Tamar, who had tricked Jacob's son Judah into impregnating her (Gen. 38:12-30). The problem is that if Judah actually did have two grandsons who had already been born to Perez at the time of Jacob's descent into Egypt, then other sections of the biblical narrative cannot be numerically correct.
We can determine this from certain chronological information given about Joseph, Jacob's son who was sold into Egypt by his jealous brothers. Joseph was seventeen years old when his broth- ers betrayed him (Gen. 37:2). Immedi- ately after the events of the betrayal were related, the Genesis writer said, "And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua; and he took her and went in unto her" (38:1-2). Now if this happened "at that time," what else can we believe except that the writer meant that Judah married the Canaanite woman at the time following the selling of Joseph? To argue otherwise is to render meaningless a transitional ex- pression ("at that time") that the writer was obviously using to let his readers know when Judah's marriage had oc- curred. It had occurred "at that time" when Joseph was sold into Egypt.
According to the story, Judah's Canaanite wife conceived and bore a son named Er, then conceived again and bore a son named Onan, and finally conceived and bore a third son named Shelah (vv:2-5). Er grew up and married Tamar, but before the marriage had produced children, Er did something to offend God, who then killed him. Under the requirements of Levirate law, Judah told Er's brother Onan to "go in unto [his] brother's wife... and raise up seed to [his] brother." Onan went in to his brother's wife, but, knowing that the child produced would not be legally his, he "spilled [his seed] on the ground." This so angered God that he killed Onan too (Gen. 38:6-10). Judah, fearful that tragedy would befall his last son Shelah, urged Tamar to "remain a widow in [her] father's house till Shelah [his] son be grown up... lest he also die like his brethren" (v:11).
Tamar obligingly retired to her father's house, and "in the process of time" (v:12) Judah's Canaanite wife died, at which time Judah went up to his sheep-shearers at Timnah to be com- forted. Meanwhile, realizing that Ju- dah's son Shelah was grown but that she had not yet been given to him in Levirate marriage, Tamar posed as a prostitute and conspired to trick Judah into impreg- nating her. The plan worked, and Tamar subsequently gave birth to twin sons, Perez and Zerah (vv:13-30). It was this Perez* who fathered Hezron and Hamul, who were listed in Genesis 46:12 as two of the sixty-six members of Ja- cob's family who accompanied him into Egypt.
So what is the point of all this? To see the significance of it, we have to think in reasonable terms of how many years would have had to pass for all the events in Genesis 38 to happen. If we assume that Judah married his Canaanite wife the day after he and his brothers had sold Joseph into Egypt, and if we further assume that Judah's wife became pregnant the very night of their wedding, and then if we further assume that Judah's second son, Onan, was conceived immediately after Er's birth, this would have made the brothers about a year apart in their ages. Now, if we suppose that Er married Tamar immediately upon reaching puberty, say, when he was a mere 12 years old, and if we further suppose that Onan went into Tamar when he too was only 12 years old, then Onan's death would have occurred about fourteen years after the selling of Joseph into Egypt, because Onan's puberty (at age twelve) could not have occurred until about fourteen years after Judah's marriage to his Canaanite wife.
There is a clear indication that more than just one year separated Onan and Shelah, because Judah implored Tamar to remain a widow in her father's house "till Shelah [his] son be grown up" (v:11). Exactly how many years separat- ed them we don't know, but the Genesis writer certainly implied that more than just a short while separated Onan's death and Tamar's conspiracy to trick Judah into impregnating her, because the writer bridged the interval by saying that "in the process of time" Judah's wife died. Surely this is not an expression he would have used if only a few weeks or even a few months had passed. Further- more, the writer said that Tamar had seen that "Shelah was grown up" (v:14). Both of these statements imply the passage of a considerable period of time, for certainly Tamar would not have had to see that Shelah was grown up if he had been only a year or so younger than Onan. She would have known without "seeing" that he was grown. There is even a textual implication that many years separated Onan and Shelah, for the writer said that Judah's wife bore Shelah "at Chezib" (v:5). This place is mentioned nowhere else in the Bible, and some scholars think that this is because it was not a place. They think that the Hebrew word kezib was actually derived from kazab, meaning "to stop flowing." If so, the implication is that Judah's wife gave birth to Shelah and then ceased having her menstrual cycle or in other words experienced meno- pause, and this is exactly what the NEB understands the word to mean. Lamsa's translation from the Peshitta text renders the verse, "and after she bore him [Shelah] she stopped bearing." These translations are consistent with Judah's request that Tamar return to her father's house and wait until his son Shelah "be grown up" (v:11), a definite implication that Shelah at the time was considerably younger than Onan.
To make my point, however, it isn't necessary to assume that Shelah was "considerably younger" than Onan. Let's just assume that only two years had passed between Onan's death and Tamar's realization that "Shelah was grown up" (v:14). Let's further assume that Tamar, after realizing that "Shelah was grown up," immediately tricked Judah into impregnating her. Even at that, her twin sons, Perez and Zerah, could not have been born until about seventeen years after Judah's marriage to his Canaanite wife, whom he had married "at that time" (the selling of Joseph into Egypt). Let's now be gen- erous to Mr. Hatcher and assume that Perez, like his half-brothers Er and Onan, had married immediately upon reaching puberty at age twelve. Let's further assume that he immediately impregnated his wife, whoever she was, and that she also gave birth to twin sons, Hezron and Hamul, who only days after their birth accompanied their great- grandfather Jacob into Egypt with sixty- four other members of the family clan. Even this would put the births of Hezron and Hamul at least thirty years after the selling of Joseph into Egypt. This figure is arrived at by the following formula: 2 (the time it took Judah's wife to give birth to Er and Onan) + 11 (the time required after Onan's birth for Er to attain puberty) + 1 (the time needed after Er's death for Onan to attain puberty) + 2 (the time for Shelah to grow up and Tamar to realize that Judah did not intend to give her to Shelah in marriage) + 1 (the time for Tamar to trick Judah and then carry her twins to term) + 12 (the time for Hezron to attain puberty and marry) + 1 (the time for Hezron's wife to carry her assumed twins to term). The numbers add up to thirty, and surely no one would seriously argue that all of this could have occurred within a time frame of less than thirty years. Reasonable people, who have no pet theories to protect, would even agree that a much longer period of time would have passed. To add ten or even fifteen years to our hypothetical thirty would not be at all unreasonable, because the thirty-year figure is predicated on the assumptions that (1) all events happened in rapid succession, that (2) three broth- ers all attained puberty at twelve and became sexually active at that age, that (3) one of the twelve year olds was sophisticated enough sexually to know how to prevent pregnancy by coitus inter- ruptus, and that (4) one of the three immediately impregnated his mate. That any one of these happened is very un- likely, but to believe that they all hap- pened, one would have to be naively credulous.
With the chronology in this period of Judah's life agreed upon, let's now return to Joseph. As previously noted, he was seventeen when his brothers sold him into Egypt (Gen. 37:2). Through a long, complicated process that I will be as brief as possible in relating, Joseph found favor with the Egyptian pharaoh and was made food administrator. If the Bible record is historically correct, Joseph was in Egypt thirteen years before this promotion occurred, because he was "thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt" (Gen 41:46). Joseph was put into this adminis- trative position as a result of his dream interpretations in which he had predict- ed seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. When he made himself known to his brothers, who had come into Egypt to find food during the famine, Joseph said in identifying him- self, "For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and there are yet five years, in which there shall be neither plowing nor harvest" (45:6). So if Joseph was 30 years old when he "stood before pharaoh" and if seven years of plenty and two years of famine had passed when he revealed his identity to his brothers, then he was only thirty- nine at this time. In other words, Jo- seph's reunion with his brothers oc- curred only twenty-two years after he was sold into Egypt. He then sent his brothers back into Canaan to bring his father and family into Egypt where there would be food to sustain them during the famine (Gen. 45:19-28; 46:1-27).
The problem should be apparent by now. Between the selling of Joseph into Egypt and his reunion with his brothers, certain events had allegedly transpired in Judah's life that required a bare mini- mum of thirty years, and, as I indicated, we have to stretch every detail of the story to confine these events to only thirty years. Yet during all of this time only twenty-two years had passed in the life of Joseph. How could that have happened?
The conclusion is inescapable: either the events that the Genesis writer recorded in the life of Joseph are not chronologically accurate or else the events he recorded in Judah's life are not chronologically accurate. It is impossi- ble for his chronology of both lives to be numerically correct. Thus, there is at least one historical error in the Bible.
* This Perez born to Tamar and Judah is the same Perez who was the great-grandfather of Aaron's wife Eliseba, a relationship that causes problems with reconciling the banning of bastards from the assembly of Yahweh "even unto ten generations" (Dt. 23:2) with the appoint- ment of Elisheba's sons as the first priests of Israel (Num. 3:1-3). This problem was explored in "No Bastards Allowed" (TSR, Spring 1994, pp. 7.12,16) and "What was a 'Mamzer'?" TSR, Spring 1995, pp. 8-9).
TSR is *The Skeptical Review,* a bimonthly journal that I publish on the subject of biblical inerrancy. A free first-year subscription is available to all who request it.
Farrell Till, Editor The Skeptical Review jft@aol.com