Take the Bible Quiz!

Great Debates
1

I’ve been looking thru my Bible looking for verses. It’s been a while since I escaped my “religious phase” a few years back. So it was surprising how little I remembered from those days. How about you? Take this Quick Bible Quiz (answers are below):

Let’s have a little quiz:

  1. When was Jesus crucified?
    A) Third hour
    B) Sixth hour

  2. How many “clean” animals were taken on the ark?
    A) Two of each
    B) Seven of each

  3. Who was Jesus’ grandfather (on Joseph’s side)?
    A) Jacob
    B) Heli

  4. How many people were at Jesus’ tomb on Easter?
    A) 1
    B) 2
    C) 3

  5. And who did they see at that tomb?
    A) an angel
    B) two angels
    C) a young man
    D) two young men

  6. Which was created first in Genesis?
    A) Beasts
    B) Man

  7. Should we be punished for the sins of our fathers?
    A) No
    B) Yes

  8. What did Jesus say right before he “gave up the ghost?”
    A) My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
    B) Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit
    C) It is finished

  9. Where was the Sermon on the Mount?
    A) On a plain
    B) On a mount, silly

  10. Are there any totally righteous people?
    A) No
    B) Yes

  11. When was Jesus crucified?
    A) Mark 15:25 third hour
    B) John 19:14-15 at the sixth hour, Jesus wasn’t even crucified yet

  12. How many clean animals were taken on the ark?
    A) Genesis 7:8-9 Two each of clean and unclean
    B) Genesis 7:2 Seven of clean, two of unclean

  13. Who was Jesus’ grandfather (on Joseph’s side)?
    A) Matthew 1:16 Jacob was Joseph’s father
    B) Luke 3:23 Heli was Joseph’s father

  14. How many people were at Jesus’ tomb on Easter?
    A) John 20:1 Just Mary Magdalene
    B) Matthew 28:1 Mary Magdalene and another Mary
    C) Mark 16:1 Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Salome

  15. And who did they see at that tomb?
    A) Matthew 28:2 “Angel of the Lord”
    B) John 20:12 “Two angels in white”
    C) Mark 16:5 “a young man”
    D) Luke 24:4 “two men”

  16. Which was created first in Genesis?
    A) Genesis 1:25,26 Beasts, then man on the next day
    B) Genesis 2:18,19 Man, and later beasts

  17. Should we be punished for the sins of our fathers?
    A) Deutoronomy 24:16 …neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
    B) Isaiah 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers…

  18. What did Jesus say right before he “gave up the ghost?”
    A) Matthew 27:46,50: … saying, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?” that is to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” …Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
    B) Luke 23:46: …he said, “Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:” and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
    C) John 19:30: …he said, “It is finished:” and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

  19. Where was the Sermon on the Mount?
    A) Luke 6:17,20: “And he came DOWN with them, and stood in the PLAIN”
    B) Matthew 5:1,2: “he went UP into a MOUNTAIN”

  20. Are there any totally righteous people?
    A) Romans 3:10 “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, NOT ONE.”
    B) Luke 1:6 “And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.”

How did you do?
10/10. Very good! No doubt you remember “All Scripture is God-breathed” and “God is not the author of confusion”. (2 Timothy 3:16, 1 Corinthians 14:33)

2

Pretty cool!

3

You must have meant “Take the New Testament Quiz”.

4

And your point is…?

5

Can’t speak for the New Testament stuff, but your Old Testament “contradictions” were explained centuries ago in the Talmud.

If you’re genuinely interested in how, ask in another post to this message thread. If the whole point of your post was to put on a show of cynicism, don’t bother.

It doesn’t take too much work to get past the superficial and seek a genuine understanding of the Bible. Unfortunately, these days, too many people take delight in the superficial inconsistencies and then just assume it can’t be true.

6

cmkeller,

::applause::

Well-said. ;j

7

I have an e-mail which I will gladly forward to anyone interested (I won’t post it because it’s extremely loing and the formatting would be a bitch) with a TON of Biblical contradictions.

Now, ask Navigator (from LBMB) and he can answer all of them to his own satisfaction (and to the satisfaction of many others) and will claim that with careful study, all supposed contradictions vanish!

Ask a skeptic and he will simply say “it’s black and white a contradiction,” and debate the finer points of it with this in mind.

Now, here’s my Uniterian outlook:

The Bible may have been inspired by God, but it was written by man. MEN, actually. Many of them. And I think that God speaks to everyone differently, which is why we’re all different. Which is why it is not too surprising that a book written by a ton of people over many years has contradictions out the ass.

Now, it pains me that Fundies see mentioning this an attack on their book and their beliefs (that “If you question some of it, you question all of it” nonsense), and it equally pains me if an atheist would attempt to invalidate the book with this knowledge (though I really think that happens all that frequently).

Ultimately, I feel the Bible is a great book with some excellent lessons in morality (as is a few other religious texts, not for nothing). But just as it infuriates me when people want to use it as a science textbook, it saddens me when someone else wants to use it as a logic excersise too.

Yer pal,
Satan

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8

Satan said:

I just wish to clarify that the above quote os his own opinion, and possibly that of some religious groups, but not of Orthodox Judaism.

Chaim Mattis Keller

9

I think Issac Azimov was quoted once saying “Give me the bible and I can prove anything, if I take enough of it out of context.”

10

I didn’t know there were many white supremacists who completely discarded Christianity and the Bible, KlanMan. Learn something new every day, I guess.

11

Well, yeah,I agree. Stuff like that is not relavent to the true worth of the Bible.

But when the world is full of Fundamentalists who pretend their aren’t any contradictions (or “contradictions”) and want to use it a the basis for science class, then pointing these things out is useful.

hey, I don’t know that KM2 is trying to invalidate the Bible. I don’t even know he’s an atheist. matbe he’s just a guy with a bad Fudamentalist experience in his past.

Perhaps this is off the point (perhaps not) but anybody familar with The Residents’ Wormwood? Song about the weird and little known stories on the Bible? like when Zipparah threw Moses’ foreskin at God? (Exodus 4:24-26) Or when Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to YHWH in thanks for victory in battle?(Judges 11:31-40)
(Ulike Baal, YHWH did not recieve human sacrifies.
A.True
B.False)

The Bible is a truely fascinating book.

12

Thanks, Chaim. And thanks, Satan. I was gonna answer the OP, but youse guys did it better than I coulda.

13

So, what is the opinion of Orthodox Judaism?

14

The opinion of Orthodox Judaism is as follows:

The Pentatuch was dictated word-for-word by God to Moses.

The other books of the Jewish Bible were written by men, but divinely inspired.

Zev Steinhardt

15

Zev, may I add a slight clarification?

Orthodox Judaism holds that the Masoreti text of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) were dictated word for word, letter for letter, by God to Moses.

There were deviant texts over the centuries – certainly in the later Old Testament books, such as Judges, Kings, etc. A rabbinic panel set a canonical text, I think around 200 AD or so, IIRC, and since that time there has been no deviation, not by so much as a letter.

Other branches of Judaism, it should be noted, have varying approaches on the extent to which the text is God-given.

HOWEVER, the seeming contradictions in the Pentateuch text have been debated and resolved centuries ago, as cmkeller rightly says. I’m always amazed at people who suddenly hear that different lines of text have different focuses, and think they’ve uncovered the blatant contradiction that will undermine the last 2,000 years or so of organized religion.

New Testament, of course, is something else again. I have no idea how fundamentalists resolve (or bother with) contradictions in New Testament texts.

16

KM2

Great! Now do Ayn Rand and Madalyn Murray O’Hair. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

17

cmkeller

I am not sure that you needed to point out that my views were exactly that - my views - when In my post, I said this very thing:

Emphasis here is mine.

Now, since you brought up the Orthodox view, I find that to be in line with Fundamental Christian beliefs (both Orthodox Judaism and Fundamentalist Protestant movements are just forms of a fundamentalist following of faith anyway).

Since both camps view the Bible as the inerrant Word of God (difference being you guys think it stopped, the other dude think it didn’t and we got the New Testament), it is not surprising that the contradictions would be explainable if you were from those camps (please see the Asimov quite above for my reasoning there).

In a nutshell, just as you, Dex and Zev can take the attitude that “the seeming contradictions in the Pentateuch text have been debated and resolved centuries ago,” (direct quote from CKDextHavn, for those keeping score at home), obviously they are NOT resolved to EVERYONE’S satisfaction. To yours and other people like you (for the purpose of this, I include Fundamentalist Christians in this lumping), yes. Not to all.

If we were to resolve ALL of the contradictions in the Bible, there would be a solid answer as to whether the Jews are right or whether Jesus is the messiah, don’t you think?

Let’s not state things so matter-of-factly that things are hunky-dory and there are no Biblical contradictions that remain unresolved.

I claimed that the view was my personal one. Ultimately, as long as there is a logical reason to doubt innerency (Pi=3), I would say that calling it “resolved” is quite disingenuous. Especially since, as I said, if it were resolved there would be no Jews and Christians anymore - that would be the ultimate discrepency of interpretation, don’t you think?

Oh, and thank you for making me aware that the OP was a dickhead. That said, if a dickhead can start a cool debate, that’s fine - We’ll just leave him in the dust and he’ll go away.

I also appreciate the irony of this, as andros pointed out, since the Klan has always been a “fine Christian organization.”

Yer pal,
Satan

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18

Satan,

Contradictions are all around us.

For example, the First Amendment says that we have a Freedom of Speech (yes, I know it only applied to the federal government, but the BOR has since been exapnded to state and local governments as well…). Yet local laws will tell us that we can’t yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre.

Contradiction. :eek:

Sure, there is a simle explanation. If you choose to accept the explanation. If you don’t choose to accept it, then you don’t accept it.

Zev Steinhardt

19

KM2 wrote, in the OP:

And don’t forget:

When the Earth was first created, was it
A) dry, or
B) covered by water?

20

We can if it’s on fire.