Internal Consistency of The Bible - Old Testament

Old Testament

Modern scholars ascribe Old Testament inconsistencies to the process by which they were created. For example, the documentary hypothesis suggests that repetitions and contradictions are the result of texts that have been woven together from diverse sources written by different authors, at different times. Joseph Jensen wrote, "no better explanation has as yet been found of the complexities of composition of the Pentateuch, and it continues to command a good consensus among scholars".

Ronald Witherup gives the example of Genesis 1-2, which most scholars view as two separate stories of creation written by different authors in different time periods. "Most biblical scholars accept Genesis 1 as originating around the sixth century B.C. with a group of scribes who were concerned about the preservation of the liturgical traditions of the Jews (thus the concern for the seven-day schema of creation and the notion of the sabbath). Genesis 2, on the other hand, originates from an earlier, more primitive tradition dated to around the tenth century B.C. Fundamentalists, however, do not view the two stories as separate, the first one (Gen 1:1-2:4) being poetic and the second one (Gen 2:4-25) being more anthropomorphic, i.e., describing God in very human terms as a divine sculptor who forms the first human being out of dust. For fundamentalists, this is not a second story of creation but merely 'further detail' about the story of creation. This makes the differences in the accounts only apparent rather than substantive."

There are several places in the Old Testament where numerical figures can be directly compared. Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 list the "people of the province who came up out of the captivity of the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away to Babylon, and returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his city". Both give a total figure of 42,360 (Ezra 2:64, Nehemiah 7:66 ). A third version of the list exists in the apocryphal book 1 Esdras. The numbers of members of each tribe given within the lists differ, none of which add up to the total of 42,360.