(Thanks for the suggestions in the comments on the plots.)
First I'll plot the number of contradictions in each book by testament.
Notice that the gospels have the most contradictions in the New Testament, as does Genesis in the Old. No big surprise there. But they are also rather big books. What happens if we take size into account?
We can do that with the Contradiction Index, which is just the number of contradictions per 100 verses. Here's what that looks like.
There are some surprises here. James is the most contradictory book of the New Testament, with Malachi taking the gold in the Old.
And here's a log-log plot of the number of contradictions versus the number of verses.
And now on to cruelty!
4 comments:
I'm curious about the most self-contradictory book. I understand that Malachi might contradict something (say) in Genesis but what would be really damning is if Malachi contradicts Malachi.
Hey, I didn't see the blogger share buttons. It would help so that I could tweet this to my followers.
Good question, Tony. I'm interested in that, too. I plan to do an analysis of the contradictions between books. Which books are contradicted the most by James for example? Romans? 1 Corinthians? Galatians? Deuteronomy? That will be fun. (But also a lot of work.)
As for self-contradictions in Malachi, well, I don't know of any. But since it only has 10 contradictions (in its 50 or so verses), it shouldn't be too hard to find out. (I've added links in the post to the list of contradictions for Malachi and James.)
In doing a bible study, I came across 'The skeptics bible'. Actually, it's a pretty good resource! But you really owe it to yourself to look at the 'Christian responses' links at the very bottom. To play this game(honestly and fairly) you have to search out what other learned men have said about these 'contradictions' - Christians who really know the bible. It's very easy to flummox an layman with stuff like this and give yourself a false sense of security.
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