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I have a question. I ran across something this morning that “seems” like a discrepancy in the Bible. I don’t know why I never ran across this before as many times as I have read the Bible. Perhaps it is because I recently had cataract surgery in both eyes and was listening to an audio Bible instead of reading it. Anyway, I was listening to the Holman Christian Study Bible and heard a passage that sounded like it varied greatly from KJV so, of course, I pulled up KJV. It was the passage where Stephen was preaching just before he was stoned. Acts 7:19-21. I then decided to go into Exodus 1:16-22 to compare. My question is this, why does the account in Ex. say that the male children were cast into the river, which almost assuredly means they would die but the account in Acts makes it sound like * or at least to me * that they were just cast out of the house? Am I missing something?

Curious to see the replies.

John Kissinger [02/02/2016 7:47 AM]
Did you follow the steps for a BIBLE STUDY TO A DEEPER LEVEL? http://www.pentecostaltheology.com/bible-study-to-a-deeper-level/

Stan Wayne [02/02/2016 7:52 AM]
Don’t know what version he was reading to you but ASV (very rigidly literal) shows no contradiction:

“The same dealt craftily with our race, and ill-treated our fathers, that they should cast out their babes to the end they might not live.”
Acts 7:19 ASV

Benjamin DiZoglio [02/02/2016 8:28 AM]
There is no contradiction in the Word of God, although something’s when we read in one passage something that seems to vary from another we must still understand that these were men sharing their account of what happened and the way they know the story or the way they saw it happen. Just like an accident, an officer gets ALL the accounts from everyone that saw it and they will have a little different story but point to the same truth, one saw it from behind another from the parking lot across the street another from the side…. The gospels all tell most of the same stories but have a little difference in them. Don’t let little things that have nothing to do with our salvation effect you as satan is ALWAYS trying to get us to look at and question these things. God Bless you sister and hope this helps.

John Kissinger [02/02/2016 8:28 AM]
now what does DAKE say about that? Corey Conger Ricky

Melody Cates Kinzer [02/02/2016 8:35 AM]
Milton, I would be interested in what your take on this would be.

Corey Forsyth [02/02/2016 8:37 AM]
I don’t know about Dake, but I saw a lecture from RC Sproul on studying the Bible and he said a very similar thing as Benjamin DiZoglio just stated. He went on to explain that what is crucial to understanding the Bible is context. You cannot interpret metaphors in the same way as historical accounts. You also can’t drain historical context from poetic lyric. As far as the historical accounts, when reading original historical accounts vs. recollections of those accounts, there will be discrepancies in the details but not in the main points and principles. Minor discrepancies certainly do not classify as error.
There are my two cents worth anyway! 🙂

Tj Stoner [02/02/2016 10:08 AM]
stick with the King James. There are places where the NIV is different from the King James. If you compare the KJV with the original greek / hebrew you will see it is the closest translation. Other translations are more interpretations as opposed to translations. …and people will argue this until they’re blue in the face but study will prove it.

Stan Wayne [02/02/2016 10:32 AM]
Tj – you really need to study this a bit more – the translations like ASV, NASV, ESV are quite good – the main dispute is over very old (@250 A.D.) manuscripts that were not available to the KJV translators who relied on what is called textus receptus – textus receptus was hand copied later but has some arguments favoring its lineage but the older ones made available are called Vaticanus (was in Vatican and Protestants couldn’t go look) and Sinaiticus which was found in disrepair in a monastery in 1800s –

Also Dead Sea scrolls help with OT Etc but Most modern translations are honest attempts to give us the best rendition of English translation of the best available Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.