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BH>Even though I haven't heard back from Tommy, I wanted to get my part of BH>this grand debate out of the way and let the chips fall as they may.
BH>The Bible contradiction I have chosen is between Exodus 6:16-20 and BH>Exodus 12:40-41. It deals with the amount of time spent in Egypt and BH>the two passages both give differing amounts of time. Exodus 12 claims BH>that 430 years passed while Exodus 6 gives a geneology of people who BH>lived during this time that does not cover 430 years.
Like almost all the genealogies of this style that are found in the Pentateuch (for example, Num. 26:28-34), the one in Exodus 6 of lists a person's family tree by tribe, clan, and family group. This type of classification was common in ancient Near Eastern practice. Similar examples are found in ancient Egypt.
Obviously by Moses' day (compare Num. 3:27-28) the total number of Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites came to 8,600, all of descended from Kohath, the Amram, who had perhaps one-fourth of 8,600 "children" (or 2,150). Obviously, he could not have been the immediate parent of Moses and Aaron unless one wishes to argue that they had over 2000 brothers in that one family! While Moses' father may in fact have been named Amram, he could not have been the same Amram as the one that produced that many descendants.
Fortunately we can look to 1 Chronicles where we have several genealogies that are more complete, and these indicate that there were nine or ten generations between the sons of Jacob and the generation of Moses. For example, 1 Chronicles 7:25 tells us there were ten links between Ephraim and Joshua: Beriah to Rephah to Resheph to Telah to Tahan to Ladan to Ammihud to Elishama to Nun to Joshua. Bezalel, who designed the tabernacle (Exod. 31:2-11), was in the seventh generation from Jacob (cf. 1 Chron. 2:1,4-5,9,18-20). Elishama, mentioned in Numbers 1:10, was in the ninth generation from Jacob (1 Chron. 7:22-27).
Nine or ten generations between Jacob and Moses harmonizes very well with a 430-year period for the Israelites to have been in Egypt (probably between 1875 and 1445 B.C.). This would average out to 43 years per generation. (Some hold to a 215-year theory. This is based on the Septuagint's version of Exod. 12:40, which only yields 215 years for the time in Egypt, giving an average of 21 years per generation. In the case of Bezalel and Joshua, this is highly unlikely. So also is the increase of the original 70 or 75 in Jacob's immigrant group to over two million souls by Moses' time.)
BH>I did want to say something about "solving" contradictions. I have read BH>apologetic works by Gleason Archer, Josh McDowell and many others who BH>tend to use the "any explanation is a good explanation" method. By this BH>I mean that if they can invent an explanation, no matter how far fetched BH>or implausible, they will declare the contradiction to be solved. I BH>would certainly hope that when and if Tommy takes this contradiction on, BH>he would try to limit himself to the text, or at least to reasonable BH>explanations that actually do solve the contradiction, not just invent a BH>convenient patch. Under the "any explanation is a good explanation" BH>method, one can reconcile *ANY* two passages in any book ever written, BH>but it really proves nothing more than that the reconciler has a good BH>imagination. We're looking for truth, not for which person is more BH>clever and can invent the best explanation.
I would suggest to anyone reading this, that they actually look at the works of the authors in question. They are an atheists worst nightmare. Archer has written extensively in the field, and Josh McDowell pretty much laid to rest any claim that Christ's life cannot be proven. Oh well, I guess Brian knew he was in a bind, and wanted to try any way out. The simple truth is, this contradiction, like most, can be dealt with by looking at both the external information (Brian apparently would conveniently ignore the fact that this is Hebrew literature, not English.) and the rest of the Bible. The "limit himself to the text" line sounds good, but is actually itself very much a obfuscation of the truth....not a search for it.