Why The Bible’s Contradictions Do Not Refute It

Most people never do any serious writing. They will not understand this aphorism, although they will tell themselves that they do.

The same person is a different writer on different days.
And different writers write differently.

When a person writes, they do so while in a certain frame of mind.

And most written works are produced over the course of several sessions.

So a person will write a bit one day, leave, and then return to write some more on the next.

When he writes on the first day, he is in one frame of mind. When he writes on the second, he is in another.

Now, the meaning that words take, as well as the method by which one chooses their words, changes when a person leaves one state of mind for another.

An author who writes while they are in one state does so with different meaning and intention than when they are in another state.

So a person may write words with one meaning in a single sitting and then write those same words with a different meaning in another.

Later, a reader may encounter these words and, failing to understand that the writer changed during the course of his writing sessions, will assign the same meaning to the same words in the same work.

Which is reasonable.

So this reasonable assignment which is born from ignorance of the writing process will produce incoherent interpretations; the reader believes certain words to possess meaning other than that which the writer had intended when they were written.

Many religious and philosophical texts contain contradictions because of this effect. As a rule, these contradictions need not refute the text, but they require the reader to discern the author’s frame of mind when the words were being written. Those who fail to do so will find irreconcilable errors.

Books are written by people, and people write strangely.