UPDATED BY VCG ON 8/14/2026 @ 10:10 EST#

Anyone can do this, but they won't.#

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I’ll treat the thread as a set of discrete claims rather than as one monolithic argument: first reconstruct what each post is actually asserting, then test factual claims against primary/credible sources, identify rhetorical and psychological techniques, and finally compare the theological claims against the KJV text itself. I’ll keep thread claim, evidence, inference, and Scripture clearly separated so we don’t smuggle conclusions into the fact-check.

/x/ - Paranormal » Thread #42765890 » Biblical Inerrancy is Provably False

I’ve recovered the substantive source the thread was built around: the poster explicitly says the deleted thread was discussing Bentham’s July 13, 2026 essay “Biblical Inerrancy is Provably False,” and the surviving follow-up thread repeats its core framing and several claims. The original 4plebs page itself is returning a 403, so where a deleted post is not independently recoverable I’ll mark that limitation rather than pretend we have wording we do not.

Two early corrections are already clear. First, the debate is not merely “Christians say the Holy Spirit made a flawless English Bible”: Vatican II’s own formulation is about Scripture written under inspiration through genuine human authors, while the KJV itself says prophecy came as holy men “were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

Second, some of the essay’s alleged contradictions are stronger than others. For example, its census argument overstates 2 Samuel 24:1 as a verbal command from God; the verse says the LORD “moved David … to say, Go, number Israel and Judah,” which leaves room for the Chronicles account to identify the immediate tempter. By contrast, Daniel’s historical questions and 2 Peter’s authorship deserve much more careful treatment rather than a one-line harmonization.

The thread’s own methodology turns out to be worth separating from its conclusions. The linked essay explicitly rejects cheap “gotcha contradiction lists” and uses a cumulative probabilistic argument instead; that is a legitimate method in principle. The pressure point is whether its likelihood judgments are independently justified or whether selected hard passages are being counted as evidence after assuming the very historical/moral conclusions under dispute.

The evidence is converging on a mixed verdict rather than a blanket dismissal. Several thread/article points identify real difficulties—especially Levitical slavery, Daniel’s dating/history, 2 Peter’s authorship history, and Mark/John’s crucifixion timing—while several advertised “contradictions” collapse once we distinguish agency, idiom, genre, or sequential events. That distinction matters: a good rebuttal should not defend Scripture by pretending every hard text is easy.

Soli Deo Gloria. I went after this as an evidence audit, not as an exercise in automatically defending every harmonization. That distinction matters, because the linked essay contains a mixture of weak objections, genuine textual tensions, serious historical-critical questions, and moral arguments that are not the same kind of claim at all.

One limitation has to be stated at the beginning: the exact 4plebs page for thread #42765890 would not return its archived body to my retrieval tools. I therefore will not fabricate a line-by-line transcript of deleted posts. What is independently recoverable is unusually useful, however: the follow-up thread identifies #42765890 as the deleted inerrancy thread, repeats several of its arguments, and the OP explicitly identifies the source essay as Bentham’s July 13, 2026 article Biblical Inerrancy is Provably False. (4chan)

Your own research standard is exactly the right one here: Scripture first, context before commentary, evidence before opinion, separate fact/interpretation/speculation/rhetoric, and state uncertainty honestly. I am using the uploaded KJV/PCE as the primary English biblical text.

1. First: what would actually disprove inerrancy?#

Before touching individual verses, we need categories.

A formal contradiction requires something equivalent to:

• Text A asserts P.
• Text B asserts not-P.
• They concern the same subject, time, sense and respect.

That is much stronger than:

• “This sounds strange.”
• “I do not find this historical event plausible.”
• “This is morally offensive.”
• “Most modern scholars think somebody else wrote it.”
• “Two witnesses emphasize different details.”
• “I can construct an awkward harmonization.”
• “A transmitted manuscript reading may have suffered corruption.”

Those may still be important. But they are different evidential categories.

Bentham himself recognizes an important point: possible harmonization is not by itself enough. His method is probabilistic—if an apparent difficulty is substantially more expected if Scripture errs than if Scripture is inerrant, it counts against inerrancy, and multiple cases supposedly accumulate. That is a respectable kind of argument. (Bentham's Newsletter)

But its execution has a serious vulnerability: the cases cannot simply be multiplied as though they were independent observations. A commenter on the essay correctly pointed out that an adversarial search across a large, ancient, multi-author, multi-genre corpus can generate apparent discrepancies even under some models of inerrancy, and that correlated objections should not receive independent Bayesian multiplication. Bentham agreed with the general methodological issue while maintaining that his examples are sufficiently strong. (Substack)

That is a central finding of this audit.

2. What doctrine is the thread actually attacking?#

Thread claim: “Christians claim the Holy Spirit made the Bible without a single error.”#

Verdict: ⚠️ Crude formulation of a real doctrine#

It is wrong to dismiss inerrancy as merely a “KJV-only” oddity. In the follow-up thread, one poster does exactly that. (4chan)

Official Roman Catholic teaching alone disproves that claim. Vatican II says the canonical books were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have God as author, and were composed through human beings acting as true authors. It then says what the sacred writers assert must be regarded as asserted by the Spirit and that Scripture teaches without error the truth God wished committed to writing for salvation. (Vatican)

So:

Incorrect caricature:
“God dictated every English sentence directly; therefore every English edition is mechanically perfect.”

Actual Catholic doctrine:
Divine inspiration operated through genuine human authors exercising their faculties.

Common conservative Protestant doctrine:
Similarly, inspiration normally attaches fundamentally to the biblical writings/original text, not necessarily to the perfection of every subsequent printing or translation.

And Scripture itself says:

“holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
— 2 Peter 1:21

That does not say the prophets were passive stenographic machines.

Important KJV correction#

This is particularly interesting given the uploaded edition. The original KJV translators themselves expressly acknowledged that translations can contain “imperfections and blemishes” while still rightly being called the word of God. They defended correction and revision and deliberately placed alternative senses in margins where interpretation was uncertain.

They described their work not as converting a completely corrupt Bible into an infallible new one, but as seeking:

“to make a good one better”

and explicitly went back to Hebrew and Greek as the source languages.

That does not settle the inspiration of Scripture itself. It does mean that “biblical inerrancy” and “every word of one later English edition was independently given by inspiration” should never be silently treated as identical propositions.

3. Recoverable 4chan claims, line by line#

Claim A: “If a pro-Christian paranormal claim belongs on /x/, rebutting it should too; deleting criticism shows Christian bias.”#

Verdict: ❌ No evidential connection to whether Christianity is true#

The follow-up OP accused the moderators of suppression, but later explicitly admitted the deletion might instead have resulted from a shared/mobile-IP moderation mistake. (4chan)

That admission is important.

A thread deletion can be evidence concerning moderation, but it is not evidence that:

Christianity is false → therefore moderators deleted criticism,

or:

moderators deleted criticism → therefore Christianity is false.

That is an attributional leap.

Another poster offered a mundane board-policy argument: /x/ is for paranormal claims, whereas a thread solely denying paranormal claims may be treated differently. Whether that policy is sensible is separate from whether the Bible is inspired. (4chan)

Logical error: category mistake / non sequitur.

Claim B: “Christians can't argue; they only suppress and lie.”#

Verdict: ❌ Sweeping generalization#

There are Christians who make bad arguments. There are Christians who censor. There are also centuries of Christian textual criticism, theology, apologetics, philosophy, archaeology and historical scholarship debating exactly these problems.

The interesting irony is that Bentham's own article is discussing many arguments developed inside biblical scholarship, including scholarship by Christians.

Calling an entire population incapable of argument does no argumentative work.

Biblically, the appropriate method is the opposite:

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”
— 1 Thessalonians 5:21

and:

“The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.”
— Proverbs 14:15

That principle applies to Christian apologists too.

Claim C: “For thousands of years Christians could simply kill critics; now religion is declining.”#

Verdict: ⚠️ Contains historical reality, then makes an unsupported causal leap#

Christian political authorities at various historical periods unquestionably persecuted dissenters, heretics and religious minorities. It would be dishonest to deny that.

But “Christianity survived because its critics could be killed, and now declines because they cannot be” requires a causal historical demonstration the thread does not supply.

It also ignores:

• periods when Christians themselves were persecuted;
• large Christian populations outside coercive Christian states;
• internal Christian dissent;
• peaceful missionary expansion;
• demographic, cultural, educational, economic and political explanations of secularization.

So this is a classic movement from a true premise—

religious persecution has existed—

to an unproved causal theory—

therefore coercion explains Christianity's historical endurance.

Claim D: “The Bible is made of parables and isn't supposed to be literal.”#

A poster makes essentially this response. (4chan)

Verdict: ❌ Bad Christian rebuttal#

The Bible is not “made of parables.”

It contains:

• historical narrative,
• law,
• wisdom,
• poetry,
• prophecy,
• apocalyptic visions,
• genealogies,
• letters,
• speeches,
• parables,
• hymns,
• lament,
• symbolic imagery.

Genre matters precisely because not everything belongs to the same genre.

The Catholic source invoked by OP actually affirms the historical character of the Gospels while also insisting upon attention to literary forms. (Vatican)

So “it's all metaphor” is not a serious answer to an historical allegation about Daniel or a chronological allegation about the crucifixion.

Claim E: “BibViz lists contradictions.”#

OP answered that many are not actually contradictions.

Verdict: ✅ OP is right here#

The fact that an internet graphic labels two verses contradictory does not make them contradictory.

Then OP adds:

“Controlled opposition.”

Verdict on that addition: ❌ Unsupported and self-sealing#

If bad atheist objections are interpreted as evidence that Christian agents planted them, while good atheist objections are evidence against Christianity, then the theory immunizes itself against disconfirmation.

Ironically, the same OP later correctly criticizes a Christian answer of the form “God fixes every honest mistake invisibly” as unfalsifiable.

That criticism should be applied symmetrically.

4. The linked essay: full substantive audit#

Bentham organizes his case around war, slavery, Leviticus, Daniel, 2 Peter, Genesis 19, genealogies, imminent eschatology, contradictions, violent texts and the theology of inspiration. (Bentham's Newsletter)

Here is the serious part.

5. Conquest and “war crimes”#

What the objection gets right#

The conquest passages are severe.

Deuteronomy 20 distinguishes distant cities from the Canaanite peoples in the land. For the latter it says:

“thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth”

and provides a theological reason:

“That they teach you not to do after all their abominations…”

The text cannot honestly be reduced to “Israel merely practiced defensive warfare.”

Therefore this common apologetic response is false:#

“The Bible never commands destruction of populations.”

It does.

Missing biblical context#

The conquest is not presented as:

Israelites are ethnically superior, therefore kill inferior races.

Quite the contrary.

Deuteronomy 9 explicitly tells Israel that possession of the land is not because of Israel's righteousness.

Leviticus 18 represents the prior inhabitants as judged for grave wickedness.

Genesis 15:16 delays judgment because:

“the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”

And Exodus 23 describes dispossession happening progressively rather than portraying every inhabitant as killed simultaneously.

That theological frame does not make the moral problem disappear, but it changes the proposition being judged.

The biblical claim is:

unique divine judicial judgment within Israel's covenant history

not:

ordinary human ethnic warfare is morally admirable.

Can Joshua contain conquest hyperbole?#

Yes, ancient conquest accounts can employ rhetorically totalizing language, and biblical scholars have discussed such conventions. That is a real literary issue, not something invented yesterday by internet apologists. (Cambridge University Press)

But this defense has limits.

It cannot simply erase Deuteronomy 20:16–18.

Final assessment#

Bentham raises a genuine moral-theological challenge.

He has not thereby demonstrated a logical contradiction.

To turn it into a proof of biblical error he needs an additional premise:

A perfectly good God could not justly issue this particular judgment.

That is a philosophical/moral argument requiring defense. Calling it “war crimes” before establishing the applicable moral/legal framework partially builds the conclusion into the label.

Verdict: 🔵 serious moral argument; not a formal contradiction.

6. Slavery#

This is one of the article's strongest sections.

What Scripture actually says#

Leviticus 25 distinguishes poor Israelites from foreigners.

For Israelites:

“thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant”

and release is tied to Jubilee.

But concerning surrounding nations:

“of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids”

and they can become an inherited “possession”; the text says:

“they shall be your bondmen for ever.”

Therefore:#

“Biblical slavery was just voluntary employment” is not an adequate reading of Leviticus 25.

The historical scholarship agrees that Torah permitted and regulated slavery, and that early Christianity arose in societies where slavery was normal. Cambridge's World History of Slavery concludes that early Christians commonly affirmed spiritual equality while nevertheless generally accepting the institution. (Cambridge Resolve)

That is substantial support for Bentham's historical observation.

But the biblical picture is larger#

Scripture also contains strong restraints and destabilizing principles:

• Manstealing is a capital crime: Exodus 21:16.
• Deuteronomy 23:15–16 forbids returning an escaped slave to his master.
• 1 Corinthians 7:21 says that if a servant can become free, he should use the opportunity.
• 1 Corinthians 7:23 says, “be not ye the servants of men.”
• Paul tells Philemon to receive Onesimus “not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved,” indeed as Paul himself.
• Masters themselves answer to a heavenly Master who shows no respect of persons.

Those texts matter.

But they do not amount to an explicit biblical statute:

“All human slavery is hereby universally abolished.”

We should not claim that they do.

Final assessment#

Bentham is right against simplistic apologetics.

The real dispute is theological:

1. Does divine regulation of an existing institution imply moral endorsement of its ideal form?
2. Can biblical revelation progressively undermine an institution it temporarily regulates?
3. Does Leviticus 25's permanent foreign slavery constitute moral error incompatible with divine authorship?

Those are serious questions.

Verdict: 🟨 one of the strongest moral challenges in the essay; not solved by saying “indentured servitude.”

7. “The craziness in Leviticus”#

The heading itself is rhetorical loading. (Bentham's Newsletter)

Different Levitical laws need to be separated.

Menstruation#

Calling a menstruating woman “unclean” does not mean the Bible identifies menstruation as a moral sin.

Levitical ritual impurity can result from:

• childbirth,
• male emissions,
• contact with corpses,
• certain skin conditions,
• menstruation.

Men become ritually unclean too.

Therefore:

ritual impurity ≠ personal moral guilt.

This is one of the essay's category mistakes whenever ritual uncleanness is spoken of as if it simply meant “God thinks menstruating women are wicked.”

Capital laws#

Other examples are much more difficult because they really are penal sanctions.

The correct Christian distinction is:

• Israel was a covenant nation with civil/judicial legislation.
• The New Testament church is not given Israel's civil sword.
• Therefore a prohibition and Israel's historical penal sanction are not automatically identical commands to the church.

That explains why Christians do not execute every violator of Mosaic civil law.

It does not answer every philosophical question about why those penalties existed.

Final assessment#

Bentham mixes:

• ritual purity,
• morality,
• civil law,
• covenant symbolism,

under a single emotionally charged heading.

That weakens the analysis.

Verdict: ⚠️ mixed. Some genuine hard laws; some category errors.

8. Daniel#

Here the argument becomes much more serious.

Bentham invokes the standard critical case for a Maccabean-era composition/final form of Daniel, focusing especially on Daniel 11, historical problems and authorship. (Bentham's Newsletter)

Academic scholarship really does contain a longstanding critical/conservative divide over Daniel, and Daniel 11's relationship to the history of Antiochus IV is a recognized major issue. Cambridge scholarship explicitly describes both that divide and the chapter's problematic relationship to Antiochus' history. (Cambridge University Press)

Things Christians should not say#

Do not say:

“Nobody serious thinks Daniel is late.”

False.

Do not say:

“There are zero historical difficulties in Daniel.”

False.

And Darius the Mede remains a genuine historical identification problem.

But what follows?#

A mainstream historical-critical conclusion is not the same thing as a mathematical proof.

Scholars infer composition dates from:

• language,
• historical knowledge,
• literary development,
• intertextual evidence,
• apocalyptic genre,
• predictive accuracy and apparent failure.

Those are arguments whose premises and weights can be debated.

Furthermore, composition-history models can distinguish older court tales from later apocalyptic material.

The key circularity risk#

Daniel 11 is often dated late partly because it describes Antiochene events accurately and then appears to diverge from subsequent history.

But if one begins with a prior assumption that detailed predictive prophecy cannot occur, very accurate prediction itself becomes evidence of late composition.

That does not make the critical dating wrong.

It means the argument must disclose its philosophy of prophecy rather than present every conclusion as religiously neutral raw data.

Verdict#

🟨 Strong historical-critical challenge. Not honestly dismissible; not “provably false” in the deductive sense.

9. 2 Peter#

This is likewise one of the harder cases.

2 Peter presents itself internally as Petrine:

• “Simon Peter”
• eyewitness to the Transfiguration
• refers to a previous epistle
• speaks of Paul's letters.

If Peter did not author the document and the attribution is intentionally fictitious, a strict account of inerrancy faces a significant problem.

Historical evidence#

Ancient doubts are real.

Recent Cambridge work notes that Eusebius classified 2 Peter among disputed writings and that Origen knew of doubts concerning its Petrine authorship. Importantly, that same analysis says pseudonymity was suspected rather than simply demonstrated by those ancient witnesses. (Cambridge University Press)

So the internet formulation:

“We know Peter didn't write it”

is stronger than the historical evidence allows.

Acts 4:13: “unlearned and ignorant men”#

This is sometimes treated as:

Peter was illiterate → Peter couldn't produce literary Greek → 2 Peter is fake.

That is too quick.

The expression concerns lack of recognized rabbinic/formal training. It does not logically establish lifelong inability to use Greek, obtain assistance, dictate or employ a secretary.

Yet “a secretary could have written it” is also only a possible solution unless evidence supports it.

That is exactly where Bentham's methodological challenge is fair: possibility is not probability.

Verdict#

🟨 Genuine authorship/canonical-history difficulty. Ancient doubts are real; definitive non-Petrine authorship is not a directly observed historical fact.

10. Lot and his daughters — Genesis 19#

Bentham interprets the origin stories of Moab and Ammon as implausible ethnic polemic and objects to Lot fathering children while severely intoxicated.

Scripture correction#

The chapter never commends the incest.

Narrative description is not moral prescription.

The fact that Scripture reports:

• David's adultery,
• Cain's murder,
• Judas' betrayal,
• Peter's denial,

does not mean Scripture calls those acts righteous.

Physiological claim#

Genesis says Lot did not perceive when his daughters lay down and arose.

That does not require:

medically unconscious throughout every biological process.

The article takes a strange event and upgrades its implausibility into something approaching physiological impossibility. The text does not require that inference.

Etiological reading#

Could the account function polemically concerning Moab and Ammon?

Certainly possible.

But:

“This story carries an etiological/polemical function”

does not logically entail:

“therefore no historical event underlies it.”

Ancient narratives can have both historical and etiological functions.

Verdict#

⚠️ Speculative historical-literary argument, not a contradiction.

11. Matthew and Luke's genealogies#

This is a genuine prima facie difficulty.

Matthew moves from David through Solomon.

Luke moves through Nathan.

Matthew identifies Joseph's father as Jacob; Luke connects Joseph with Heli.

There is no value in pretending a reader would never notice this.

Bad apologetic#

“Luke obviously gives Mary's genealogy.”

No. Luke's text does not plainly say that.

It may be proposed as a harmonization, but it should not be advertised as the explicit wording.

And Bentham is substantially right that the specific “Luke = Mary's genealogy” theory does not dominate the early patristic record; an older Catholic reference work itself observes that this interpretation appears very late in its recognizable form. (New Advent)

But Bentham's broader historical implication fails#

Ancient Christians did not wait until the Renaissance to notice the genealogical problem.

Julius Africanus, centuries earlier, offered a legal/biological-father harmonization based on levirate family relations: Joseph could be physically begotten by Jacob while legally reckoned to Heli. Augustine also wrestled with the issue. (New Advent)

That proves only that ancient harmonizations existed—not that Africanus has been historically proven correct.

But it destroys any suggestion that early Christians were oblivious and that all reconciliation mechanisms are modern desperation.

Verdict#

🟨 Real prima facie discrepancy; ancient harmonizations exist; Mary's-genealogy solution should not be presented as explicit fact.

12. “Jesus falsely predicted an imminent Second Coming”#

Bentham marshals:

• Matthew 10:23,
• Matthew 16 / Mark 9,
• the Olivet discourse,
• “this generation,”
• Paul's “we which are alive,”
• “the time is short,”
• Revelation's “quickly,”
• other imminence texts.

This is a serious cumulative exegetical question.

But several alleged predictions are being conflated.

John 21 is especially important#

Jesus says:

“If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”

Then the evangelist explicitly corrects the interpretation that John therefore would not die:

“yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die…”

The text itself records an early eschatological misunderstanding and corrects it.

That's highly relevant to the essay's claim that later Christianity merely retrofitted reinterpretations.

Acts 1#

The disciples ask about kingdom timing.

Jesus answers:

“It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.”

Again, Christian Scripture itself discourages chronological certainty.

1 Thessalonians 4: “we which are alive”#

“We” need not logically mean:

God has revealed to Paul that Paul himself will certainly remain alive.

An author can identify himself rhetorically with the class of believers who would be alive at the event.

Still, Paul's epistles unquestionably contain strong imminence language.

“This generation”#

This is harder.

The Olivet discourse intertwines:

• destruction of Jerusalem,
• tribulation,
• vindication,
• Son-of-man imagery,
• final eschatological language.

Preterist, futurist and mixed readings differ about where one horizon ends and another begins.

Bentham is justified in saying this requires interpretation.

He is not justified in simply treating his preferred mapping of every “coming” statement to the final bodily return as an uncontested datum.

Verdict#

🟨 Significant exegetical tension; not a simple demonstrated false prophecy.

13. The alleged contradictions#

Now we can test them one by one.

13.1 Mark's third hour vs John's sixth hour#

Mark 15:25:

“it was the third hour, and they crucified him.”

John 19:14 places Jesus before Pilate at:

“about the sixth hour”

before he is delivered for crucifixion.

Verdict: 🟨 Real prima facie chronological tension#

Various proposals exist:

• different systems of reckoning hours,
• approximation,
• scribal numeral issues,
• Mark's broad time blocks.

None should be announced as proven merely because it is possible.

This is one of the article's stronger specific discrepancies.

13.2 Who caused David's census: God or Satan?#

2 Samuel 24:1:

“the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.”

1 Chronicles 21:1:

“Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.”

Bentham paraphrases Samuel too strongly as if God simply gives David a direct verbal divine command.

That's not exactly what the verse says.

Is dual agency coherent?#

Yes.

Scripture repeatedly distinguishes:

• ultimate sovereign permission/judgment,
• proximate secondary agency.

Job is the obvious example: Satan acts, yet the narrative also speaks of what God has permitted.

Likewise David remains morally responsible, and Chronicles says God was displeased with the census.

Therefore:

God judicially permits/instigates an event through Satanic temptation

and

Satan immediately provokes David

are not formally contradictory descriptions unless one text excludes the other agent.

Neither does.

Verdict: ✅ Weak contradiction claim. Distinction of primary and secondary agency gives a natural reconciliation.#

13.3 Who killed Goliath?#

This one must be handled very carefully.

1 Samuel says David killed Goliath.

1 Chronicles 20:5 says Elhanan killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath.

The KJV of 2 Samuel 21:19 similarly reads that Elhanan:

“slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite”

But there is a textual-critical problem here: the Hebrew wording behind Samuel is difficult, and “the brother of” in the KJV represents a harmonizing resolution in relation to Chronicles rather than a simple case where every witness plainly reads identically.

This matters methodologically#

If our doctrine concerns the inspired original text, a scribal/transmission problem is not the same proposition as:

the original author asserted a false fact.

But if someone claims a particular late printed English form is independently immune from every textual difficulty, this passage becomes more awkward.

And again, the KJV translators themselves explicitly accepted textual/translation uncertainty and the usefulness of marginal alternatives.

Verdict#

🟨 Genuine textual-critical difficulty. Do not use a glib “no problem at all” answer.

13.4 “Moses saw God face to face” vs “no man can see God”#

Exodus 33 is frequently mutilated by contradiction lists because both statements appear in the same chapter.

Verse 11:

“the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”

Then verse 20:

“Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”

And verses 22–23 immediately distinguish the mediated revelation Moses receives from seeing God's unveiled face.

This is unusually strong internal evidence for idiom.

“Face to face” in verse 11 is explained by the text itself:

“as a man speaketh unto his friend.”

Numbers 12 likewise describes Moses' unique revelation as “mouth to mouth” while referring to the “similitude of the LORD.”

John 1:18:

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son… he hath declared him.”

Christian theology distinguishes:

• mediated theophany,
• manifestation,
• vision,
• divine presence,

from exhaustive/unveiled sight of the divine essence.

Verdict: ✅ Poor contradiction. Context supplies the distinction.#

13.5 Judas: hanging or falling and bursting?#

Matthew:

Judas “went and hanged himself.”

The priests subsequently use his returned money to acquire the potter's field.

Acts:

Judas “purchased a field with the reward of iniquity,” then falls headlong and bursts open.

Death mechanism#

Hanging and later falling are sequentially compatible.

Nothing logically prevents:

1. hanging,
2. body remaining/suffering a fall,
3. decomposition or traumatic rupture.

Acts does not say:

Judas did not hang himself.

Matthew does not say:

his corpse never fell.

Therefore this is not a formal contradiction.

“Who purchased the field?”#

Matthew assigns the direct transaction to the priests.

Acts attributes the acquisition to Judas through his blood money.

That is ordinary indirect agency:

“Judas bought the field with his money”

can coexist with:

“the priests physically completed the transaction.”

Again, possible harmonization alone is not absolute proof of history. But the alleged contradiction is much weaker than advertised.

Verdict: ✅ Readily harmonizable; no direct P / not-P statement.#

14. Violent Psalms and prophets#

This section of the essay badly needs a speaker/genre analysis.

Psalm 137:9#

Psalm 137 is an exile lament.

The horrifying imprecation against Babylonian infants is uttered from the perspective of traumatized exiles yearning for retaliatory judgment.

That is very different from:

“God commands Christians to kill babies.”

The Bible records many speeches it does not endorse.

Examples include:

• Satan's words,
• Job's friends' theological errors,
• Pharaoh,
• false prophets,
• Peter's denial.

Quotation inside Scripture ≠ divine approval of every quoted sentiment.

That does not remove every theological question about inspired imprecatory prayer.

It does refute the crude category error.

Isaiah#

Judgment oracles can portray dreadful violence through invading nations.

Again we must distinguish:

• description,
• prophecy,
• divine judicial action,
• permission through secondary agents,
• command to God's people,
• moral commendation of the agents' motives.

These are not synonyms.

Verdict#

⚠️ Some real moral-theological questions, but major genre and speaker conflation.

15. Circumcision argument from the follow-up thread#

The OP says, essentially:

1. Romans banned infant circumcision.
2. The Bible never does.
3. Catholic and Orthodox Christians still do not universally condemn hygienic infant circumcision. (4chan)

This needs disassembly.

“The Romans banned circumcision”#

Too categorical.

Roman policy varied by emperor and period, and the legal history of Hadrianic restrictions is historically disputed. Scholarship emphasizes the complexity of Roman-Christian-Jewish treatment of circumcision rather than a single timeless “Rome banned it” rule. (Cambridge University Press)

“The Bible never forbids nonreligious circumcision”#

Substantially correct.

The New Testament forcefully rejects circumcision as a covenantal requirement for Gentile salvation:

• Acts 15,
• Galatians,
• 1 Corinthians 7.

But that is not identical to saying:

every medical or cultural circumcision procedure is intrinsically sinful.

The thread should get credit for noticing the distinction.

Catholic position#

The Catholic Catechism states that directly intended mutilations of innocent persons are morally prohibited except for strictly therapeutic medical reasons. It does not, in that paragraph, specifically adjudicate every case of male circumcision. (Vatican)

So:

“Catholicism has no principle relevant to bodily mutilation”

is false.

But:

“the Catechism explicitly declares routine male circumcision sinful”

would also go beyond the cited text.

Orthodox position#

The Orthodox Church in America explicitly says it does not object to circumcision for medical or hygienic purposes while rejecting religious circumcision as a New-Covenant requirement. (Orthodox Church in America)

So the OP has a legitimate point regarding at least that Orthodox jurisdiction.

Verdict#

⚠️ Mixed: biblical observation partly correct; Roman-history claim overbroad; Catholic generalization too categorical; OCA evidence supports part of the Orthodox claim.

16. The theological argument: does “inspired” logically equal “inerrant”?#

Bentham is right about one narrow logical point:

“God-breathed” does not, merely by dictionary definition, automatically produce every detailed modern formulation of inerrancy.

The doctrine is normally synthetic.

Relevant texts include:

2 Timothy 3:16

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God…”

2 Peter 1:21

“holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

John 10:35

“the scripture cannot be broken”

Matthew 5:18

“one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law…”

A Christian theological argument then adds premises concerning:

• God's truthfulness,
• what divine authorship entails,
• what Scripture itself asserts,
• genre and authorial intention.

That argument deserves to be evaluated as an argument.

It should not be reduced to:

2 Timothy says “inspired,” therefore every theory of inerrancy is proved in one word.

Nor should the opposite side say:

humans wrote it, therefore it necessarily contains error.

That is also a non sequitur.

17. Overall evidential ranking#

Here is where I would rank the major claims after fact-checking.

That distribution is why the headline “provably false” overstates what the paper establishes.

18. Psychological and rhetorical analysis#

This must be handled carefully. We cannot diagnose anonymous posters.

We can analyze observable argumentative behavior.

18.1 Motivated reasoning#

Psychological research on motivated reasoning shows that desired conclusions can influence how people retrieve, construct and evaluate reasons. Importantly, that bias is not uniquely religious or atheistic. (PubMed)

You can see a risk on both sides:

Anti-inerrancy version:

A reconciliation exists → it is obviously desperate.

Inerrancy version:

A reconciliation is conceivable → therefore it must be what happened.

Both are asymmetric reasoning.

The proper question is:

How well is the interpretation supported by language, context, historical evidence and parallel passages?

18.2 Online disinhibition#

The thread's insults, capitalization and sexualized abuse tell us essentially nothing about Daniel or Matthew.

Research on online disinhibition finds that features of computer-mediated communication—including reduced eye contact—can contribute to more hostile/disinhibited interaction. (ScienceDirect)

That doesn't invalidate a proposition because its speaker is rude.

It explains why an anonymous imageboard is unusually good at producing identity warfare instead of careful epistemology.

18.3 Closed-loop “controlled opposition”#

This is perhaps the thread's clearest epistemic warning sign.

If:

• strong anti-Christian material = Christianity refuted;
• weak anti-Christian material = Christians planted controlled opposition;
• deletion = Christians fear truth;
• non-deletion = only weak criticism is allowed;

then every observation confirms the same conclusion.

That structure is non-falsifiable.

And once an explanation has been insulated from all conceivable contrary evidence, it stops functioning as an empirical explanation.

18.4 Poisoning the well#

Words such as:

• “crazy,”
• “primitive,”
• “war crimes,”
• slurs against Christians or atheists,

may communicate moral judgment, but they cannot substitute for premises.

The correct order is:

1. establish what the text says;
2. establish historical context;
3. establish the relevant moral principle;
4. derive the conclusion.

Not:

1. apply morally maximal label;
2. treat label as proof.

18.5 Adversarial selection#

Suppose one deliberately searches tens of thousands of biblical propositions for the 20 most awkward-looking passages.

Those 20 passages cannot be treated as though they were a random sample of biblical propositions.

This was precisely the methodological objection raised under Bentham's essay: a theory of inerrancy must predict the distribution of apparent errors too, but critics also need to model the effects of adversarial selection. (Substack)

The right question isn't:

“Can I find 20 weird passages?”

It is:

“Given each competing model, how probable is it that a corpus of this type would generate difficulties of this particular strength after controlling for genre, textual transmission, historical uncertainty and selection?”

That's much harder.

19. The biggest Bayesian problem in the essay#

Bentham says evidence “compounds.”

Sometimes it does.

But several examples are correlated.

For instance:

Daniel cluster#

• late dating,
• Daniel 11,
• Antiochus,
• historical discrepancies,

are not four fully independent errors. They largely emerge from one disputed composition-history model.

2 Peter cluster#

• delayed Parousia,
• Pauline collection,
• Jude dependence,
• style,
• canonical hesitation,

all participate in the same authorship/dating hypothesis.

Moral cluster#

• conquest,
• slavery,
• violent judgment,
• Levitical punishments,

depend heavily upon a shared moral-theological prior concerning what divine accommodation/judgment could look like.

Counting each as if statistically independent artificially inflates confidence.

The essay's own comment section identifies this issue explicitly. (Substack)

So the methodological correction is:

Use hierarchical evidence, not naïve multiplication.

20. Where Christian apologetics most needs correction#

A serious defense of Scripture should stop using these answers:

“All biblical slavery was voluntary indentured employment.”

False.

“Every conquest statement is just metaphor.”

Unproved and insufficient.

“There is no chronological difficulty between Mark and John.”

There plainly is a prima facie one.

“Luke explicitly says he is giving Mary's genealogy.”

He doesn't.

“Nobody in legitimate scholarship questions Daniel or 2 Peter.”

False.

“The Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 21:19 presents no textual issue whatsoever.”

False.

“If any possible harmonization can be invented, the objection is defeated.”

Methodologically inadequate.

Truth does not need weak arguments protecting it.

21. Where the anti-inerrancy argument most needs correction#

Likewise it should stop doing this:

“A difficult harmonization is a contradiction.”

No.

“Ritual impurity means moral wickedness.”

No.

“Scripture narrating an evil action means Scripture endorses it.”

No.

“Psalmic imprecation equals a standing divine command.”

No.

“Ultimate divine agency and proximate Satanic agency contradict.”

Not necessarily.

“Judas cannot have hanged and later fallen.”

Obviously not logically contradictory.

“Ancient Christians didn't notice the genealogies until modern times.”

Historically false; Africanus is an early counterexample. (New Advent)

“Modern critical consensus = mathematical demonstration.”

No.

“Every apparent error can be multiplied independently until probability reaches zero.”

No.

22. A particularly important KJV lesson#

There is something almost providentially relevant in The Translators to the Reader for this very debate—not as a proof of inspiration, but as a model of intellectual humility.

The translators openly acknowledged:

• predecessors;
• revision;
• imperfect translation;
• uncertain renderings;
• variant senses;
• returning to Hebrew and Greek;
• the danger of dogmatizing where evidence is genuinely uncertain.

Their stated principle concerning difficult readings was essentially that it is better to acknowledge uncertainty than to quarrel dogmatically about what is uncertain.

That is a far healthier posture than either:

“Every difficulty is fake because my doctrine requires it,”

or:

“Every difficulty is an error because my conclusion requires it.”

23. Scriptural methodological correction#

The Bible itself gives a surprisingly rigorous framework for evaluating claims.

Proverbs 18:13

“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”

Don't rebut a critic you haven't actually understood.

Proverbs 18:17

“He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.”

Hearing one side is insufficient.

Acts 17:11

The Bereans searched the Scriptures to test what they were being taught.

1 Thessalonians 5:21

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

2 Timothy 2:24–25

The servant of the Lord is instructed not merely to win fights but to teach patiently and meekly.

That method rebukes both blind credulity and shallow debunking.

24. Final verdict on the 4chan thread + Bentham essay#

The strongest conclusion supported by the evidence is not:

“The essay has nothing in it.”

It absolutely does.

Nor is it:

“Biblical inerrancy has now been provably falsified.”

The evidence does not establish that either.

The thread and linked essay contain four different kinds of material:

1. Weak or erroneous contradiction claims — census agency, seeing God, Judas, much of Genesis 19.
2. Genuine textual/exegetical difficulties — Mark/John chronology, genealogies, Goliath/Elhanan.
3. Serious historical-critical disputes — Daniel and 2 Peter.
4. Serious moral-theological objections — slavery, conquest and some Mosaic penalties.

Only by blurring all four into one category called “Bible error” can the argument appear as clean as its title suggests.

The most defensible response is therefore:

The thread does not prove biblical inerrancy false. It exposes several bad Christian harmonizations and points toward a handful of genuinely difficult questions that inerrantists must take seriously. But it also repeatedly confuses moral disagreement with factual contradiction, narration with endorsement, different levels of agency with inconsistency, historical-critical probability with demonstration, and possible textual transmission problems with proof that the inspired author erred.

And the article's cumulative Bayesian presentation is substantially weaker than advertised unless it supplies justified likelihoods, accounts for adversarial selection, and avoids double-counting correlated objections. (Bentham's Newsletter)

The five matters I would put at the top of the research stack—not because they defeat Scripture, but because they deserve the strongest scholarship rather than canned answers—are Daniel, 2 Peter, Mark 15/John 19 chronology, the Elhanan/Goliath textual problem, and the theology of slavery/conquest. The face-to-face, Judas and census objections are nowhere near the same evidentiary class.

That, I think, is the key correction to the whole 4chan exchange: truth is not served by pretending the Bible has no hard passages; neither is it served by relabeling every hard passage a contradiction.

4CHAN THREAD & POST BREAKDOWNS – Library of Rickandria

VCG PAPER PROJECTS – Library of Rickandria

Biblical Inerrancy on Trial: A Line-by-Line Examination of the 4chan Critique, Its Sources, Psychology, Methodology & Scriptural Claims

Biblical Inerrancy on Trial: A Line-by-Line Examination of the 4chan Critique, Its Sources, Psychology, Methodology & Scriptural Claims – Library of Rickandria