Thanks for your contribution to the site. (btw, sorry about the long delay while I’ve been juggling other projects. That being said, I don’t respond to all good comments that get posted, but when I do want to respond, long delays like this will be common.)
First, regarding the cubits and Pi issue: In my comments in the table above, I do try to be clear that this is a matter of approximation. So, yes, to a first approximation, 3 is “correct.” But, as someone once said, to a first approximation, all life on earth flies because, to a first approximation, all life on earth is bugs. The point here is simply that this is a fairly crude approximation for what Literalists tell us is a divinely perfect book and a source of scientific and other truths. Of course, for us not-so-perfect humans, especially living a couple of thousand years ago, this kind of approximation is hardly a surprise, at least without “outside” help. And that’s really the point. It is one more piece of a much larger collection of contradictions, outright errors, and telltale statements that strongly supports the idea that the Bible is best explained as the (sometimes beautiful and wise) product of ancient humans who lacked any special, supernaturally inspired insights. Some of these pieces of evidence are smaller and less dramatic (like this Pi thing) than others, at least when they are considered in isolation; but cumulatively, they add more and more “straws to the camel’s back”— more and more to the total weight of evidence. Other pieces are so large that they go a long way to breaking the camel’s back all by themselves.
But there is perhaps something even more telling about this particular Pi passage than the crudity of the approximation. Why did the writers feel the need to give us both the diameter and circumference—as if they did not realize that we only need to know one? All they needed to do was give us one value or the other and we could use Pi (even an approximation!) to easily figure out the other value. It is very suggestive that they did not know that a strict relationship between the two even existed. Again, this is surprising only if the Bible is supposed to be the perfect work of a perfect, supernatural being. Of course, it is just what we would expect otherwise. So, when apologists say that such things are typical of the ancients, they seem to be saying, “What did you expect from people living back then?” It seems the answer is, “Exactly what we’re reading—that is, unless they are acting as the secretaries of perfect deity who is creating a body of perfect, literal truths.” (non-Literalists are not as vulnerable to this line of critique.)
Regarding Jesus’ time of death. I’m not sure your response fully appreciates the full scope of this contradiction. The problem also has to do with the order of events. For the Jews, the day began at sundown. So, for example, food prepared this afternoon for a meal tonight would be food prepared today for a meal tomorrow. In terms of Passover, then, the Day of Preparation is the day before the Passover Meal. In Mark, the Last Supper is a Passover meal, held the day after the Day of Preparation. It is after this meal (according to Mark) that Jesus is betrayed and brought before Pilate the following morning. When does he get crucified? Well, Mark 15:25 tells us, “And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.” So, by Jewish timekeeping (as you noted), that would be 9 that morning—that is, the morning following the Passover Meal.
In John, however, the order of events is irreconcilably different. John 19:14-15 tells us ” . . . it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!. But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him.” So John has Jesus in custody and being hauled away for crucifixion not just at a different time (which would be enough on its own to undermine a Literalist’s notion of inerrancy), but on a different day: the Day of Preparation–that is, the day before the Passover Meal (Bart Ehrman makes this point).
There have been quite a few attempts over the years to reconcile these particular passages. And this fact alone is sufficient to make my point: even if there is a resolution, it so inaccessible that even life-long Bible scholars cannot reach consensus. If scholars who have dedicated their lives to understanding its meaning still fail to reach consensus on how to resolve such a clear contradiction in a plain reading of the text, then the only possibilities are (1) the Bible is not and never was inerrant, (2) its inerrancy is so obscured as to have no practical consequence, or (3) only the now-inaccessible autograph manuscripts were inerrant, which, again, takes away any practical consequence. If there is no practical consequence, then there is no way to tell the difference between an “inerrant” Bible and a Bible that has no divine influence at all. The whole notion ends up becoming an abstract, unsupported, article of faith.
Why would a perfect God with unlimited power allow the accuracy of His Word to become so obscured? Keep in mind that we’re not just talking about one or two problem passages. When example after example (after example) comes up, each requiring its own independent, often creative, and almost always controversial explanation, it is time to ask whether there isn’t a much simpler, more general explanation, which is this: The Bible is the product of humans–just humans—writing in the context of their ancient world, and producing something that was sometimes true and beautiful, but oftentimes neither, especially when the morality of their times was mirrored in the God of the OT. Of course, all of this is exactly what we would expect if these writings were not divinely shaped at all. To make an all-good, all-powerful God fit with the current state of the Bible, one has to bring in one ad hoc assumption after another, pushing us ever further from the simplest explanation necessary to explain what we’re seeing.
While my points above are relevant mainly to Bible Literalists, this “simplest explanation,” or “inference to the best explanation,” I think, applies to anyone who claims that the Bible is divinely inspired in any way.
