The tension: Deuteronomy 23:2 bars the offspring of an illegitimate union from the assembly of YHWH for ten generations, but the genealogies of David in Matthew 1 and Luke…
The tension: Joshua 10:12-13 narrates the sun and moon standing still for about a full day so Joshua could finish slaughtering the Amorites, while Genesis 8:22 has YHWH pro…
The tension: The Bible names at least six different sins as the reason Sodom was destroyed: same-sex intercourse (Leviticus 18:22 read into Ezekiel 16:50), inhospitality (M…
The tension: Leviticus 19:26 and Deuteronomy 18:10-12 ban divination and observing 'times' — language traditionally read to include astrology — and call practitioners an ab…
The tension: The Pentateuchal legal codes prescribe death by stoning, burning, or general execution for an enormous range of offenses: murder (Gen 9:6; Num 35:30), striking…
The tension: Hebrews 11:13 lists Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah and says "these all died." Eight verses earlier the same chapter, Hebrews 11:5, explicitly says Enoch…
The tension: Genesis 6:5-7 has God resolving to destroy humanity precisely because "the wickedness of man was great" and "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was…
The tension: Genesis 9:5-6 lays down the Noahide blood-vengeance principle: whoever sheds human blood, by man shall his blood be shed, because humans are made in God's imag…
The tension: The contradiction sets the silencing-and-subordination passages — Genesis 3:16 (the husband rules over the wife as curse), 1 Timothy 2:12 (woman may not teach…
The tension: Genesis 8:22, the Noahic covenant, declares that while the earth remains, "seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night sh…
The tension: Genesis 12:5 reports that Abram took his household from Haran and "they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came" — Abra…
The tension: Romans 4:19 and Hebrews 11:12 both emphasize that Abraham's body was "as good as dead" and Sarah's womb was barren, so the birth of Isaac required miraculous d…
The tension: Genesis 13:14-17 and Genesis 17:8 record God promising the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed as an "everlasting possession" (achuzzat olam).
The tension: Genesis 9:2, embedded in the post-flood Noachic covenant, has Yahweh place the fear and dread (morakem ve-hittekem) of human beings upon every beast of the ear…
