Errors in Numbers

Q. Did David kill 700 or 7,000 of the Syrians?

Here is an argument in which the critic shows a discrepancy in the historical account with respect to recorded numbers.

Now, here is a real difference. First it should be noted that the Bible claims direct inspiration for God’s direct revelation.

(2 Pet 1:20 NKJV) knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, {21} for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

The Apostles believed that the "Scriptures" (i.e. the Old Testament) were "Holy" (i.e. set apart from other writings as coming from God)

(Rom 1:1 NKJV) Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God {2} which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,

The original autographs then must be considered "from God", but we have no evidence that those who copied the scriptures were 100% error-free. Certainly it is expected that God would preserve His message with enough accuracy that man can know His will, and the manuscript and archaeological evidence supports the reliability of the Bible. We have no record of Jesus rejecting the Old Testament "scriptures" in use in His day, but instead spoke of the "scriptures" as being "from God" since they could not be broken:

(John 10:35 NKJV) "If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), …"

While it may be evident that there are some copyist errors in the text, that fact does not necessarily render the document untrustworthy. The evidence that we do have (such as the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah), testifies that any modifications to the text by copyist errors have not been significant.

With regard to the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament McDowell quotes Gleason Archer:

"A careful study of the variants (different readings) of the various earliest manuscripts reveals that none of them affects a single doctrine of Scripture. The system of spiritual truth contained in the standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament is no in the slightest altered or compromised by any of the variant readings found in the Hebrew manuscripts of earlier date found in the Dead Sea caves or anywhere else. All that is needed to verify this is to check the register of well-attested variants in Rudolf Kittel’s edition of the Hebrew Bible. It is very evident that the vast majority of them are so inconsequential as to leave the meaning of each clause doctrinally unaffected."^[2]

With regard to the New Testament, McDowell quotes Geisler and Nix in comparing the New Testament writings with that of the Iliad:

"Next to the New Testament, there are more extant manuscripts of the Iliad (643) than any other book. Both it and the Bible were considered ‘sacred,’ and both underwent textual changes and criticism of their Greek manuscripts. The New Testament has about 20,000 lines … the Iliad [has] about 15,600. Only 40 lines (or 400 words) of the New Testament are in doubt whereas 764 lines of the Iliad are questioned. The five percent textual corruption compares with one-half of one percent of similar emendations in the New Testament."^[3]

The following chart (adapted from the same reference) shows the comparison of evidence for the New Testament compared to that of the Iliad:

In summary, this is not a contradiction, but apparently a copyist error. The matter of accurate textual transmission is an important matter (see FAQ: Is The Bible Reliable)

-- David A. Duncan

² Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict, Volume 1, Thomas Nelson Publishers, p. 45, as quoted from Gleason Archer, A Survey of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press, 1964

³ Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict, Volume 1, Thomas Nelson Publishers, p. 43