LOL, its all true- the Bible can be played like a fiddle. But its not just copying and translation errors... it contains outright contradictions. This is from Joachim Kahl's 1968 book 'The Misery of Christianity':
From the abundance of contradictions contained in the New Testament and conveniently brought together by Kasemann and Herbert Braun in their articles on the New Testament canon, I will select three examples.
The gospels of Matthew and Luke state that Jesus was born of a virgin (Matt 1:18 and Luke 1:26 ff.). According to Paul (Phil. 2:6 ff.) and John (1:1 ff.), however, he was a pre-existent celestial being who came down to earth, assumed a human form, and, after performing his work of salvation, returned to God in the eternal world. Both views are mutually exclusive. In the case of the first, Jesus first became the son of God at his birth, after having been begotten in a miraculous fashion by the Holy Spirit. In the second case, he had already been living as the son of God with the Father since eternity. This, however, is not all - the gospel according to Mark presents us with a third view. Jesus was not born of a virgin and did not have any existence before entering his human body, according to Mark, but was initiated as the son of God during his life on earth, namely when he was baptized by John (Mark 1:9 ff.). There are also glimpses of even a fourth form of Christology in the New Testament, although this is only apparent in a few ancient fragments. Thus Paul quotes a traditional formula (in Rom. 1:3 f.) which indicates that, in the earliest Christian community, Jesus' messianic state dated from his resurrection.
The eschatological teaching of the gospel and the Apocalypse of John cannot be reconciled in any way. In the gospel, the dramatic eschatology of the Jewish apocalyptic vision is, in accordance with the Gnostic pattern, completely abandoned and judgement and salvation are presented as taking place in the present (John v, 24 f.). The soul of the believer is seen as rising up into the glory of heaven immediately after death (xii, 32; xiv, 2 f.; xvii, 24). The Apocalypse, on the other hand, indulges in phantasmagoria of a catastrophe at the end of time, imagined on a massive scale and accompanied by fearful punishments. Satanic locusts are to torment man, for example (Apoc. ix, 3 ff.).
There will be a battle between Michael the Archangel and the great dragon in heaven (xii, 7 ff.). Bloody massacres will take place in which Christ, seated on a white horse, will kill the unbelievers, whose bodies will be devoured by birds (xix, I I ff.). This wholesale slaughter will be followed by a peace lasting for a thousand years (xx, I ff.), at the end of which Satan and his angels will be thrown for ever into a lake of fire (xx, 7 ff.). Finally, the Apocalypse presents us with a vision of the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem to earth (xxi, I ff.).
My third example of irreconcilability between the teaching in two similar New Testament documents was also noted a long time ago by Martin Luther. It is this. There is a gap between Paul's doctrine of justification and that of the letter of James that cannot be bridged. In Rom. iii, 28, Paul taught: `For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law'. In the letter of James, we read: `You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone' (James ii, 24). However ridiculous it may seem, both Paul (Rom. iv, 3) and the unknown author of the letter of James (James ii, 23) appeal, for their totally opposing statements, to the same passage in the Old Testament (Gen. xv, 6): `Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness'.
Which partly explains why there are so many different Christian religions...
