Question 2

There are places in the Old Testament where numbers don’t agree from one book to another. Does this mean there are mistakes in Scripture?

It’s common for writers to point to these discrepancies as proof of the Bible’s fallibility. “Aha,” they cry, “we knew the Bible was full of mistakes and here’s the proof!” Sincere believers have been troubled by these inconsistencies because a comparison of the texts will demonstrate that numbers in parallel passages do sometimes disagree.

If the question is, do our present versions of the Bible contain mistakes, I’m afraid the answer is a qualified yes. When it comes to numbers, the ancient texts have suffered a great deal. And if the ancient texts have been damaged in transmission, the modern translations can’t help but reflect that damage. I could list numerous places where numbers have gotten changed, omitted, enlarged, or shrunk. But does that mean the Bible is in error? No. Most evangelicals say that the Bible is inerrant in the original autographs. For those who think of baseball players and pop singers when they hear the word autograph, in biblical studies it refers to the original text as it came from the hand of the first writer. In other words, the book as it was first written is without error.

I’ve tried to show how the modern text of the Bible is reliable, but no one I’m aware of would argue that the NIV is inerrant. The original autograph was inerrant. The text we have today is reliable because the comparison of ancient texts and versions has shown that no copyist’s error or scribal gloss has changed the meaning of any doctrine or teaching. There are numerous places, however, where the precise reading of a particular text is uncertain.

That’s particularly true when it comes to numbers. We can’t always prove that the numbers in the original autographs were different from the numbers we have in the available manuscripts. But there’s enough evidence that numbers fared very poorly over the centuries that it is a plausible explanation for most of the variant numbers we find in the text.

For example, 1 Samuel 13:1, in the Hebrew text, reads, “Saul was [_____] years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel [_____] two years.”

You read it right. Saul’s age isn’t given in the Hebrew text. Bible translators have figured it out from the Septuagint. And the Hebrew gives the length of his reign as 2 years. We get the round number “40” from Acts 13:21. That’s a good example of numbers that have been so damaged in the transmission of the text that they have to be pieced together from other sources.

Later in the same chapter, the number of chariots used by the Philistines is given as “thirty thousand chariots, six thousand charioteers, and soldiers as numerous as the sands on the seashore” (13:5). Anyone with a smattering of mathematical sense can figure out that there were five chariots for every charioteer. Even if the Philistines had abnormally long legs, one man would have had a terrible time straddling five chariots. Since we know that the Philistines used chariots that held two men, and since the Septuagint reads three thousand chariots, most recent translations read “three thousand chariots, six thousand charioteers.”

What’s the point I’m trying to make here? Simply this. Anyone who has ever dialed a wrong number on the telephone, or has trouble remembering numbers larger than three digits, should be able to understand how easily copyists could garble numbers.

The fact that the Septuagint preserves the more plausible reading in these two cases probably points back to an earlier Hebrew text that hasn’t survived the centuries. This means that the Septuagint translator of 1 Samuel had access to a text older than the one containing the copyist’s error.

We find another example of conflicting numbers in Genesis 46:27, which says that Jacob’s household of seventy went down to Egypt. Acts 7:14 says seventy-five. The culprit here is probably the Septuagint.

By Christ’s time, this Greek translation of the Old Testament had become the accepted text of the Bible for most of the world’s Greek-speaking Jews. The problem arises out of a quotation in Acts 7:14, the part of Stephen’s sermon for which he was martyred.

To clear up this problem we need to know a little more about this powerful preacher. We first met him in Acts 6:5. A dispute had arisen in the Jerusalem church over a fund for the care for widows and orphans. The Greek-speaking believers complained that the Hebrew-speaking believers were unfairly overlooking their widows in the distribution of food. In an act of inspired wisdom, the church appointed seven men to oversee the distribution; all seven were from the Greek-speaking, or Hellenistic, community. Stephen is mentioned first in this group. Even his name, which is Greek, attests to the fact that he or his family had come from the Jewish world outside Palestine. This means that Stephen, when he preached in Acts 7, used the Greek Septuagint of the Diaspora, not the Hebrew Bible of Palestine.

The Septuagint, in its translation of Genesis 46:27, adds two sons of Manasseh, two sons of Ephraim, and one of Ephraim’s grandsons to the patriarchal census. With these five added to the list, the number in Stephen’s Bible totaled seventy-five. And so, in quoting from the Septuagint, Stephen gave the number of Jacob’s family as seventy-five.

Does that mean Acts is wrong?

Absolutely not. In fact, Acts 7:14 records Stephen’s statement with great accuracy.

I’ve grown accustomed to using the newer translations of the Bible. I preach from the NIV or NASB, I read the NIV or NEB, and I study from the NASB. But after years of that, when I quote Scripture in a sermon I almost invariably fall back into the wording of the King James. I can’t help it. That’s the version I memorized as a boy.

Knowing that Stephen was raised in the Diaspora and educated in Scriptures from the Septuagint, what version would we expect him to quote when surrounded by a potential lynch mob? If Acts 7:14 was a quotation from the Hebrew, I might be inclined to doubt its accuracy, even if it did agree with Genesis. A Greek-speaking Jew would be expected to quote from the Greek Old Testament!

Then is Genesis wrong?

Again, absolutely not. Genesis, using the list of people it does, accurately numbers seventy.

On Sunday mornings at the church I previously served, our head usher counted the congregation and entered the count in a record book. I never changed his number, but he took his count early in the service and our congregation tended to be very relaxed about the clock. Therefore, there were frequently more people when we dismissed than when he made his count.

Does that mean he had counted incorrectly? Of course it doesn’t. He counted everyone who was there when he counted. The fact that another six or seven people came after he finished counting doesn’t render his count inaccurate.

The list of family members Moses chose to count numbered seventy. The Septuagint, translated a thousand years later, took the liberty of adding members of the lines of Ephraim and Manasseh. For them, apparently it was important to extend the count to include two of the dominant tribes in later history.

While the numbers in the two books disagree, both are accurate in what they record. Moses provided us with he biological building blocks for the greatly multiplied people of Israel.

I don’t mean to imply that every number problem in the Old Testament can be dealt with simply by blaming a ham-handed stenographer. But the frequency of copyist’s error in the transmission of numbers makes it foolish to think that numerical problems in the text are proof that the Bible is riddled with errors.

David E. O’Brien, Today’s Handbook for Solving Bible Difficulties (Minneapolis, MN: David E. O’Brien, 1990), 45–48.