Problem: Josiah died at Megiddo or Jerusalem 
Verses: 2 Kings 23:29-30, 2 Chronicles 35:23-24; Status: Serious

Josiah was slain by Pharaoh Neco of Egypt. But there is an apparent contradiction as to whether he died at Megiddo where the battle was, or later in Jerusalem. This is 2 Kings 23:29-30:

Note carefully the wording of 2 Kings. It does not just say that the fatal blow was delivered in Megiddo (leaving open the possibility that he died later). It says that his servants carried Josiah's dead body from Megiddo back to Jerusalem. This is no small distance: about 50 miles. By contrast, this is 2 Chronicles 35:23-24:

2 Chronicles seems to say that Josiah was still alive when the chariot reached Jerusalem. The only way out of this problem is to claim that actually, he died during the journey. Does the text of 2 Chronicles allow the possibility that Josiah died in transit? This is not the natural reading - one expects a competent author to write in chronological order - but it's just about possible. I should note though that other Bible translations make it more explicit that Josiah died in Jerusalem. For example, here is the NIV's version of 2 Chronicles 35:24:

The NASB and NRSV translations of 2 Chronicles agree that he died in Jerusalem, in which case 2 Kings is clearly wrong about his dead body being moved from Megiddo.

Problem: The city of Tyre survived 
Verses: Ezekiel 26:7-14; Status: Serious

For about 15 years, the city of Tyre was under seige from King Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet Ezekiel, evidently writing while this was happening, predicted Tyre's sack and total ruin by Nebuchadnezzar. This isEzekiel 26:7-14:

This is not just a vague prophecy of Tyre's destruction some time in the future. It tells us precisely who will be responsible: Nebuchadnezzar. However, his seige ended in 573 BC with a negotiated settlement. He never did destroy the city, and so Ezekiel's prophecy did not occur. Ezekiel gets one thing right: Tyre wasn't rebuilt after the seige - because it wasn't destroyed.

Repentance?

Stephen McCormick (who gave permission to be named) wrote to me, to suggest that perhaps the people of Tyre repented of their sins in response to the prophecy, and so God did not carry out his threat. Something similar happens in the events of Jonah 3.

This is not a terrible suggestion, but it does suffer from the fact that this repentence, if it occurred, is not recorded, and so the reader of the Bible is left with the wrong idea about what the significance of this prophecy actually is. As it stands, it seems to be a straightforward statement about future events.

The strongest reply

The Tektonics website notes that, at one point, the prophecy refers to the invaders as "they", and argues that "they" are someone else: the "many nations" mentioned at verse 3. This is a very unnatural reading - I expect everyone reading Ezekiel 26 for the first time thinks that "they" refers to Nebuchadnezzar's troops, rather than anyone else.

In any case, most of the prophecy refers to "he", which can only mean Nebuchadnezzar. Verses 10-11 tell us that "he" will enter through the city gates, trampling through all of the streets, and killing the people. But "he" never did. So the problem still stands, even if we ignore the "they" sentences.

Tyre was an island city, with associated suburbs on the mainland. Tektonics claims that these verses refer only to such suburbs, but I don't see why they should. The island was Tyre proper - as shown by verses 4-5predicting that Tyre would become "a bare rock ... in the midst of the sea". These verses surely indicate that Ezekiel understood "Tyre" to mean the island. So when he predicts that Nebuchadnezzar would rampage through all of Tyre's streets, he must mean on the island.

Further support for my position comes from verse 8: "He will kill with the sword your daughters on the mainland." These "daughters" are the mainland suburbs, and so it's clear that Ezekiel distinguishes between them and Tyre proper. In the following verses, he predicts that Nebuchadnezzar will bring devastation not only to "your daughters" but also to "you" - which must therefore mean Tyre itself.

Never rebuilt?

Despite Ezekiel saying it would never be rebuilt, Tyre exists to this day (the island and mainland having been connected now), and its inhabitants are even mentioned, in the present tense, several times in the New Testament (e.g. at Acts 12:20).

Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say

Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

A worker removed sand from the remains of a military fort. The ruins roughly coincide with the timing of the Israelites’ biblical flight from Egypt

NORTH SINAI, Egypt, April 2 — On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt’s chief archaeologisttook a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency’s latest discovery.

Enlarge This Image

Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

A grave containing a female skeleton near the military fort. Egyptian archaeologists say no evidence has surfaced to confirm the Exodus story.

It didn’t look like much — some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava. The archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, often promotes mummies and tombs and pharaonic antiquities that command international attention and high ticket prices. But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons, excited him because it provided physical evidence of stories told in hieroglyphics. It was proof of accounts from antiquity.

That prompted a reporter to ask about the Exodus, and if the new evidence was linked in any way to the story of Passover. The archaeological discoveries roughly coincided with the timing of the Israelites’ biblical flight from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land.

“Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom.

Egypt is one of the world’s primary warehouses of ancient history. People here joke that wherever you stick a shovel in the ground you find antiquities. When workers built a sewage system in the downtown Cairo neighborhood of Dokki, they accidentally scattered shards of Roman pottery. In the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, tombs have been discovered beneath homes.

But Egypt is also a spiritual center, where for centuries men have searched for the meaning of life. Sometimes the two converge, and sometimes the archaeological record confirms the history of the faithful. Often it does not, however, as Dr. Hawass said with detached certainty.

“If they get upset, I don’t care,” Dr. Hawass said. “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”

The story of the Exodus is celebrated as the pivotal moment in the creation of the Jewish people. As the Bible tells it, Moses was born the son of a Jewish slave, who cast him into the Nile in a basket so the baby could escape being killed by the pharaoh. He was saved by the pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the royal court, discovered his Jewish roots and, with divine help, led the Jewish people to freedom. Moses is said to have ascended Mt. Sinai, where God appeared in a burning bush and Moses received the Ten Commandments.

In Egypt today, visitors to Mount Sinai are sometimes shown a bush by tour guides and told it is the actual bush that burned before Moses.

But archaeologists who have worked here have never turned up evidence to support the account in the Bible, and there is only one archaeological find that even suggests the Jews were ever in Egypt. Books have been written on the topic, but the discussion has, for the most part, remained low-key as the empirically minded have tried not to incite the spiritually minded.

“Sometimes as archaeologists we have to say that never happened because there is no historical evidence,” Dr. Hawass said, as he led the journalists across a rutted field of stiff and rocky sand.

The site was a two-hour drive from Cairo, over the Mubarak Peace Bridge into the Northern Sinai area called Qantara East. For nearly 10 years, Egyptian archaeologists have scratched away at the soil here, using day laborers from nearby towns to help unearth bits of history. It is a vast expanse of nothingness, a flat desert moonscape. Two human skeletons were recently uncovered, their bones positioned besides pottery and Egyptian scarabs.

As archaeological sites go, it is clearly a stepchild to the more sought-after digs in other parts of the country that have revealed treasures of pharaonic times. A barefoot worker in a track suit tried to press through the crowd to get the officials leading the tour to give him his pay, and tramped off angrily when he was rebuffed.

Recently, diggers found evidence of lava from a volcano in the Mediterranean Sea that erupted in 1500 B.C. and is believed to have killed 35,000 people and wiped out villages in Egypt, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula, officials here said. The same diggers found evidence of a military fort with four rectangular towers, now considered the oldest fort on the Horus military road.

But nothing was showing up that might help prove the Old Testament story of Moses and the Israelites fleeing Egypt, or wandering in the desert. Dr. Hawass said he was not surprised, given the lack of archaeological evidence to date. But even scientists can find room to hold on to beliefs.

Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, the head of the excavation, seemed to sense that such a conclusion might disappoint some. People always have doubts until something is discovered to confirm it, he noted.

Then he offered another theory, one that he said he drew from modern Egypt.

“A pharaoh drowned and a whole army was killed,” he said recounting the portion of the story that holds that God parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape, then closed the waters on the pursuing army.

“This is a crisis for Egypt, and Egyptians do not document their crises.”

Absurd Torah “Science”

    The Torah is VERY errant and contradictive to that of scientific facts.  The first book of Genesis alone should be enough to invalidate Judaism to any INTELLIGENT person.  Sadly, not only is Judaism still one of the world’s leading religions, but it has spawned the most insane theism (Christianity).  The goal of this page is to expose the inaccuracies of the Torah, hence shooting down its divine claim.  All the verses shall appear in chronological order.  Feel free to copy what ever you wish.

1) The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. Genesis 1:1 The earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals.  From science, we know that the true order of events was just the opposite.

2) “And God said, Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) and “. . .And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1 :5), versus “And God said, ‘Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night....’ “And God made two lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also…  And the evening and morning were the fourth day” (Genesis 1 :14-19).  These violates two major facts.  Light cannot exist without a sun, and secondly, how can morning be distinguished from evening unless there is a sun and moon?  Christians try to claim that god is the light he is referring to yet, considering the context it is quite obvious that the light god is speaking of is the light emitted by the sun.  Just another feeble attempt at trying to rationalize such a MAJOR blunder.

3) God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament (Genesis 1:6-8).  This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters.  This firmament, if it existed, would have been quite an obstacle to our space program.

4) Plants are made on the third day (Genesis 1:11) before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (Genesis 1:14-19).

5) “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind…  ‘And the evening and the morning were the third day” (Genesis 1:11-13), versus “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life…  And God created - great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly…  And the evening and the morning were the fifth day” (Genesis 1:20-23).  Genesis says that life existed first on the land as plants and later the seas teemed with living creatures.  Geological science can prove that the sea teemed with animals and vegetable life long before vegetation and life appeared on land.

6) “And God said, ‘Let the water bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven” (Genesis 1:20).  Birds did not emerge from water.

7) "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, the beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.  And God made…every thing that creepth upon the earth after his kind…" (Genesis 1:24-25).  Science contends that reptiles were created long before mammals, not simultaneously.  While reptiles existed in the Carboniferous Age, mammals did not appear until the close of the Reptilian Age.

8) “So God created man in his own image,...male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27), and “the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31). If Adam was created on the 6th day, approximately 6,000 years ago (Bishop Usher’s calculations), then nobody lived before 4,000 B.C. Prehistoric men would be fictitious.  By tracing the genealogy of Jesus back 77 generations to Adam, the third chapter of Luke also supports belief in a very young earth.  If each man had lived approximately 100 years, then the world would be no more than 9,684 (7,700 + 1984) years old.  If each of Jesus’ ancestors had lived to be 1,000 years old (an age not even reached by Methuselah), the earth would still be only 78,984 (77,000 + 1984) years old, according to creationists.

9) “And to every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so” (Genesis 1:30).  Carnivorous beasts and fowl do not eat green herbs, nor were all animals originally herbivores. Simply consider tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, barracudas, tigers, etc.

10) In Genesis 1, the entire creation takes 6 days (Genesis 1:31), at the end of which the earth and its living things are pretty much as they are today.  But we know from modern science that the universe (including the earth and life on earth) evolved slowly over billions of years.

11) In Genesis 2:7 humans are created instantaneously from dust and breath, whereas they actually evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms.  Science can in fact trace back human evolution CONCLUSIVELY 3 .2 million years.

12) God makes the animals (Genesis 2:18) and parades them before Adam to see if any would strike his fancy.  But none seem to have what it takes to please him.  After making the animals, God has Adam name them all.  The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while, why Adam would still have to be living for we haven’t even discovered nor named all the species.  Also consider the idea of every living creature being brought to the Middle East, that would have killed many animals due to climatic changes.

13) God curses the serpent, making him crawl on his belly and eat dust (Genesis 3:14).  One wonders how he got around before -- by hopping on his tail, perhaps?  But snakes don’t eat dust, do they?

14) “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Genesis 6:4 But there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of these giants.  Also there is a reference to the “Nephilim” being on the earth.  Which is a term used for half angel, half human.  Why is there no archaeological evidence for the existence of the Nephilim either?

15) Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long (Genesis 6:14-15).  The largest wooden ships ever built were just over 300 feet, and they required diagonal iron strapping for support.  Even so, they leaked so badly that they had to be pumped constantly.  Are we to believe that Noah, with no shipbuilding knowledge and no shipbuilding tradition to rely upon, was able to construct a wooden ship that was longer than any that has been built since?

16) Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female representatives from each species of “every thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 7:8).  Now this must have taken some time, along with expert knowledge of taxonomy, genetics, biogeography, and anatomy.  How did Noah manage to collect the endemic species from the New World, Australia, Polynesia, and other remote regions entirely unknown to him?  How, once he found them, did he transport them back to his Near Eastern home?  How could he tell the male and female beetles (there are more than 500,000 species) apart?  How did he know how to care for these new and unfamiliar animals?  How did he find the space on the ark?  How did he manage to find and care for the hundreds of thousands of parasitic species or the hundreds of thousands of plant species?  (Plants are ignored in the Genesis account, but the animals wouldn’t last long if the plants died in the flood.)  No, wait, don’t tell me, a miracle happened, millions of them.

17) All of the animals boarded the ark “in the selfsame day” (Genesis 7:13-14).  Since there were several million species involved, they must have boarded at a rate of at least 100 per second.  How did poor Noah and his family make sure that the correct number of each species entered through the door and then get them all settled into their proper living quarters so efficiently?  I wish the airline companies could do as well!

18) The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare (Genesis 7:20).  Where did all the water come from?  Where did it all go?  Why is there no evidence of such a massive flood in the geological record?

19) When the animals left the ark (Genesis 8:19), what would they have eaten?  There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year.  What would the carnivores have eaten?  Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct.  And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find there way back after the flood subsided?

20) Noah kills the “clean beasts” and burns their dead bodies for God (Genesis 8:20).  According to Genesis 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all “clean” animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark.  So why is it that we still have “clean” animals?

21) God is filled with remorse for having drowned his creatures in the flood.  He even puts the rainbow in the sky so that whenever the animals see it they will remember God’s promise not to do it again (Genesis 9:13).  But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops.  There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed.

22) “The whole earth was of one language” (Genesis 11:1).  But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others.

23) (Genesis. 11:4) According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God (Genesis 11:9)  But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time.

24) (Genesis 14:14) Abram goes into pursuit looking for his captive relative in the city of Dan.  The problem here is that the city of Dan did not exist until over 300 years after Moses died.  How is it that Abram could enter the city of Dan, when the city did not even exist?

25) Jacob displays his (and God’s) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods.  The result is streaked baby goats (Genesis 30:37).  The author of Genesis (God?) believed that genetic characteristics of the offspring are determined by what the parents see at the moment of conception.  This is a laughable belief.  Ask any animal husbandrist.

26) Camels don’t divide the hoof (Leviticus 11:4).  This statement is completely moronic for every TEENAGER knows what a “camel toe” and how it used to describe a specific split.

27) The bible says that hares and conies are unclean because they “chew the cud” but do not part the hoof (Leviticus 11:5-6).  But hares and coneys are not ruminants and they do not “chew the cud.”

28) Bats are birds to the biblical God (Leviticus 11:13-19 & Deuteronomy 14:11-18).

29) Some birds have four feet (Leviticus 11:20-21).

30) If there is a God, there is one thing we know for sure about him: He really likes insects (particularly beetles).  There are more species of insects, by far, than all other species of life on earth.  As JBS Haldane said, “he has an inordinate fondness for beetles.”  Yet insects are said to have four legs in Leviticus 11:22-23.

31) Unicorns have never existed, yet they are said to in Deuteronomy 33:17.

32) Fiery serpents have NEVER existed yet Numbers 21:6 claims they do and TO THIS DAY STILL inhabit certain cities.