The questioner of the following did not provide a valid e-mail for my reply. I am posting it here because I feel it is an important enough question and I hope he will read his answer here.
I have many questions about Christianity as I do with many other religions because I have decided to look at each and every religion and choose one which i want to carry on with for the rest of my life. so far i have learnt many things from Judaism and Islam and Buddhism, but Islam strikes me, as there is so much science in the Quran. my question to you is, is it true the bible contradicts itself, because when I was staying with some rabbis, they explained to me how the bible contradicts itself in many way. i they showed me a lost of 101 contradictions of the bible, could you please explain to me why if the bible is the word of god, does it have mistakes and contradictions.
Answer
I do not believe the Bible contradicts itself. There are translations (or mistranslations) that may make it sound contradictory. (Please see What Does the Bible Say About..The Skeptics Annotated Bible? for my previous answer about that.) There are doctrines that have been developed by men that contradict what the Bible says, thus making apparent contradictions. There may be extremely minor discrepancies as a result of copying texts, but these are amazingly few. I have yet to find an apparent contradiction that can be shown to be valid.
On the other hand, there are a number of sites that also show apparent contradictions in Quran. One obvious one is that Allah claims to have created man variously from nothing, from a clot of blood, from a lump of clay, and from a drop of sperm. (I admit that this last one may be referring to individual births rather than to the original creation.) The contradictions in Quran and other religious works are as significant, if not more so, than any apparent contradiction in the Bible. You are right in saying that if it is the word of God it should not have contradictions. That is why many people accept the Bible over Quran. The apparent contradictions among 60 authors (which should statistically be a large number) are fewer than the apparent contradictions with just one author (which statistically should be minimal).
I would be interested to know which version of Judaism those rabbis who claimed a mere hundred contradictions in the Bible subscribed to. Most Orthodox rabbis of which I am aware would object to that idea. Most Reform rabbis of which I am aware would agree with it. It would also be interesting to know if they are restricting that to their own understanding of what constitutes scripture (what Christians call the Old Testament). I would find it hard to admit that I was following a supposedly infallible document that had flaws in it. I would think they would want to change religions if they felt that their scriptures were flawed.