I already know what the comments are going to say. People will say I'm taking the Bible out of context and that there are no contradictions in the Bible. Well I'm here to prove you wrong.

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"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." Ezekiel 18:20

"The Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." Exodus 20:5

I was always told that God wouldn't punish someone for the sins their father or mother committed. However in the Old Testament when the Jews spied on their promised land and God found out, he grew upset and had them wander in the desert for 40 years. Everyone, including the children were punished because a group decided to spy.

"God does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punished the children and their children for the sins of the parent to the third and fourth generation." Exodus 34:7

In this chapter, Moses is on mount sinai for the second time to form a covenant between God and the Israelites. But at the base of the mountain, the people grow impatient and decide to create their own idol, which angers Yahweh. The defense for him punishing the future generations is that it's possible (or that he knows) they will also form idols and worship false gods.

So which is? Is it as Ezekiel says and we are not punished for the sins of our ancestors? Or are the passages from exodus correct?

Let's not ignore the fact that jealousy is also a sin. (Only for people though. It's ok when God does it).

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"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham" Genesis 22:1

Some context: this is the moment God instructs Abraham to take Isaac into the wilderness and sacrifice him. My first problem with this is that I thought God hated human sacrifice yet here he is asking Abraham to do it.

"When tempted , no one should say 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed." James 1:13-14

Okay, so God doesn't tempt anyone. Sounds good. Oh but wait, didn't he just tempt Abraham in the book of Genesis? 

And for those of you familiar with the New Testament, you might remember the story of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. You can read this encounter in Matthew 4.

God supposedly cannot be tempted or tempt anyone yet the Holy Spirit (who is also God) leads Jesus (also God) to the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Yes, Jesus does resist the temptations but he was still tempted. This entirely contradicts the passage from James 1.

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The last words of Jesus are a highly debatable topic but let's turn to each gospel and see what they have to say.

"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." Luke 23:46

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Matthew 27:46

"It is finished." John 19:30

These are supposedly the last words spoken by Jesus Christ. Perhaps they were the last words each 'witness' heard him say. Or perhaps none of these are true. I have no idea, I just find the drastic differences fascinating. And there's differences all throughout the gospels, which is wild to me considering these claim to be firsthand accounts.

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The flood story is probably one of the most recognizable tales in all of Christianity. But did know that scholars believe there were actually 2 separate flood narratives and they were combined into the 1 we have today?

https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/related-articles/two-flood-narratives

There's a lot of reasons they believe this including differences in the details of the story, vocabulary, and writing styles. I'll provide an example of a little difference in detail.

Genesis 6:19-20 "You are also to bring into the ark two of all the living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of everything- from the birds according to their kinds, from the livestock according to their kinds, and from the animals that crawl on the ground according to their kinds."

"You are to take with you seven pairs, a male and it's female, of all the clean animals, and two of the animals that are not clean, a male and its female." Genesis 7:1

These two verses are very different in how God instructs Noah to choose which animals to bring. Did God change his mind? Is he providing further instruction? Or is it as the scholars believe? That there were 2 flood accounts combined into one over time

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I could go on and on about this subject. I'll probably do another chapter on just the differentiations between the gospels because I find those very fascinating.