NUMERICAL CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN SAMUEL-KINGS AND CHRONICLES

In any listing of contradictions in the Bible, one is sure to run across those where a difference in numbers is involved. These are often stated as being especially egregious since if we can't trust the Bible to even get the numbers correct, how can we trust anything at all that it says. In fact, that sort of reasoning is way off base and only reflects our modern preoccupation with scientific and mathematical truth, things far removed from the more important emphases of the authors of the Bible.

In addition, as I have stated in several earlier posts (“How Old Was Saul When He Became King?”, “Mathematical Objections to the Bible”, “I Samuel 13:1”, “How Many Years of Famine was David Threatened With?”, etc.), in the transmission of the manuscript of the Bible over the years, numerical errors are much more likely to be perpetuated from one scribe to the next than errors involving words since the latter possess much more redundancy.

Thus, to take a hypothetical example in English, what would you with a garbled text that read: “On Sudnay mourning wnt I to store and bot 7 oranges”? Obviously most of us would easily correct the misspellings and strange word order and reconstruct it as, “On Sunday morning I went to the store and bought 7 oranges.” But what if I had another handwritten copy of that same sentence that read, “On Sunday morning I went to the store and bought 17 oranges”? Which version would be correct, 7 or 17? Without any additional information such as knowledge of how many people would be eating oranges, it is impossible to tell which scribe made a mistake, or perhaps both did.

In addition, Fouts explains, “In most of the cases of differing numbers the disagreements can be resolved by textual analysis...It is because of problems such as these that the veracity of the accounts sometimes have been called into question. Instead of seeking to understand the numbers as figures of speech or as symbolic, some have derided the passages as unhistorical folktales, thereby claiming to invalidate the historical accuracy of the text...others have sought to understand the processes by which these numbers arose, thereby seeking both to maintain the historical credibility of the texts and to understand the original significance of the numbers themselves.”

With that brief background, here are four “contradictions” I found on an internet site called wardoons:

How many people did David's chief kill? II Samuel 23:8 says 800 while I Chronicles 11:11 says 300.

Girdlestone says, “The readings in this verse evidently varied before the time of the LXX [Greek Septuagint] and there is no means of accounting for them.” However, he then makes the telling comment that the numbers eight and three are interchanged in other passages as well. The reason might well be that the two Hebrew words look somewhat the same as well as sounding somewhat alike (shemonah and sheloshah, respectively). Thus, it might be quite easy for a scribe working alone to confuse the appearance of the two words. Or, alternatively, if two scribes were working together with one reading out loud from an original while the other produced a copy, the similarity in sounds could have also easily led to an error.

Williamson goes elsewhere in the Old Testament to determine which version is likely to be correct: “2 Sam. 23:8 has 'eight hundred', which is undoubtedly original since Ishbaal's exploit surpassed that of Abishai's (vv. 20-21 [of I Chron. 11]). Rudolph suggests that v. 20 was used to correct the unintelligible 2 Sam. 23:8 in connection with 'his spear,' and that this opened the way for the smaller number which immediately follows there [in v. 3] to be accidentally substituted here.”
How many horsemen did David capture from the King of Zoliah: 1,700 (2 Samuel 8:4) or 7,000 (I Chronicles 18:4)?

The Septuagint happens to agree with Chronicles at this point. Therefore Davies says, “It may be that the '1,700 horsemen/charioteers' of v. 4 should read '1,000 chariots and 7,000 horsemen/charioteers' as in LXX and the parallel in 1 Chron 18:4.”

McCarter: “I assume that MT [the Hebrew text] lost rkb wsb't 'lp by haplography [accidental elision] and that the present text arose from an imperfect attempt to correct the damage.”

Tsumura takes a slightly different approach in saying “the combination of 1,000 chariots and 7,000 charioteers seems rather unbalanced. The view of Ap-Thomas that the original figures were 1,000 chariots, 700 cavalrymen, and 20,000 foot soldiers sounds more reasonable [than McCarter's view]. It may be, however, that the term parasim, which can mean either '(military) horses' or 'horsemen' (see Hab. 1:8) and is parallel here with the foot soldiers, and refers to a horse and rider as a pair. On the other hand, the Hebrew term harekeb, which is literally 'the chariot,' here clearly means chariot horses since most were hamstrung.”

Thus, there are several chains of reasoning one can use in order to work backward to determine which version is more likely to be original.

How many work supervisors did Solomon appoint: 3,600 (II Chronicles 2:2) or 3,300 (I Kings 5:16)?

I must admit that my first reactions to this problem were, “Who cares, and what possible difference does it make?” But responsible Bible commentators go to the trouble to take each problem like this one seriously. Thus, we have the two representative responses given below.

Williamson: “This verse [II Chronicles 2:2] is repeated from v. 18 below. It is usually thought to have been added here as a preparation for the reference in v. 7 to the 'skilled workers'. Since this latter, however, clearly refers back to I Chr. 22:15, the present verse has to be regarded as secondary.” Then concerning v. 18 referred to above, Williamson points out the discrepancy in numbers with I Kings 5:16 and states that “it may well be this latter figure that is confused.” He refers the reader to a fuller discussion in a work by Gooding on the subject.

Michaelis alternatively explains the discrepancy as due to different methods of classifying the foremen. Thus, Chronicles distinguishes those from Canaan from the Israelite overseers. But Kings distinguishes the higher from the lower overseers. Thus Solomon had 3,300 lower level overseers and 550 upper level supervisors, of whom 20 were Israelites and 300 Canaanites.

How many baths were in the facility: 2,000 (I Kings 7:26) or greater than 3,000 (II Chronicles 4:5)?

From the way this question was worded, I am not convinced that the internet critic really understands the passage at all. He seems to treat a “bath” as a place to bathe in rather than what it really meant at the time – a Hebrew unit of liquid measure. So at most, we are talking about a difference in the volume of water held by one particular ceremonial basin, not the number of individual bathing places in the building.

The second point involves the word “greater than” or “over.” in the II Chronicles passage. Modern translations such as NRSV, JB, NEB, and AB delete this Hebrew word since it does not have strong textual support in the early manuscripts.

That still leaves us with a problem concerning the liquid capacity of the giant basin. G.H. Jones indicates that the volume of a “bath” appears to have varied during biblical times from as low as 22 liters to as high as 45 liters. This was determined by measuring the capacity of labeled jars found at different sites in the Holy Land.

And Howard points out, “The description [in the Bible] is not easy to follow...The variation in capacity from I Kings may be due to different shapes being envisaged.” Thus, another approach has been taken by C.C.Wylie, who demonstrated that the figure in Kings is a calculation based on the assumption that the large “sea” being described is hemispherical in shape. Alternatively, the volume given in Chronicles appears to have assumed that the large “sea” was cylindrical. Both figures then were calculated from the dimensions given in the biblical text rather than the volume being measured directly.