Skeptics Annotated Bible: #54 How many of Bethlehem and Netophah's offspring returned from Babylon?

Skeptics Annotated Bible

A Response

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9/30/2004

#54 How many of Bethlehem and Netophah's offspring returned from Babylon?

Response by Eric Vestrup
Tektonics Apologetics Ministries

179
Ezra 2:21-22: The children of Bethlehem, an hundred twenty and three. The men of Netophah, fifty and six.

188
Nehemiah 7:26: The men of Bethlehem and Netophah, a hundred fourscore and eight.

Nehemiah 7, Ezra 2
Do These Chapters Hopelessly Contradict Each Other?

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Commentary on the
Skeptics' Annotated Bible
by James Patrick Holding
Tekton Apologetics Ministry

Do you know a person who writes in their Bible? Some Bibles today even come with space for such scribblers. I do write in my books, though not in my Bible, since that's a little hard with one on CD-ROM. But after numerous requests we have decided to offer some comments on one of the leading skeptical scribble-sites on the Net, the Skeptics' Annotated Bible.

By appearance this site is about the same as Ken's Guide to the Bible and even uses some of the same categories. But Ken offers even more details than these guys. As most will know, SAB is an online version of the Bible with little pictures placed by verses editorializing on the comment: stuff like sex, blood and guts, injustice, etc.

Why have we not bothered with these guys before? Because they aren't actually arguing anything. Editorial commentary in the form of pictures and one-sentence comments are not arguments. SAB is the Internet equivalent to a brick wall scribbled with graffiti, or arguing by saying, "nanny nanny boo boo." It performs (of course!) no analysis of the social background, the literary data, or context. It is merely "instant reaction" from angry Skeptics. And that sort of arguing isn't arguing at all. We feel no more obliged to offer a response than they would feel obliged to respond to a preacher whose only argument was, "You're a sinner bound for hell!"

That said, such implied arguments as SAB uses are indeed thoroughly answered on this site and others we link to, but as our time has opened up a bit it is time to get more specific. We have now run through the single-sentence commentaries in SAB and added such response as we deemed necessary. By estimate perhaps 40-50% of SAB's comments are either "argument by outrage" or places where SAB takes moral offense, usually against a cultural norm. Most of the rest are easily answered by links. Overall almost none of SAB deserves detailed response and many cases require no more than a "So, what's the big deal?" as a response. We now consider our dealings with SAB otherwise closed. Though SAB updates nearly every day (1-2 verses) we see no need to address each new objection as they have in principles been almost all the same.