VIDEO: Unsolved Mysteries of the Bible

The Bible has dramatically influenced the cultures of just about every group of people on this planet, but there are still a lot of controversies around it and a lot of aspects that people simply cannot agree on.

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According to Wikipedia, the view that the Bible should be accepted as historically accurate and as a reliable guide to morality has been questioned by many scholars in the field of biblical criticism. In addition to concerns about morality, inerrancy, or historicity, there remain some questions of which books should be included in the Bible (see canon of scripture).

Jews discount the New Testament and Old Testament Deuterocanonicals, Jews and most Christians discredit the legitimacy of New Testament apocrypha, and a view sometimes referred to as Jesusism does not affirm the scriptural authority of any biblical text other than the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels.

Certain moral decisions in the Bible are questioned by many modern groups.

Some of the most commonly criticized ethical choices include treatment of women, religious intolerance, use of capital punishment as penalty for violation of Mosaic Law, sexual acts like incest, toleration of the institution of slavery in both Old and New Testaments, obligatory religious wars and the order to commit the genocide of the Canaanites and the Amalekites.

Christian Apologists support the Bible’s decisions by reminding critics that they should be considered from the author’s point of view and that Mosaic Law applied to the Israelite people (who lived before the birth of Jesus). Other religious groups see nothing wrong with the Bible’s judgments.

There are many places in the Bible in which inconsistencies—such as different numbers and names for the same feature, and different sequences for the same events—have been alleged and presented by critics as difficulties.

Responses to these criticisms include the modern documentary hypothesis, the two-source hypothesis and theories that the Pastoral Epistles are pseudonymous. Contrasting with these critical stances are positions supported by other authorities that consider the texts to be consistent.

Such advocates maintain that the Torah was written by a single source, the Gospels by four independent witnesses, and all of the Pauline Epistles to have been written by the Apostle Paul. However, authors such as Raymond Brown have presented arguments that the Gospels actually contradict each other in various important respects and on various important details.

W. D. Davies and E. P. Sanders state that: “on many points, especially about Jesus’ early life, the evangelists were ignorant … they simply did not know, and, guided by rumour, hope or supposition, did the best they could”. More critical scholars see the nativity stories either as completely fictional accounts, or at least constructed from traditions that predate the Gospels.

For example, many versions of the Bible specifically point out that the most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses did not include Mark 16:9-20, i.e., the Gospel of Mark originally ended at Mark 16:8, and additional verses were added a few hundred years later.