Ten Things Not in the Bible
December 14th, 2004People attribute all manner of sayings, numbers, and things to the Bible that are not found anywhere within its pages. Here are the straight facts:
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1. The Bible does not say Eve sinned by eating an apple. It says the fruit of “knowledge of good and evil”.
2. Noah did not bring all animals by twos. There were seven of every clean and two of every unclean.
3. The Bible does not say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. It says a large fish.
4. The Bible does not say that there were three wise men who visited the child Jesus. It only names the three gifts that they brought and not the number of men. They also were not at the manger but met the family at a house when Jesus was nearly two. (the subject of the first 528cast)
5. Jesus did not just feed five thousand with the loaves and fish. The Bible says that besides the five thousand men, there were woman and children who also ate.
6. The Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is a root of all types of evil.
7. Hezekiah is not a book in the Bible. He was, however, a king of Judah for 29 years.
8. Mary Magdalene was never referred to as a prostitute in the Bible.
9. The book of Revelation in many Bibles is titled “The Revelation of (St.)John” or something similar. Yet the first verse tells us that it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ that was given to John.
10. The maxim “God helps those who help themselves” is not found anywhere in the Bible.
December 14th, 2004 at 1:22 am
“God helps those who help themselves” was in Ben Franklin’s almanac. It is an extremely poor representation of theology! Thanks for the reminder.
March 1st, 2005 at 7:01 pm
Great stuff!!!
Also, Revelation is not an epistle to a church in a city: thus, it’s not “Revelations 21:8,” it’s “Revelation 21:8.” Just a dumb English-dork pet peeve I have!
September 17th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
2 of 10 Should read 7 clean and 2 unclean.
September 17th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
Oops, must have transposed them. Thanks.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
I am looking for other such things - especially “verses” that don’t exist. If you know of some - email me, please - pambayonso (at) hotmail (dot) com
Another great not-in the Bible line: “age of accountability”.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:56 am
The list was very helpful. I always find it sad when people ‘misquote’ or ‘mistranslate’ the Bible to suit their own purposes, ‘justify’ their own actions. It was nice to see some of the truth. The Bible has become The Word of God (translated by mankind).
March 29th, 2008 at 10:45 am
#3 is wrong; Here is the reference-
Mt 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
First, I apologize for the late response. Your comment was in moderation with hundreds of flagged comments. It sort of got lost in the shuffle.
I think you may be referring to the translation rather than the actual text. Since you did not post the translation that you used we will take a general approach.
No translation is perfect. While some are far worse than others in a literal word for word translation; a good thought for thought translation can add context. However at times when we need or want to know the true meaning of a word, we must fall back to the original languages.
The bottom line is that we need to understand the original language(s). We have a Greek written set of manuscripts for the Apostolic Scriptures (”new testament”). However, they were written in ways that strongly suggest that they were translated from Semitic languages. At the very least the structure suggests that the person thought with a Semitic language mindset.
That being said, I will leave you with some input from my colleague Erik, who graciously researched this while I could not get to my concordance. Hope it helps. Shalom!
The Greek word used is: