A researcher who studied parts of the Bible looking for what he believed were contradictions said the following:
The Bible says that for every miracle that Moses and Aaron performed, the magicians did the same with their secret arts. But then how was the first miracle replicated? Moses and Aaron converted all the available water into blood (Exodus 7:20-21). The magicians did the same (Exodus 7:22). This is impossible because there would be no more water to convert into blood.
Let’s examine these verses:
(Exodus 7:20-22) [20] And Moses and Aaron did so, just as the Lord commanded. So he lifted up the rod and struck the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants. And all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. [21] The fish that were in the river died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink the water of the river. So there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. [22] Then the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments; and Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the Lord had said.”
Firstly, if one reads the passages properly, one can easily see that Moses and Aaron did not convert all available water to blood, but only the water of the Nile (see verse 20). The researcher made his first mistake by misquoting the text. There was plenty of other water for the magicians of Pharaoh to use for their demonstration. We know this because just a few verses later (verse 24) we are told, “And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.”
Secondly, the magicians couldn’t replicate every miracle as this author had claimed, but used their “secret arts” to turn water into blood and call frogs from the Nile (Exodus 8:6-7). By the 3rd plague, the magicians told Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God!” (Exodus 8:19). It would appear the researcher made his claim that “for every miracle that Moses and Aaron performed, the magicians did the same” due to poorly executed research.
This is not a case of a contradiction, but a mistake made by a hasty researcher looking for errors in an inerrant collection of manuscripts.
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