Here are verses where the Bible says something about the world that turned out to be wrong. Tap the reference to read the verse in its original language. Each one includes how believers explain it, so you can judge for yourself.
One error could be a copying mistake. Dozens, all matching what people believed at the time, point to human authors. Each defence below can explain one verse; together they need a different excuse for every mistake.
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Why the defences don't add up
Every error on this page has an answer from somewhere: "it's poetic", "it's how people talked then", "the translation is off", "it's a different kind of measurement", "it will still happen". Each sounds reasonable alone. But notice that the errors always line up with the knowledge of the time the books were written, and never run ahead of it. No verse mentions germs, a round Earth orbiting the Sun, or anything else people couldn't have known. That's exactly what you'd expect if people wrote it.
The Bible contains statements about nature, history and the future that don't match what we've since learned.
The Bible is without error in everything it teaches (the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy", 1978).
Many Christians don't believe the Bible is meant to be a science or history textbook. They say it uses the everyday categories of its time ("birds" meant flying things) and that its purpose is spiritual. The reply: that's a reasonable way to read an ancient human book. But then it can't also be used as proof of divine knowledge, and its authors' moral views (on slavery, women, outsiders) deserve the same "that's just how people thought then" treatment.
Sources
- Archaeology of the Philistines, camels and Chaldeans: see What archaeologists found. Tyre: modern Tyre (Sour), Lebanon, is still a city of well over 100,000 people. Nebuchadnezzar and Egypt: Babylonian Chronicle; Ezekiel himself admits Tyre wasn't taken as promised (Ezekiel 29:18).
- Herodotus, Histories 1.188–191, and the Nabonidus Chronicle, on Belshazzar as son of Nabonidus and Babylon falling to Cyrus the Persian in 539 BCE.
- Hebrew re'em ("unicorn" in the KJV) is now translated "wild ox" in modern Bibles; the KJV followed the Greek Septuagint's monokeros.