Why do stories within the Old and New Testaments often conflict with one another?
Both the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and New Testament contain diverse books (Latin = biblia) that tell about God. Neither testament offers a seamless narrative. The Hebrew texts tell about God primarily through the stories of the Abrahamic tribes, Hebrew people and the nation Israel. That God is known variously as Yahweh, El, El Shaddai and Adonai. The Hebrew texts were composed over a period of 700 years by numerous people, mostly anonymous, in several different literary styles (myth, history, song, wisdom, prophecy). The pre-history found in Genesis seeks to explain the origins of the Hebrew tribes. Their actual history starts with the Exodus from Egypt. These are books about God, and as such they tell what people believed to be true. The stories conflict because people’s experiences are always different, and because political considerations entered in. To read the Hebrew Bible effectively, you need to step into it, try to understand why a story was being told, what encounter with
