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Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Printable Version

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Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Havah - 08-31-2010

Shlama,
Is there any contradiction between Genesis 33:18 ad Acts 7:16?
Genesis 33 states a land was bought from Bnei Hamor by Jacob.
Acts 7 states the land was bought from Bnai Chamur by Abraham.
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Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Jerry - 09-01-2010

To my knowledge, it seems plausible for Abraham to have first purchased a "sepulchre" from the sons of Chamur, in "silver" (Acts 7:16), and then later on Jacob to have purchased a "parcel of land" from them as well, in "qeshitah" (Gen 33:18).

So I don't think it necessarily has to be a contradiction. Although others may have better insight on it than I, as I only took a quick glance at it.


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Havah - 09-04-2010

Joshua 24:32 They buried the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. They became the inheritance of the children of Joseph....
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That's no good
Acts 7:16
And he[Joseph] was removed to Shechem and buried in the sepulchre which Abraham had bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor.


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - distazo - 09-04-2010

Hi,

It looks like a scribe error.

I think that if Stephan spoke this, the audience would not have got mad at his words because 'they could not answer' but just kill him.


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Andrej - 09-05-2010

Let me ask you, do you believe that every single monologue spoken by a human recorded in the Bible is free of error? Of course not. Stephen was a man, and as such, he could make errors. Just because we have his error recorded in the Bible doesn't make the Bible any less perfect.

That is my angle, without going too much into the details of how inspiration works etc.

Edit: i still wanted to say, though, that if you accept this as a "contradiction" so quickly, you may actually lack the understanding of the intricacies of God's word (Or any complex text for that matter). Written words are a very ineffective method of communication, yet God made the best possible use of this method. The result of this use is not a billion-page long Book that contains all information to the smallest detail, but a book that is concise and compressed, and that often times asks for expansion and decompression, if one wants to get to the bottom of a matter. There are many illustrative examples of this, i will provide you with some, if you please.


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Jerry - 09-06-2010

Quote:Acts 7:16 - And he[Joseph] was removed to Shechem and buried in the sepulchre which Abraham had bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor.
Are you sure 7:16 is referring to Joseph? Maybe so, but Stephen could be referring to Jacob.

7:15 - And Jacob went down into Egypt and died there; "he" and our fathers.
7:16 - And "he" was removed to Shechem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought with silver from the B'nai Chamur.

Take for example a verse in Genesis, which gives us some added detail as to the burial of Jacob:

50:13 - For his sons carried him [Jacob] into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave [sepulchre] of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field, for a possession of a burying-place, of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre. - ASV


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Havah - 09-08-2010

Jerry: No. Jacob was buried in Hebron. Everyone knows it.
Andrej: I got your point of view. In fact if Steven was wrong(he is), it doesn't means he is not a righteous believer. Also, author Mar Luqa has no point to corrupt his word to suit the Scripture, which was also a lie, right?


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Jerry - 09-08-2010

Havah, I deleted a portion of an above post which presumed Ephron to be a son of Hamor. Instead, Genesis 23:8 lists him as a son of Zohar. For what its worth, the details of Stephen's verbal statement, as recorded in Acts 7:16, do not seem to align with the accounts of the Hebrew Old Testament. But I also suspect it is not of the greatest importance that they do, since I doubt he was stoned for that reason.

Nor would I expect a long verbal testimony to be an exact of replica of written Hebrew text.


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Andrej - 09-08-2010

Havah Wrote:Andrej: I got your point of view. In fact if Steven was wrong(he is), it doesn't means he is not a righteous believer. Also, author Mar Luqa has no point to corrupt his word to suit the Scripture, which was also a lie, right?
That is kind of what i said, though i do not want to exclude other explanations. i just wanted to point it out as a valid possibility. It might very well be, though, that there is another explanation hidden in scripture, which may even reveal further secrets.

Reading on the subject, i suppose the most logical explanation is that Stephen was simply trying to be quick in his summary, and as he was speaking to people aware of history, they knew how to understand his information. It's like with OT quotes in the NT, often times those are literal, but sometimes, those are paraphrases. Many have a problem with that, but, why is it many people think that only literal translation is valid? Alike, why should one think that Stephen's way of expressing the story is improper? He was merely trying to be concise, which always results in inaccuracies.

Another interpretation would be:
1) "he" in v. 15 is Joseph,
2) Joseph and his brothers were all carried to Shechem, but this is not recorded in the OT (Josephus seems to indicate this is Samaritan tradition)
3) Since Abraham set up an Altar in Shechem, he led Jacob to buy the land by making it a place of worship
But, this, to me, seems too much of a stretch.

Just fyi, i quickly compiled a paper from the commentaries out of my library that adressed the topic:
http://www.mediafire.com/?byjyx64j5y1cm55
This is one of the approaches i take when studying something in detail. This is not edited for proper formatting (messed up footnotes), nor is it arranged in any particular order. There may also be a few paragraphs that do not deal with the topic. Usually i would not share a document like this without formatting, arranging and extracting the information, but as i am currently not in the luxury of being able to spend time on this, i will give you the raw data, and you may examine it, if you wish.

It should be said, however, that, even when you have a hundred commentaries at your disposal, one often times has to arrive at the conclusion that none of them was able to figure out the truth behind a text. That happened to me several times, for example when examining the role and succession of the queen mother in the Old Testament, or when studying the story of the beggars of Jericho.


Re: Acts 7:16 and Genesis 33:18 contradiction - Havah - 02-04-2011

I started to believe this: possibly Abraham had did something on the land before.
He just didn't buy the land.

1. Abraham built an altar in Shechem, after God revealed to him on same place. (Genesis 12:-7)
2. Later the land and the surroundings belonged to Bnai Hamur.
3. When Jacob return from his uncle. He bought the land with money, under the name of Abraham. He built an altar in this place. Here we don't see scripture said God revealed to Jacob. Therefore, very possibly the same site of Abraham's altar.

We know, the Jews don't make an altar with all their wills. It's only the will of God.

Hence, the "owner" of this land is Abraham.