King David claims that snails melt and
Moses that insects have four legs

By Tomas De Los Santos

Nothing destroys the credibility of a story more effectively than do contradictions within the story, or where the story provides erroneous information. In that regard, the Bible is riddled with contradictions and errors. As a former believer in biblical inerrancy, I never really paid attention to the many contradictions and errors that are in the Bible in spite of my having studied the Bible with serious dedication for a full decade. In retrospect, I now realize that I was aware of some of these problems, having noticed them through the course of my studies, but I either ignored them and their implications, or they simply did not register enough for me to pursue the question -- so deeply had my critical faculties been put to sleep by my belief that the Bible was the inerrant and inspired word of God. When I finally did look more squarely at these problems with the biblical text, well, as they say, all hell broke loose. The entire edifice of the Bible toppled like a giant house of cards.
This is no laughing matter, especially when one considers the implications of biblical contradictions and mistakes with regards to claims that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Some of the contradictions and mistakes in the Bible are very serious. Others, however, are just plain silly. Let's take a look at a few "silly" biblical mistakes that are amusing if not funny.
The first five books of the Bible, collectively referred to as the Torah, are believed to have been written by Moses. Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the third and fifth of those books, record, among several things, God's laws regarding kosher diet. Notice what Moses says about rabbits (I will only quote from Leviticus as the corresponding verse in Deuteronomy is essentially the same): "and the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but devideth not the hoof; he is unclean to you. . . ." (Lev 11:6; Deut 14:7 KJV).
Whoa! Hold on a minute. Cud-chewing rabbits? Since when? Rabbits don't chew their cud! Cows do, but not rabbits. What's the deal with Moses? One would think that Moses would know his animals a little better, especially if he was getting his information from God. Maybe the mistake is not God's fault. Maybe Moses misunderstood God. The phrase translated "chew the cud" in the KJV is more exactly rendered as "bring up the cud." At any rate, rabbits do not bring up anything. Although they do eat their own dung, they pass it completely through before doing so. The description of rabbits as cud-chewers in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is simply inaccurate.
But this isn't the only place where the Bible, inspired by God, gets it wrong. For example, let's look at a passage in Psalms. The book of Psalms is believed to have been written almost entirely by David, the first Jewish king, and the boy who slew Goliath. Look at what King David says about snails: "as the snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. . . ." (Psa 58:8 KJV).
David! You should stick with slinging stones! C'mon . . . snails are slimy and all, but they don't melt! If they die, they dry up and rot, and if thrown into a fire, they burn like everything else, but melt like an ice-cube? No way! Where is David getting his info?
And lastly, we have Moses' brilliant gaffe where he maintains that insects have four legs: "all winged insects that go upon all fours are an abomination to you. Yet among the winged insects that go on all fours you may eat those which have legs above their feet, with which to leap on the earth. Of them you may eat: the locust according to its kind, the bald locust according to its kind, and the cricket according to its kind, and the grasshopper according to its kind. But all other winged insects which have four feet are an abomination to you. . . ." (Lev 11:20-23 RSV).
My Lord! Now Moses has really gone off the deep end. Aside from informing us that it's okay with God if we eat grasshoppers and crickets (a practice I am neither debating nor advocating), Moses seems to be living in a world of his own imagination where insects have four legs. Maybe back then "insect" didn't mean what it means today. Or maybe Moses was just mistaken, or wasn't paying attention, when God gave him the law. Certainly it would be his mistake and not God's. But then, what is a mistake, silly or otherwise, doing in the Bible? If it's wrong, it's wrong, and the Bible is not supposed to be wrong about anything. To be sure, God, a perfect being, could not have authored any mistakes. The Bible then, must be of human creation, and Moses, or whoever authored those books, needs some brushing up on basic entomology.