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What the text says · what tradition added · what the evidence shows. Start with Adam and Eve: the garden and the fall.
Browse stories →02 · CompareCompare translations
Word-level differences highlighted. See why Isaiah 7:14 reads virgin in one Bible and young woman in another.
Open Isaiah 7:14–16 →02b · Contested versesWhy Bibles differ
Virgin or young woman? “Pierced” or “like a lion”? The longer ending of Mark? The original words, the ancient translations and manuscripts, and how each tradition reads them.
Start with Isaiah 7:14 →03 · QuestionsHard questions, fairly heard
The case, the strongest responses, and a plain assessment.
Browse question guides →Stories
- Draft · being fact-checked
Genesis 2:4–3:24
Adam and Eve: the garden and the fall
God places the man in Eden and forbids him to eat from one tree. A serpent challenges the death warning; the woman and her husband eat, blame follows, and God announces painful consequences and blocks access to the tree of life. Genesis does not name Satan; Jewish, Christian and Islamic interpretations differ over responsibility, death, inherited sin, marriage and the couple's legacy, while genetics tests recent sole genetic descent rather than supernatural agency. What supports claims about Satan, male authority and a historical first couple?
Genesis tells of disobedience and expulsion without naming Satan. Interpretations differ over inherited sin and the husband's rule. Genomic evidence addresses whether humanity descends solely and genetically from a recent couple; it does not independently establish supernatural agency in Eden.
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Genesis 4:1–16
Cain and Abel
Cain kills his brother Abel after God favours Abel and his offering but not Cain and his. Before the killing, God warns Cain to resist sin; afterward, God confronts him, sentences him to wandering and protects him from being killed. Cain settles east of Eden. The story leaves questions about why Cain's offering was rejected, who could threaten him, where his wife came from and what his protective mark meant and looked like.
Genesis says the mark protects Cain but does not describe its form, explicitly explain why his offering was rejected or identify his wife and the people he fears. The reviewed sources yielded no independent corroboration of Cain and Abel as individuals. That finding does not settle whether they existed.
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Genesis 1:1–2:3
Creation in six days
Over six days, God brings light into darkness, separates waters, reveals dry land and fills the world with plants, heavenly lights, animals and humans. Light and plants appear before the heavenly lights. Humans bear God's image and receive his blessing and rule over other creatures; God then rests and makes the seventh day holy. How long the days last, what the sky is and how the sequence relates to scientific accounts of origins are disputed.
God creates over six days and rests on the seventh, but interpreters disagree about what this week describes. Scientific estimates of the universe's and Earth's ages weigh against recent formation. Those estimates alone do not settle whether God creates.
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Exodus 13:17–15:21
Crossing the Red Sea (and did the Exodus happen?)
Trapped between the sea and Pharaoh's army, Israel fears death; Moses urges trust in the LORD, and God commands an advance. An east wind opens a path across exposed ground for Israel, then the returning water drowns its pursuers. Moses and the Israelites sing of God's rescue, followed by Miriam and the women. The crossing has no independent confirmation in the sources checked, and its location, date and population remain disputed; wind models show a possible mechanism without establishing that it happened.
Exodus tells of Israel's rescue and the drowning of its pursuers. The sources checked do not independently confirm the crossing or settle its location, date or scale. Merneptah's inscription names Israel in Canaan but does not attest an escape from Egypt. Whether the rescue was God's work is a theological judgment.
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Daniel 1:1–21
Daniel and his friends in Babylon
Daniel and his friends train at Babylon's court and receive new names; Daniel refuses the king's food and wine as defiling, without the chapter explaining why. The four look healthier after ten days on vegetables and water and enter royal service. The chapter credits God with Jehoiakim's defeat, Daniel's favour and the youths' learning. Daniel 1's siege date fits other dates only if certain assumptions hold, but the sources checked contain no record from the time confirming it, and the chapter does not say the youths were castrated.
The chapter credits God with Jehoiakim's defeat, Daniel's favour and the youths' learning, but does not explain why the food would defile Daniel. Its siege date can be made to fit other dates only on certain assumptions, and no record from the time confirms it in the sources checked. The chapter does not say the youths were castrated.
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2 Kings 2:19–25
Elisha, the jeering boys and the two bears
Two female bears maul forty-two boys after Elisha curses their mockery using the LORD's name. This follows his announcement of God's healing of Jericho's harmful spring; afterward he travels to Carmel and Samaria. The passage puts healing and devastating injury beside each other.
The text reports mauling, without specifying ages or deaths or explicitly saying God sent the bears; explaining its meaning does not by itself establish its justice.
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Jonah 1:1–4:11
Jonah and the Great Fish
A four-chapter narrative set in the 8th century BC (2 Kgs 14:25 names a real prophet Jonah son of Amittai) but commonly dated by critical scholars to after the exile, on grounds of language and content. Its genre (history, didactic history, parable, satire) is the central debate. Nineveh was real and very large, but smaller than a "three days' journey", and no Assyrian source records a mass repentance; the modern "a sailor survived inside a whale" story (James Bartley) has been traced and debunked. Jesus's appeal to Jonah (Matt 12; Luke 11) is the main argument for a historical reading, and how much it settles is itself debated.
Whether the book is history or parable is the central debate, and no Assyrian source records a repentance of Nineveh.
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Genesis 6:5–9:17
Noah and the Flood
Genesis 6–9 describes a flood that destroys all land life except those on Noah's ark, followed by a covenant never to repeat it. The text shows signs of two interwoven accounts (most scholars call them J and P), and it closely parallels older Mesopotamian flood stories (Atrahasis, Gilgamesh XI). Geology finds no trace of a recent global flood; local Mesopotamian floods are documented, but none can be tied to the story with confidence. The moral questions (the deaths of children and animals, a God who "regrets", the curse of Canaan) are real and still debated.
Most scholars see two interwoven sources and close Mesopotamian parallels, and geology finds no trace of a recent global flood.
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Joshua 2:1–24 · Joshua 6:1–27
Rahab and the fall of Jericho
Rahab hides two Israelite spies, lies to the king's messengers and wins a promise to spare her family. Israel circles Jericho as commanded; its wall falls, the city burns and its people and livestock are killed, while Rahab's household survives. Hebrews praises her faith and James her actions; archaeologists dispute the walls' date and extent of occupation. Is the killing language literal, can God's command justify it, and does praise for Rahab make her lie right?
Joshua describes the killing of Jericho's people and livestock and the sparing of Rahab's household. Archaeologists report a Bronze Age wall collapse and fire, dated in the cited evidence to around 1550 BC, before the usual conquest dates; Wood's proposed date of 1400 BC is disputed. Limited occupation in the Late Bronze Age is also reported. Whether God caused the destruction and whether the killing was just are separate questions from the archaeology.
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Exodus 19:1–20:21
Sinai and the Ten Commandments
After leaving Egypt, Israel camps at Sinai, where God gives commandments amid thunder, smoke and a trembling mountain. Beginning with his rescue of Israel from slavery, they govern worship, rest, family and conduct toward neighbours; the frightened people ask Moses to speak for them. Deuteronomy repeats them with different wording and a different reason for Sabbath rest. How should readers understand the two versions, different numbering and warning about descendants?
Exodus and Deuteronomy give different wording for the commandments. The cited research leaves their date and Sinai's location unresolved. Whether God spoke there remains outside what evidence can settle.
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Revelation 13:1–18
The beasts and the mark: 666
John sees a beast receive power from a dragon and a second beast lead people to worship it; an image threatens those who refuse with death. The unmarked cannot trade, and John calls for endurance and wisdom to understand the beast's number, 666. Does the number point to Nero, and why do some manuscripts give 616 instead? How does ancient emperor worship help explain the mark's ties to worship and trade, and what evidence supports later claims about the mark?
The passage ties the mark to worship of the beast and the ability to trade. Nero's name can explain both 666 and 616, but Williams cautions that this does not make Nero the only possible match. The passage names no technology for the mark.
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Genesis 22:1–19
The Binding of Isaac (the Akedah)
Genesis 22 has a deity command a father to kill his son as a burnt offering, call it a test, and stop it only at the last moment. It raises hard questions that ancient and modern readers alike have pressed: how a good God could command it, what "now I know" means, and whether anyone should obey such a command. Isaac is missing when Abraham returns (22:19), and Sarah's death follows (23:2). Critical scholars debate the chapter's sources, including whether an earlier version ended differently. Child sacrifice is condemned elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible but reported among Israel's neighbours and in the Punic world, and the historicity of Abraham is disputed.
Scholars debate the chapter's sources and whether Abraham is historical, and the moral questions are pressed by believers and skeptics alike.
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Revelation 6:1–7:17
The seven seals and the four horsemen; the 144,000
As the Lamb opens seals, John sees four horsemen, slain witnesses calling for justice, and upheaval in the heavens and on earth. Before the seventh seal, God's servants receive a seal: John hears a total of 144,000, then sees a countless crowd before the Lamb, promised shelter. The first rider has no name, and interpreters differ over who he is, how the two groups relate, and whether the calamities belong to the past, the future, or recurring history. Who are the sealed, and what does their protection mean?
Revelation describes a vision, and the historical parallels cited here do not independently show that its seals have been fulfilled. The interpreters named here disagree about the first rider's identity, the meaning of 144,000, and when the seals apply.
Read the story →4translation notes10interpretations6evidence claims4hard questions