Since both issues below relate to pretty much the same thing, they will be answered together.
Jehoiakin—8 or 18?
Video: “12 Contradictions in the Bible” by Holy Koolaid
The texts in question: 2 Chronicles 36:9 and 2 Kings 24:8
Below are Mr. Koolaid’s statements (in bold) followed by my response.
“2 Chronicles 36:9 says that the Old Testament Jewish king Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign as king, while 2 Kings 24:8 says that Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign. This seems minor but it’s a contradiction because it can’t be both.”
What was David’s Tally?
Video: “12 Contradictions in the Bible” by Holy Koolaid
The texts in question: 1 Chronicles 19:18 and 2 Samuel 10:18
“Or here’s another one 1 Chronicles 19 and 2 Samuel 10 tell the exact of how Hanun the king of the Amorites disgraces the Jewish king’s messengers and sends Arminian mercenaries to battle against David’s army who massacre them. But 2 Samuel says that David killed seven hundred of the Arameans and forty thousand horsemen, while 1 Chronicles says that he killed seven thousand charioteers and forty thousand foot soldiers.”
Chronicles was written around 535-450 BC, depending on the source material and internal evidence used by biblical scholars. Its source of information are the two books of Samuel and the two books of Kings (or quite possibly the sources that both Samuel and Kings used).
It’s quite possible that the copyist of 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings made a clerical error. These only concern peripheral issues that do not affect the actual meaning of the text in any significant way, nor do they affect the teachings from the two texts at all. The internal evidence suggests that the Chronicles accounts are probably more reliable.
Since the numbers in Chronicles used Samuel and Kings as source material, that should point out that the copies they had were accurate at the time and that any errors in Samuel and Kings crept in later.
If you’re interested in further study on the issue, look up “Old Testament textual criticism.” Textual criticism is the science of figuring out what the original text (sometimes referred to as the autograph) contained.
KJV vs NIV
Video: “12 Contradictions in the Bible” by Holy Koolaid
“Oh, and uh, that’s according to the King James Version for all you King James purists out there; if you’re reading the NIV, the humans who wrote it ignored our oldest Hebrew manuscripts and edited out this discrepancy.”
The Old Testament Hebrew text used for the King James version is the Masoretic Text (MT). The NIV uses the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). In addition, both translation teams also used other sources to help them along. That would answer to Mr. Koolaid’s question of why the NIV and the KJV Old Testament read differently. So much for his claim to have studied the Bible for 20 years.