Why the "There are so many interpretations of the Bible" claim is confused

[Redbeard The Pink]

Ambiguities and varied interpretations don't bother me -- it comes with the written word.

The big problem with the bible are the internal contradictions and flat-out errors written therein.

Another problem is the lack of any evidence for its major claims.

In short, the problem isn't interpretation, it's that the bible is horseshit.

This to be a bit more robust approach to criticizing the Bible. Level 2. Kudos.

That being said, very few claims of contradictions and errors actually hold up under scrutiny. 

Many skeptics study the issue just enough to support their conclusions and then ignore everything else. Then they blow the apparent discrepancy totally out of proportion.

But on the flipside, are the inerrantists who hold the Bible to be the literal, physical, magical word of God. Can't have two more ignorant groups of people go at it than these two.

How about contradictions to reality? Forget contradictions inside the text (of which there are many, and no, they don't all fall apart under scrutiny), I'm talking about contradictions about what's possible in the material world. The Flood Story (one of my favorite examples) is scientifically impossible for a wide range of reasons. This means that most of the story (significantly more than is noted in the text) has to have been done with magic, or it's a complex metaphor for something, or the people writing the text just didn't have a complete understanding of the technical implications of a global flood. That last one is really unlikely if the story came from an omniscient author (even through a proxy), but it's a really likely explanation of why the story and the reality of the situation are so different.