That's how it is with the Bible: The right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and it is especially evident in numbers. For example, in identical stories, 1 Kings 5:16 says that 3,300 chief officers were involved, while 2 Chron. 2:18 says it was 3,600 overseers, a difference of 300 people. In another story 1 Kings 4:26 says 40,000 stalls were involved, while the same account in 2 Chron. 9:25 says it was 4,000 stalls. 2 Samuel 8:4 says 700 horsemen, while the same account in 1 Chron. 18:4 says 7,000. In 2 Kings 8:26 Ahaziah is twenty-two years old when he began to reign, while 2 Chron. 22:2 says he was forty-two. 2 Samuel 6:23 says Michal had no sons, while 2 Sam. 21:8 says she had five sons.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
