Bible Repeats

The Bible is not a single document without any repeats. The writers of the Bible many times borrowed from other books, making some changes, then including them as part of their book. The question is, why would they do that?

In the first example,
I used Microsoft Word to compare sections of the Bible. The words of the two portions of scripture that are exactly the same are in black type. The text that is in red underlined is one version, red strike through is the other.

Here are the dates some think the books were written:


Jeremiah
In the following example, Jeremiah 51 (supposedly written 586-570 BC) talks about the King of Babylon and how Babylon is horrible and how God will destroy Babylon. Then in Jeremiah 52 the writer tells a partial story of King Zedekiah.
2 Kings
2 Kings 24 (supposedly written 25 years after Jeremiah) describes the sequence of Kings that ruled Jerusalem and the Kings from Babylon who took all the people out of Jerusalem. The story then continues in verse 17 with how the new king of Jerusalem, Mattaniah was renamed Zedekiah. The chapter ends with three verses, 18, 19, 20 about Zedekiah.

Supposedly Jeremiah was written first
It actually makes no sense if Jeremiah was written first (25 years earlier). If 2 Kings was written first, it would have been logical for Jeremiah to have copied 2 Kings. If Jeremiah was written first, it only makes sense if a portion of 2 Kings was added later to Jeremiah, after 2 Kings was written. I am going with the assumption, Jeremiah was written without chapter 52 (which does not fit the flow anyway). Then, I estimate years later, after 2 Kings 24 and 25 were written, Jeremiah chapter 52 was created by copying the verses from 2 Kings and added to Jeremiah.

The translators of each book into English used their own personal vernacular (“by” rather than “against” for example), which shows that the King James Version is not word for word what the earlier writers wrote. In general the meaning does not change much, except where numbers are changed.

The above in black from 2 Kings is the same as the red below from Jeremiah.
“land of Hamath” only in Jeremiah, spellings are different.

King of Babylon and “he slew the princes” only in Jeremiah
“putting him into prison only in Jeremiah.

Jeremiah had much more detail than the writer of Kings.

Again Jeremiah had more detail than Kings.
Now Kings added more detail.
Jeremiah says five and twentieth day, Kings has it seven and twentieth day.
With such specificity, yet different day?

My father always said, “King James says it, I believe it, end of subject.”
I never got to ask him which day does he believe is the correct one in this example?

Continue to Example #2