If the bible is inerrant, then Joseph had two daddies.

You know, when someone says the bible is inerrant, I usually send them to read Matthew 1:16 and Luke 3:23.

Matthew 1:16 reads:

and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

and Luke 3:23 reads:

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli

Both passages refer to both Jacob and Heli as sons, so we can reasonably assume that they're both male. If you say the bible is inerrant, then Joseph had two fathers. If you believe that the bible isn't inerrant, then you can pass this off for a mistake. Although I would personally find it somewhat alarming that a mistake like this was made in the highest book of my religion.

Or, as I took it, that the bible isn't inerrant, and that this is just one of the more glaring examples of lack of self-consistency.

I value self-consistency; I look for it in movies and fiction and in people. I find it more often in movies and fiction than people. That used to bother me, but now, not so much. I'm not entirely self-consistent, and I doubt that anyone is. But I think a system of philosophy -- which is what most religion seems to be, at least to me -- should be self-consistent.

I wonder where I got this peculiar fetish...