What About All of the Contradictions in the Bible?

Christians rely on the four Gospels to learn everything about the life and work of Jesus. But, as many skeptics argue, how do you explain the contradictions found between the different accounts? Or even within each of them?

But, as Derek McIntyre points out in this Short Answers video, you’d only find absolute consistency in a fabricated, controlled narrative. The small differences we see today actually point to the Gospels value as independent eyewitness testimonies, faithfully preserved ever since.

Transcript

A question that’s commonly asked is: what about all the contradictions in the Bible, especially between the Gospels? And what about the awkward bits that you see in the Gospels?

Now, there are a number of apparent contradictions. I’m saying apparent because these contradictions can be explained away.

For example, the number of people who find Jesus’ tomb empty varies between the Gospels. The birth narrative doesn’t appear in Mark’s Gospel or John’s Gospel. In one Gospel, we find Jesus’ mother, Mary, being told clearly that she’s about to give birth to the Son of God. Yet in another Gospel, we find Jesus’ entire family, including Mary, coming to get him because they say he’s out of his mind. Why would these contradictions be there?

The Gospels were created at least semi-independently and were drawing upon the oral histories of more than one early Christian community. Unsurprisingly, then, there would be slight variations between these oral histories, and that would be reflected in the Gospels.

The interesting thing is that these differences exist in the Bibles we read today. The fact that they’re there lends credibility to the view that the Gospels we read today are accurate versions of what was originally written, because it would have been far easier just to remove these inconsistencies rather than to try and find explanations for these differences.

Now, there’s also a number of, I guess, difficult bits in the Gospels. Here are a couple of examples from Mark’s Gospel.

In Mark 6:5, Jesus apparently can do few miracles in Nazareth, his hometown. That’s kind of odd if you’re the omnipotent Son of God.

In Mark 13:32, Jesus doesn’t know the day and hour of his return. If you were omniscient and omnipresent, you would surely know when you were going to come back.

In Mark 7:27, Jesus refers to non-Jews as ‘dogs’. An interesting thing to say if you consider that today, Christians are pretty much all non-Jews.

In Mark 11:12, Jesus talks to a fig tree. Indeed, he curses it for not having any fruit on it. Kind of odd behaviour if you think of how Prince Charles was looked at when he admitted talking to his plants.

In Mark 15:35, Jesus says on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s kind of an odd thing to say.

Now, there are explanations for all these passages. For example, the first one: when Jesus was in Nazareth, he often linked the success and effectiveness of miracles to somebody’s faith in them. And, of course, in Nazareth, people probably couldn’t really see beyond him being Joseph the carpenter’s son. So he did few miracles in Nazareth.

But rather than having to explain all that, wouldn’t it be easier if those awkward differences just weren’t in the Bible?

In fact, another point arises: why are there four Gospels in the Bible? There doesn’t have to be four Gospels in the Bible. There’s no rule to say there have to be four Gospels. Why weren’t the details in the four Gospels boiled down to one seamless narrative, so that you wouldn’t have any of these inconsistencies?

You can look at these contradictions as a bit like a trial. The witnesses take the stand. They promise to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth. But often, the witnesses’ statements vary in subtle details. It’s a bit like that with the Gospels.

The Gospels generally agree with each other on the broad terms of things that happen in Jesus’ life and its aftermath, but they vary in some of the subtle details, a bit like individual witnesses.

The most likely explanation for why these awkward bits and differences appear in the Gospels is that they haven’t been taken out by anybody who was copying these documents to reproduce them in the early Church. It was their duty to preserve the Word of God from these documents as accurately as they could. So that’s why I think these differences appear in the Gospels we read today and haven’t been taken out.

So, rather than undermining the credibility of the Gospels, these differences actually lend credibility to the Gospels as actual eyewitness accounts. You can have confidence that what you read today is an accurate version of what was originally produced, and that it’s an accurate version of what actually happened.