It always comes up eventually when you are talking about the Bible with someone doesn’t believe in its inspiration. Don’t you know that there are contradictions in the Bible? (as in, are you that big of a moron to not know that the book you base your life on has contradictions???) If they have really looked into this, or if they know a few just to annoy people, they will pull out several passages that they think show the contradictions. This is different from the disputed passages that we talked about in Mark or manuscript disagreement. This is when people say that they Bible has two Scriptures that flat out contradict each other. One of the biggest targets in this tends to be the Gospels.
I will grant that Gospel harmonization can be as fun as an ingrown toenail, as each author may have some or little concern for chronology. With four different authors having four different audiences with different needs, you end up with each Gospel having unique passages, features, and structure. Since they all cover Jesus life and ministry, of course there are overlaps when the authors tell the same stories or teachings. I won’t even start with all the fun of which Gospel came first and who copied from who. The Gospel tradition and synoptic question has been saturated with literary criticism to the point that reason and historical considerations are largely ignored.
Let me give you an example of one of these “contradictions”. In Mark 5:1-20, Mark includes the story of Jesus casting the demons known as Legion out of the madman and into the pigs. In his telling, there is only one man, and afterward, he asks to come with Jesus. In Matthew’s version of the story however, Matthew 8:28-34 records that there are two demoniacs, not one. This seems to be a trend with Matthew, as we compare the story of the blind man healed (Matt. 20:29-34). In Mark 10:46-52 , there is again only one blind man who calls out to Jesus to heal him and his name is given as Bartimaeus. In Matthew, there are two blind men who call out to Jesus. What are we to make of the fact that Matthew seems to double the people in each story?
The doubters will point to this and call it a contradiction. It is clearly the same story they say, but one of them must have the wrong number, especially as Luke 18:35-43 agrees with Mark as well. A second possibility is that we are dealing with scribal error here. As we discussed, we don’t have the autograph of Matthew, so perhaps an early scribe made a mistake in both places on the number.
However, there is nothing here that logically necessitates a contradiction. The following are plausible and possible explanations: 1) we are dealing with two different stories. Jesus healed many blind men, and one event could have occurred leaving Jericho, while the other occurred entering; 2) it is the same event but two Gospel writers only record one of the blind men, while Matthew notes that there were two (only one gives his name for example).
The bottom line is that the Gospel writers do choose to include different stories, teachings, and even details within shared stories. While on appearance, these can seem like contradictions, when you apply logic, you can see that it is possible to harmonize the stories. Teachers always use the illustration of witnesses at a trial, who all see the same event, but each remember different details (have to be careful with this comparison, as people often remember incorrectly, whereas Scripture is inspired and therefore different).
Another example is how the details of what happens after Jesus’ resurrection differ within the Gospels (Matt. 28 , Mk. 16, Luke 24). Matthew records that the angel is sitting on the rock outside the tomb and never mentions that the women enter. Mark says that after they entered, the women see one angel inside the tomb. Luke takes Matthew’s place by doubling the angels to two of them (inside the tomb that is). What the angels say in all three of these accounts is fairly similar.
Again, we could point to these as contradictions, believing only one to be right. Yet, pesky logic comes at us again and these can be harmonized. Matthew says the angel is sitting on the rock, but doesn’t say that is where he spoke to the women. The angel could have moved or there could be an additional angel outside the tomb that Mark and Luke don’t mention. Mark doesn’t mention that there are two angels inside the tomb, but there could have been and he choose to only mention the one who spoke. Do you see where we are going here???
The bottom line is what angle are you coming at Scripture? If you want to find contradictions, and don’t believe it is inspired, you find troubling passages. If you believe in the inspiration of Scripture, you assume that there is no contradiction, and it must be our understanding or interpretation that is incorrect. Logic should trump both of these. If there is a possible solution, however unlikely it may seem, you have to leave that option open without sufficient evidence to overturn the witnesses. Is it better to assume that God got the details wrong or that we aren’t smart enough to always figure it out?
The Bible Nerd 