How to Handle Contradictions in the Bible
Does the Bible have contradictions?
Okay, I’m going to be straight up with you. I’m not going to answer that question how you might want. In fact, you might think I’m doing more squirming than a politician who’s asked a tough question. Most people will answer this question with a yes or no. It’s black and white. But I don’t think either of those answers really suffice. I don’t think a yes or no gives an honest evaluation of the Bible.
Before we can attempt to answer this question we need to understand what the Bible is.
Understanding What Scripture Is
If you do a google search of Biblical contradictions you will quickly find list after list of hundreds of contradictions. The problem is most of these lists regard the Bible as 100% facts. But the Bible is not a list of facts. Now hear me out… The Bible is true. But the Bible is not all the same. The Bible contains 66 different books. Written by dozens of authors. Over thousands of years. The Bible contains many different genres and each has a unique style and purpose.
For example, books of poetry will often use expressive language that is not literally true, but rather it points to a larger truth. Even Jesus uses exaggerated language by telling people to cut their eyes out if they lust. He’s not literally telling people to do that; he’s exaggerating to make clear how serious he is.
Other books are historical; they are a little more dry and factual. You should read those differently because of the genre they fall in. Much of the New Testament are not books at all, it is actually letters. They were written to a specific group of people at a specific time. They are true. But to fully understand that truth we must understand the culture to which they are written.
For More on Understanding the Bible
How to Read the Bible (better)
Everything in the Bible is True… BUT
How To Choose The Right Bible Translation For You
Maybe you are thinking… What does this have to do with contradictions? Well actually a lot. Many of the contradictions that people will point to aren’t contradictions at all. The first step in determining if something is a contradiction is by looking at the context. Most of the time it doesn’t contradict itself; it’s just a different style and way of communicating.
Differences vs Contradictions
Next we need some distinction between differences and contradictions. The Bible does contain plenty of differences in accounts. A thorough reading will show you that. But a difference in accounts doesn’t necessarily equal a contradiction.
Let’s look at a few examples… In John’s account (John 20:1) he records one woman coming to Jesus’ tomb. While in Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 28:1) he records two women. Still yet, Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:1) records three women. That is not a contradiction. That is a difference. But that doesn’t change the historical accuracy of the texts. More on that later.
Let’s look at another one. Matthew 27:5 says that Judas hung himself following selling Jesus out. While Acts 1:18 says he fell to the ground and burst wide open. Again this is a difference, not a contradiction.
Think of it this way. If you and I watch a football game together, or witness an accident, or describe something we both saw, we will come up with a different version. We will tell the story from our point of view. Many contradictions are just different accounts, from different perspectives, or different versions of the story.
In the examples earlier, the accounts of how many women were at the tomb doesn’t contradict itself. A contradiction would be Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, but the other Mary (as Mark calls her) was not there. Matthew never said that the other women weren’t there, he just highlighted that Mary Magdalene was there. That’s a difference.
In the second example a contradiction would be Matthew stating Judas died from hanging and Acts saying Judas didn’t die from hanging, he jumped off a cliff. Matthew never recorded how Judas died, just that he hung himself. He very well might not have died from hanging, the rope could have snapped and he fell to his death as Acts records. It’s a difference, not a contradiction.
The point of this is when we come across something in the Bible that doesn’t jive, we first have to give a deeper look. Most of the time it’s a difference in the account, not a contradiction.
So What About Actual Contradictions?
Again I don’t think this is a yes or no answer to this question. Let me answer it this way. There is no difference or contradiction in the Bible that damages the integrity of the message. However there are contradictions that we just don’t have the answer to.
Here’s what I mean. Critics often overemphasize contradictions in the Bible. They will point to one small issue of discrepancy but ignore the majority agreements. Let’s go to the Old Testament. The accounts in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are often pointed to as containing contradictions. These books record the same events, but sometimes the numbers don’t line up. Critics will point to the few times the numbers don’t match, but ignore the fact that the vast majority of numbers do align.
Chronicles, for example, records 10 times a number that was higher than the other books. Some claim the author was all about inflating the numbers. But he wasn’t doing that because in addition Chronicles records a lower number 7 times. The issue with this example is that there’s no clear agenda or any consistency to this issues.
Some of these number discrepancies can be explained by a differing culture. For example, 1 Chronicles 21:5 states that Judah had 470,000 soldiers, but when you flip to 2 Samuel 24:9 it says Judah had 500,000. In our culture that would be considered a contradiction.
If these were your bank account balances you would want to know which one was true. Get out of your 21st Century mind for a minute. Think about when you are having a conversation with a friend about a road trip. They might ask, “how far are you traveling?” You say 800 miles. In reality, you are actually traveling 756 miles. But 800 just sounds better and the point of the story is still there. It’s very possible that in this instance that is what is happening. Sometimes we have to read by the rules of normal conversation, not a precise account. Context will tell us what to do and when.
We Don’t Need to Answer Everything
I believe every person should examine the Bible to see for themselves if it’s trustworthy. I don’t need to defend it, it can do that itself. We shouldn’t feel the need to have an answer for every single apparent contradiction in the Bible. There are passages that seem like contradictions. And I say seem because we cannot prove it… Yet. There’s a lot we don’t know, archeology hasn’t discovered, or God hasn’t revealed. I don’t know why. But I also don’t feel the need to answer every question.
Here’s why I don’t feel the need. The list of apparent contradictions in the Bible is shrinking. In Acts 13:7 Sergius Paulus is mentioned as proconsul of Cyprus. Critics have long contended that the title was wrong; rather he should be called propraetor which was the common title of the day. For a long time there was no answer to this apparent contradiction. However, archeologists later discovered coins on Cyprus with the inscription “Paulus the Proconsul.” Contradiction solved.
Here’s another one. In Daniel 5:1 Belshazzar is named King of Babylon. The problem is every historian knew that Nabonidus was king at this time. For a long time, this was one of the most blatant contradictions that critics would point to. That is until an inscription was discovered known as “Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus.” This inscription states that Nabonidus went away on a long journey. During that time he left the kingdom in the hands of his son, Balshazzar. Again, contradiction solved.
The point is, the apparent contradictions that exist are just that: apparent. There is a good chance that over time we will solve more and more of these contradictions. New evidence will be found, and archaeology will confirm the accuracy of the Bible. Maybe not all of them. Some are probably buried too deep in deserts somewhere. But that’s okay. The Bible stands on it’s own. It’s got a good track record. And stands way beyond the accuracy of just about every other ancient book.
The few apparent contradictions don’t hold a candle to the mountain of congruent passages and stories. The Bible as a whole is in agreement and a few passages here and there should not cause us to throw the rest out.
Recommended Resources for Understanding the Bible
How do you answer the question of contradictions in the Bible?
Love this! A big one I hear all the time is the Bible promoting rape in the OT and not in the NT. If we read within context of the culture the OT says a man who rapes a woman must marry her. Sounds horrible right? However, in their culture a woman who has lost her virginity was no longer useful to a man, and God knew that these women would often rather die than not have a husband. So He righteously told the wrongdoer that he must make it right by marrying her. In our culture it’s unthinkable because we understand now that virginity (while sacred) is not a woman’s fault if it is taken from her. Most Christian men now would understand and still take a woman they love on marriage. Back then it was unthinkable. I mean look at Joseph! He almost divorced Mary because she was pregnant. She could’ve been stoned for it! We also see this when Amnon rapes his half sister Tamar. After he overpowers her and takes her virtue she begs him to marry her because now he has taken her most precious gift.
The Bible is not pro rape, God just knows how to handle things properly in different contexts without removing free will.
Shame on atheists for using minor discrepancies in the Bible to discount its historical reliability. We should only worry if the big stories are fictional.
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2021/10/02/do-bible-contradictions-matter/
why are all the ys missing?
This is a good article. I agree with your premise. I might ask you to recheck the facts of the Babylonian king. Daniel was written 536-530 BC. However the attack on Jerusalem was 605 BC when Nebuchadnezzar captured Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Their names were changed to Babylonian names. Belteshazzar, Hananiah, Mishael, Meshach and Azariah. If you notice the name King Nabonidus reigned from 556-539 BC and his children were Belshazzar (later King) and Nebuchadnezzar the third. The first Nebuchadnezzar reigned during the siege and capture of Daniel. Daniel was in Babylon 66 years in which the throne changed at least 4 times.
There is a great Bible software which is complete with everything dealing with the Bible in every bible version written. It gives thousands references from anytime and any place in history, sermon starters for every denomination, articles written by many scholars and so much more. It has a tutorial on how to use tools to retrieve what you want through it’s massive collections. There is no bias. This is like a huge library only easier to access. It is called Logos Bible Software. The cost to download it is around $200. It is a wealth of information at your fingertips.
Keep writing. Keep learning. You are revealing to yourself the most important thing in life….the word of God and how to understand it.
Dating of the OT books is very tough. Multiple calendars were used and texts that old are tough to be 100% on. I own Logos, and it’s a great tool to help figure some of this stuff out! But I doubt we will ever be able to firmly establish all the dates.
I agree but if we look at the Jewish calendar (Daniel was a Jew) and the year Daniel states “In the third year of the reign of Johoiakim king of Judah.” This is a specific date of 605 BC that the first Babylonian attack occured and Johoiakim reigned from 610-599 BC. He died during the last attack when he was taken and slaughtered along with 3,000 other Jews. This is not speculation by Daniel. It is dated by the author, not someone in the future. However Jesus quoted Daniel over 600 years after his time. He did not point out that Daniel was wrong about the time he lived in according to the Jewish calendar. I’m not a person to say “It’s my way or the highway.” I like to deal only in history (which is unchangeable) and culture and leave philosophical debate to the different denominations. The important thing is God gave us all a brain and a way to get to Him. Humans tend to complicate everything and argue their positions on ideology. I take the bible literally and when their is a question in my mind as to whether I can accept it as literal, I dig for the answer like you do. Geologist have recently found proof of Isaiah’s and king Hezekiah’s dwelling in the same place. And they are talking about the time of the eighth century BC which is consistent with the dating of the Jewish calendar which is presented in the Greek translation which is what our English translation originates from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfdkfyTe5qA . But the important thing is not all the different points of view. The important thing is to develop a personal relationship with God. Life usually takes care of that when we’ve hit bottom doing everything our own way and nothing working for us. Once we give Him a chance He will follow us wherever we go to prove His love for us. That is my experience and the most important thing to me.
Hi Ed, in fairness to Jefferey, he does say: “Again I don’t think this is a yes or no answer to this question. Let me answer it this way. There is no difference or contradiction in the Bible that damages the integrity of the message. However there are contradictions that we just don’t have the answer to.” Were you suggesting this was tongue-in-cheek?
This starts out in the right direction by recognizing that the Bible is not a single book, but a collection of books written across a long period of time with distinct purposes and audiences, not to mention different assumptions and understanding of the world. Each book needs to be read in its own terms, not by pushing it together with other books. It starts out in this direction, but it quickly shifts to a point of view that imposes a modern sense of history writing on the texts, and dismisses seeing them as singular stories to be understood in themselves. Then this moves on into the standard explanations and mental gymnastics of those who try to harmonize and explain away contradictions. The empty tomb/Resurrection stories don’t contradict, they just offer different details. Maybe, but the differences, if we try to shoehorn the narratives into a modern sense of history are sometimes troubling and at least _feel_ more significant than one gospel mentions 3 while another mentions only 2, but the 3rd could be there and is just not mentioned in this narrative. Take the ending of Mark, for instance. This gospel has no account of the Risen Christ, but has an empty tomb and angelic visitors telling the women that Jesus is risen, and that He awaits in Galilee-a message they are to tell the apostles. But then Mark tells us the women told NO ONE out of fear. The other Gospels don’t treat it in this way. Maybe they get over their fear and carry the message as in the other Gospels, and Mark just doesn’t register that. BUT omitting this detail is enough to make the suggestion of contradiction look more likely than simply a difference in details noted. The death of Judas likewise reads more like two different stories than one story with different parts told by Matthew and Luke. If the Acts account just “leaves out” the detail that Judas committed suicide, the trust that Acts is telling a reasonably complete story is undermined. Ditto for Matthew if it just happens to leave the extraordinary
Judas split open. How could it miss that?
That was getting long, so I broke this apart. The discussion of the death of Judas avoided the thorniest problem (though juggling the “he hanged himself” and the “he fell and split asunder” does stretch credulity). No, the biggest issue is what did Judas do with the money, who bought the Potter’s field, and why does it come to be called “Akadelma” the field of blood? In Matthew, Judas in remorse from what he has done throws the money at the feet of the priests and goes out and hangs himself. The priests, who had no problem paying for a man’s death with Temple funds, get all pious and say that the “blood money” can’t be put in the treasury, so they buy the Potter’s field to bury foreigners, which becomes known as the field of blood because it was bought with blood money. In Acts, Judas takes the money, buys a field, and is walking around looking at his purchase when he falls upon rocks and is burst asunder. The field comes to be called the field of blood because Judas spilled out his blood on it. I know that the approach in the article will attempt to harmonize these passages, and will go through incredible contortions to do so, twisting any ordinary sense of narrative far from anything that is recognizable. This will happen because even though the essay starts out saying that a “yes” or “no” answer to the question of Biblical contradictions does a disservice to the Scripture itself, it doesn’t really mean that, and after saying that, it goes on to give a yes or no answer to the apparent contradictions it notes. Given the view of Scripture that underlies this, and the fundamental mistake it makes about how to approach the Bible, the answer to the question of contradictions has to be “no” and it has to be that even before looking at the contradiction in question. Indeed, no matter how twisted and unlikely the harmonization is, it must be, and always will be accepted because “yes” is _a priori_ ruled out. At the center of any conversation about the Bible coming from the perspective that is here, even if disguised a bit, is intellectual dishonesty. The answer is predetermined before the conversation begins, and there is no evidence whatsoever that will change anyone advancing this perspective’s mind. Better to just say that as an axiom than to act as if there is something like an honest conversation possible here. And this isn’t a question of the “Christian” view of the Scripture versus the “unbelieving” view of the Scriptures. It is a question of a particular sort of Christian belief, and its view of the Scripture versus different varieties of Christian faith and secular scholarship and their sometimes agreeing, sometimes dissenting view of faith. Most important, this basic view of the Scripture is NOT something that reaches back to the earliest days of Christianity, but has only developed since the time of the Reformation, and has only taken on its current formulation in the last hundred to two hundred years.
Perhaps writing a book is your calling, Ed. Perhaps you could use this as a post as an intro to it. No harm meant. But for “comments” I think it’s a bit overstated. God bless, brother.
if Judas hung for 2 couple of days and swelled and then was cut down he could have burst open. Bursting open may not have been something one wants to record.
Beautiful!! Thanks for sharing.
As a reading teacher, I spend a lot of time instructing my students about point of view and how character’s or author’s perception of an event will determine how they write about or replay that event. These are third graders, mind you, and they understand the differences in points of view across a group of people who all witnessed something. Sometimes, we adults would be wise to remember the basic principles of reading a text that we learned in grade school. The Bible is no different.
That’s a very basic principle that we too often abandon when it comes to the Bible. When I was studying for my undergrad we would always say “Context is king”.
The only so-called contradictions that are purported come by way of those who cannot understand a particular passage; it then becomes a contradiction. In this way, they can then justify their personal beliefs. For example, in a recent conversation with a convert to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the guy told me that he couldn’t find the word Trinity in the Bible and couldn’t grasp the concept of God being three persons in one. Therefore, it is easier to view the scriptures are contradictory as opposed to having the faith to believe them as written. Of course, when those who actually read and study the scriptures began to point to the errors of J.W. theology…the J.W.’s simply altered the scriptures, printed their own Bible and made the rewrite justify their errant beliefs.
As someone who blog a lot on refuting BIble contradiction I say: Good stuff!
Thanks Jeffery. Christians can benefit from the practice of resting with certain tensions that arise rather than hastily collapsing them into one another. I appreciate that you encourage us to do our homework while being patient with the more tedious sections.
Well written. Thank you.
A writer, even a biblical writer, writes for an audience. A story teller, even a biblical story teller, speaks to the audience. We have the benefit of the volume of books organized in front of us. Contradictions? Maybe. Differences? Yes. God is in all and above all. Believing we are owed a full comprehension of each Word doesn’t allow God to be God.
I can live with seeming contradictions. God is bigger than what we can wrap our brains around. I also think that the differences don’t undermine the truth–the prophetic accounts that came to fruition in Jesus.
“God is bigger than what we can wrap our brains around.” Bingo! We can, and should, study so that we can understand as much of God’s word as possible. But we will never fully get there because he is so much bigger than us!
Great article, Jeffery!
When I was early in my Christian journey, I asked my Pastor the question about the differences in the number of women at the tomb in the three Gospels. He told me, “Maybe they just remembered it differently or didn’t think it was necessary to mention them all. However, the number of women does not change the truth of the resurrection.” That answer has help me look for the meaning of the writings, not to look for differences.
We typically find what it is we are looking for. It’s a good practice to look for the meaning in the Bible.
For me, it comes down to perspective and that if one is looking for evidence to support one’s world-view, it surely will be found. When I study scripture, I pray the His will for me be revealed, consequently, it inevitably is.It really is personal and what I seek I find.
We certainly read into scripture what we want to see regularly.
my reverend says to enter into the mystery, but don’t expect any finite answers. i love that. and i think our chidren are a wonderful reminder that it’s also okay to just accept the miracle for what it is. i was feeling kind of low yesterday at service and then i heard my son singing https://ltop.blog/2018/04/02/the-lords-prayer/
I like that saying!
This was easy to follow! And caused me to think more about how I can answer this question to anyone. Believers or nonbelievers are faced with this topic and you did a great job on touching on what’s true.
Very good. Great points and well written.
Great post! Thank you!
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Great article! At the end, when you said you didn’t feel the need to have every question answered right now, I was reminded of a way I’ve explained my own intellectual curiosity about faith… “A non-believer is putting all the pieces together; if they have any question that can’t be answered adequately, it’s like a missing puzzle piece; they won’t believe unless they can create a full picture with all the pieces. For me, the puzzle is a rubik’s cube; I know there’s a solution, and I “work towards the solution” (believe in God) knowing that the puzzle can be finished.”
Thanks for sharing that! I think that’s a really good illustration! We are finite beings that are limited in our understanding. That’s where faith comes in.