Why I Trust My Bible - Lesson 6

1. Challenge 

In this 5th session we’re going to look at the whole issue of ‘contradictions’ (and I’ll put contradictions in quote marks because I don’t think there are any). But we’re going to talk about the whole issue of: does the Bible disagree with itself? Does it disagree with science? Contradictions. If you want to read about the challenge, you can read another Ehrman book. It’s called Jesus Interrupted, Revealing the Hidden Contradictions to the Bible, and then parentheses (and Why We Don’t Know About Them).

2. Synoptic Problem and Harmonization

There’s YouTube videos and other things like that that really point out what some people believe to be contradictions in the Bible. And what I want to do is to look at three basic categories, three kinds of ‘contradictions,’ and how we can deal with them. And the biggest one has to do with the Synoptic problem, and I’ll spend the bulk of my time on the Synoptic problem, and something called harmonization, and how that all works. The word ‘synoptic’ just means ‘same,’ and the Synoptic problem is: how do you explain the similarities and the differences among Matthew, Mark and Luke? Okay, so the Synoptic Gospels, how do you explain the similarities and the differences? Again, what some people would say proves that there are contradictions in the Bible, and hence it is not trustworthy and believable. 

Let me start with some examples just to make sure you understand what the Synoptic problem is. There is similarities and differences, for example, in wordings, in wording. If you look at Matthew, Mark and Luke at the same event, you’ll see that often they’re word for word very much the same. If you go to Matthew 3:7 and Luke 3:7, you’ll see descriptions of John’s ministry, and you’ll see that they’re almost exactly the same (the same in Greek, by the way, as well as in English). And yet, there are differences in wording, right? You have the two thieves on the Cross, and in Matthew and in Mark they’re reviling Jesus; but in Luke one of them repents. How do you explain that similarity and yet the differences in wording? 

There’s also similarity and differences in terms of the order of things. All three Synoptics basically agree that Jesus primarily had a ministry in Galilee (a travel ministry), and a ministry in Jerusalem; basic agreement on things. But yet there’s also differences in order. For example, the temptation. In Matthew the temptations are: turn the stone to bread, jump off the temple, worship me. In Luke he flips the last two. Temptations in Luke are: stones to bread, worship me, jump off the temple. Okay, how do you explain that? How do you explain that? We’ll talk about it in a bit. But there is similarity and differences in both the wording and in the order of things in the Synoptics. Well, I think that the best way to answer the question as to why these things exist is to let the Bible speak for itself. 

So, one of the more important passages is in the prologue to Luke, in Luke 1:1-4. And let me just read it for you, Luke writes, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who, from the first, were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word; with this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I, too, decided to write an orderly account (and that’s the important word, one of them) for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught.” Basically, Luke is saying “I’m going to write a term paper. I’m going to research. Other people have written accounts, and I’m going to see what they’ve done, and I’m going to do my own research, and then I’m going to put it together in an orderly way, not necessarily chronological, but in an orderly way.” Because Luke wants Theophilus to know the certainty of the things he has been taught. Theophilus was probably a young Christian, and I don’t know if he was wondering or not, but Luke wanted him to understand that these things really did happen. This wasn’t just all myth. So, he tells you right up front that there is selection and purpose, right? “There’s a lot of accounts going on, but I’m going to go out, and I’m going to get the ones I want to tell you about,” and the purpose is, among other things, historical credibility. 

You see the same thing elsewhere. For example, in the end of John. In John 21, verse 25, John writes, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” Perhaps a little hyperbolic, but the point is that there was selection, right? There’s a lot of things that the Gospel writers could have told us, but they’re going to select some of it. And what stories they select is based on their purpose. Okay, Luke’s purpose was historical reliability. It's interesting if you go earlier in John 20, we see John’s purpose, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book (selection), but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah (and not just any kind of Messiah; the Son of God kind of Messiah), and that by believing, you may have life in his name.” 

So, we have some pretty strong statements there that there were a lot of accounts out there, and the Gospel writers went out, and they had a purpose. They had groups of purposes. And those purposes became the grid by which they made their decision as to which accounts they would remember, which ones they recorded, and which ones they wouldn’t record. Okay? So, purpose and selection.

3. Harmonization

Along comes harmonization, and harmonization is very simple. Harmonization asks the question: Is there a way to conceive of an event having happened such that both accounts could be true? Can you harmonize the passages? Is there a way to picture two thieves on the Cross reviling Jesus, and a thief on the Cross repenting? Is there a way to harmonize those two? Is there a way to conceive of how the situation may actually have happened that could have given rise to both accounts, and both are yet accurate and true? I mean, you don’t have to be able to prove the harmonization is right. I think you just have to say, is it possible? A friend of mine tells the story that when he teaches Synoptic problem in college, before he starts, he takes two students, and he puts them out in the hallway. He presents the Synoptic problem, and then he calls in one student, and he says, “Okay, tell us what happened the last ten minutes.” And he’ll tell them what happened. And then they bring in the other student. They say, “Tell us what happened the last ten minutes.” And as the second student starts to describe what happened out in the hallway (they’re both in the same hall, the same time, the same school), as the second student starts explaining what happened, the students in the classroom start to giggle and laugh because they can see the point. Because it’s kind of like, “Were you guys both in the same hall, the same time? Because while you saw some things that were the same, you saw a lot of things that were different.” And George says it happens every single semester he does it. And he gets the same result. 

Well, that’s what harmonization is. Can you conceive of a situation that could have given rise to these two apparently divergent accounts, but yet both could be true.

The best example I know of this are the birth narratives. And let me just walk through this, and I apologize up front. I’m probably going to ruin some of your Nativity scenes, but I’m not the one doing it. The Bible’s doing it. But if you look at Matthew and at Luke, it’s really interesting. Matthew starts with a genealogy. Luke starts with the Angels’ visits, and the whole business of John the Baptist. And then they both come together, and they both agree that Jesus was born, and shepherds came to visit them. And then they have some other stuff, and they both agree that Jesus ends up in Nazareth years later. Okay, so you have a different beginning; you have the similarity, the birth, the shepherds and Nazareth, But you have totally different things happening between. Okay, when you look at Matthew, you have the Magi, the wise men coming, and you have Herod killing all the babies two years old and down; the flight to Egypt; and after Herod was dead, Joseph comes back and goes up to Nazareth. 

But in Luke, what you have after the shepherds is the circumcision in the Temple, the naming and the offering in the Temple, and Jesus ends up in Nazareth. Okay, now how on Earth could you possibly trust two different Gospels that are so different? That’s how the charge would be leveled. Well, let’s see about harmonization. And again, we’re going to go to the text and look for clues. When it comes to the Magi, there’s two interesting things: Where was Jesus when the Magi came? (And this is what ruins your Nativity scenes, Chapter 2, verse 11, or thereabouts.) He’s in a house. He’s not at where he was born; he’s in the house. And, now we know Herod was just nuts, but even for someone that’s as evil as he was, if Jesus had just been born, why would he kill babies that were two years old and younger? I mean, certainly a soldier can tell the difference between a baby that’s one day or two days old, and two years old. Maybe he just was nuts, or maybe something else is going on. Go over in the column under Luke. One of the clues is: when was the baby circumcised? Circumcision happens eight days after birth. So we know that the circumcision happened right away, but with the Magi, we’re not so sure. Then you have the naming, Jesus’ naming, and offering in the Temple. Why is that there? Well, again we know that happens relatively quickly. 

But also, what’s really important is you have the story of Simeon. And Simeon has been told that he won’t die until he sees the Messiah. He sees Jesus, and he breaks forth into this beautiful song, this hymn. And in there he talks about being a light to the Gentiles. Well see, one of Luke’s themes is that the Gospel isn’t just for the Jewish people. It’s for Gentiles as well. This is a really important story in Luke, and it sets the stage for the fact that Jesus has a ministry not just the Jews, but to Jews and Gentiles. That’s why the travel narrative, that middle part between three or so years in Galilee, and his trip down to Jerusalem, it’s very short in the other Gospels. In Luke it’s very long. And the reason it’s long is he’s traveling outside of Israel. Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles (to the Greeks) is very important to Luke, and that’s why the story about Simeon is so important to him. From day one, Jesus was destined to be a light to the Gentiles.

Okay, how are you going to put all these things together? Can you conceive of some kind of historical situation that could have given rise to both these accounts? Well yeah, it’s really simple, isn’t it? Okay, so Jesus was born. The shepherds came that night. Eight days later he would have gone and circumcised relatively quickly after that. He would have been named and offered in the Temple. And then, very easily could have gone back to Bethlehem. Okay, Mary just had a baby. They weren’t technically married yet, and why go back to where they’re going to get that kind of social static. Joseph was from Bethlehem, right? It’s his ancestral home. So, you can see that he stayed there, made sense he could have stayed there for a while. A year, year and a half or so afterwards, the Magi come. Herod finds out. Since Jesus has been alive for, I’m just guessing, but at least a year, he’s going to play it safe and kill all the babies that are two years old and down. They go down to Egypt. They stay there until Herod dies. And then they return home, but they go all the way up to Nazareth. 

Okay, is that possible? Is that a possible way to handle the Synoptic issue when it comes to the birth of Jesus? Sure, makes perfectly good sense. There was selection of material, and there are purposes governing that selection. All right? In the Matthew passage there’s prophecies, “Out of Egypt, I have called my Son.” It is important to Matthew in writing to the Jews that Jesus was seen as the fulfilment of prophecy, and “out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1). “Out of Egypt, I’ve called my Son.” He has another quotation when the babies were killed. This is a fulfilment of prophecy, something that’s important to the Jews, not so much to the Gentiles. Luke doesn’t have any real reason to include it. But you see how that works? All right, that’s what harmonization is. And when it comes to apparent contradictions in the Synoptics, harmonization can solve just about every problem you can imagine.

But you look at some of the other situations that are often held up. What about the cleansing of the Temple? In the Synoptics, Jesus cleanses the Temple at the end of his ministry. At John, he cleanses it at the beginning of his ministry. Is that a contradiction? Well, is it possible that Jesus did it twice, that to inaugurate his ministry to establish the fact that he is going to be contrary to Judaism. He goes and he pronounces judgment, and he purifies the Temple. He goes through a three and a half year ministry. Nothing is changed, and he purifies as an act of judgment. If you look at Leon Morris’s commentary on John, he actually points out all the things that are different between the John account where Jesus cleanses the Temple at the beginning, and the Synoptics that put it at the end; very easily could have done it twice. Very easy. 

Order temptations is another very simple answer. In Matthew, he turned the stones to bread, and he was tempted to jump off the Temple, and then he was tempted: worship Satan. In Luke, the temporal connectors are gone, and it’s stone to bread, worship me, and he was tempted, jump off the Temple. Now the Temple’s in Jerusalem, and from a literary standpoint for Luke, the city of Jerusalem is very important. And so, from a literary standpoint, the temptation of ‘jump off the Temple’ was the culmination of those. And the problem is in English, when we see things in sequence, we view them automatically as sequential. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. That’s a peculiarity of English. It doesn’t carry over into Greek. When you have a sequence, it doesn’t assume chronological sequencing. It’s just not how the language works. So yeah, probably because the temporal connectives are in Matthew, that that was the actual order. But that’s not important to Luke. Luke’s not writing a chronological recounting. He’s writing an orderly account. 

So, that’s what harmonization is. You know, again, parenthetically, let me just mention, so many modern biographies suffer from a ‘Facebook obsession.’ It’s just every little detail is important. And they just want detail after detail after detail. And the question that we have to ask ourselves is does the biblical author have to tell us everything, or can each writer relay the information that he wishes to convey in order to accomplish his purposes? Does he have to tell us everything? No, of course not. That's a modern obsession with details, and that’s not the way biographies were written. And you go look at Ehrman’s book, you can see how this works out. Ehrman emphasizes the difference between the Synoptics. So, for example in Mark, Jesus is silent and fulfills the prophecy of Psalm 22. In Luke he shows concern for the women who are crying. He deals with the thief on the cross, “Father, into your hands, I commit myself.” And there’s quite a bit of difference there, isn’t there? Is there so much difference that they both can’t be true? No, of course not! They can both be true. Jesus hung on the cross for a long time. During a stage of that he could have been absolutely silent fulfilling the prophecy. But then at other times he could have responded to the thieves, responded to the women, forgave the people who were crucifying him. You can conceive how both of those things can be true, and they both fall within the purview of what the writers are writing, and how they are writing it, and what they are trying to accomplish. It’s not that hard to deal with that. 

Was there one or two donkeys? An interesting one, in Matthew, it says (Jesus says), “Say to Daughter Zion, see, your King comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” So, there were two of them there. But in Mark and Luke they both have a colt, singular, and in John, he talks about a donkey’s colt. Well, unless Jesus was really bow-legged, and I don’t think he was, he’s not riding on two donkeys. If one Gospel writer says that there was the one and then another one with him, and the other one only says there’s one, does that matter? Of course not! Or if Matthew, is an instance of Hebraic parallelism, that both the donkey and the colt are the same animal, then that’s an interpretative issue. But it’s not hard to imagine why one writer would say two, and the other ones would only talk about the one Jesus was actually riding on. That’s not hard to do at all.

So, just a parenthetical comment on the obsession with details, and thinking we have to say everything, because we don’t. Biographers, even today, a good biographer’s not going to tell them everything that he or she know about the person they’re writing about. So, that’s the Synoptic problem and apparent contradictions and harmonization, and it really does solve a lot of problems. 

4. Hermeneutics

The second place in which we’re going to deal with contradictions (and I’m just going to hit this one kind of quickly), is the whole area of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the science and the art of biblical interpretation, and it’s basically: How do we study our Bible? All right? And sometimes we can see what appears to be contradictions, but the real problem is we’ve misunderstood the passage. We have misinterpreted the passage. In one place, Jesus says, “If you’re not with me, you’re against me.” In another place it says, “If you’re not against me, you’re with me.” Well, isn’t that kind of the opposite. Well, yeah, at first glance they are opposite, but then you have to ask the question, “Have I interpreted them properly?” The disciples are unhappy that someone other than the twelve is doing miracles, but the person’s obviously a follower of Christ. He’s just not one of the twelve. And Jesus says, “Nah, nah, nah, no.” Within that context, “If you’re not fighting me, and he’s not fighting me, he’s for me. It’s okay.”  But when it comes to the context of Pharisees, Jesus says, “Hey, you can’t sit on the fence, and if you’re not actively for me, you are by definition against me.” So, it’s two statements that sound like they’re contradictions, but that’s just because we’ve misinterpreted the verses. And so many of these kinds of contradictions go away once you come to understand what the passage is really saying. 

Another example is Paul and James on Abraham. In Romans 4 and in James 2, they both quote Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” All right. The problem is they both draw opposite conclusions. They cite the same passage, the same person, and Paul quotes it to prove that justification is by faith. James quotes it to prove justification is by works…okay, gave Luther hissy fits, and many other people as well. Well, is that a contradiction? It depends upon what the word ‘justification’ means, right? For Paul, he’s talking about how do you enter into a right relationship with God? James is talking about how you live in such a way that shows you are in right relationship with God. And you enter into the relationship by faith, and that’s illustrated by Abraham. And you live in a relationship by faith, and that’s also illustrated by Abraham, right? So, you can quote the same passage, and because the use of the word ‘justification’ is different, you come out with what sounds to be a contradiction, but it’s not. It’s not a contradiction at all.

Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “Well I can never trust the Bible. I mean, it teaches that slavery is good.” No, it doesn’t; it doesn’t. All the seeds for the abolition of slavery are sown in, especially Paul. The discussion of Onesimus and Philemon: he is to receive the slave back, not as a slave, but as a brother. See, Paul’s radically redefining what it is to be a human being. In 1st Timothy, in the list of sins, being enslaver (someone who sells slaves), is Paul’s interpretation of the breaking of one of the Ten Commandments. It’s a sin to sell people. The seeds are all there in Scripture. Paul had other issues that were more pressing than social change, the spread of the Gospel. But that’s not to say he liked slavery, or he endorsed it and said it was biblical. It doesn’t. That’s an interpretive issue. So the second basic category of contradictions are the result of us misunderstanding what the Bible is actually saying.

5. Contradictions Between Bible and History or Science

And thirdly, there are what appear to be contradictions between the Bible and history, and the Bible and science. And here I just want to be cautious. It’s certainly possible, although you would never know it from some of the discussions, that the secular source could be wrong when the Bible seems to disagree with history or science. So maybe history and science are wrong. This is going to sound silly, but there was a well-known German Old Testament scholar named Wellhausen who dictated Old Testament scholarship (I don’t know, for a hundred years), and he argued that a lot of the Old Testament couldn’t have been written by the people that we traditionally think wrote it; and certainly not as early, date-wise, that we think it is because writing wasn’t invented, he said, until four or five hundred BC. He’s just wrong (maybe it’s a thousand). That’s just wrong. I mean, we have alphabets going way back into the third millennium BC.

Wellhausen argued that the suggestion about David playing a harp; it couldn’t possibly be historically accurate because music hadn’t been invented. Can you conceive of any point in time in the history of mankind where there wasn’t music? Of course not! Of course not! Sometimes the secular source is just wrong. There’s a debate on Luke where he dates the census during the rule of Quirinius. Well, it could be that the secular source we have for dating. The problem is that the dates that we’re given elsewhere for Quirinius don’t match up with the biblical account, so they both can’t be right. And, well maybe the secular source is wrong. Why does it always seems to be the Bible is told that “you’re wrong!” Well, that’s just not the case. The secular source could be wrong. 

It's also possible when Scripture seems to disagree with science that, “Oh I don’t know, maybe science is wrong.” I mean, could be, right? I mean, for a long time we thought the best way to heal someone was to cut them and let them bleed out. Now you look at it now and you go “that’s stupid.” When someone’s sick they need their blood. I mean, bleeding is the worst thing you possibly could do. Science was wrong. 

And it might be in some of these discussions between the Bible and science that science also needs to have a little humility and understand that they have been wrong in the past. Science tends to correct itself, but it’s not always right. It’s not always right. But again, the other side, too, brings up this whole issue of hermeneutics. I think you have to be very careful when science and history appear to contradict each other; that maybe the secular source is wrong, but maybe your interpretation is wrong as well. 

If you get a really old Bible, you’ll see that the heading of the first book is ‘Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, 8008 BC’ (never part of the text, but it was added in through a series of events). I think probably, counting back through the genealogies to get to 8008 BC, is not an accurate way to handle the genealogies, and our interpretation was simply wrong. It was just wrong. You know, you talk about the contradictions between Genesis 1 and science. Well, maybe science is wrong a bit on evolution and creation. Or (and this is a side discussion), but maybe Genesis 1 isn’t meant to convey science. It’s meant to convey theology, that the World was created by God. It was created intelligently, on purpose, with men and women as the apex of creation. I mean, after all, you have light, day 1, before you have the Sun, day 4. What’s going on? Well, the greatest god in almost any cosmology is the Sun. And Moses comes along, and he writes, “Our God is so much greater than Ra, that he can create light without the Sun.” So, I’m just saying that this whole thing of potential contradictions between the Bible and science, and the Bible and history, a little bit of humility on all sides is a good thing. But it’s not always the Bible that has to be wrong. We might be interpreting it incorrectly, or science is wrong, or our understanding of history is wrong.

6. Conclusions

Let me conclude with this, when people come and they say, “I can’t trust my Bible because of all the contradictions in it” (I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard that), the first thing you should say is, “Can you show me one, just show me one?” What you will find, I believe, is the vast majority of people don’t have a clue where the problem passages are. And there are problem passages. There are what appear to be contradictions that are a little hard to explain. But you need to know if that person truly has an intellectual problem with apparent contradictions in the Bible, or whether they’re just mimicking what their professor in college said, or what some book they read said. And that’s not the real issue, that the real issue is that they don’t want to submit to God. So, if you’re going to have a discussion on contradictions, start by saying “Show me one that you’re struggling with and then let’s work on it together.” Vast majority of the time, they won’t know one. They won’t know one. 

The second thing I want to encourage you, is that there almost always is a conservative answer. There almost always is an answer to these contradictions. Some a little more difficult than others, but the vast majority of these contradictions can be so easily explained. When I was in grad school, Darrell Bock and Craig Blomberg were two of my best friends. We went to the same school in Aberdeen, Scotland, and Thursday was my favorite day because Darrell would come in from (he lived in a little town called Torphins outside of Aberdeen), and Craig and I would meet him, and we’d have lunch together, and then we’d argue. It was the best learning experience of my life, I think! And we argued, discussed, everything. We talked about women’s role in ministry. We talked about dispensationalism. We talked about errors in the Bible. Well, I’d gone to a seminary that just matter of factly taught that there were errors in the Bible, and I, without thinking, had picked it up. Darrell went to Dallas Theological and Craig went to Trinity, two schools that actively taught their students that there weren’t errors in the Bible. And when we were talking, “Well, what about this passage?” And Darrell would give the answer, I go, “Oh, that’s kind of obvious. Okay, what about this?” And Craig would give an answer. You know, “Yeah, that’s not a contradiction.” And what I’ve found is that there almost always is an answer to these problems. I had not been taught them, so I was unaware of them. I have learned them since. But there almost always is a conservative answer.

And that just takes you to the conclusion, that is, I believe that Scripture deserves the benefit of the doubt. I think Scripture has shown itself to be unbelievably accurate, internally coherent and consistent. It fits into history and what we know about science. It fits into all that so beautifully if we interpret it correctly, and if we have a fair view of history and science. And I think, yeah, there’s some issues, there’s some questions I’m not completely sure of. But I think Scripture deserves the benefit of the doubt because it has proven itself to be true over and over and over again. And so, I encourage you to look through these issues, find the Darrell and Craigs in your life, and talk through some of these issues, your pastors, your friends in school. Come to a point where you trust the Bible. It’s not full of contradictions. It’s just not! Give it the benefit of the doubt. Understand that if somebody brings up a contradiction that you can’t explain, there’s someone somewhere that can. And I’ve listed on the class page a book by Craig where he just goes through probably every major apparent contradiction, and gives you very good answers for it. And trust it. Trust it! 

Thanks.