Bible “Contradictions”
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It's the Easter season, and at this time of year, we always see the usual articles calling into question the resurrection of Christ. Most times these articles cite contradictions in the resurrection accounts. Did Jesus appear in Galilee (Matthew's and Mark's Gospel ) or Jerusalem (Luke's and John's gospels) ? One angel or two? Angel outside the tomb or inside? Can all the appearances be harmonized, or are they hopelessly contradictory? What you have here are four writers with different perspectives and emphases.•Matthew (Matt. 28:16 ) records only an appearance to disciples in Galilee-but...
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I was at a conference several years ago and heard a well-known author and scholar speaking on the book of John. This speaker said John’s accounts were written from political and spiritual motivations and that John or whoever the author was invented the details to fit his “motif.”He pointed out that, in the Gospel of John, Andrew introduces Peter to Jesus. In the other Gospels the disciples are called from their fishermen’s nets by Jesus, and they immediately go off with Him. He also cited the two different accounts of Jesus cleansing the temple. “See,” he said, “so many contradictions!”...
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Here's a classic "contradiction" in the New Testament. It involves the healing of the Roman centurion's servant. In Matthew 8:5-13 the centurion himself is portrayed as coming to Jesus to ask for his servant's healing, but in Luke's version (Lk 7:1-10), the centurion sends the Jewish elders to make the request. How do we reconcile this?There are several observations to be made here. First, Matthew tends to simplify and summarize-this seems to be his style. And it is quite acceptable and still accurate to say that the centurion made the request, even though he sent the Jewish elders to...
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We hear a lot about Bible "contradictions" from people these days. Many say that because of these discrepancies the reliability of the Bible cannot be trusted. Especially brought up are the four gospels, since they have many parallel accounts that have surface disagreements with one another. But let me give you six different ways you can explain these supposedly fatal contradictions:1.They used “paraphrase”: Saying the same thing in different words. In first century culture, it was permissible to vary the exact wording when you quoted someone, as long as the meaning of the quote...
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Some critics of the gospels today claim they are full of contradictions and so can't be trusted as real history. An example that is often brought up are the accounts of Peter's denial of Christ and the roosters crowing. All four gospels contain this account. In Matthew, Luke, and John, Jesus seems to be telling Peter that before the cock (rooster) crows once the next morning, Peter will deny Him three times, but in Mark, Jesus tells Peter that he will deny Him before the cock crows twice. So some say since the accounts disagree, they can't be trusted.But is this fair? First of all,...
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In ancient history, most cultures believed that the earth was flat, and if you went too far in a particular direction, off the edge you would fall! The ancient Bablylonians or Egyptians are said by some to have believed in a circular earth, but the earth shown in their diagrams was a circular, flat disk floating in the ocean. Until the time of Pythagoras, about 600 B.C. no one even suggested a spherical earth, and even then it was strictly an idea. It took until about the third century before the idea of a spherical earth really started to take hold, and many more centuries to provide...
© 2012 Vince Latorre, The Bible Can Be Proven