Are There Contradictions in the Bible?

The Question

Does the Bible Contradict Itself?

• Skeptics catalog hundreds of alleged Bible contradictions.
• Defenders often wave them away too quickly.
• Both moves skip the actual work.
• This deck weighs the hardest cases honestly.

First, A Definition

Contradiction vs. Difference

• A contradiction affirms and denies the very same thing.
• It cannot be true both ways at once.
• A difference is two accounts stressing different details.
• Most alleged contradictions are differences — but not all.

The key test: Ask whether both claims can be true at once, not merely whether they match word-for-word.

How They Wrote

Ancient History Had Its Own Rules

• The Gospels resemble Greco-Roman biography, not modern journalism.
• Ancient writers paraphrased, compressed, and reordered events freely.
• Exact quotation and strict chronology were not expected.
• Judging them by modern standards is an anachronism.

Ancient convention: Richard Burridge showed the Gospels fit the genre of ancient “bios,” where capturing the gist mattered more than verbatim precision.

Source: Richard A. Burridge, ‘What Are the Gospels?’ (1992); Michael R. Licona, ‘Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?’ (2017).

The Objection

State the Case at Full Strength

• The four Gospels disagree on details of the resurrection morning.
• Two genealogies of Jesus barely overlap.
• Judas dies in two seemingly different ways.
• And Luke's census appears to misdate a Roman official.

Test Case 1

The Resurrection Accounts

• Matthew mentions one angel; Mark, a “young man” in white, traditionally taken as an angel; Luke, two men later called angels; John, two angels.
• The lists of women at the tomb differ in name and number.
• No Gospel claims to give a complete roster.
• One angel spoke — but mentioning one does not exclude two.

Not a contradiction: “One angel spoke” and “two angels were present” can both be true; a bare number is rarely a denial.

Source: Matthew 28:1–8; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–10, 23; John 20:1–13.

Test Case 2

The Two Genealogies

• Matthew traces Jesus through David's son Solomon.
• Luke traces him through David's son Nathan.
• They even name Joseph's father differently: Jacob versus Heli.
• Two old solutions exist — and neither is certain.

Two theories: Ancients appealed to levirate marriage (Julius Africanus); many today argue Luke records Mary's line — plausible, though the text never says so outright.

Source: Matthew 1:1–17; Luke 3:23–38; Julius Africanus, ‘Letter to Aristides’ (3rd c.).

Test Case 3

How Did Judas Die?

• Matthew says Judas hanged himself.
• Acts says he fell headlong and burst open.
• A hanged body that later falls could produce both descriptions.
• It is possible and reasonable — though not provable.

Honest verdict: The two accounts can be combined without strain, but we should hold the reconstruction loosely rather than insist on it.

Source: Matthew 27:3–10; Acts 1:18–19.

Test Case 4

Two Creation Accounts?

• Genesis 1 gives an ordered, cosmic sequence of six days.
• Genesis 2 zooms in on the garden and on humanity.
• The apparent order of animals and Adam seems to differ.
• Many read Genesis 2 as topical focus, not a rival timeline.

Genre matters: Genesis 1 and 2 serve different purposes; reading chapter 2 as strict chronology sets up a clash the text may never intend.

Source: Genesis 1:1–2:3; Genesis 2:4–25.

The Hard One

Luke's Census and Quirinius

• Luke dates Jesus' birth to a census under Quirinius.
• But Herod died in 4 BC, and Quirinius governed Syria from AD 6.
• That leaves a gap of roughly ten years.
• Proposed fixes exist, yet many scholars think Luke simply erred.

Be candid: This is the case where harmonizations are weakest; honesty means admitting it may be a genuine mistake, even as Luke is elsewhere a careful historian.

Source: Luke 2:1–2; Josephus, ‘Antiquities’ 17–18; Herod's death dated to 4 BC, Quirinius' census to AD 6.

Where Christians Land

A Spectrum of Faithful Views

• Strict inerrantists seek a harmonization for every last detail.
• Others hold Scripture infallible in what it teaches, not in every incidental.
• That allows for paraphrase, approximation, and rounding.
• Both camps affirm the Bible's core reliability.

Not one position: “Inerrancy” and “infallible in what it teaches” are distinct views, each held by serious believing scholars.

Two Mistakes

The Myth Cuts Both Ways

• One error: assuming any two differing accounts prove a mistake.
• The opposite error: forcing every detail to match at any cost.
• Strained harmonizations can damage credibility as much as denials do.
• Honesty sometimes means saying, plainly, “we are not sure.”

The myth: That difference automatically equals error — and its mirror image, that faith requires every detail to line up perfectly.

Why It Matters

Trust Built on Honesty

• Real eyewitness testimony varies in perspective and detail.
• Suspiciously identical accounts suggest collusion, not truth.
• Most alleged contradictions turn out to be complementary differences.
• A few remain genuinely debated — and that is worth admitting.

In one line: Most “contradictions” are the ordinary variation of independent witnesses; stay honest about the few that remain hard.