136
BIBLE “CONTRADICTIONS” … ANSWERED (Part One – Introduction 2)
A Booklet by Brad McCoy, Th.M.
© Copyright 1985 Reprinted with
author’s permission. May be distributed
freely but not sold.
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Note: I thought it would be
interesting for a few posts, to consider some alleged Biblical
contradictions. I hear this all the time, but no one who makes the
complaints will sit down with me and study them. Brad McCoy was my
Theology Professor in Seminary. He is an outstanding theological scholar
and teacher. At my request, he provided me with a booklet he
self-published in 1985. The booklet can be reproduced, but not sold. I
will return to the Calvinism/Arminianism series after awhile; maybe a couple of
weeks. - dh
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Introduction
– 2
(This
booklet is a response to the pamphlet “136 Bible Contradictions” printed by
Crusade publications of Redmond, Washington.)
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A
special word should be said about the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John. Each gospel is true in all it affirms, as far as it chooses to go. Each gospel gives eyewitness events to the
life of Christ. However, this does not
mean the Gospels should be expected to be verbatim clones of one another! If this were a necessary corollary of the
divine inspiration/inerrancy of the gospels, we have one not four gospels! As any attorney will confirm when the
testimony of different eyewitnesses to the same event is compared it is never
verbatim (unless of course there had been collusion among the eyewitnesses,
thus invalidating their testimony!).
Reliable/accurate
eyewitness accounts of the same event vary (we will call this phenomena “divergent
accounts”) because in retelling the event the different eyewitnesses will vary
in what details they summarize/generalize, as opposed to what details they give
in specific terms. Based on their own perspective of what they considered
important, they will tend to give detailed information, while minimizing or
even omitting other facts that they feel trivial or not worth mentioning (even
while in the act of observing the event itself they will have ignored certain “unimportant”
details which they felt were not worth mentioning/remembering). Such a dynamic is
apparent when comparing the gospels because none of the four gospels were
intended to be formal, all-inclusive biographies of the life of Jesus Christ.
Instead each is a theological document written with a specific purpose focusing
on a particular theme, and written to a specific audience.
Matthew
wrote to Jewish believers and presented Jesus as their Messiah/King who will
rule over His future earthly Kingdom. Mark
wrote to Roman believers and presented Jesus as the perfect servant of God. Luke wrote to Greek believers and presented
Jesus as the ideal man. John, written well after the other three Gospels (90-95
A.D. - for a liberal scholar’s irrefutable confirmation that all the New
Testament books were in fact written in the first century by eyewitnesses of
the events, read Redating The New Testament by Dr. J.A. T. Robinson) has
two primary emphases. It is addressed to
non-Christians so that they might believe on Jesus as their own personal savior
(20:31). It is also addressed to believers to encourage them to enter into a life
of intimate personal fellowship with the Savior (13:1-17,26 21:1-25). The
Gospel of John presents Jesus as God who took on humanity, becoming the
God-man. Understanding the specific
audiences the gospels were addressed to and perceiving each Gospel’s major purpose/theme
helps to explain why each writer includes certain details (specific events, miracles,
discourses, etc.) and omits others. One example will illustrate this fact. Only
two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, include genealogies of Christ. Does this then mean that the other two, Mark and
John, denied or did not know that Jesus had genealogies through his human parents?
Obviously not! Mark and John chose purposely not to include the genealogies of Christ
through either human parent because to do so would not contribute to their
overall theme/purpose for writing. Matthew, who stresses the Messiahship and
Kingship of Jesus includes His legal genealogy through His human “father”
Joseph. Its inclusion proves the validity
of Jesus’ claim to Kingship via his legal relationship to the royal line of
King David.
Luke,
who presents Jesus as the ideal man, includes his actual physical genealogy
through His human mother Mary. Its
inclusion proves Jesus’ unique and ideal “pedigree”. On the other hand Mark, who presents Jesus as
a servant, chose not to detail His background. A servant is evaluated by the quality of his
service, not by his ancestry. John who presents Jesus as God does not focus on
His human ancestry but instead begins his Gospel with the preexistence of
Christ (“The Word”) who is the Creator of the universe. Each gospel author was highly selective in what
information he chose to include in his particular book, in accord with his
overall theme and purpose.
If
one does not keep such basic “ground rules” in mind, he or she will be unable
to accurately relate the gospels one to another. This is especially true when
comparing different gospel accounts of the same event (parallel accounts). Any
differences between detail/emphasis between the two parallel accounts will
always be supplementary/complimentary, NOT contradictory. Moreover by comparing
and putting together the different gospel accounts of specific incidents, one
derives a fuller, richer understanding of the event than could be gained by examining
any one gospel witness alone (thus the wisdom of having not one but four
gospels!). This comparing and harmonizing of different but equally accurate
eyewitness accounts is the same process that an attorney goes through in
reconstructing a detailed account of a specific event by means of putting
together the various inputs of the eyewitnesses.
Along
these same lines of reasoning, one must remember when relating the gospel
accounts to one another: (1) partial reports are not necessarily false reports
and (2) divergent accounts are not necessarily contradictory accounts. Some amplification might prove helpful at this
point. (1) Partial reports are not
necessarily false reports. A newspaper story the day after a national election
might be headlined “Smith Elected President”. The article might then go on to
give information about Smith’s victory (with no other mention about other
races, such as the Senate, House, etc.).
Could someone then charge that the article was erroneous in view of the
fact that Smith was not the only public servant elected on the day in question?
No one would make such a claim. The
newspaper story was true in all it affirmed. It was not intended and did not
attempt to analyze any of the other campaigns of the day. The story would be
erroneous only if it had directly stated that only the Presidency and no other
offices had been voted on. A partial
report is not only necessarily a false report! In the New Testament, Matthew mentions that
one angel spoke to the women at the empty tomb, while Luke tells us that there
were two angels present. Is such a situation a necessary contradiction? Certainly not! This is a simple case of a partial account
focusing on the angel who actually spoke compared to a more detailed account
detailing the exact number of angels present. John Menham, M.A. Cambridge
University, has well said whenever you have “two”, you always have “one”. The
situation would be a contradiction if and only if Matthew had specifically
maintained that there was only one angel present. (2) Divergent accounts are
not necessarily contradictory accounts. When two or more equally divergent
details to their proper time sequence and the overall context in order to
construct an accurate harmonization. Sometimes
divergent accounts are caused because two different witnesses see or describe
different portions of a sequential event. Imagine two eyewitnesses who give the
following divergent testimony. Eyewitness A tells the police that he saw a
woman standing on a street corner who was hit by a bus and injured but not
killed. Eyewitness B claims he saw the same woman riding in a car which was hit
by a truck such that she was thrown out and killed instantly. These are
obviously divergent accounts but both are completely accurate. Putting the pieces
of evidence together, the police harmonized the divergent accounts and
reconstructed the whole story. The woman was hit by a bus while standing on a
street corner and injured. A passerby in a car volunteered to take her to the
hospital, but in his haste he ran a red light and collided with a truck. The
collision through (sic) the woman out of the car and she died instantly. The divergent
eyewitness accounts are both fully accurate! They were complimentary not contradictory.
What was needed to harmonize them was a careful reconstruction of the event accepting
both witnesses’ accounts at face value and then properly relating them to each
other. At other times, divergent accounts occur because of the different
perspective of the eyewitnesses. For instance, two men might both watch a woman
get into a cab. The first man might later testify that the woman got into a
“white cab”. The second, when relating the story, might state that the woman
got into a “yellow cab”. Surely such
diverse accounts must be contradictory. Not necessarily! In this case both
witnesses are absolutely accurate in what they affirm. The first witness, an
artist, noticed the actual color of the cab. The second, a businessman,
referred to the cab by its company name (this writer has seen many all-white
cabs marked “yellow cab” for its corporate name). Divergent accounts are not
necessarily contradictory. In the New Testament, one finds such a situation in
the divergent information given about the events surrounding the death of Judas
Iscariot. Matthew reports that Judas
hung himself, but Luke in the book of Acts indicates that Judas fell and his
body was badly mangled. These are
divergent accounts, but there is no necessary contradiction between them. The
obvious harmonization, taught by Christian commentators for two thousand years
and consistent with the rugged geography of the Jerusalem area, is that Judas
hung himself on a branch or some other protrusion overhanging one of the chasms
just outside the city. Later either the branch or the rope broke, or came
untied (or perhaps it was cut by a disgusted passerby . . . the Jews despised suicide)
such that the body of Judas fell to the rocky surface below. Divergent accounts
are not necessarily contradictory! Moreover the presence of divergent accounts
in the Bible actually functions to confirm the honesty of the human authors.
When studying and comparing the gospels it is obvious that the human authors
did not secretly get together in order to smooth out any apparent difficulties
between their accounts (i.e. there is no evidence of collusion among the writers
of the gospels in order to devise “clever fables” see II Peter 1:16). The
gospel writers simply recorded the facts from their own unique perspective and
within the overall purpose/thrust of their individual books. This factor speaks
volumes for the author’s integrity, especially in view of the fact that these
men would later be persecuted and killed for what they wrote in their gospels.
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I
thought I would continue with Part 3 of the introduction next.
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