The Good Side of Contradictions

Contradictions have one other benefit—the proof of its eyewitness accounts. This is especially true of the New Testament. All the stories claim to be from eyewitnesses, giving their stories. Some of these stories are opposing to one another, offering different details, even disagreeing about details. But this proves that the texts weren’t manipulated by someone trying to establish consistency. Rather, we truly do have eyewitness accounts—along with their contradictions, their inconsistencies and the different details. This is a greater evidence of historicity than a completely consistent account, for if you have ten human beings witnessing an event, you have ten different and sometimes contradictory accounts of a single event.

So what is the benefit of accounts that are sometimes contradictory? The benefit is in what they agree in. If you have ten people who see a car accident, and they disagree as to the color and make of the cars, but they all agree that the larger car was hit by the smaller one. Then one can disregard the eyewitness account of the color or make of the cars, but one can rely on the fact of the accident and who hit the other. The same with the Bible. We may not know how many angels were at the tomb, but we have a number of witnesses who claim to have seen an empty tomb and a resurrected Jesus—on that they are consistant. Not only do we know what to focus on, but we also know that what agreement we have we can better rely on because we have unimportant details that disagree with each other.

Contradictions and Theology of the Bible

Contradictions are not an argument against the inspiration of Scripture. God could have inspired the authors to focus on what is important. The important thing, in Genesis 1, is to offer texts that show the creation of the world by God’s hand, but not necessarily to show the order or timing of the creation. The important thing in the genealogies of Jesus is to show that he is an adopted descendent of David, not to get the exact names right. The importance of Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 is to show how Judeans had always rejected God’s prophets, not to get every precise detail correct. In this way, we can see that contradictions in Scripture help us to focus on the important details—the ethics and basic facts about God, not the details of history.

Contradictions, however, do land a blow against the idea of the inerrancy of the Bible. If the Bible can be shown to have one, solid, proven error, then it is not without error, thus not inerrant. If the Bible is not inerrant—which the Bible never claims for itself—then that offers a lot of other questions about the connection between faith and science, faith and proven historical data, and whether fundamentalist faith is accurate in any way. The Bible could be about many things, but it does not have to inform science, nor does it have to inform our study of other disciplines. The Bible is good for what is shows us—the ways of God, the salvation of Jesus, the fact of a spirit world, and the ancient history of the Jews. But we should not make the Bible say what it does not say for itself.

Are There Contradictions In the Bible?

When I first began reading the Bible, I found some contradictions. I also heard about other contradictions. As I studied the Bible more, and heard more preachers, I found that these contradictions have easy explanations. Okay, so there are two angels at the tomb in one text, and only one in another—is this really a contradiction? I mean, if there are two, are there not one? And the Judeans of John deny Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. But does this absolutely contradict Jesus’ birth there—which was not necessarily well known anyway? Many of the “contradictions” that are put forth are insignificant and not really a contradiction at all, but simply different points of view.

However, as I continued to read the Bible and really dig into it, I find contradictions that cannot be easily explained, at least if we allow the text to speak for itself. For instance, in Genesis 1, it says that plants were created before humanity, but in Genesis 2 it says that it occurred the other way around. In I Corinthians 11 it says that women should prophecy with their heads covered, but in I Corinthians 14 it says that women should stay silent and not prophecy at all (and this despite earlier in I Cor. 14 where it says that EVERYONE should have something to speak). In Matthew 1 there is a genealogy of Jesus which contradicts the genealogy given in Luke 3. While some claim that one if of Mary and the other of Joseph, both claim to be genealogies of Joseph.

Some additional contradictions are given by Dewey Beagle, found in Erickson’s Readings in Christian Theology, vol. 1.

Jude verse 14—Jude says that Enoch is the “seventh generation from Adam”, as quoted in the Book of Enoch, while the text in Genesis has many more generations between them.

II Kings 15:27—It says that Pekah “reigned twenty years”, but this is not possible, given the comparisons of other passages of II Kings.

Acts 7:4—Stephen claims that Abraham left Haran “after his father died”, but Genesis claims that Abraham’s father was still alive when he left.

Galatians 3:17—There is a strong discrepancy in the Bible to how long the Hebrews were in Egypt—was it about 400 years or a bit more than 200 years?

But these are but a few of the other serious contradictions that were discovered.

There ARE certainly some contradictions in the Bible text. But what does that mean for those of us who depend on the Bible as our main source of truth about God?

Can Every Believer Understand Scripture Equally?

Is Scripture accessible?

It is as accessible as any other piece of ancient literature—we can understand it, if we work at it. It is accessible, but some people can understand what they read better than others. It is accessible, if one is literate, both in eye and in mind. This means that not everyone, in reality, has direct access to it. Not everyone can read, for one thing. And not everyone, even if they can read, can read well enough to understand all the words of the translators. And not everyone, even if they understand the words, can sift through the cultural differences to the principles of God’s word that can be applied to our culture today. Therefore, the simple reading and understanding of Scripture is not for everyone. Some people are dependent on others whom God has given the additional gift of interpretation.

Thus, it is arrogant to assume that everyone can be an interpreter of Scripture. Some have the gift, some do not. How this gift is determined is hard to say. But I will say this—many popular “interpreters” of Scripture are not interpreters at all, but re-writers. They are not interested in delving into Scripture to dig out the treasure that is discovered there. Rather, the “precious stones” they discover have the faux shine of the ideals of this world. They are filled with the judgments, prejudices, fears and assumptions of our own culture. To a certain degree, this is understandable. But when an interpreter only tells people what they want to hear, is “praised by all”, and does not hope in God’s deliverance, but in a deliverance from man, then such an interpreter must be avoided. To claim to be speaking God’s word when it only a re-packaged hope of one’s contemporary culture is the worst of all lies.

Culture and Interpretation

I have a friend who is a prophet, and I believe that she is truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. When she writes down exactly what she receives, then it is accurate—scarily accurate. But when she attempts to interpret it, to put it “in her own words” and thus to put her own understanding into it, then it becomes more difficult to understand, and harder to accept. It just doesn’t seem as “right” somehow. It is still inspired, but there are layers to dig through to understand what the Holy Spirit really says, and we have to ask questions to really figure it out.

Even so with the text of Scripture. It is written in a context, and interpreted for that culture to better understand it. Sometimes, it has the assumptions of that culture which are not explained and occasionally it includes the misconceptions of the culture of the author. This does not mean that God’s word is not there. But we have to sift through the culture to determine the culture. God’s word for us is not on the surface of Scripture—written in Greek or Hebrew, filled with idioms and not explaining the cultural assumptions that come with living in the Ancient world. To understand God’s word, we must work hard to unpack Scripture.

Inerrancy

It is a leap in logic to say that an author was “breathed into” by the Holy Spirit, to then say that everything that author wrote was 100 percent accurate, both scientifically and in accord with modern knowledge. Just like everything that God does on earth, Scripture is the work of both God and humanity. Since humanity is involved, this means that human culture, ideals, weaknesses and misconceptions were put into it.

The Future of Religion

The future of religion is in following Jesus’ humanitarian morality, in seeing all human beings as being equal in the need to have their basic needs met. The following precepts, that Jesus promoted, is really the ultimate moral end for all religions:
a. All humans are equal
b. All humans are to be ultimately punished by God, not humanity
c. Varieties of ideal communities should be established, having no authority except over themselves
d. Leaders should be chosen, not because of their capacity to collect power to themselves, but because of their ability to assist the most people of any kind, especially those under their care
e. Humans who harm community should be separated from the ideal community
f. It is the noblest ideal to meet other’s needs no matter the harm they do to oneself or one’s community
g. We change the world through accepting suffering, not by forcing suffering
h. The greatest sin is harming others and teaching young people to harm others.