OK, back to contradictions. This thread (such as it is – so far there’s been no thread) began with a reader’s question of how there could be contradictions in the work of a single author? Was he just inattentive? Didn’t he care? Was he sloppy?

In the previous post I pointed out that with someone like Paul, it was possible that he changed his mind about some things over the decade covered by his letters. But how about internal contradictions within a book? There are lots of these two? How can they be explained?

In some instances they can be explained by the fact that an author has taken a variety of different sources and incorporated them into his writing. On occasion, these sources have discrepancies (sometimes very slight) between them, and the author for some reason or another did not choose to smooth them out. Or he didn’t notice them! (More on that in my next post.)

A terrific set of examples comes from the Gospel of John. Most people reading John don’t see these internal discrepancies, which are sometimes called literary seams. But they’re there if you want to look for them. This is how I discuss them in my NT textbook, in my chapter on the Fourth Gospel.

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The Presence of Literary Seams. If I were to sew two pieces of cloth together, everyone would know. I am a lousy seamster, and the connections would be plain for the world to see. Some authors who splice their sources together are obvious as well, in that they don’t cover up their handiwork but leave numerous literary seams. I do not mean to say that the Fourth Evangelist was a sloppy (literary) seamster. But he did leave a few traces of his work, traces that become evident as you study his final product with care. The following are several illustrations.

 

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