Loading...In my previous post I began discussing the difference between differences and contradictions. I see contradictions as a kind of difference, one that cannot be reconciled. Some statements are just different: Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer; Jimmy Carter was president. Different but not mutually exclusive. Others are contradictory: Jimmy Carter became president in 1976; Jimmy Carter became president in 1992. Both can’t be true at the same time.
UNLESS you figure out a way to reconcile them, for example, by saying that Jimmy Carter became president twice, once in 1976 and again in 1992. But THAT reconciliation can be shown to be false by other facts (that at Bill Clinton became president in 1992). Eventually in a case like this, one has to concede: yes, the two statements about Jimmy Carter are in fact contradictory. In this instance, one of them is true and the other false. In other instances, you can have contradictory statements *both* of which are false (Bill Clinton first became president in 1962; Bill Clinton first became president in 2002). But you can’t have contradictory statements both of which are right.
The New Testament is filled with different claims about Jesus, and only some are contradictory. The question is: which is which? Here are two examples I rather like from the end of the Gospels, in this case the resurrection narratives.Some intriguing and controversial stuff here. Join the blog and you can see! Click here for membership options
I say you are right. Why would someone, attempting to give a testament to convince, consciously exclude information that would add weight to it?
What do you make of the “we” in John 20:2?
Also, what are your thoughts on Libbie Schrader’s work on “Mary the Tower” and the idea that Martha was added to GJohn in the second century?
Yeah, it’s odd, huh? It appears John has heard two traditions, one of Mary going alone and another of their being more than her, and has inadvertently combined them. As it turns out, he does that kind of thing a lot in his Gospels
Libbie is my student (she’s doing a PhD at Duke); I think the Tower has real possibilities, but haven’t decided. I don’t think she’s at all right about Martha being added later. But hey, I’ve been wrong before!
Contradiction. The women at the tomb is the example I start with when attempting a constructive dialog with inerrantists. Reconciling the differences requires embarrassing mental gymnastics, as you point out. Moreover, this story is at the heart of our faith. If the Holy Spirit was implanting the very words to write in the minds of the authors, what purpose does these differences serve? Alternately, if these authors were inspired to write, but used the stories as they had heard them, decades after the event, these differences are exactly what you’d expect. It must have been a confusing morning. They never found the body. Some men – and one woman – reported visions of seeing Jesus resurrected. That’s why they didn’t find it – it wasn’t there! So the stories swirled around, morphed as they were retold, and finally got written down. It was a very human endeavor. The writers were inspired, as is manifest in their writing. But they were not inerrant.
I think if the HG wrote the gospels there would only be one with a full account.
1. I would say contradiction.
2. Is Mary the mother of James also Jesus’ mother? So James is Jesus’ brother?
Some have argued that, but it seems unlikely she’d be identified in connection with James instead of Jesus himself. Lots of James’s back then! Even in the NT.
How do conservative Christians explain the contradiction between Mark 11:12-21 and Matthew 21:18-20? You could argue that Mark’s version was just Jesus’ disciples seeing a dead fig tree and mistakenly thinking that it was the fig tree from the previous day. Matthew recognizing that problem changes the story to eliminate that possibility and in doing so makes the story seem more miraculous. What do you think?
Well, apart from it happening twice, about the best one can say is that Matthew is simply summarizing a longer story. Often that is called “telescoping” an account. But even if that’s what is going on — in fact, that almost certainly what *is* going on — the two stories contradict. That is to say, if Mark is right in what happened, Matthew cannot be right (in the sequence of days)
I would lean towards contradiction but hard to say it’s slam dunk. The detail about when the stone was rolled away also seems to be contradictory but maybe also not a slam dunk. Specifically, Matthew seems to suggest the women showed up and then the stone was rolled away as opposed to discovering it already opened. I’m very new to this type of reading of the Bible even though I’ve read the Bible my entire life. If these differences are intended to emphasize different things by the writers, what possibly could those points be that they want to emphasize? To me it just seems like slightly different but generally the same stories. Thanks in advance.
If the writers had each said something like, “Among the women visiting the tomb were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James…” then there would be no contradiction at all; they were each just noting certain women in the group. But they didn’t say it that way. They seem to be citing the specific women who visited the tomb, and they contradict each other. And all four Gospels contradict Paul’s version in 1 Corinthians 15. It’s not surprising that different stories would get passed down, and few believers are bothered by such details, except for those who think a God-inspired book can’t have any inconsistencies, and therefore they refuse to see them.
Contradiction:
Why? Matthew and Luke know Mark’s account and changes the number of women at the tomb. Maybe to improve? Luke does believe he wrote the definitive account up until his time.
John is also a contradiction.
I think you presented that data accurately, and in doing so, you made me laugh. It is funny because it is “true”.
As for making sense of the decisions of the writers: I currently favor the view that Matthew knew Mark and Luke. I also think John knew all three synoptic gospels. So I suppose the later writers, Matthew and John, both deliberately chose to reduce the number of women named in order to focus on the two or one they found necessary or interesting.
It is not a a strictly logical contradiction, but rather a violation of what the philosopher H. P. Grice called a conversational implicature. Specifically, it violates the maxim of quantity, which is the implication that what we say is as fully informative as required by the context. So when a writer says that it was three women, we are justified when we infer it wasn’t a dozen.
I agree.
Bart, Thank you for asking my opinion but allow me to start with a list of facts:
F1. Jimmy Carter won the US Presidential election in 1976 and became the US President in 1977.
F2. Grover Cleveland became the US President in 1895 and 1893.
F3. F2 contains no contradiction.
F4. Saying that Jimmy Carter became the US President in 1992 or 1993 would not be a contradiction. But it would be a false statement, apart from appealing to alternate realities.
F5. All contradictions are differences, but all differences are not contradictions.
F6. If we apply modern standards of history to the canonical Gospels, then we will find many contradictions between them.
Now my opinions follow:
O1. The canonical Gospels were written as Greco-Roman biographies without the concerns of modern standards of history.
O2. You bring up many interesting points about the differences between the canonical Gospels.
You confused me a bit with F2. What could it mean to say that he became president twice, 2 years apart. Is it a contradiction? I didn’t know, but assumed SOMETHING was incorrect. And why 95 first and 93 second?
Yes, it was wrong, but it’s only a typo and your example is an excellent one. He was president twice, and his dates were 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.
Such a shame 1885 turned un-noticed into 1895, screwing up your example. I hate it when that kind of thing happens to me.
Yes, yes, “1895” is a typo for “1885.” I tried to proofread, but to err is human 🙂
I’m confused about your F2. Cleveland became president in 1885 and 1893. Did you have a typo or were you giving an example of incorrect information?
I think it is a contradiction for the reasons you mention.
I guess there is a possibility that the attempt to reconcile the different accounts is correct. In John 20:2 Mary says to Peter: ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’
Is the use of “we” in that verse correct (I looked this up in the NRSV). Anyway, it’s a stretch, but it does lend some credence to the view that maybe all of the women were not mentioned in the various accounts.
Yup, that’s one way to do it.
I am not too keen on your Jimmy Carter example. I do not think it is a contradiction. As you say, he could have become president twice. The thing that makes it false is another fact not related to the two statements: Clinton became president instead. Contradictions are false because they are two statements that cannot both be true.
A better example would be Jimmy Carter won the 1992 presidential election AND Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election.
My observations of contradictions: Jesus is born before King Herod dies, but after Judea becomes incorporated into the Roman province of Iudaea. Jesus immediately went into the wilderness for forty days after his baptism, except in John, where the author details what Jesus and his disciples did day-by-day following the encounter with John the Baptist. Jesus is in a person-to-person conversation with the Centurion, or Jesus only speaks to the Centurion through intermediaries and never meets him. Jesus’s disciples either watch the fig decay while they watch it, or they don’t but they notice it decayed the next day (to believe that they watched it decay, but not mention this would be more miraculous than watching it decay in front of their eyes). Jesus meets Simon and Andrew in Bethany, or Jesus calls Simon and Andrew first and then on a separate occasion calls James and John, or Jesus calls all four at the same time while performing a miracle that is mentioned in only one other gospel and that is after the resurrection of Jesus. And the family starts in Nazareth, goes to Bethlehem and then return or they almost by chance end in Nazareth fleeing Herod Archelaus.
My first thought was that the exact number of women present does not constitute a contradiction, at least not as much as some more obvious contradictions in the gospels. However, on doing a deeper dive into the full stories in all four gospels reveals significantly greater differences…
My one observation about the numbers is that if Abraham Lincoln visited Gettysburg, he definitely went with an entourage, but one narrative may only mention Abraham himself, while another may mention a few of his colleagues and retainers, while others may describe the entire entourage, but one would not claim that these are contradictory.
Here’s my deeper dive into the full stories told in all four gospels (my apologies, a deep dive cannot be summarized in comments):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oFGuhx7rCsvEWb_CCF9F2epvvPEnxNHj/view?usp=sharing
The “penitent thief” at the crucifixion has always been one of the most intriguing contradictions in my mind. Mark and Matthew have him clearly joining the others in mocking Jesus, but Luke has him acknowledging Jesus’s innocence with the famous plea: “remember me when you come into your father’s kingdom”, which is incredibly touching, but also clearly a major departure both historically and theologically from the earlier Gospels (implying 1. that entry to heaven is, more or less, “instantaneous” at death for believers and 2. that the salvation provided by Jesus lies in recognizing his divinity and repenting of one’s sins). Not sure how inerrantists resolve these accounts because the implications of the contradiction are huge.
I’m not a inerrantist, but I do know how they solve this: The sinner was first mocking Jesus (Mark and Matthew) but later on he changed his behaviour and ‘converted’ (Luke).
As far as this business about contradiction VS simple difference or different perspective, I’ve always found that a bit strange in light of the belief in infallibility of scripture and the strict adherence of conservative Christians with respect to their pet doctrines. They give no room for different interpretations of such things as who to pray to: witness the still preaching despite terrible personal scandal Jimmy Swaggart’s constant admonitions concerning Catholics who will ‘…roast in the deepest pits of Hell…’ for praying to the Virgin Mary while people of that ilk tend to jump through burning hoops to try twisting the original text’s obvious problems to claim that such scriptures are inerrant. If you are going to cut the Gospel writers such tremendous slack as is done to justify the belief in inerrancy in the light of contradiction, why not cut the Catholics a bit of slack for their differences?
As a child I once asked my grandfather how many metres there were in a kilometre (because I had recently found out and wanted to see who else knew). He replied “Five hundred”, continued with another conversation for a while, and then added “plus five hundred”.
The discussion about the number of women at the tomb just reminded me of that.
Hi Bart, are you going to cover how many times the cock crowed before Peter’s denials?
No, but it’s a classic!
Not a contradiction if we presume each author only gives names the reader will be familiar with.
For example, suppose you know I have a friend named John. I tell you last night I played soccer with John. That doesn’t imply John was the only person I played soccer with, but he’s the only one I named because he’s the only one there whom you know.
If taking care of a body was a “team sport” in the same way soccer is, I would expect it wasn’t necessary to explain that a group was there, as much would be implied. Thus only naming people the reader would be familiar with seems perfectly natural.
I think that the number of women is a “difference”. There would have been several to perform the anointing. The various oral legends used by the gospel authors would have focused on the main character or characters.
I can reconcile the differences in the actual anointing. Nicodemus took care of it according to John; when Jesus was laid in the tomb. (Men could do the anointing of a man, just not a woman. Women could do both genders) I think that the women were too occupied with mourning to know what Nicodemus did.
I can also reconcile that the women bought the spices before the Sabbath (Luke) and after the Sabbath (Mark). In 30 CE, Passover (a High Sabbath) occurred on a Thursday. So they bought the spices on Friday. (For those who argue 33 CE, I won’t go into a lengthy discussion. Among other proofs, suffice to say that Tiberias was co-regent in charge of Palestine about 10-11 CE.)
To me, there are contradictions in the stories. The angel or angels and Jesus’ appearances are irreconcilable.
Might I propose a sub-category of ‘strong contradictions’; as readings where one New Testament text appears to refer to the tradition underlying another text, but explicitly rejects that tradition as false?
I am thinking specifically of John 19:34-35 – the piercing of Jesus body by a spear after death – which appeals to an eyewitness, so implying a contrary tradition as being in circulation that the author of John’s gospel seeks to refute.
And indeed just such a contrary tradition – in which the spear thrust happened before Jesus’s death – is found in the 4th century Greek gospel texts (and Coptic papyri) at Matthew 27:49. So one interpretation is that the author of John knows of the tradition behind this variant reading in Matthew, but explicitly rejected it.
This particular ‘strong contradiction’ is one of the very few where ‘orthodox corruption’ is directly observable in the historical evidence; as numerous manuscripts where the unacceptable words are marked for deletion, as official statements of condemnation (including by one Pope), and as campaigns of extirpation. So that only in remote Ireland, Dalraida and Ethiopia did the spear-thrust at 27:49 survive as the standard text of Matthew.
Whoa. That’s good.
I have the impression that this represents the views of Westcott and Hort in respect of the longer reading at Matthew 27:49. They considered the word-order of the Matthew variant to be too consistent and different from that in the Gospel of John, the witnesses to the longer reading to be too various, and the textual evidence (in their view) too early; for the Matthew text to have arisen through harmonisation. The inference being , since John’s is the later gospel anyway, that it is more likely that the tradition in John is responding a pre-existing tradition that was also found in Matthew, than the other way round. So whether the longer variant in Matthew is original to that gospel author – which Westcott and Hort say they are “not prepared to reject altogether” – or whether it is an early intrusion from an independent account of the crucifixion; it is the placing of the narrative in John that creates a contradiction.
Had the parallel John narrative had not survived, would the longer variant in Matthew have been readily rejected?
I believe Westcott and Hort included it as one of their “Western non-interpolations” — the only one in Matthew (the others are in Luke); they thought at the end of the day that these verses were not original but had been interpolated in every tradition subsequent to the Western. It is, of course, the text of the vast majority of mss; without the Johnanine parallel (which is not precise), it is hard to tell. In the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture I argue that it is in fact a later interpolation, made, like the other Western non-interpolations, for reasons of anti-docetic polemic (OC, pp. 228-29).
RE: “Jimmy Carter became president in 1976; Jimmy Carter became president in 1992. Both can’t be true at the same time.”
Yes, interestingly, this is true:
Grover Cleveland became president in 1885; Grover Cleveland became president in 1893.
If the statements were a little different and more exacting, then they could not be true at face-value:
Jimmy Carter *first* became president in 1976; Jimmy Carter *first* became president in 1992. Cannot be true – no need to check out other facts.