Bible Contradictions: Part I
At face value, the Bible can seem to be full of contradictions. When people level this at us, we need to take them and it seriously, so let’s see how we can respond. We shall start with the first book of the New Testament. There’s lots to choose from, so let’s look at some of the more interesting ones.
The Book of Matthew
Problem: Ch 2: Verse 2 – The Bible seems to commend (and God blesses) the Magi for following the star, when elsewhere astrology is condemned.
Response: Astrology is a belief that looking at the position and movement of the starts can help us to foretell events. The star in the biblical account is there to announce Jesus’ birth, not to foretell it. The star given to the Magi was a proclamation, not a prediction, of what had already happened. Also, elsewhere in the Bible stars and planets are employed by God to reveal His desires. Psalm 19:1-6 affirms that the heavens declare God’s glory, while Romans 1 teaches that creation reveals God’s existence.
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Problem: Ch 4: Verses 14-16 – Does Matthew incorrectly quote Isaiah 9:1-2, or does he change it?
Response: It isn’t necessary to quote a passage verbatim in order to accurately communicate its meaning. Rather than distorting it, Matthew simply condenses the meaning of the passage. To paraphrase accurately is not to distort, otherwise no news report or historical account could ever be accurate, since summary is essential to history.
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Problem: Ch 5: Verse 14 – Jesus tells his disciples that they are the light of the world, whereas in John 9:5, he declared: ‘I am the light of the world’. So, who is the light of the world, Jesus or us? (And who’s paying the energy bill for all this?)
Response: Both! Jesus is the primary light of the world, and we are the secondary light. We are the reflectors of Jesus’ source light, in the same way that the moon is the reflector of the sun’s source light.
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Problem: Ch 5: Verse 42 – Jesus clearly says ‘Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.’ But, if we took this literally, how would we provide anything for our families. Also, Paul says that those who do not provide for their own families are worse than infidels (1 Timothy 5-8).
Response: Context is key. As we know from other things Jesus says (no good father would give a serpent to his child), this does not mean we should give people what will harm them. Furthermore, it does not mean give to those who flatly refuse to work. Paul is emphatic: ‘If anyone will not work, neither will he eat’ (2 Thessolonians 3:10). Finally, the whole context of Jesus’ words here are to reaffirm the spirit of the law, and to counter the legalistic misinterpretation of the OT that says take revenge on your enemy with ‘an eye for an eye’. By contrast, Jesus says not to retaliate against your enemy: love him, and give him help. Jesus no more expected His listeners to take this command without qualification than He intended them to literally cut off their hands and pluck out their eyes if they offended them!
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Problem: Ch 5: Verse 43 – Jesus said of the Old Testament, ‘You have heard it said, you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ So why did the OT say that it was Ok to hate your enemies, and why would a God of love allow that?
Solution: It didn’t, and He didn’t. Jesus said ‘you have heard’, and not ‘it is written’ as he often did when quoting scripture. He is actually criticising the Jewish tradition that had grown up around the Old Testament – a tradition that was corrupted, based on the pharisaical misinterpretation of the text. God never commanded His people at any time to hate their enemies, while Jesus said that the greatest of all commands were to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22: 36-37).
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Let us know what passages you struggle with, and we’ll try and cover them in future blog posts. Until next time…
Here’s one which is very troubling … Isaiah 14:12 mentions the morning star being cast out of heaven down to the earth (NIV) and this is clearly talking about Satan. My bible cross references this with 2 Peter 1:19 where it says that the morning star will rise in our hearts!
How can this be true? Why does our English translation imply that Satan will rise in our hearts?!
Hi Voyager.
I think this is really interesting. Does the fact that the same(ish) name is given to Jesus and to Satan make them equal?
I think that this name is more of a title, denoting brightness, firstness etc. It’s something that Satan would claim of himself (and perhaps Isaiah is taunting him this way?).
However, the true Morning Star is clearly Jesus. Revelation 22:16 says this: “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” (Revelation 22:16, ESV)
Jesus is the true Morning Star and asks us to place him in that position in our life. Satan is in competition with Jesus and wishes the opposite were true!
Thanks for the comment
In the NIV why is Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer so different to that in Matthew? Why doesn’t it say who the prayer is addressed to? Why doesn’t it mention ‘the evil one’? This is an ‘ecumenical’ prayer … anybody can pray it to whichever deity they want … that’s dangerous don’t you think?
There are many differences between Gospel accounts! This is one, but there are many more.
With Gospel writers writing from different perspectives, and to different audiences, I’m not surprised that some writers omit some details and some keep them in. I don’t see this as dangerous, just merely a different angle.
I’ve found this article to be quite helpful here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2012/march/differences-in-gospels-closer-look.html?paging=off
Hi Jonathan, thank you for your response. I am, of course, well aware of the reasons why there may be differences in accounts due to perspective etc. but when it comes to fundamental doctrine we have to remember that we are dealing with the inspired Word of God. The differences in the 2 Lord’s Prayers cannot, in my opinion, be explained away by Luke just choosing not to include any reference to heaven, the Father’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, evil or the evil one and the confirmation that ‘thine is the kingdom etc. Being a physician surely Luke would have remembered and included, at least, some of this vital detail.
As you might expect from my previous posts I believe that there is a more worrying explanation for the 18, significant missing words in Luke’s Lord’s Prayer.
In the 3rd century faithful men of God such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian concluded that the shortened Lord’s Prayer that we see today in modern versions was created by a heretic named Marcion, who they referred to as ‘the Beast’. Occultists and books such as ‘The
Dogma and Ritual of High Magic’ admit that occultists use Marcion’s shortened version to pray to Lucifer and they are able to because it is not directed to heaven or our heavenly father and it does not make the claim that the will of the subject of the prayer is done in heaven. Neither does it ask for us to be delivered from evil … why would it?
In the 4th Century Emperor Constantine wanted to unite the pagans and Christians so he created a religious document that appeased both. It had to have both versions of the Lord’s Prayer and when he created the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts he included both versions. These manuscripts were corrupted in many ways by a succession of heretics and what we would today consider ‘new age’ thinking.
The Vaticanus and Sinaiticus created by Constantine disappeared from use from the 4th century until the late 19th century when liberal churchmen, Westcott, Hort and other spiritualists and liberals in England, saw in those manuscripts the same ecumenical spirit that Constantine liked and used them as the basis for their ‘New Greek Text’.
When their Greek New Testament was published in 1881 it provoked outrage amongst scholars of the day who called it ’strongly radical and revolutionary, ‘deviating the furthest possible from the Received Text, ‘a violent recoil from the Traditional Greek Text,’ the most vicious Recension of the original Greek in existence, ‘a seriously mutilated and otherwise grossly depraved New Greek Text.’
John Burgon, who was Dean of Westminster and the preeminent Greek textual scholar of the day said in ‘The Revision Revised’ For the Greek Text which they have invented proves to be hopelessly depraved throughout … It was deliberately invented … The underlying Greek is an
entirely new thing,… is a manufactured article throughout … The new Greek text… is utterly inadmissible. It was not so much a new version as a ‘New Greek Text’… full of errors from beginning to end.
He continued, ‘It was no part of your instructions to invent a new Greek Text, or indeed to meddle with the original Greek at all … By your own confession you and your colleagues knew yourselves to be incompetent. Shame on those most incompetent men who finding themselves in a evil hour occupied themselves … with falsifying the inspired Greek Text … Who will venture to predict the amount of mischief which must follow, if the ‘New’ Greek Text … should become used.’.
The New Greek Text, which he referred to, did eventually
form the foundation of all modern translations. Many of the obvious differences were concealed by the use of modern English so that it would be marketable and more readily accepted.
As you have said in other posts on this subject and as John Burgon predicted… ‘this is a very big problem’. You’re a researcher so I know that you can check all of this out for yourself … I pray that you do. Please don’t dismiss it on the grounds that it sounds ludicrous, that’s just the attitude that our enemy relies on.
God bless you, Voyager.