Does The Bible Contradict Itself? — rethink

Originally published at https://www.rethinknow.org on November 11, 2019.

Does the Bible contradict itself?

Most people will answer that question with passion and confidence. If you’re a Christian it’s probably emphatically “no”, absolutely not, there cannot be any contradictions in God’s Word. A contradiction is seen as a crack in the foundation of Christianity. So the answer has to be no and fear keeps us from looking too closely for them.

On the flip-side, there are others who believe there are contradictions in the Bible. And yes, even Christians who love Jesus believe this. They say the Bible is written by man over thousands of years, so yeah, contradictions would naturally be in there.

So, what’s the right answer? Does the Bible contradict itself?

I would argue for a middle ground answer to this question. Certainly, there seem to be contradictions. We will look at some in a bit. But first, we need to do some defining.

Differences In The Bible vs Contradictions In The Bible

If you were to do a google search for contradictions in the Bible you would find list after list with supposed contradictions. But many of those “contradictions” on these lists aren’t contradictions, rather…