Bibical contradictions?

[Stephen5]

Atheist 1,

I would suggest that you might start a new thread on this subject of what is inspired and what is not … an excellent question by the way

This way we will not interrupt this posting

I do have the answer for you and here it is:

The Bible is total truth scripted … both from the Lord’s point of view and from human actions and behavior over time …actual accounts are recorded in scripture as historical facts even though they may not reflect His short term will or even His values … and some times His objectives and purposes are not readily apparent … but always revealed and consummated in finality

Humans have free will by His choosing to make us this way and we do things that He will eventually judge … but we continue on … human interactions are complex, but He never fails to eventually move the overall direction of humanity to His own ends

So there are accounts of human activity and behaviors that are allowed which are not necessarily sanctioned by Him … but never the less factual … the scriptures are full of these accounts even thought they may be contrary to His liking … and there are also things that He imposed for Israel to make them different than all other nations and to remind them of their own lost condition

Once one moves forward with an investigation of the Bible and with proper motivations, one will began to see this difference and all eventually will balance out toward the Lord’s position with no questions asked … He will eventually hold all accountable for their thought, actions, and deeds

Human intransigence is typical and innate for all, and this we must begin to realize because the only way out of the dilemma is to seek and find His only provision for escape … otherwise we are all lost and on a road to our own destruction whether we think so or not … this is a the heart and truth of the gospel

But in order to gain this understanding and to rightly divide inspired truth and historical fact one from the other it is necessary to grasp an overview of the scriptures first and then to evaluate details like the one you have presented

I have taught many in Bible study groups over the years and I always suggest that they actually start their study backwards and read Revelation first … then go back and fill in the details

This method will give the framework of the entire structure of the Bible since Revelation is the capstone of the scriptures … the overview and the wrap up … from beginning to ending

Revelation is highly symbolic in nature, but all of this is explained within the context or in other passages of scripture … it also has a unique structure using repetition as the narrative advances … but all of this can be understood when rendered properly

This section of the Bible needs to be read many times over as one begins to learn what the Lord is telling even though it will not be entirely understood at first

It is like putting a puzzle together … first the border pieces [the frame work] and then the fill … the more pieces you get into place the faster the task comes to completion

 

[chaunceygardner]

“Take off your blinders and open your eyes, mind and heart to what God is telling us”

This statement is a contradiction in itself in my opinion

The statement you quoted about the blinders was not directed to you personally, but to all who tend to miss the forest for the trees. It was the first paragraph only that was directly responding to your statement that I quoted. The rest was intended as part of the general discussion. I do apologize to all for not making that clear.

I am puzzled, however, by your statement about bringing “argumentation to a public forum”. Isn’t that the purpose of a forum? And this forum is full of arguments. One can argue without being nasty, which was my intent. Finally, I don’t expect to change your mind, but was again presenting my thoughts for all to consider. Another purpose of a forum.

Despite what I said above, after reading your last two sentences, I can see my later comments about blinders should have also been directed at you after all, sad to say.

 

[Silyosha]

Silyosha,

I agree … hope you have had you question answered regarding the congruency of the scriptures of the Lord’s Word

Yes, I certainly have. Thank you very much–I really appreciate it!
God bless you,
Silyosha

 

[Ruthie_again]

Most of the “contradictions” you posted have been well debunked. I had fun working on the others.

Who was the mother of Abijah?
Maachah the daughter of Absalom. 2 Chron 9:20
Michaiah the daughter of Uriel. 2 Chron 13:2

Michaiah is the only person called the mother of Abijah in the whole OT. (I have a good Bible search engine.)

2 Chron 9:20 has nothing to do with it; it actually reads: “All King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon.”
Oops!

Has anyone before Jesus ascended into heaven?
No. John 3:13
Yes. 2 Kings 2:11

In the OT, “heaven” pretty much means “sky.” After Elijah was lifted by the whirlwind into the sky, his friends looked for him for several days, assuming he had been dropped somewhere else. – They had no concept that he had gone anywhere but the sky.

Heaven as the dwelling place of God, and where we hope to go when we die, is an NT concept. It is almost always a phrase, either the “kingdom of Heaven” or “Father in Heaven.” When it stands alone, can mean either Heaven or just “sky.”

Who slayed Goliath?
David. 1 Sam 17:4,7,50
Elhanan. 2 Sam 21:19

There were two different Goliaths. David killed the first one long before he became King; the second one was killed by Elnahan after David became King. ( It’s also in 1 Chron 20:5)

Hope I’ve helped. God bless you,

Ruthie

 

[alongexpected]

Hello,

One contradiction in particular has troubled me. What about the Resurrection? Where each Gospel records differing amounts of women at the tomb? As well as whether or not the stone was already moved away?

In Matthew, Mary Mag and the other Mary went to the tomb, and before them, the angel came and rolled back the stone.

In Luke, the women came and found the stone already rolled away, and in John, Mary Mag alone came, and the stone was already moved.

Please help.

 

[joecap]

Hard to address this exactly.

Basically, the normal consensus is that many of the Old Testament books of the Bible were actually written by several different individuals, and compiled (edited) at a later date by a single author, commonly called the Priestly Author.

For example, the Books of Genesis and Exodus were written by between 2 and 4 different individuals, working about 200 years apart from each other. These were then combined and edited around the time of King David\Solomon by a single author.

This is why we sometimes have apparent contradictions and variations in the Old Testament, such as:

Two separate Creation stories

Moses taking 7 pairs of clean animals onto the Ark (Genesis 7: 2)
And taking 2 pairs of clean AND unclean animals (Genesis 7: 8)

The flood lasting 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7: 17)
The flood lasting 150 days (Genesis 7: 24)

We have God being called Elohim (by the ‘Elohist’ author)
And God also being called Yahweh (by the ‘Yahwist’ author)

The Bible, while being the inspired Word of God, is still written (and copied and re-copied over the centuries) by fallible human beings, which create other errors, such as the Reed Sea being called the Red Sea, etc.

The same holds true with the Gospels being written by 4 different individuals as well.

While there may be inconsistencies in the writing, the basic message of Truth and Faith prevail. The earth was created by God. There was a flood, and God saved Noah.
God led the Israelites out of Egypt.
Jesus rose from the dead.

To me, the fact that the different versions were written so many hundreds of year from each other…after first being passed on only VERBALLY over the centuries…before actually being written down during the David era, actually lends MORE credibility to the Word of God, after all this, we still have a coherent story that tells us God’s plan.

 

[kiranignatius]

Sure the contradictions exist, probably hundreds of them. This is only a problem if you insist on taking every word in the Bible as factually and literally true. … We should be reading it to learn what God is telling us about how we should live our lives on this earth, not as a history book…
Don’t look to the Bible as a source of facts, but as a source of truth. There is a big difference. If your faith is based on the Bible being 100% factual and in total agreement with itself and with our knowledge of the physical universe, then that faith is built on quicksand.

I totally agree with Chaunceygardner.

The Bible especially the OT, was initially passed down generations by the oral route. And this inevitably leads to slightly differing versions of the same story. This is shown by the two accounts of creation.

The NT too was copied and recopied, edited and “corrected” for centuries. And there are many differences in the available manuscripts. Check out a Bible with good footnotes (like the New Jerusalem Bible) and you can see how the different manuscripts vary and how a single letter changes the meaning of whole sentences… Like the Goliath example somebody explained above…

@ Thread Starter:
I’m surprised you didn’t include the two accounts of Judas’s death. The Gospel says he hanged himself. The Acts of the Apostles says he fell from a height and spilled his guts.
Bible literalists have a far-fetched explanation to reconcile this contradiction.

 

[alongexpected]

I totally agree with Chaunceygardner.

The Bible especially the OT, was initially passed down generations by the oral route. And this inevitably leads to slightly differing versions of the same story. This is shown by the two accounts of creation.

The NT too was copied and recopied, edited and “corrected” for centuries. And there are many differences in the available manuscripts. Check out a Bible with good footnotes (like the New Jerusalem Bible) and you can see how the different manuscripts vary and how a single letter changes the meaning of whole sentences… Like the Goliath example somebody explained above…

@ Thread Starter:
I’m surprised you didn’t include the two accounts of Judas’s death. The Gospel says he hanged himself. The Acts of the Apostles says he fell from a height and spilled his guts.
Bible literalists have a far-fetched explanation to reconcile this contradiction.

This is troubling, though. Only one (or none!) of these could be right. He could’ve only hanged himself, or fell from a height. So…if one of them is wrong…what else could they have gotten wrong?

 

[Ocarm]

This is troubling, though. Only one (or none!) of these could be right. He could’ve only hanged himself, or fell from a height. So…if one of them is wrong…what else could they have gotten wrong?

Nothing important, as the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation Dei Verbum reassures us.

See vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

 

[PJM]

=Silyosha;6261104]skeptictank.org/hs/berror3.htm
I found a troubling website with a long list of supposed Bibical contradictions, completely with exact verse. I haven’t had a chance to look at all of them, but it bothers me nontheless. Can anyone refute these claims?

There are about 50 stated errors. Some are are just not worth responding too. Space [and time prohibits responding to each of them.] If you’d care to pick about five that seem on the surface legitimate [how much dirt does a snake eat, not being one of them], I’ll attempt to respond.

 

[yellowdaisy]

I just have to say, I had some questions about biblical contradictions too (which of course turned out not to be such at all) and PJM has managed to clear them up for me!

Listen to him-- he is smart! He knows what he’s talking about!

 

[Pete_Holter]

When we read the text I posted we see that if a man calls into doubt the virginity of his bride by claiming that there is no proof of her virginity after he and his bride have had intercourse it is expected that the girl or the girl and her family provide the proof of her virginity or as some texts have it, the tokens of her virginity.

In verse 17 the proof is described as a cloth which presumably would have been the bedding or a type of towel the couple would have laid on during their first time together. As you know some women bleed the first time they have intercourse but this isn’t true all the time. A woman may be a virgin and for a number of reasons not bleed.

Pity the bride who actually was a virgin and didn’t bleed because the punishment for not being a virgin is being stoned to death by the men of the town. Interestingly enough the penalty for the man, should his bride produce the proof of her virginity, is simply being fined and forbidden to divorce his wife.

So if a woman is actually a virgin but for whatever reason doesn’t bleed and therefore can’t produce the “proof” of her virginity is given the death penalty…by stoning.

It seems to me that it’s more likely a primitive people wrote this text than an all knowing and all loving God. We now know that the evidence being demanded in Deut 22 is ridiculous (the evidence that will save the young girls life) but several thousand years ago they didn’t have the knowledge we have today.

How could an all knowing God inspire such a law? The young bride may very well be a virgin but, as I mentioned before, not bleed during her first time. I suppose you could also question how a just God could directly inspire such a law.

An all knowing God would have certainly realized the evidence being asked for is not truely evidence of a brides virginity. So why would He ask/demand such evidence and leave the brides life in the balance?

If the text isn’t inspired that solves the problem but opens up a bigger one. How does one know what is and what isn’t inspired within the pages of the bible?

Hopefully I have stated my problem with this section of Deuteronomy clearly enoughand am looking forward to your answer.

Greetings my Atheist friend!

I hope this explanation helps. I have written about this previously in a chain of emails with a friend, so some of what I’m saying here doesn’t apply directly to your questions in the way that you’ve posed them, but I think it is all helpful information for this specific case nonetheless.

First, a general help in our approach to the Mosaic Law. The Catholic tradition is to have a very positive view of the Old Testament Scriptures. There is much to be drawn from Jesus’ interaction with the Old Testament in His Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ method of interpretation, His hermeneutic, of the Old Testament (OT) as understood by St. Augustine and the other Early Church Fathers is one of continuity, one of the partial OT making way for the more complete NT. The general approach is as given by Jesus: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Jesus brought to fulfillment in the New Covenant that which was partial in the Old, just as the Second Coming will issue in what is perfect, at which time even the partial aspects of the New Covenant will likewise “pass away” (1 Cor 13:10), the structures of both covenants having served their purposes in their allotted times. Moses, for example, is not endorsing divorce in Deuteronomy 24 when he talks about what a man should do when he divorces his wife. Instead, God was simply telling the Israelites what to do when a divorce took place at the instigation of the people’s hardness of heart. Rather than condoning divorce, issuing the certificate was meant to curb divorce by forcing the spouses to go through the procedure of securing a certificate in order to procure the separation. If Moses and Jesus were not tending towards the same end when Jesus picked up on this teaching (cf. Mark 10:1-12), then Jesus could not rightly say that He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (cf. Matt. 5:17). Within the context of the Sermon on the Mount, fulfillment most naturally speaks of bringing to completion that which is harmonious yet lacking, not of doing away with and replacing that which is contrary. Augustine writes about this aspect of divorce in , Book 19Against Faustus:

“The precept not to put away a wife is the opposite of saying that a man may put away his wife if he pleases; which is not what the law says. On the contrary, to prevent the wife from being put away, the law required this intermediate step, that the eagerness for separation might be checked by the writing of the bill, and the man might have time to think of the evil of putting away his wife; especially since, as it is said, among the Hebrews it was unlawful for any but the scribes to write Hebrew: for the scribes claimed the possession of superior wisdom; and if they were men of upright and pious character, their pursuits might justly entitle them to make this claim. In requiring, therefore, that in putting away his wife, a man should give her a writing of divorcement, the design was that he should be obliged to have recourse to those from whom he might expect to receive a cautious interpretation of the law, and suitable advice against separation. Having no other way of getting the bill written, the man should be obliged to submit to their direction, and to allow of their endeavors to restore peace and harmony between him and his wife. In a case where the hatred could not be overcome or checked, the bill would of course be written.”

 

[Pete_Holter]

The same understanding is given to the precept of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Rather than entrenching a retaliatory spirit in the Israelites, this Law was designed to restrain an over-excessive vigilantism already instilled in the Israelites that went well beyond quid pro quo retributive justice. This is why turning the other cheek fulfills “an eye for an eye.” They are both designed to instill a conciliatory disposition. Seeing these two commands in opposition, as many people do, just doesn’t make sense of what Jesus does and teaches. Jesus forces us to go behind the Law to find the Spirit Who is the Law Maker. Behind the difficult passages of the Old Testament, is a more difficult people that God has come to win to Himself. Behind the barbaric laws of the Old Testament, is a people of an even greater barbarism being led by steps to embrace the perfect love of God. With this hermeneutic in mind, the case in Deuteronomy may best be understood like this: The tendency of the Israelites under Moses’ charge was one of male dominance and cruelty towards their women. This case was therefore designed to prevent the husband from immediately killing his wife without some sort of mitigating procedure. And through this procedure, lives would be saved. The underlying principle at work here is one that actually favors the protection of women in a patriarchal, sexist society.

Also, if we expect God’s Law to be a perfect Law, then we’re not appreciating the divine condescension at work in giving us this Law. The Old Testament Law, as perturbing as it is, even today serves to “increase trespasses” and show us how sinful our sin really is, and how far we are, apart from God, from attaining to such righteousness. And at that time and place in history, we can be certain that it was the perfectly-just albeit-concessionary Law for the moral capacities of the Israelites in Moses’ day:

“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14).

Keeping in mind even our own unanimous failure to live up to the Old Testament Law that many complain about, if God’s law was a sort of perfect law, would the history of the Israelites fared any better? Or, by placing the standard too high, would they have despaired of attainment and become even more depraved? Because of the overwhelming complexities involved in history, we can’t answer this question. But I think that there is enough here to make us doubt that we know better than God.

Now on to Deuteronomy 22. With the exception of the daughters of priests (cf. Leviticus 21:9), there is no capital punishment for just plain old premarital sex. For example:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins” (Exodus 22:16-17).

Notice that the woman who had sex with this man is not necessarily bound to the man by having premarital sex with him. Her father may reserve her for someone else. Also, the priests were instructed that “[t]hey shall not marry a prostitute or a woman who has been defiled, neither shall they marry a woman divorced from her husband, for the priest is holy to his God” (Leviticus 21:7). Rather, a priest “shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people” (Leviticus 21:14). The fact that we have “defiled” women running around again shows us that premarital sex, while sinful, was not a capital crime for the general populous. You may also remember the frequent warnings against staying far away from prostitutes found in books such as Proverbs. The law says, “Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, lest the land fall into prostitution and the land become full of depravity” (Lev 19:29). But it doesn’t say to kill her if she is a prostitute. So the woman in Deuteronomy 22 is guilty of more than just having premarital sex.

Let’s try to understand the disparity of punishment in this case. The man, if found guilty of lying, is guilty of just that: slanderous accusation. But the woman, if she is found guilty, would be guilty of perjury, a graver form of lying, because she lied to her husband when forming the covenant of marriage, which itself should be understood as taking an oath. She would also be guilty of premarital sex. Furthermore, when we compare the situation here in chapter 22 with the one described in 24:1-4, I think that you’ll see an implication come to the surface. The law allowed for a man to take certain actions when he wanted to divorce his wife on account of an indecency found in her. If we compare the two scenarios, I think it is fair to deduce that the wife in chapter 22 is protesting the husband’s charge of indecency as described in 24. She is obstinately trying to prevent him from divorcing her. Consequently, by the time the case of chapter 22 comes before the elders, this woman would be guilty of three things: (1) premarital sex while under the care of her father, (2) perjury against her husband on the wedding day, and (3) lying yet again to prevent the divorce. So the charges against her are greater than against him. Therefore, death for the woman, a whipping and a fine for the man, plus the fact that he can never divorce her since he tried to malign her character.

 

[Pete_Holter]

Finally, and I think this is the most important concern, if the evidence was a bloody sheet or cloth from the wedding night, how could this case ever turn out unfavorable for the husband? He would have seen the sheet on their wedding night and would know whether it was bloody or not. The fact that the case in Deuteronomy has a course of action for when the husband is wrong leads us away from the breaking-of-the-hymen-on-the-wedding-night interpretation; unless, of course, we assume that the man is a total moron or that it’s been a long time and he has a really bad memory. We also know from Deuteronomy 24 that a man simply has to get a certificate of divorce if he wants to divorce his wife. If he knows that there was blood on the sheet from the wedding night, why would he try to trump up what he knows to be false charges and end up being stuck with the woman for the rest of his life? Why wouldn’t he just divorce her quietly? As you’ve pointed out, the hymen can be broken apart from sexual union. We don’t have any evidence that the Jews of Moses’ time thought that there was a one-to-one correspondence between the breaking of the hymen and the loss of virginity. Their society could very well have been aware of this fact. Otherwise, are we to think that there was never a woman who did anything to make herself bleed down there when it wasn’t her period? That no one ever noticed such things or that everyone who did notice failed to make the connection?

So we don’t know what the tokens of virginity were. But because the case can turn out against the husband, we can be confident that they weren’t the bloody sheets from the wedding night and we can trust that our God would not enact an unjust law, as you pointed out. Therefore, we hold by faith that the proof of her virginity is a certain and indisputable proof. Here is Philo’s treatment of the text. He was a first century Jew:

“When those men who marry virgins in accordance with the law, {6}{#de 22:13.} and who have sacrificed on the occasion and celebrated their marriage feast, and who yet afterwards preserve no natural affection for their wives but treat them with insolence, and behave to freeborn citizens as if they were courtesans, if they seek to procure a divorce, and to being able to find any pretext for such a separation, then betake themselves to bringing forward false accusations, and from an absence of any clear grounds of impeachment direct all their charges at things which cannot be made certain, and come forward and accuse them, saying that though they fancied that they had been marrying virgins, they found on the first occasion of their having intercourse together, that they were not so. When, I say, these men make such charges let all the elders be assembled to decide on the case, and let the parents of the woman who is accused also appear, to make their defence in this their common danger. (81) For in such a case, not only are their daughters themselves in danger, as to their reputation as having preserved the chastity of their bodies, but their guardians are likewise imperilled, not only because they have not kept them safe till the important period of their marriageable age, but because they have given in marriage as virgins those who have been defiled by others, deceiving and imposing upon those who have taken them to wife. (82) Then if they appear to have justice on their side, let the judges impose a pecuniary fine on those who have invented these false accusations, and let them also sentence those who have assaulted them to corporeal punishment, and let them also pronounce, what to those men will be the most unpleasant of all things, a confirmation of their marriage, if their wives will still endure to cohabit with them; for the law permits them at their own choice to remain with them or to abandon them, and will not allow the husbands any option either way, on account of the false accusations which they have brought” (, Bk. III, Ch. 14The Special Laws).

You’ll notice that Philo thought the father was complicit in the deception of the woman. This also runs against the broken-hymen interpretation and is also in favor of the idea that more than just premarital sex is involved in this case.

 

[Pete_Holter]

Here is Josephus’ (Jewish historian, also first century) interpretation:

“If any one has been espoused to a woman as to a virgin, and does not afterward find her so to be, let him bring his action, and accuse her, and let him make use of such indications to prove his accusation as he is furnished withal; and let the father or the brother of the damsel, or some one that is after them nearest of kin to her, defend her If the damsel obtain a sentence in her favor, that she had not been guilty, let her live with her husband that accused her; and let him not have any further power at all to put her away, unless she give him very great occasions of suspicion, and such as can be no way contradicted. But for him that brings an accusation and calumny against his wife in an impudent and rash manner, let him be punished by receiving forty stripes save one, and let him pay fifty shekels to her father: but if the damsel be convicted, as having been corrupted, and is one of the common people, let her be stoned, because she did not preserve her virginity till she were lawfully married; but if she were the daughter of a priest, let her be burnt alive” (, Bk. 4, Ch. 8, No. 23Antiquities of the Jews).

He acknowledges that the woman is put to death because she didn’t preserve her virginity, but his first remark shows that this is not all there is to it. The man had “been espoused to a woman as to a virgin.” Again, I think that if you make all of the comparisons between Exodus 22, Leviticus 18 and 21, Deuteronomy 22 and 24, etc., you’ll see that the situation that best fits the context of Deuteronomy 22 is one where the woman pawned herself off as being a virgin when she wasn’t and who harassed her husband to the point of making him bring forward evidence against her rather than letting him just divorce her quietly. The footnote for the text I just quoted from the work by Josephus reads:

These tokens of virginity, as the Hebrew and Septuagint style them, Deuteronomy 22:15, 17, 20, seem to me very different from what our later interpreters suppose. They appear rather to have been such close linen garments as were never put off virgins, after, a certain age, till they were married, but before witnesses, and which, while they were entire, were certain evidences of such virginity. See these, Antiq. B. VII. ch. 8. sect. 1; 2 Samuel 13:18; Isaiah 6:1 Josephus here determines nothing what were these particular tokens of virginity or of corruption: perhaps he thought he could not easily describe them to the heathens, without saying what they might have thought a breach of modesty; which seeming breach of modesty laws cannot always wholly avoid.

Being referred to Book 7 of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, we read there, “Whereupon she was sorely grieved at the injury and violence that had been offered to her, and rent her loose coat, (for the virgins of old time wore such loose coats tied at the hands, and let down to the ankles, that the inner coats might not be seen)” (cf. 2 Samuel 13:18).

I hope this helps! Sorry it was so long and repetitive in some places. I thought it was more important to get the information to you and just let you do the required editing in your head.

In Christ,
Pete

 

[Pete_Holter]

@ Thread Starter:
I’m surprised you didn’t include the two accounts of Judas’s death. The Gospel says he hanged himself. The Acts of the Apostles says he fell from a height and spilled his guts.
Bible literalists have a far-fetched explanation to reconcile this contradiction.

Like the far-fetched explanation given by Bible Literalist, Doctor of the Church, St. John Chrysostom?

“This sight [of silver or gold coin], which (as you said) does good to the eyes, suffered not the wretched Judas to hearken unto the Lord’s voice, but led him even to the halter (cf. Matthew 27:5), made him burst asunder in the midst (cf. Acts 1:18); and, after all that, conducted him on to hell” (Homily 9 on Matthew).

 

[Pete_Holter]

Hello,

One contradiction in particular has troubled me. What about the Resurrection? Where each Gospel records differing amounts of women at the tomb? As well as whether or not the stone was already moved away?

In Matthew, Mary Mag and the other Mary went to the tomb, and before them, the angel came and rolled back the stone.

In Luke, the women came and found the stone already rolled away, and in John, Mary Mag alone came, and the stone was already moved.

Please help.

Here is a harmonization of the resurrection accounts.

Jerome’s Letter to Hedibia also answers some of these questions. I love this thought…

“As for me, it seems to me that we can meet this challenge in a simpler and less embarrassing way, by saying that these holy women, unable to bear the absence of Jesus Christ, were in transit all night, and went to observe His grave not only once and twice, but constantly, especially as their sleep was disturbed and interrupted by the earthquake, by the sound of splitting stones, by the eclipse of the sun, by all sorts of confusion and inconvenience, and especially by the desire they had to see the Savior.”

Your brother in the Lord,
Pete

 

[PJM]

*** Regards two dirvergent and contrdictory Biblical views of the death of Judas. One has “claimed” that Judas did not hang himself, but threw himself off a cliff and “his bowels burst.” As shown below such is not the case.

**DR BIBLE: Acts 1: 18 ***"And he indeed has possessed a field of the reward of iniquity, and being hanged, burst asunder in the midst: and all his bowels gushed out. 19 And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: so that the same field was called in their tongue, Haceldama, that is to say, The field of blood. 2/I]

**Mt. 27: 4-6 "**saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. ** But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money."