Are There Contradictions in the Bible?

Question 1072.

Bible contradictions are one of the first objections any believer meets once they start talking about their faith with a sceptical friend, and I think we do ourselves no favours by either dismissing the question too quickly or panicking as though the whole edifice of Scripture rests on winning every single one of these debates. So let us look honestly at what is actually being claimed when someone points to alleged Bible contradictions, and what a careful response looks like, building on a companion piece concerning biblical inerrancy.

My settled position is that there are no genuine contradictions in Scripture, properly understood, though there are real and sometimes difficult differences between parallel accounts that deserve honest engagement rather than either denial or capitulation.

What actually counts as a genuine Bible contradiction

A genuine contradiction occurs when two statements cannot both be true under any circumstances, using the same terms in the same sense at the same time. Many alleged Bible contradictions fail this test the moment we look closely, because they involve different perspectives on the same event, different levels of detail, or different emphases chosen by different authors for different purposes, none of which amounts to a logical contradiction at all.

Take the frequently cited example of Judas’s death, described in Matthew 27:5 as hanging himself, and in Acts 1:18 as falling headlong so that he burst open in the middle. These are not contradictory claims once we allow for the entirely plausible scenario in which Judas hanged himself and the rope or branch subsequently gave way, causing the fall Luke describes in Acts. Two authors describing different stages of the same grim event is not the same thing as two authors contradicting one another.

Why parallel Gospel accounts differ in detail

The Gospels frequently record the same event with differing levels of detail, a pattern any reader of multiple eyewitness accounts of the same incident would expect. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each wrote for different audiences with different emphases, and each selected, arranged and summarised material according to purposes that were entirely legitimate by the standards of ancient historical writing, standards different from, but not less honest than, modern journalism.

When one Gospel mentions one angel at the tomb and another mentions two, this reflects selective reporting rather than contradiction. Mentioning one angel does not deny that a second was present, any more than a modern account that mentions the prime minister at a summit denies that other officials were also present. Ancient writers regularly focused on the figure most relevant to their narrative purpose without intending to deny the presence of others.

Old Testament numerical differences

Some of the more genuinely difficult Bible contradictions raised by sceptics involve numerical differences between parallel accounts in Kings and Chronicles, where troop counts or measurements differ between the two books. Ancient Hebrew numerals were transmitted through a manuscript process where certain letters, used as numbers, could be miscopied over centuries of transmission, and textual scholars have proposed specific, plausible explanations for several of the most cited discrepancies along these lines.

I want to be honest that not every one of these differences has a fully settled explanation available to us, and I would rather say so plainly than manufacture a strained harmonisation for its own sake. What I would resist is the leap from an unresolved textual difficulty to the conclusion that Scripture as a whole cannot be trusted, a leap that vastly overstates what a handful of unresolved numerical questions can actually establish.

Peter’s own acknowledgement of difficulty

Peter himself, writing about Paul’s letters, acknowledges in 2 Peter 3:16 that there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. This is a genuinely useful text for this whole question, because it shows an apostle openly acknowledging real difficulty in Scripture without treating that difficulty as evidence of error. Hard to understand is not the same claim as false.

This distinction matters enormously in conversation with sceptical friends. Conceding that a passage is difficult to harmonise costs us nothing and models intellectual honesty. Conceding that difficulty proves error concedes something Scripture itself does not require us to concede, and that we have no good reason to grant, a claim I have also examined in relation to how the canon of Scripture was formed.

How I handle this conversation pastorally

When someone raises an alleged Bible contradiction, I try to slow the conversation down rather than reaching for a rehearsed answer. Often the specific claim, examined closely, turns out to rest on an assumption the text never actually makes, a demand for modern precision the original author never intended to supply, or a failure to read the surrounding context. Working through the actual passages together, rather than trading proof texts, usually does more good than any general defence of Scripture’s reliability in the abstract, a wider question addressed in a companion piece on KJV Onlyism and one on the JEDP theory.

I would also encourage believers not to be destabilised by the sheer volume of alleged Bible contradictions circulated online, since most compilations recycle the same handful of examples, many of which have received careful scholarly attention for generations. The existence of a long list does not mean the list contains strong arguments. It usually means the same weak arguments have simply been copied many times.

Why compiled lists of Bible contradictions are weaker than they look

Sceptical websites and social media posts regularly circulate lists claiming several hundred Bible contradictions, and the sheer size of such lists can feel intimidating to a believer encountering them for the first time. Examined individually, the overwhelming majority of items on these lists of alleged Bible contradictions rest on the same handful of interpretive errors: ignoring genre, demanding modern precision from ancient authors, missing an obvious harmonisation, or simply misreading what the text actually says. A long list built from a short supply of weak arguments, repeated many times across different passages, is still a short supply of weak arguments.

I would encourage any believer confronted with such a list to resist the temptation to answer every item at once. Choose the two or three claimed Bible contradictions that seem strongest, work through them carefully using a good commentary, and you will generally find the pattern repeats: apparent difficulty dissolving under careful reading rather than genuine, irreconcilable contradiction. This builds confidence far more effectively than either ignoring such lists altogether or feeling obligated to research every single item before feeling settled in your faith.

Bible contradictions and the unity of the biblical storyline

It is worth stepping back from individual disputed verses to notice something larger. Whatever alleged Bible contradictions specific critics raise, the Bible’s sixty-six books, written across roughly fifteen hundred years by dozens of authors from vastly different backgrounds and circumstances, still cohere into a single unfolding story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration culminating in Christ. This kind of large scale coherence is precisely what we would not expect from a purely human collection of documents assembled across so many centuries, and it deserves at least as much weight in this conversation as any individual disputed detail.

None of this means every difficulty has a fully worked out resolution available today. It means the pattern of the evidence, taken as a whole, consistently favours the Bible’s own claim to be a unified, trustworthy revelation rather than the sceptical alternative that treats it as a patchwork of contradictory human documents.

A test case worth working through together

Take one more frequently raised example of an alleged Bible contradiction: the two genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, which trace different lines of descent and even name different fathers for Joseph. Rather than treating this as a fatal contradiction, careful readers have long noted that Matthew traces the legal, royal line through Joseph while Luke most plausibly traces the biological line through Mary, a pattern entirely consistent with how ancient genealogies could serve different purposes within a single culture. Working through even one example like this carefully, rather than accepting a sceptic’s summary at face value, usually dissolves the apparent Bible contradiction far more thoroughly than a general assurance ever could.

So, now what?

The next time you meet a claimed Bible contradiction, resist both extremes. Do not dismiss the question as unworthy of serious engagement, and do not panic as though your faith depends on winning every skirmish. Look at the actual texts, consider what kind of claim is really being made, and remember Peter’s own honest acknowledgement that some things in Scripture are hard, without that difficulty ever amounting to error.

Scripture has survived nearly two thousand years of exactly this kind of scrutiny without any demonstrated contradiction ever overturning its central claims about God, Christ and salvation. That track record deserves more confidence than the next social media list of supposed contradictions is likely to shake.

As he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

2 Peter 3:16