The apostle Peter in 1st Peter 3:15 commands us to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” The word “answer” is “apologiav” in the Greek means “defense or a thoughtful defense of the faith.” One of the areas we need to “answer” has to do with alleged contradictions in the Bible.
Which of the following FOUR APPROACHES to alleged contradictions fulfills 1st Peter 3:15?
1. The Bible (the original manuscripts) contains errors.
2. The Bible is inerrant and does not need to be defended.
3. Inspiration guarantees only an accurate reproducing of the sources which were at times were inaccurate.
4. The contradictions need to be harmonized.
Here is a trick question: “Is everything in the Bible true?” The question is not: “Does the Bible always tell the truth?”
The answer to the trick question is “No.” Psalm 14:1 quotes the fool as saying, “There is on God.” This is not a true statement, but this is not what the Bible teaches only what the Bible accurately records. Genesis 3:4 records a lie of Satan: “You shall not surely die.” In Job 4:7, Eliphaz said, “Whoever perished, being innocent?” and God said Eliphaz was wrong in Job 42:7.
To quote Ryrie, “The inerrancy of the Bible means simply that the Bible tells the truth. Truth can and does include approximations, free quotations, the language of appearances, and different accounts of the same event as long as these do not contradict” (p.82, Basic Theology).
Edward Carnell believes that the writers of Scripture could have used fallible sources and recorded errors. In his book, The Case for Orthodox Theology, Carnell writes on page 111, “Orthodoxy may never decide whether the Holy Spirit corrected the documents from which the Chronicler drew his information. He just quotes the errors correctly.”
Carnell is referring to the alleged contradiction between the numbers in David’s census in 2nd Samuel 24:9 and 1st Chronicles 21:5. NET Bible only acknowledges that there is a textual variant in 1 Chronicles with no explanation: "The parallel text in 2 Samuel 24:9 has variant figures: ‘In Israel there were 800,000 sword-wielding warriors, and in Judah there were 500,000 soldiers.” The Original Scofield Reference Bible’s footnote for 2nd Samuel 24:9 adequately accounts for the difference: “Cf. 1 Chr. 21:5. The total military strength of Israel (the northern kingdom) was 1,100,000, and of Judah 500,000. The numbers actually set in array were, of Israel, 800,000; of Judah, 470,000.”
In the 1st Chronicles 21:5 the word “all” is used in relationship to the numbering and in 2nd Samuel 24:9 the word “all” is not used and this accounts for the larger number in 1st Chronicle 21.
I disagree with Carnell that the Chronicler could have used fallible sources in his numbering in 1st Chronicles 21:5 which is different from 2nd Samuel 24:9 and therefore recorded error in the original manuscript.
I agree with what Steward Custer says in his book, Does Inspiration Demand Inerrancy, on page 79, “The strict Conservative would say that the Biblical writers were preserved from selecting erroneous material whatever source the writer used.”
Alleged contradictions usually fall into FOUR AREAS: Alleged contradictions in numbering, historical accounts, advice, and statements.
Alleged contradictions in numbering
Bible scholar Ronald Youngblood tells of a personal struggle with alleged contradictions in the Bible.
Several years ago, when I was an interim pastor, a member of my congregation came to my office greatly agitated. He’d learned that a seminary instructor had said some numbers in the Old Testament are simply estimates, and he was concerned that this cast doubt on the Bible’s inerrancy.
The verse in question had to do with the battle in Judges 20:46, in which the casualty count is given as 25,000.
I asked, “Don’t you think 25,000 could have been a round number --- that the count was somewhere between 23,000 and 27,000?”
My friend insisted this couldn’t be so. “Well, what would be reasonable from your standpoint?” I asked. “That it was somewhere between 24,000 and 26,000?”
“No.”
“Somewhere between 24,990 and 25,010?”
“No.”
“How about between 24,999 and 25,001?” I asked. “Or are you saying it has to be right on the money?”
“Well … yes.”
In those days, the war in Vietnam was in the news daily. “The causality counts the newspaper are obviously estimates. Why can’t it be that way in the Bible?” I asked.
“Because the daily paper isn’t my Bible,” he replied.
“Good enough. But what if I showed you verses in the Old Testament describing the same incident where different figures are used? I asked.
“Is that right? Are there such passages?”
At this point, I showed him the story of King David’s census of fighting men, which is recorded twice, in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. In the first account, Joab reports: “In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand” (v. 9).
This 1.3 million total in Samuel does not square precisely with the same story in Chronicles. There, Joab reports the number of men to David: “In all Israel, there were one million one hundred thousand men who could handle a sword, including four hundred and seventy thousand in Judah” (v. 5).
When we closed the Bible, my friend sighed with relief. “I’m glad we’ve talked,” he said. “It takes a big weight off my shoulders. I’d always wondered why counts in the Bible come out in round numbers so often.”
Some discrepant statements concerning numbers are, however, found in the existing manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures. These are most naturally ascribed to the fact that the Hebrews used letters in the place of numerals. The letters from Koph to Tau express hundreds up to four hundred. Five certain Hebrew letters, written in a different form, carry unit letters: e.g. the letter Teth, used alone, stands for 9; with two dots, it stands for nine thousand. Error in the transcription of Hebrew numbers thus becomes easy, preservation of numerical accuracy difficult.
Sometimes there are simple explanations for the alleged differences in numbering. In 1st Corinthians 10:8 23,000 died in the plague referred to in Numbers 25:9. The Numbers passage says that 24,000 died.
John Calvin believes round numbers were used and accounts for the differences. But although they differ about the number, it is easy to reconcile their statements. For it is not unheard of, when there is no intention of making an exact count of individuals to give an approximate number. For example, there were those whom the Romans called the Centumviri, The Hundred, when in fact there were one hundred and two of them. Therefore, since about twenty-four thousand were destroyed by the hand of the Lord, in other words, over twenty-three thousand. Moses gives the upper limit, Paul the lower, and there is really no discrepancy. This story is to be found in Numbers 25:9 ( Calvin, John. The First Epistles of Paul The Apostle to the Corinthians, ed. Avid Torrance and Thomas Torrance; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1960, pp. 208, 9).
Another explanation is the simple one found in the Original Scofield Reference Bible on page 1220: Cf. Num. 25:9. A discrepancy has been imagined. 1 Cor. 10:8 gives the number of deaths in “one day”; Num. 25:9, the total number of deaths “in the plague.”
Alleged contradictions in historical accounts
Matthew 27:5 says Judas hanged himself and Acts 1:18 says Judas fell and killed himself. “Falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels (entrails) gushed out.”
Knowing the cultural differences between our day and the first century explains this apparent contradiction. When some of us hear of someone being hanged our minds race to an old John Wayne Western, where a lynch mob hangs a guy with a noose around his neck and the victim dies by strangulation.
In the Bible, hanging was not by strangulation but by impalement. The word “hanged” in the Judas story means “impaled.” In Galatians 3:13, Paul referring to the death of Jesus wrote: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree.”
When Jesus was executed it was not with a noose around his neck, but by spikes driven through his hands and feet into a wooded pole or impalement.
One possible explanation for the two accounts of Judas death is that he jumped or fell onto a sharpened wooded pole and killed himself by impalement.
Ryrie’s simple explanation in chapter 14, which has been around since Augustine's time, is also very believable. Matthew said that Judas hanged himself (Matt. 27:5). Most likely both descriptions are true. He did hang himself, but something happened that caused his body to fall and break open (Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth, Chicago: Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition, 116).
Alleged contradiction in advice
Proverbs 26: 4, 5 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly lest you also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”
Sometimes it is inappropriate to answer a fool as Proverbs 26:4 says or as Jesus taught in the Sermon of the Mount, “Neither cast your pearls before swine” (Mt. 7:6), and as Jesus exemplified in Mark 15:3-5 before Pilate.
Other times it is appropriate to answer a fool as Proverbs 26:5 commands. The same principle is found in Titus 1:10-12: “For there are men unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision; whose mouths must be stopped.” Again, Jesus provides an example. Jesus answered the Herodians, Sadducees, and the Pharisees in Matthew 22:15-46.
Proverbs 26:4,5 are suggestions to be used in differing situations, not contradictory advice.
Alleged contradictory statements
2 Samuel 24:1 says that God moved David to number the people and 1 Chronicles 21:1 says that Satan moved David to number the people. The solution is that both statements are true.
God does not tempt any person to sin (James 1:13).
Man and Satan are under God’s sovereign rule (Job 1:12; 2 Cor. 12:7)
Satan caused the action, but God allowed it.
This would be an excellent S.S. lesson for you to teach. Your lesson could teach what the Word says to strengthen students who are in universities that attack the credibility God’ Word or to equip all believers to answers questions to better present the gospel.
1. The Bible contains errors. We know this response is incorrect. Inspiration of the original manuscripts guarantees the inerrancy of the original manuscripts.
2. The Bible is inerrant and does not need to be defended. This is the position of B. B. Warfield. But this position does fulfill 1st Peter 3:15.
3. Inspiration guarantees only an accurate reproducing of the sources which were at times were inaccurate. This is the view of Edward Carnell.
4. The contradictions need to be harmonized. This is the view of E. J. Young and Louis Gaussen. This is what Ryrie does in his Basic Theology as 1st Peter 3:15 commands. This is Ryire’s view.