Apologetics of contradiction

[Difflugia]

There are absolutely no contradictions in the Bible. Nowhere does God ever contradict Himself.

When dismissing contradictions in the Bible, are there any apologetic arguments that are considered out of bounds or beyond the pale?

Are there any contradictions in the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, or any other holy work that can't be reconciled even by biblical standards?

Or is it a case of, to misquote Syndrome from The Incredibles, when everyone's inerrant, no one is?

[JehovahsWitness]

[*]The recently discussed conflict between the Matthean and Lukan birth and infancy narratives.

Can you be a bit more specific about this ? (Its hard to address something this vague)



JW

[JehovahsWitness]

[*]Jesus cleansing the temple at the beginning or end of his ministry.

Actually twice, one at the beginning and one at the end. Is there something that renders this impossible?

[JehovahsWitness]

[*]Both Abraham and Isaac had exactly the same encounter with Abimelech and Phicol, right down to naming the same wells, but for slightly different reasons.

Are you just sharing a general observation or are you suggesting a contradiction? If the latter could you clarify what that is? (scriptural reference would be appreciated).

[Overcomer]

I agree with Goose. The topic is contradictions, but, at best, you have provided differences in the accounts, not contradictions. This is a contradiction:

John is a man. John is NOT a man.

In other words, something cannot be one thing and its exact opposite at the same time. Put another way, something can't be true and false at the same time in the same sense.

Can you offer real contradictions, ones that break the Law of Non-Contradiction and are not merely differences?

As for differences, there are valid resolutions for them. For example, let's take the issue of the sermon preached on a mount or on a plain. The word plain (tpou pedino) simply means level place. The mountains in that area of the world are not sheer drop-offs. They rise gradually and have level places. So both are correct.

As for Judas hanging himself and falling and having his insides spill out -- both are possible since neither negates the other. He could have hung himself and then, later, his bloated body fell down and split open.

Those are just two examples showing reasonable explanations for them. However, what I think is really important is this: We must understand that ancient biographies and histories had their own set of rules and they differed from modern biography and history. For example, in modern biography, we expect someone to start at the beginning of somebody's life and then write a chronological story, objective in tone, accurate to the most minute detail.

However, that's not how ancient biography functioned. The purpose was to reveal the character of the person being portrayed. Therefore, the writer wrote only what was needed to do that and they did so using chreia, that is, brief sayings or actions that made a point and were attributed to the person in question. Chreia took many forms. For example, they could be expanded or compressed, they could be a paraphrase, and they could include changes in the number of people involved. Speeches could be reconstructed by an author as long as they were credible and suitable for the speaker, audience members and occasion. But they did not have to be verbatim.

If you look at other ancient biographies, such as Plutarch's Lives, and compare them to the gospels, you can see that they were written according to the rules of rhetoric at that time. And one of the characteristics was this: Unimportant details were not precise. But that doesn't mean they weren't accurate. It just didn't matter if you mentioned one woman at Christ's tomb or more. It had no bearing on the account.

Other devices included conflation (the author combines elements from two or more events or people and narrates them as one), displacement (author knowingly uproots event from its original context and transplants it to another), compression (author knowingly portrays events over a shorter period of time), spotlighting (one character is highlighted over another), and simplification (author adapts material by omitting or altering details that may complicate the overall narrative). And material could be rearranged and placed at different places and times to make a point rather than merely present it all in chronological order. We see all of that in the gospels as well as other ancient biographies -- but these devices do not render the information presented false.

Bottom line: When it comes to major doctrines such as salvation and the identity of Jesus Christ, etc., you won't find any discrepancies.

I think it is unfair to measure ancient history and biography according to modern rules. It's what C.S. Lewis would call chronological snobbery.

For more, read Why are There Differences in the Gospels? by Michael Licona and Craig Evans which is reviewed here:

https://themelios.thegospelcoalition.or ... biography/

[JehovahsWitness]

Inerrantists offer harmonizations for all of these that range from barely plausible (Jesus gave two sermons, one on the mount and one on the plain) to modest textual changes (it was Merab's children that David had executed, not Michal's) to downright insulting (Judas hanged himself and then his body fell on some rocks and exploded). The question isn't if inerrantists can find harmonizations for these that they, themselves find reasonable. I know from experience that they can.

Well if they can be harmonized they cannot be true contradictions can they! It is irrelevant if you find an explanation "implausible" or "insulting", what would make a contradiction is if it were impossible.

Everything else is just gravy.



JW

[bjs]

[Replying to Difflugia]

Any argument that is illogical would be out of bounds. Any argument that seems more focused on reaching a set conclusion instead of finding the truth would be highly suspect.

I am unaware of any internal contradictions in the Koran or the Book of Mormon. I do not consider them to be Inspired books, but not because of internal contradictions.

[bluegreenearth]

The standard apologetic approach is to dismiss claims about contradictions because the term "contradiction" doesn't strictly apply in cases where the specified discrepancies are actually "differences" between multiple accounts. However, this apologetic still fails to demonstrate where the proposed harmonization of multiple discordant accounts is a plausible and reliable explanation. For example, an apologetic for the apparent discrepancy between the Gospel of John and the remaining Gospels regarding the scene when Jesus cleansed the temple is that this event occurred twice; once near the beginning of his ministry and the other near the end. While this explanation does not describe something impossible, it would be intellectually dishonest to assert that this proposed harmonization is more plausible than the author of John intentionally or mistakenly rearranging the chronology of events in the story. When we examine the apologetic harmonizations for a variety of other notable differences between the accounts, the same problem with intellectual honesty and plausibility remains unresolved. So, labeling these discrepancies as "differences" rather than "contradictions" does nothing to invalidate the objection that these accounts are unreliable.

[bjs]

The standard apologetic approach is to dismiss claims about contradictions because the term "contradiction" doesn't strictly apply in cases where the specified discrepancies are actually "differences" between multiple accounts. However, this apologetic still fails to demonstrate where the proposed harmonization of multiple discordant accounts is a plausible and reliable explanation. For example, an apologetic for the apparent discrepancy between the Gospel of John and the remaining Gospels regarding the scene when Jesus cleansed the temple is that this event occurred twice; once near the beginning of his ministry and the other near the end. While this explanation does not describe something impossible, it would be intellectually dishonest to assert that this proposed harmonization is more plausible than the author of John intentionally or mistakenly rearranging the chronology of events in the story. When we examine the apologetic harmonizations for a variety of other notable differences between the accounts, the same problem with intellectual honesty and plausibility remains unresolved. So, labeling these discrepancies as "differences" rather than "contradictions" does nothing to invalidate the objection that these accounts are unreliable.

I agree with you that it would be intellectually dishonest to say that it is more plausible that Jesus cleared the Temple more than once than that John changed the chronology of the story. I think that John almost certainly told this story at the beginning of his Gospel for theological reasons.*

However, it would be an equal level of intellectual dishonesty to say that John changing the chronology of the story is more plausible than Jesus repeating this demonstration on two or more occasions.

In every area of life I tend to give writers the benefit of the doubt. With everything I read I start with the assumption that the most logically coherent explanation of the text is the correct one. If we are talking about an article in The New York Times or a Tom Clancy novel, if there is a way to understand what is written in a way that make logical sense then I immediately accept that as the correct understanding. I might be able to imagine a meaning to the text that does not make sense, but I dismiss it out of hand as silliness on my part.

Therefore, to think that there is a valid objection to John describing the cleansing of the Temple at the start of his Gospel would be intellectually dishonest on my part. Intellectual integrity requires that I accept the coherent interpretation of the text. To do otherwise would be the logical fallacy of special pleading " holding religious texts to a standard that I do not use for other texts.



*A theme of the first three chapters in John is that John is starting where the other Gospels left off. The synoptic writers spent their entire books leading us to understand the Jesus is God in the flesh. John puts that in his prologue. The synoptic gospels give us a prolonged death march to the cross. In John, the first dialogue about Jesus includes the Baptist calling him the Lamb of God. Jesus clearing the Temple at the beginning instead of the end of the Gospel is one of the many ways that John was saying, You already know the other gospels. Now lets go deeper. I assume that you already know what the other gospels tell you about Jesus. This frees me to tell you even more about his life.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 26 by Goose]

14 18

That's the implied contradiction you are arguing for but that's not an explicit logical contradiction such that A and ~A.

So you must have some underlying assumptions here. What are they? And why are they the case?

14 is not 18. That's not an 'implication,' that is a fact. The bible asserts both that there were 18 generations from David to Jeconiah (in Chronicles and Kings) and that there were not 18 generations from David to Jeconiah (in Matthew). This is a direct and obvious logical contradiction; pretending that you can entertain the idea that 14 equals 18 is hardly a viable response. Who nominated this guy for "best debater" amiright?

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to bjs]

If the Gospel of John were the only account, then I could understand why it would be intellectually honest to accept the most logical interpretation of the text. The problem with adopting this approach with multiple accounts is that accepting the most logical interpretation for each account results in apparent discrepancies which must be explained. From there, we are tasked with comparing the plausibility and reliability of the proposed harmonizations as explanations for these discrepancies. If the proposed harmonizations are determined to be implausible or unreliable, then intellectual honesty requires us to consider the possibility that our initial interpretation of the accounts might be in error.