Are the four gospels consistent ?

[polonius]

There are four gospels supposedly named after their authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They are supposed to have been dictated by God. Do they contain any contradictions? If so, does this show that God contradicts himself?

[JehovahsWitness]

Yes I thought better of that statement and modified it (see edit).


JW

[DavidLeon]

Actually they're not entirely consistent. They have significant contradictions, often among one another.

Contradiction in number: demon-possessed men, blind men, and angels


Two demon-possessed men (Matt. 8:28) vs. one (Mk. 5:2)
Two blind men (Matt. 20:30) vs. one (Mk. 10:46)

These aren't contradictions. My brother goes to the park and sees some people there which later he tells me about; specifically seeing a man in a wheelchair and talking to him, without mentioning the other people he saw. Meanwhile his wife gives the account differently by saying they saw some people there; that isn't a contradiction. This is why four separate gospels are beneficial. For different perspectives.

Two angels at the tomb (Lk. 24:4) vs. one (Mk. 16:5)

Same as above, plus angels are spirit creatures who have taken on the form of men so that we can see them. In the Bible they are called variously angels, men, God and even Jehovah because they are angels, they are in the form of men, they are messengers of Jehovah God.

Contradiction in the nature of events: The Temptation of Jesus

Luke 4:9-11. After the Spirit led Jesus into the desert the devil puts Jesus on a high place at the edge of the Temple and tells him to jump off if he's really the son of god

VS

Matthew 4:8-11. After the Spirit led Jesus into the desert the devil takes Jesus to the top of a very high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and all the wonderful things in them.

Luke 4:1-11 and Matthew 4:1-11 are not contradictory.

Contradiction in the time of events: when the last supper took place

Matthew 26:17, Mark 14:12, Luke 22:7 The last supper takes place on the first day of the Passover

VS

John 19:14 The last supper takes place a day earlier and Jesus is crucified on the first day of the Passover

The NWT has a footnote at Matthew 26:17 and Mark 14:12 that reads: "Or, "On the day before." This rendering of the Gr. word πρῶτος (pro′tos) followed by the genitive case of the next word agrees with the sense and rendering of a like construction in Joh 1:15, 30, namely, "he existed before [pro′tos] me." According to LS, p. 1535, col. 1, "πρῶτος is sts. [sometimes] used where we should expect πρότερος [pro′te·ros].""

See Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Revised by H. Jones, Oxford, 1968, p. 1535)

Contradiction in the nature of events: Who bought the Potters Field?

Matthew 27:7 the chief priests buy the field.

VS

Acts 1:18 Judas buys the field.

The chief priests buy the field for Judas posthumously with Judas' money. Like saying Donald Trump built Trump towers doesn't mean that he built the place with his own bare hands by himself.

The vast majority of actual contradictions in the Bible are numerical due to copyist errors.

Perhaps, but in any case they remain to mislead the reader

The reader should try a little harder. Do some research.

The writing of the gospels were allegedly inspired but the translation was not inspired, meaning that if there were actual contradictions they either reflected discrepancies of the writers due to variations in the stream of time of the events or, far more likely, misinterpretations and therefore do not indicate that God contradicts himself.

And why do you think that is? Here we have a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient god who took the trouble to dictate his wants, needs, and stories---and four times no less---so, as we're told, they'll be recorded and passed down for posterity, yet is quite aware that along the way they'll be screwed up by incompetent copyists and blundering translators. As I see it, these contradictions point to a god who's either

A) incompetent himself

B) Doesn't care that errors crop up in later years

C) Was unable to prevent the errors

D) For some odd reason actually wants the errors

A) If the god in question exists and created the universe your calling him incompetent is laughable. You should have better sense. If he's invented for a fictional character he has achieved a remarkable feat in simply our talking about him thousands of years later.

B) Maybe he doesn't care that errors crop up in later years. Why would he? Because otherwise people who want to find fault couldn't? Research Operation of Error.

C) Maybe he was unable to prevent the errors. Why suggest a possible alternative? Can he prevent each living person who lived in the time of translation to not have prevented errors and what would be the purpose of it? Again, see operation of error.

D) Maybe not so much wants the errors but wants them to remain. Stop and think about it. There are going to be billions of people who reject God. If all they need is some alleged contradictions it would serve to weed out the unfaithful while giving the faithful cause to dig deeper.

[brunumb]

My brother goes to the park and sees some people there which later he tells me about; specifically seeing a man in a wheelchair and talking to him, without mentioning the other people he saw. Meanwhile his wife gives the account differently by saying they saw some people there; that isn't a contradiction.

That's not even close to being a valid comparison. Their accounts are not of biblical significance, the word of God, and they are not even describing the same event. If you intended their experiences to be read and understood by future audiences, surely you would ensure everything of relevance would be recorded as accurately as possible. Hoping that someone else might have observed the same events and written down their accounts more accurately than yours doesn't make much sense. If your account was actually inspired by God, then why the need for different versions? Anyway, in the biblical context, how do you get different view points from people who were not even eyewitnesses? God inspired different points of view? It all reeks of human inspired religious propaganda.

[1213]

...
They are supposed to have been dictated by God. Do they contain any contradictions? ...

No one has shown to me any real contradiction in the Gospels, but many have made contradictory interpretations of the Bible.

[Miles]

each are given as the last temptation by the devil in the temptation story.

They may have been be "given" (presented) as the last but neither writer SAYS which was the last:

And you're actually serious, aren't you.

Have a good day.

[Difflugia]

The NWT has a footnote at Matthew 26:17 and Mark 14:12 that reads: "Or, "On the day before." This rendering of the Gr. word πρῶτος (pro′tos) followed by the genitive case of the next word agrees with the sense and rendering of a like construction in Joh 1:15, 30, namely, "he existed before [pro′tos] me." According to LS, p. 1535, col. 1, "πρῶτος is sts. [sometimes] used where we should expect πρότερος [pro′te·ros].""

See Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Revised by H. Jones, Oxford, 1968, p. 1535)

This is an extraordinarily weak argument. For the tl;dr crowd, it boils down to two things:

• Matthew uses a form of πρῶτος twenty-four times aside from in 26:17 and it always means "first." When he wants to mean "before," he uses different words.
• The three times that John uses πρῶτος to mean "before" in wordplay. Each time, he specifically refers to Jesus and each time and the wording appears intentionally odd to make the point that Jesus both came before in time and is foremost among others in the sense of primacy.

Anyone that cares enough to look up the references and check my explanation can do so in free resources:
An older edition of Liddel and Scott available at Google Books includes substantially the same observation in the entry for πρότερος.

A Greek concordance or decent Bible software will list uses of Greek words by root or lexeme. Here is every verse in Matthew that uses a form of πρῶτος

• 5:24; 6:33; 7:5; 8:21; 10:2; 12:29; 12:45; 13:30; 17:10; 17:27; 19:30; 19:30; 20:8; 20:10; 20:16; 20:16; 20:27; 21:28; 21:31; 21:36; 22:25; 22:38; 23:26; 26:17; 27:64

Verses in John (bold items are where πρῶτος means before or something similar):

• 1:15; 1:30; 1:41; 2:10; 7:51; 8:7; 10:40; 12:16; 15:18; 18:13; 19:32; 19:39; 20:4; 20:8

Unique Bible App is quirky, but free. If you have a Strong's, πρῶτος is number 4413.

The words involved in the discussion are πρότερος and πρῶτος. Πρότερος means before. Πρῶτος is the superlative of πρότερος (like best is the superlative of good), so it means first in the sense of being "most before" or "foremost." The apologetic argument made by the Watch Tower Society is that since πρῶτος has been used in Greek literature a handful of times to mean "before," it's reasonable to think that that's what Matthew means in 26:17. As I said, Matthew liked the word πρῶτος enough to have used it more than twenty times and always meant first. Whenever he actually meant before, he used πρό (five times) or πρὶν (three times).

John's use of πρῶτος in 1:15, 1:30, and 15:18 to mean "before" are all three in situations comparing Jesus with someone else (either John the Baptist or plural "you") in a sort of word play that is common for John. John apparently enjoyed using linguistic ambiguity for emphasis or irony in his characters' dialogues. John 1:15 and 1:30 have John the Baptist saying that Jesus came "πρῶτος" or "most before" himself. John 15:18 has Jesus telling the disciples (and readers) that if they feel like the world hates them, they must remember that it hated Jesus "most before" it did them.

The Watch Tower Society's argument is essentially that in these three verses, John's use of πρῶτος to mean "before" is common and ordinary enough that Matthew would have used it the same way without expecting to be misunderstood. The biggest problem with that is that John has a habit of intentionally wording dialog in a strange way. The context of John 1 already includes statements of Jesus having existence "in the beginning." He was indeed "most before," as the word means in its most literal sense, John the Baptist. Similar Johannine wordplay appears in dialog in 3:3 (ἄνωθεν can mean either "again" or "from above"), 9:30 (οἴδατε can mean either "you know" or "you see"), and 4:10-11 ("living water" meaning both spring water and water that confers everlasting life).

As a sidenote, several of these Johannine plays on words are a problem for apologists because the ambiguities often affect Greek in ways that they wouldn't an "original" conversation in Aramaic. The apologetic argument is generally that John didn't have to mean the phrases as double entendres, but there are enough of them that the odds of them all being unintentional is vanishingly small.

[bluegreenearth]

Rather than using the term "contradiction," I refer to the differences between the gospels as "discrepancies." This is because a discrepancy is not necessarily a contradiction, though, it could be. The discrepancy may be a dissimilarity between the texts because of a difference in perspective, a translation error, a copying error, or any other given reason. Nevertheless, even if there were no discrepancies between the accounts, the justification for remaining skeptical of the gospels' supernatural claims is the fact that they lack an implicit empirical basis. Even with non-Biblical ancient texts, historians do not and cannot classify the supernatural claims they encounter in ancient manuscripts as historically reliable regardless of whether the other information contained within them has been demonstrated to be historically reliable or not. In other words, they aren't throwing out the baby Jesus with the holy water. It is one thing to conditionally accept that a historical Jesus existed but something else altogether to accept that he was supernaturally resurrected after having likely been clinically brain dead for some period of time.

Please note that such historical methods do not dismiss the logical possibility of a supernatural event having occurred but simply acknowledges where we cannot know with any level of confidence if the claimed occurrence is either empirically possible or impossible. However, given the fact that nearly all contemporary supernatural claims have been demonstrated to be false in every case where they were able to be directly investigated, we have no reliable reason to believe a supernatural event is more likely to be empirically possible than impossible. Accordingly, there is no reliable reason to abductively infer that ancient people were more likely to have experienced a supernatural event than for them to have mistakenly believed a supernatural even occurred. After all, there are countless examples of situations where people discovered they were mistakenly confident in their supernatural belief but no examples of people successfully demonstrating their supernatural belief was empirically possible.

[Miles]

each are given as the last temptation by the devil in the temptation story.

Neither account uses the word "last" , they simply present the events in a different order and leave the question of which was chronology last unanswered.

Actually, they don't present them in a different order---bad guess.

Here's the order of the various significant Events as presented in Luke 4: 1-13 and Matthew 4: 1-11 (I've taken liberties with the descriptions to keep them coherent)


M: Matthew 4: 1-11
L: Luke 4: 1-13
___________________________

Event 1
M Jesus led by the spirit into wilderness
L Jesus led by the spirit into wilderness

THEN

E. 2
M devil challenges Jesus to change rocks into bread
L devil challenges Jesus to change rocks into bread

THEN

E. 3
M Jesus says "man shall not live by bread alone,"
L Jesus says "man shall not live by bread alone,"

THEN

E. 4
M devil takes Jesus to top of mountain
L devil takes Jesus to top of mountain

THEN

E. 5
M devil offers Jesus a deal. Jesus says “Get away from me. . . ."
L devil offers Jesus a deal. Jesus says “Get away from me. . . ."

THEN

E. 6 START OF THE CONTRADICTION
M The devil leaves.
L The devil brings Jesus to Jerusalem and sets him on a pinnacle of the temple,

THEN

E 7
M . . . . . . . . .
L devil challenges Jesus. Jesus says "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

THEN

E8
M . . . . . . . . .
L The devil leaves.

.

[JehovahsWitness]

Actually, they don't present them in a different order...

Matthew and Luke present the same events in a different order.




A contradiction can only be established if it can be proven that the writer is presenting ALL the events in chronological order which cannot be done from the gospel narratives ("then" "next" etc indicates the ordering. A specific statement of chronology, ordinal numerology or possibly the specific time of each event occurred, would be needed to be dogmatic on the question of contradiction) .





JW

[Miles]

A contradiction can only be established if it can be proven that the writer is presenting ALL the events in chronological order which cannot be done from the gospel narratives ("then" "next" etc indicates the ordering. A specific statement of chronology, ordinal numerology or possibly the specific time of each event occurred, would be needed to be dogmatic on the question of contradiction)

I can only guess (and it's a pretty good one) where you picked up the idea that "A contradiction can only be established if it can be proven that the writer is presenting ALL the events in chronological order. Or that "A specific statement of chronology, ordinal numerology or possibly the specific time of each event occurred, would be needed to be dogmatic on the question of contradiction."

Thing is, it doesn't matter what the writers could have done, but what they have done, and in this case what they have done is to relate two sequences of events that contradict each other. The contradiction rests squarely on what is actually said, and to play games with it by making up spurious requirements is not only a transparent ruse, but kind of pathetic. Obviously, this rather odd requirement for contradictions you've presented is something Christians, and JWs in particular, had to cook up in order to deny contradictions such as the one showing up between Matthew 4 and Luke 4. Unfortunately it's a waste of effort because it simply doesn't work. "Could haves" are worthless.

But for others here who might be wondering if you happen to have a point, here are several dictionary definitions of "contradiction." Please note that none of them even suggest the qualifications you present are valid.

con·tra·dic·tion
/ˌkäntrəˈdikSH(ə)n/

noun
noun: contradiction; plural noun: contradictions

a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another.

........a person, thing, or situation in which inconsistent elements are present.

the statement of a position opposite to one already made.

source: Lexico Dictionary
______________________________________________________

con·​tra·​dic·​tion | \ ˌkän-trə-ˈdik-shən
\

1 : act or an instance of contradicting the defendant's contradiction of the plaintiff's accusations
2a : a proposition, statement, or phrase that asserts or implies both the truth and falsity of something … both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true …— Thomas Hobbes
b : a statement or phrase whose parts contradict each other a round square is a contradiction in terms
3a : logical incongruity
b : a situation in which inherent factors, actions, or propositions are inconsistent or contrary to one another

Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary
_______________________________________________________

contradiction
noun [ C/U ]
us
/ˌkɑn·trəˈdɪk·ʃən/
a fact or statement that is the opposite of what someone has said or that is so different from another fact or statement that one of them must be wrong:

source: Cambridge Dictionary
_______________________________________________________

contradiction
[ kon-truh-dik-shuh n ]

noun

assertion of the contrary or opposite; denial.
a statement or proposition that contradicts or denies another or itself and is logically incongruous.
direct opposition between things compared; inconsistency.
a contradictory act, fact, etc.

Source: Dictionary.Com
______________________________________________________

contradiction
​‌‌
​noun
US

/ˌkɑntrəˈdɪkʃ(ə)n/

1 a difference in two or more statements, ideas, stories, etc. that makes it impossible for both or all of them to be true

Source: Macmillan Dictionary
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contradiction in American English
(ˌkɑntrəˈdɪkʃən )
noun
1. a contradicting or being contradicted
2. a statement in opposition to another; denial
3. a condition in which things tend to be contrary to each other; inconsistency; discrepancy
4. a person, thing, or statement having contradictory elements or qualities

Source: Collins Dictionary
__________________________________________________

contradiction con·tra·dic·tion

noun
The definition of contradiction is a statement that is different than another statement.

Source: Your Dictionary
___________________________________________________

con·tra·dic·tion (kŏn′trə-dĭk′shən)
n.
1.
a. The act or an instance of contradicting: the witness's contradiction of other testimony.
b. The state of being contradicted: a supervisor who cannot tolerate contradiction from any subordinate.
2.
a. An inconsistency or discrepancy: "Surprisingly few people saw a contradiction between freedom for whites and bondage for slaves" (Adam Hochschild).
b. Inconsistency; discrepancy: practices that are in contradiction to human rights.
3. One that contains elements that oppose or conflict with one another: The phrase "an unmarried husband" is a contradiction in terms.

Source: The Free Dictionary
___________________________________________________

contradiction

A contradiction is two propositions used in combination where one makes the other impossible. It is something that is A and non-A at the same time. A contradiction, therefore, cannot exist in reality, since existence exists (whereas a contradiction could not possibly exist). In the cognitive process, reaching a contradiction as a conclusion or evaluation of reality is proof of an error in one's thinking.

Source: Urban Dictionary