Article 1 in the series

by: Jeff Piepho

    I believe, with good reason (see other articles), that the Bible is inerrant, meaning that it contains no errors.  There are no errors in Spiritual matters, no errors in science, history, geography or anything else!  I am, however bombarded with a barrage of supposed contradictions in the Bible.  This article will attempt to answer three very common supposed contradictions.  First, it must be mentioned that the Bible in its original autographs is the inerrent version.  The copies we have do contain varients of the original writings, but for many reasons (see other articles) we know that the Bible we have now is amazingly close to the original and can be trusted. Also, inerrent is often misunderstood: Of course the Bible should be allowed to use literary utilities like round numbers, quotations, emphasis, and the like. Claiming that the value of pi is 3 rather than 3.14 is not an error. It is rounding a number! In fact, if we claimed that to round to 3 was wrong, we would have to say that rounding to 3.14 was wrong as well.

    These contradictions were taken from a website of someone claiming that "The only one who could honestly make such a claim of 'inerrant' is one who never read [the Bible]."  The truth is, those who call the Bible a "confusing mess" as this author purports are closer to those who have not even tried to reconcile the text but rather desire that there be contradictions.  They do not follow Aristotle's dictum which tells us that the text (any text) must be given the benefit of the doubt.  This is only common sense, as you would not call a person a liar until you are sure of what they are saying.  It is the same with the Bible, before we call it a "confusing mess" let us see if we are the ones misunderstanding!

    The first contradiction is in Genesis.  The author asks, "Were humans created before or after the other animals?"  He quotes Genesis 1:25-26:

 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds,the livestock according to their kinds,
and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image"

He then contrasts that with Genesis 2:18-19:

Gen 2:18-19
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. (KJV)

    The contradiction is supposedly this: Genesis two claims that the animals were formed after Adam, while Genesis one contends that they were formed before Adam.  
   There is no real contradiction here, but rather a matter of language translation.  The King James Version says in Genesis 2:19, "God formed."  But if we look at the NIV it says, "God had formed."  The NIV version is a thought-for-thought translation and is able to explain content in English better than the King James Version, (word for word).  See, in Hebrew certain words are omitted or assumed that we need in English.  For example, even the King James version inserts the word "them" into the phrase, "brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them."  (note: only the first them is changed, the second them is a Hebrew prefixed preposition)  NIV, being a thought-for-thought translation inserts the word "had" to help us understand what the desire of the text was.  

    What's more, if we don't even include the understanding of the original language it is easy for us to tell this is not a contradiction simply by looking at the content of Chapters 1 and 2.  Chapter 1 in Genesis is the story of creation itself; it is a chronological order telling us the when and what of the story.  Chapter 2 is a personal story of Adam; it is not chronological nor is it telling us the when or the what but rather the who and where details.  This chapter is a detailed explanation of the chronology in chapter 1 and its purpose is not to give us timings but rather let us know who Adam was.  

         The second contradiction is also in Genesis.  The author asks, "Did Adam die on the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?"  He quotes Genesis 2:17

"But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
(KJV)

He then quotes Genesis 3:6 to show Adam did what he was not supposed to do:

"and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."

 And finally the author quotes Genesis 5:5 showing the contradiction:

"And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died."

   There really is no contradiction here.  First of all we need to understand that God sees time differently than we do.  The Bible tells us that "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day" (2nd Peter 3:8).  And that "a thousand years in [God's] sight are like a day that has just gone by"(Psalm 90:4).  If we use these verses it is very easy to conclude that Adam did die on the day he ate the fruit because he died within the 1,000 years prescribed as a day to the Lord.  Not only that, but it is obvious that time is much more relative to God than what we are limited to as temporal beings.  And we know this is possible because the Hebrew word used here for 'day' (yom) has the ability to be used in literal or figurative senses.  Much like us saying, "I'll be there in a minute" does not mean that we will be there in precisely one minute, but that we will surely be there in time.

        While that is a perfectly acceptable and worthy way to appease the notion of a contradiction in these verses, I believe an even better way (although they are by no means mutually exclusive) is the Spiritual aspect.  The Bible speaks of death in at least two ways: The first being a physical death.  The second is a spiritual death caused by sin.  The Bible is very clear on this point saying, "your body is dead because of sin" (Romans 8:10) and "you were dead in your sins" (Colossians 2:13).  There are many verses that speak to this point and Jesus even shared a parable where a son ran away from his father. Upon the son's return the father says to his other son, "But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again" (Luke 15:32).  It is obvious that Adam did die on the very day he ate the fruit (sin) - he died a spiritual death.

        So not only is this not a contradiction, but is a verse that is reconciled in two complimentary ways that give us insight into God's view of time as well as our need for God.

         The third contradiction is between the books of Luke and John.  The author asks, "When did Satan enter Judas? Before the last supper...[or] after the last supper?"  The author first quotes Luke 22:3, 7:

"Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot ... Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover [lamb] must be killed." (his quote plus the [lamb]) 

The author then quotes John 13:27 to show the contradiction.

"And after the sop [or supper] Satan entered into him.."

    As you may have already guessed this is not a contradiction either.  This answer is perhaps the most simple of these three.  When reading the Luke verse it is clear that Satan did "enter" Judas.  But nowhere does it say or imply that he stayed in Judas.  Furthermore, we see from scripture that it is not only possible but an indisputable fact that evil spirits have the ability to leave bodies (Mark 1:23,  Mark 7:30, etc).  It is not the same as God's Holy Spirit that never leaves (2 Corinthians 1:22).  
        Not only can evil Spirit's leave a body, but this seems to be exactly what John was speaking of when he reported that Satan entered Judas after the supper.  If you look earlier in the book of John he reports that "the evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus" agreeing with the book of Luke!  
        So what we have here is not a contradiction, but rather a case of Satan entering Judas and then re-entering him again at the appropriate time.  

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    Supposed Biblical contradictions can be as simple as misquoting a verse or as complicated as ancient languages, but we must always be prepared to give an answer - even if that answer is, "Let me study and find what the Bible is really trying to say."

Geisler, N. L., & Howe, T. A. 1992. When critics ask : A popular handbook on Bible difficulties . Victor Books: Wheaton, Ill.

Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright (c) 1994, Biblesoft and International Bible Translators, Inc.

Bible Knowledge Commentary/Old Testament (c) 1983, 2000 Cook Communications Ministries; Bible Knowledge Commentary/New Testament (c) 1983, 2000 Cook Communications Ministries