Your average book on apologetics begins by defending the bible. In fact, a fair number of works, and a great number of chapters, are spent defending the belief that the bible has to be absolutely perfect in every single way. In logic, a fallacy is a mistaken belief; it’s an argument where one of the premises, or statements of fact that we use in our arguments, is wrong—so the entire argument falls apart. Well, most apologists turn the entire bible into a big giant argument in favor of God: If there’s any fallacy in the bible, any, it all falls apart. And Christianity falls apart, and God falls apart; toss out your Jesus junk ’cause it’s time to try Buddhism.
But the bible is not a logical argument in favor of God. That’s a fallacy in itself. The bible is a collection of testimonies about God. It’s about what God did and does, what God wants and plans.
Because it’s a collection of testimonies, what we have are a bunch of different writers with a bunch of different experiences of God. Like any humans, we’re going to emphasize different things about those experiences. We’re going to interpret God differently. By and large those interpretations fit together.
But not perfectly. Check this out.
Saturday evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out and purchased burial spices so they could anoint Jesus’s body. Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. On the way they were asking each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” But as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled aside.
When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side. The women were shocked, but the angel said, “Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Look, this is where they laid His body. Now go and tell His disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there, just as He told you before He died.”
The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.
—Mark 16.1-8 NLT
But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.
The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what He told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that He would rise again on the third day.”
Then they remembered that He had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell His eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.
—Luke 24.1-12 NLT
Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to visit the tomb.
Suddenly there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it. His face shone like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw him, and they fell into a dead faint.
Then the angel spoke to the women. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as He said would happen. Come, see where His body was lying. And now, go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead, and He is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there. Remember what I have told you.”
The women ran quickly from the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to give the disciples the angel’s message. And as they went, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they ran to Him, grasped His feet, and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them,
“Don’t be afraid! Go tell My brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see Me there.” —Matthew 28.1-10 NLT
Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put Him!”
Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’s head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed—for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home.
Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.”
She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize Him.
“Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her.“Who are you looking for?” She thought He was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if You have taken Him away, tell me where You have put Him, and I will go and get Him.”
“Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to Him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).
“Don’t cling to Me,” Jesus said,“for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find My brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them His message.
—John 20.1-18 NLT
Here we have four different descriptions, from four different Gospels, of what happened when Jesus’s student Mary Magdalene found out He was raised. In John she’s alone; in Matthew she’s with James’s mother Mary; in Mark she’s with that Mary, plus Jesus’s aunt Salomé; in Luke we see Salomé not listed, but Joanna (the wife of Herod Antipas’s butler) and “several other women.” In Matthew she encountered guards over the tomb, which only Matthew ever refers to; then she encounters one angel, or two; then she encounters Jesus… or not. In John she ran to tell the other students before she knew whether or not Jesus had been raised.
If you’re under the belief that the bible has no discrepancies or contradictions, then you obviously haven’t read it.
Arguably, Jesus’s resurrection is the most important story in the bible. If the writers had to get any story straight, it would have to be this one. Yet they didn’t. The general things are consistent—Mary Magdalene, Sunday morning, open tomb, missing body, angel, Jesus risen, tell others. The specifics are all over the place.
When we gather witnesses for a court case, and they give testimonies, it’s kinda important that the testimonies don’t contradict one another… in all the important areas. Witnesses to a murder, for example, have to agree that the defendant actually committed the murder. If they’re clear on that, the jury will usually let them slide if their details don’t necessarily match. One could say the murderer was wearing black slacks; the other black jeans. The defense attorney can try to make a big deal out of that, and say that if the witnesses can’t get the pants right, how do we know they got the murderer right? After all, if the jury is basing the case on pure logic, shouldn’t that discrepancy be enough to make them suffer reasonable doubt?
Not unless they’re idiots. Or unless they’re desperately looking for any excuse they can cling to, so that they can let the defendant free.
They could use the excuse that since the stories don’t line up in every particular, then pure, exacting logic would demand that they declare the defendant not guilty. And yeah, under the rules of logic, they could. But that’s where logic falls apart. That’s actually an abuse of logic—taking something that’s inherently not logical, and demanding that it follow the rules of logic. Like demanding that art follow certain aesthetic rules, or that poetry isn’t poetry unless it has rhyme and meter and metaphor and tries to evoke emotion. In the movie Dead Poets Society for example, the students’ textbook actually attempts to graph where poetry should fit on a chart. (I find it hard to imagine that any real-world textbook author would do such a thing, but then again, lots of fools edit textbooks.) There’s nothing wrong with using logic to defend the bible’s point of view, but there’s everything wrong in assuming that the bible is doing it too.
We should have enough experience with real live humans to know that when different people are honestly telling their side of the story, the stories don’t line up perfectly. The only time they do is when they’ve been coached. When the stories are too perfect, you’re supposed to recognize something is iffy. You’re not supposed to respond, “Oh, great! They all fit together perfectly and logically. It’s like a sign from God!”
If you were to take the four testimonies of Jesus’s resurrection, and try to determine in a court of law whether Jesus really did come back (presuming, of course, that the jurors believe in angels, and are okay with the idea that God can raise the dead—accepting the supernatural is always the kicker) would the discrepancies in the stories produce reasonable doubt? Or would the jury conclude that something happened, and more than likely Jesus did come back from the dead?
In other words, do the discrepancies matter? Because, folks, they’re there. We don’t have a discrepancy-free bible. The testimonies fit together, but they fit together messily. Just like real life.
Reminder: The purpose of apologetics is to understand the history and logic behind Christianity. It is not ammunition for debating skeptics. Share your testimony with skeptics. Share your apologetics with fellow Christians.