#STRask - How Would You Respond to the Claim That the Bible Is Full of Contradictions?

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Questions about how to respond to the claim that the Bible is full of contradictions, and how to answer a Jewish person who knows and speaks Hebrew and says our Bibles weren’t translated properly and the New Testament is made up.   How would you respond to the claim that the Bible is full of contradictions? How would you answer a Jewish person who knows and speaks Hebrew and says our Bibles weren’t translated properly and the New Testament is made up?

Hello, Greg, and listeners. Hello, Amy. We're ready to start another episode of hashtag STR-Ask. We are. And this first question comes from Lucy. How would you respond to this statement? The Bible is full of contradictions. Well, some people suggest ask them, show me one.

I don't think that's a good way of responding. And the reason is the catalog of apparent contradictions is quite large. And it may be the person has one in mind and therefore can toss it out. And it is likely that the average Christian or even the not-so-average Christian in terms of knowledge of these things like me would still not be able to reconcile that apparent contradiction. So that is not a good direction to go. It also makes another mistake. It accepts a certain kind of focus or an implicit way of approaching the scripture that I think is a dead end for the Christian. Okay, so what does that mean?

If someone were to say there were all kinds of contradictions in scripture, my response would be, so what? So what? I mean, it's kind of an example of moving towards the objection. But I want to know what does that person think that an apparent contradiction, even if it can't be reconciled, does for them as a non-believer pushing back against Christianity? Now, I think what it does for them is, if it's got contradictions that are genuine contradictions, then it can't be God's word. But that's not my strategy with a non-Christian. I'm not trying to persuade a non-Christian. They've got to believe the Bible's God's word before they can believe the details of the Bible.

I think the inerrancy discussion, and that's what we're touching on here, is an inside discussion. It's in-house. Now, I'm an inerrantist, but I'm telling you who has become a Christian in virtue. of first believing that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. There are all kinds of people that are Christians that still don't even believe that, but they still believe the gospel. And the early church did not move forward based on the inerrancy of Scripture. The Jews already understood the Old Testament to be God's word. And so Paul and the others appeal with the Jews to the Old Testament was appealing to an authority they already agreed on. But that wasn't the case

with Gentiles. And in fact, when Paul was on the Ariopagus, he didn't quote the Bible. He quoted the Epicurean philosophers to make his presentation. Now, he wasn't, you know, quoting them as authoritative so much as that they did get something right, you know. In him, we live and move and we have our being, you know. And so consequently, he was able to make sense to those people with this appeal. But he just makes a declaration there that there is a time will come. Well, God will judge the world through a man, Jesus, who God verified, essentially, by raising him from the dead. That was kind of the end of the talk because that's when they thought he was nuts. And they started scoffing because he talked about the resurrection, which, by the way, is an interesting thing,

because some people think that the dying and rising Messiah was part of pagan religions that was stolen by Christian writers, and they imported this into the document. And there you got pagans that Paul was talking about. And when he mentions the resurrection, they start laughing at him because it gets so ridiculous, all right. Great point, Greg. I never thought about that. So the larger point I'm making here is we're not appealing to people to believe the Bible has

no errors. We're appealing to them to the Bible as a record of something that is true and accurate. And sometimes, you know, one of the things I suggest, and I, you know, I'm trying to remember if I've had this conversation quite like this, but I said, I think I have. Do you have any books in your library, say to the Challenger? Yeah. Any of them written by God? No, of course not. Is there any truth in them? Yeah, sure. So it doesn't have to be written by God to have reliable truth. That's the case of making. Here we have a document that talks about God and also records historical events that are important,

but you don't have to have inerrant historical documentation in order to have reliable history because no record of history outside of the claims of the Bible, no record of history makes that kind of claim. But that doesn't mean we can't know history just because some people get some things wrong. Parent contradictions in resurrection accounts, for example. and some of those are a little bit hard to unpack, and you have to be kind of skilled in order to do that. But I don't think you have to show there are no contradictions to make the case that, by the way, did everybody say that Jesus rose in the dead?

I don't know how many women there were there, two or four or six or who saw what. Did they all agree that they saw Jesus? And did they all kind of stake their lives on this claim? Yeah, well, then just because, you know, just because, You've got six people that see a car accident, and they describe the colors of the vehicles a little different or speeds or direction. Doesn't mean that there was no accident. And that's the point of our gospel accounts with regards to the things that are salient important for nonbelievers to consider, is did Jesus do these things?

Did he say these kinds of things? Did he – do we have a fairly – a reasonable – reasonably accurate record of the things he said and the things he did, especially his death and resurrection? And this, I think, is demonstrably so. And the issue of contradictions is not even relevant. You know, Jay Warner Wallace, who wrote Cold Case Christianity, and he analyzed the gospel accounts from the perspective of a cold case detective analyzing alleged eyewitness report. he actually saw these variations in the Gospels as strength that they were actually telling, they were giving an accurate accounting of what took place because there's no collusion here. You're going to have variations.

That is exactly what you'd expect to have if you have people writing about the same event from different perspectives. So I don't, that's why I asked the question, and you can see the tactical maneuver there. Well, the Bible has a bunch of contradictions. So what? That's actually the so what is a tactic in the tactics book. You threw it back onto them because for our purposes, that particular issue is not relevant to making the case for the truth of Christianity. There's a number of other examples of using that tactic that's in the tactic book, but I think it's really appropriate here.

So I wouldn't press on this issue. Now, if a person wanted to talk more about it, I could point out, look, there's a lot of things that claim to be contradictions that aren't. And they're just kind of zooming in on some circumstances. You have the Gatarin Demoniac. Are there two? Or there one? Well, there were two. But in one of the accounts, maybe Mark, he's just focusing on the individual because that's the way they reported things.

They didn't have the same perspective or the same. same, what's the right word, this the same kind of way about writing about the events that we have now. And so we can't anachronistically import the standards that we use now into that culture. It doesn't work. And it's not fair to call these kinds of things contradictions then when they are really reflecting the genre of the writing and the way people wrote about those things in the past. Yeah, I think asking them what follows from that is really helpful. to find out why they are challenging you with this and how they think it disproves something in Christianity. I think I would probably also say give a little bit of what you said there, which is to say, look, I do think the Bible's inspired.

I do think the Holy Spirit or God was speaking through these people. I do think that's the case. And I also think that a lot of these contradictions, there are all the things you mentioned, Greg, that they're alleged. But when you look closer, there are ways to harmonize them. And then I would move on to, you know, just make sure you know what they're saying follows from that. And then you can address that. Because if they say that means it's false, you can ask, why would that be false? And you could bring up all the idea of it being eyewitness testimony.

people have different perspectives and they point out different things. All those things, you can give them general principles about dealing with contradictions. And one other thing, one other thing I would point out if it comes to this, because I like your idea of acknowledging that, you know, we do view it that way, but nothing follows. Let's say even if I grant that there are contradictions, what follows from that to the truth of Christianity? How do you see that affecting that? But one thing I also want to point out if it comes to more of a conversation about the contradictions, J.P. Morland pointed this out one time, and I thought it was so helpful. And he said, in scientific theory, sometimes you have anomalies that you can't yet explain. But you don't throw out the theory because of those anomalies. And in the same way, let's say I can explain nine contradictions. And one of them, I still don't have an explanation that I have, you know, that I have confidence in. I don't just throw out all the other evidence that the Bible is inspired by God

because there's one thing I can't explain. And this is true as much in science as it is in apologetics. So that's another thing you can point out. But we have all sorts of reasons to believe that the Bible is inspired. And you have a whole talk on that. And we've talked about this on the show before, evidence, you know, the fingerprints of God. Yeah. Has God spoken is the title.

Okay, yeah. So if you look for has God spoken on our website and you should be able to find that for more on that topic. But this is a general approach to responding to it. Yeah, I want to just remind our listeners of that question that I offered because it really goes right to the issue. And it's a tactically sound way of dealing with it. Do you have any books in your library? Yes. Or any of those written by God?

No. But is there truth in them? Yeah. So therefore, you don't have to have a divinely inspired work to have truth in the writing. You know, those steps, I think that will defuse the force of that argument, I think. And it will also bring out their issue because maybe they'll say, well, it proved they were making it up. And now you can address the issue, were they making it up, rather than just addressing contradictions? And they have all these hidden assumptions and conclusions that you're not realizing are going on. This is why you ask them what follows from that, and then you can address that.

Yeah, yeah. And on that issue, you would recommend it many times here, and that's why I read and just recently completed the wonderful little book by Peter J. Williams called Can We Trust the Gospels? There's a whole bunch of books that have a similar title. I wanted to get that one right. It's a very easy read. And to me, the simple things he observes about details in the gospels make it so clear that nobody could have made these things up 50 years later even than, you know, it's early second century because of the kinds of details that you find in the text that really authenticate their veracity. As eyewitness testimonies.

And having been early written and recorded, you know, close to the time of the events themselves. Let's go to a question from Amy. Amy. How would you answer a Jewish person who knows and speaks Hebrew that says our Bibles weren't translated properly? He claims the Hebrew translation to English is wrong. For example, in Hebrew, Genesis 1-1 doesn't say in the beginning. He also claims the New Testament is made up.

Well, there's one example that you gave, but if a person said our translations are wrong, I'm going to want details. Okay. now I'm not in a position at all to argue otherwise. Not directly. I can't say, well, I know here's the document, you know, and I can read Hebrew. You know, I can't do that. So I can't answer for that. It's a little bit stunning to me if somebody says in the beginning is not in Genesis 1.

And that stungs me. Okay. So I wouldn't believe this individual over against everybody else who, by the way, it's not a bunch of, you know, Gentiles who don't get Judaism or Jewish language, Hebrew, that have kind of just written this thing out. The people who are translators, it doesn't matter whether they are Jewish or not. it only matters whether they understand the language. Being Jewish doesn't give you any better access to the meanings of the Hebrew words. A Jewish person has to learn the language just like a Gentile person. It's irrelevant that this individual is Jewish.

The question is whether or not the translation is an accurate one, the English, compared to the original. And there's not a Bible you can pick up, not a translation you could pick up, that whose Old Testament has been translated by a team of Hebrew specialists who understand the language inside it out that doesn't have the phrase in the beginning, God created the heavens of the earth. They all do because it's there, and that's the translation. So, in a certain sense, I'm much more comfortable going with the consensus of scholarship than the claim that this individual has made. But I'm going to ask a lot of questions of how he came to that conclusion.

What does he actually mean by that? These are standard questions that we ask, gathering the kind of information that's necessary. As for the second thing, well, the New Testament is just made up. I have no idea what he means by that. What does that mean? The irony is that, and now I'm quoting Bart Urban, you know, that even Bart Ehrman doesn't believe that the Gospels were just made up out of whole cloth. He's written a book on the Jesus of History that trade on the reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the primary source historical documentary material we have. and also the writings of Paul, because those actually seem to come before the gospel, any gospel account.

But he talks about Jesus, too. And he says, look, they're reliable. They're early. They have different accounts. They're early. They have detail, you know, blah, blah, blah. He gives all the standard characterization. This is Bart Ehrman, one of the biggest critics of the New Testament, but he's not going to go this far.

And what he says in this piece, and I cite this in street smarts, he says, with regards to an atheist who raised this kind of issue, he said, they're in a scholar. in the world that believes what you just said. None. He's pretty aggressive with this guy. And he said, I understand where you're coming from, but, you know, you talk like that. You just sound foolish. Yeah, I think you need to find out what about them is made up. Is he saying that somebody later on made up all these things? Is he saying some of it's made up? Is he because it becomes more of a reasonable statement depending on what he's saying is made up? But as we just mentioned, with the Peter J. Williams book. There are all sorts of things that indicate eyewitness testimony.

There's the geography is all correct, the when people are going up or going down. And one thing, one thing from that book that I thought was really interesting was the idea that through all this study of graves, they figured out what the names were at that time. Right. The, the, not just which names, but the ratio of names, which ones were the most popular, which ones were the least popular, how popular they were. And when you look at the names given in the New Testament, they match that pattern. Right. And the ones that are more popular, those people have identifiers as part of their names. Yeah, what's the crazy?

I was trying to think of it. There's adjectives of something where he had a special term. I can't remember what it was. Of Nazareth, you've got to say, because there was a lot of Jesus, Judas Ascariot, Simon the zealot. You have to add, they didn't have last names. And so if there were a lot of people like that, they identified them with this characterization. And there's a lot of them because those were the most popular names. So it's, now this is easy to do to get right if you're actually reporting what actually happened.

If you're trying to do this later on, there's no way you. would know even how to go about this. If you're either doing it from later on or from a different location or whatever, you would not know what the ratio of names were at the time in that place. You wouldn't even know that you needed to match the ratio. And it's interesting Gospel of Thomas, for example, which some people think is a contender, is clearly second century. Nobody denies that it's second century. It's certainly not first century. And when they do the name test, all the individuals there are the only ones names that come up that are consistent with the time are Jesus and Thomas, and all the rest of the names are Egyptian names, which is where the

Gospel of Thomas was written. So there's just another tell giveaway in favor of the Gospels, the point you made, and against the Gospel of Thomas. It doesn't fulfill this criteria. It's clearly problematic for Thomas, but an amazing, one of the many amazing little things that you wouldn't think of, would make a difference, but does fix these accounts in the first century by people who participated and were there and understood the topography, the names of places, all kinds of details. And as far as the first part of the question, Greg, I just, while you were talking, I looked up, I just put into the browser Jewish Bible in English. And the first thing that came up was from Hibabad. So this is a Jewish website. Went to Genesis 1 and here's what it says, in the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, it's right there.

So anyway, you can look up sources from Jewish people, Jewish scholars, and see what they say and compare that to what he's saying. And then you can go from there because I don't see where he's getting that. Yeah, yeah. And that's why it's important to ask questions. You're not obliged to refute some other claim kind of right out of the gate just because they say it doesn't mean it's true. and they are obliged to make the claim clear and then defend the claim. And that's our first two steps of our three-step tactical game plan. It's make it easy on yourself.

Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Well, thank you, Amy and Lucy. We appreciate hearing from you. And we'd love to hear your question. You can do that either by using the hashtag STR Ask, or you can go to our website at STR.org. Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Cogel for Stand to Reason.

Thank you.