The Sean McDowell Show - Does the Bible Contradict? A Response to Dan McClellan

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Do the Gospels hopelessly contradict? Is it "laughable" to try and harmonize them? Recently, Bible scholar and popular TikToker Dan McClellan responded to a short TikTok video of mine from five years ago. Joined by Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, I respond to the response video clip by clip. READ: Evidence that Demands a Verdict (https://amzn.to/4hlMDoC)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowellTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=enInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Do the gospel accounts hopelessly contradict? Is it laughable to try and harmonize the details in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, such as the number of angels at the tomb? According to Bible scholar and popular TikToker Dan LeClohan, the answer to these questions is yes. Last week, Dan resurrected a one-minute TikTok video of mine from 2020 and made a 17 minute response that he posted on various channels and platforms. Now my channel does not focus on response videos, but because the nature of the critique, this one felt worth it. I invited my friend

Dr. Jonathan McClatchy to respond with me. Now he's actually done a deep dive on some of the very passages that come up here, asking the question, are there plausible harmonizations? We've actually been talking for a while about doing a response video to the top 10 apparent contradiction claims. So this seemed to provide the perfect opportunity. Jonathan, thanks for joining me. Great to be here.

Thanks so much for having me. Well, let's jump in and take a look at the first clip. Number one, even if there were contradictions in the Bible, this wouldn't prove that Christianity is false. So while I'm sure that is the rhetorical goal of many challenges to the dogma of univocality, that's certainly not the reason that I am challenging that dogma. But I will point out that if you imagine that every challenge to the dogma of univocality is an attempt to disprove Christianity and you are an apologist for Christianity, that obviously means you're going to be beginning from a position of dogma and you're going to

have a much harder time actually thinking critically about the data you're engaging. And I think your use of the subjunctive mood in if there were actually contradictions in the Bible is indicative of that dogmatic stance from which you're engaging the question. Rather than responding to the substance of my claim, He criticizes me for approaching the text with dogma. This is actually a classic ad hominem in which a response is directed at a person, in this case my supposed dogmatic stance that undermines my ability to think critically rather than addressing the argument. My point went unaddressed. The point though is simply that the mere presence of contradictions would not mean that Jesus didn't rise from the grave or that we

couldn't investigate that Jesus has potentially risen from the grave. A contradiction might challenge inerrancy but not necessarily reliability of the text, depending on the nature of the contradictions and how many, in fact, there are. Now just as a side note, Jonathan, before you give me your thoughts, do I think every challenge is an attempt to disprove Christianity? Of course not. Anyone who follows me knows that I probe deeply to what I call the question behind the question and try to address as best I can the question that people are really asking.

He imagines what he thinks I think because he seems to have certain assumptions about apologists. What's your take? No, absolutely. I completely agree with you. I'm not myself an inerrantist. I think that the Gospels and the Book of Acts are incredibly reliable sources. There's a small handful of cases where I'm persuaded that the best explanation of a particular discrepancy is a minor good faith mistake. I don't believe that the evangelists ever deliberately distorted the facts or asserted something contrary to what they knew to be the case. And I think that as we inspect the Gospels and Acts

and we evaluate them as historical sources, what we find is that they are evidently composed by individuals who are very well informed, very close up to the facts, and in the habit of being scrupulous. Not all hypothesized errors are of equal epistemic significance. There's a distinction to be made between a minor good faith mistake, of which I think there are a handful, and deliberate distortions of fact. The latter would be of much more grave consequence as far as our ability to trust these sources

relative to minor good faith mistakes in otherwise demonstrably reliable and trustworthy sources. That's really helpful. And one of the reasons I brought you on is because you're not an inerrantist. And part of the critique tends to be that, well, somebody who resists the argument being put forth by Dan is only trying to

gin up this position of inerrancy. You're actually saying, no, you and I differ on this and we can have that debate or discussion separately, but you still don't buy the arguments and pushback that he makes. That's the reason I want to have you on. Well, let's go to the second clip and see what you think. If you want to prove Christianity is false, you got to reproduce the body of Jesus.

So I don't know how one would be able to prove that a body were Jesus's body and that standard seems to me to already be presupposing an awful lot of things about the narrative of Jesus's life and death in the Gospels and also that certainly would not be the only way to disprove Christianity, but again, not the point of my engagement with this question. I actually agree with part of what Dan says here in the sense that reproducing the body of Jesus would not be the only way to disprove Christianity. I think that's a fair point that he's raising.

Now, could we even in principle find the body of Jesus? That's a separate question, but it is interesting that some ancient well-known contemporaries of Jesus, we found at least potentially the ossuary's, Caiaphas, James, a brother of Jesus. So in principle, we could have that investigation. But the larger point that's intended here that I've stated many times, not on a TikTok video, is that Christianity rises or falls on the historical resurrection of Jesus, not in an errant Bible or even historical sources that lack contradictions. The chief sign that Jesus gave of his identity is the resurrection, the sign of Jonah.

Now, historically speaking, and my research on the fate of the apostles, which you helped me quite a bit with, is in history. So I had to read a ton of how history operates and how historians approach their task. And it's often rooted in abduction. that is an inference to the best explanation. So if someone can give a better explanation for the historical data surrounding the life, death and appearance claims of Jesus, then Christianity loses credibility and one ought arguably not embrace it. That's the simple point that I'm making, but I appreciate his pushback for clarity on it.

Your thoughts. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I don't think that finding the body of Jesus would be the only way to falsify Christianity. In fact, most complex systems are not disproven by a single anomalous piece of data, but rather by manyalous piece of data, but rather by many different pieces of data which point univocally against the proposition in question. So I think Christianity being a complex topic, there are of course points of evidence that bear positively on Christianity as well as

negatively. In my judgment, the preponderance of evidence overwhelmingly confirms the truth of Christianity. That, of course, does not deny that there is evidence on the other side of the balance as well. I think the problem of evil, for example, is some evidence against the proposition of a good God. I just think the evidence in favor of that is far stronger. The resurrection, by the way, is only one of several major lines

of argument for the truth of Christianity. The others would be other credibly attested New Testament miracles, the conversion of argument for the truth of Christianity. The others would be other credibly attested New Testament miracles, the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus, or counted in Acts 9, 22 and 26. And more briefly in Paul's own letters, you've also got the argument from the Christological trilemma, most popularly associated with C.S. Lewis,

although other scholars prior to Lewis had also come up with the same idea. J.K. Chesterton, for example, in his book, The Everlasting Men. There's also the argument for messianic prophecy. There's also the argument for modern miracles. So all that aside, the resurrection is only one of several major lines of argument for the truth of Christianity. Let's look at clip number three. We can show Jesus rose from the grave, even if there were contradictions in the Bible. No, you can't. That's a dogma. That is not something that is supported by any data. That is a claim that directly contravenes everything we've ever been able to observe about the nature of life in the universe. So that's not saying I begin from the position that it's impossible.

It's saying I begin from the position that that is an extraordinary claim that requires And I begin from the position that that is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence and you have absolutely nothing even remotely approximating extraordinary evidence for this event that would overturn everything that we have consistently been able to observe about the nature of life in the universe. Again, he misses the point that I'm making here. Now that might be on me, Jonathan, maybe I needed to be more clear in a 60 second TikTok video, but the larger point that I've consistently made is,

I'm claiming that we can in principle show that Jesus has risen from the grave by examining the historical evidence if we are unencumbered by naturalistic dogma. When we investigate the miracle claims of Jesus, the empty tomb, the reports of his appearances, the conversion of Paul, like you said, the resurrection of Jesus, I would argue,

and again, haven't demonstrated that here, but I would argue is the best explanation of the facts. Contradictions would not undermine the possibility of such an investigation. Now, I want you to weigh in on this, but there's two things that he said that I wanna unpack a little bit. One, he said extraordinary claims

require extraordinary evidence. Second, he said, quote, that is a claim that directly contravenes everything we have been able to observe about the light, the nature of life in the universe. Now, my point is that both of these are presuppositions that he begins with and doesn't defend. Now, there's a difference between having a presupposition in a one-minute TikTok video and then doing a response video and presupposing something as if it's true and not defending

it. Now, I do want to read from a fascinating book by Dale Allison who is a critical scholar. I would argue one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world. I've had him on this channel to interact with Michael Kona. He's a charming thoughtful guy and he's very critical. Three years ago, and by the way, he's a professor at New Testament studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. Three years ago, he wrote a book called Encountering Mystery, where he talks about angelic appearances, near-death experiences, and other like supernatural phenomenon, and talks about how there maybe we should have more of an openness to these kinds of things.

So he says to begin, he says, numinous experiences may not be common, but they are not even in our so-called secular world, uncommon. Now that's really interesting. That raises the question, when Dan says it contravenes everything we have been able to observe, well, who exactly is included in that we? Now a couple of things I just wanna read, and then he actually responds to the point

that Dan makes about, from Carl Sagan, he says, this is Alison again, skepticism about religious beliefs and experiences is for many people an integral part of what it means to be educated. For those so minded, all religious experience, like every other alleged miracle, can be in principle explained without appeal to extra mundane realities. On their view, up-to-date analysis inevitably results reveals that the out of the ordinary is always the ordinary in disguise. He says this book is not for them. Rather, it addresses those who are because of their worldview open-minded about its topics or at least half open-minded.

And he kind of says if you just had one case of the supernatural, that wouldn't be enough, but there are case after case after case after case of this kinds of data. Now he responds to this specific point about extraordinary claims require an extraordinary evidence. Here's what Allison writes. He says, Carl Sagan echoing others before him famously said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but the word extraordinary is not a fixed measure. It is rather relative to one's other beliefs. What is extraordinary for one may not be so for another or at least much less so.

Our sense of what can or cannot happen inevitably reflects what has or has not happened to us personally. This is in part explains why I hold some beliefs that Carl Sagan did not. My experience moves me to ponder possibilities he likely never explored. They preclude me from identifying our flatland with all there is. There must be more extra dimensions, other realities, additional intelligences. Now that's coming from a critical scholar who says this. I would argue, and you and I are not making this case here, that the evidence for the supernatural and modern miracles is quite compelling and it's widespread. And it has been argued with academic rigor and should not be dismissed with a hand wave

but should be taken seriously. I am admittedly not making that case here again but simply point out that he has assumptions guiding his critique just as much as I do. So he can't settle the issue by setting up his own standard without defending it and then come to the conclusion rooted in his own assumptions as if he doesn't have any assumptions. Your take. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And the point that you just made is also articulated by Craig Keener. He wrote, as you know, a two-volume set called Miracles, The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.

He also has a more condensed volume called Miracles Today. And he points out correctly that there's a certain sense of circularity in David Hume's objection to justify belief in miracles because a large part of his objection to justify belief in miracles is that miracles go against uniform human testimony. But if human testimony is not uniform, then that undercuts that basis for that objection. And, and so in order to make the case that miracles go against uniform human testimony, Hume has to dismiss all the testimonies to miracles on that same basis. And so there's a circularity there.

David Hume's objection to miracles was actually refuted quite adequately by Hume's own contemporaries such as George Campbell, John Douglas, William Haley, and also by modern philosophers. John Ehrman, for example, is an agnostic philosopher who published a book in the early 2000s called Hume's Abject Failure. And just to give one short critique of David Hume, this point was made in William Paley's A View of the Evidences

of Christianity and his Preparatory Considerations. He points out that the point for which miracles are wrought according to both the Old and New Testament is to vindicate divine messengers, right? That the Apostle John in his gospel refers to them as signs, and we read about their purpose in Deuteronomy 18, for example, how do you know a true prophet from a false one? Well, a true prophet forecasts the future accurately with consistency. In the New Testament, Jesus says that his resurrection would be the ultimate

vindication of his messianic identity, and that's the purpose also for which his miracles and also the miracles of the apostles are wrought. Now, for miracles to function in that capacity and grab our attention, they have to recognizably stand out from the way nature normally behaves, because if they didn't, it would be wrong to their evidential value. If one in every 100 million people were spontaneously rising from the dead and then Jesus rose from the dead, which concludes, well, he must be one of those lucky one in 100 million people. And so for the, if the hypothesis under review in this case, which is that God has brought miracles as

authenticating signs to vindicate divine messengers, predicts strongly that miracles are going to stand out from the way nature normally behaves in order to grab our attention, then the fact that they do in fact so deviate from the routine course of nature cannot be taken as a serious rejoinder to the hypothesis under investigation. So we have to look to other considerations besides the fact that he gave from the routine course of nature in order to get a handle on the intrinsic plausibility or prior probability of God raising Jesus specifically

from the dead. And there we'd look to other considerations that vary independently of the resurrection on Jesus' messianic identity. Because according to his affidavit 310, the Messiah is supposed to be raised to the dead. In fact, Jesus himself says his resurrection would be the vindication of his messianic identity because according to his affidavit 310 the Messiah was supposed to be raised to the dead in fact Jesus himself says his resurrection would be the vindication of his messianic claims And so if we have other reasons besides the resurrection to think Jesus as he was then that provides us with

Independent reason to think God possibly has motivation to raise Jesus specifically from the dead So well said the claim by Sagan that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the resurrection is an extraordinary claim. It wouldn't have been a sign for the identity of Jesus if it were not extraordinary. But if you set the evidentiary bar so high and assume that throughout the history of the world, these kinds of things don't happen and this is what we have observed, then you have ruled out the possibility of investigating the resurrection before it's even begun.

Now he said, I didn't rule out that it's impossible, but functionally when you set the bar that high, you've done so. I don't begin my investigation with a claim that the resurrection is true and that we should believe in miracles. I just think we should begin it like Dale Allison, more open-minded and willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, if it leads in a natural or in a supernatural direction. Let's look at the next clip. But second, keep in mind there's a difference between a contradiction and a difference.

For example, the gospel mark at the empty tomb reports one young man. Later gospels will say there's two angels. That's not a contradiction because if there's two, there's one. So the idea that this, if there were two, there were one argument adequately resolves the ostensible contradiction in the gospel's accounts of the resurrection, I think is symptomatic of one of the critical methodological flaws of apologetics. Because the main rhetorical goal of apologetics is not to convince people who don't already agree.

It's not to convince me. It's not to generate an argument that is valid for critical scholars. The main purpose of apologetics is to perform confidence and competence so that the people who already agree can be made to feel validated in that agreement. And because their worldviews and their self-identities are so entangled with the dogmas they want to be convinced are true, the evidentiary bar is lying on the ground. And so they do not require remarkably robust or sophisticated or methodologically valid

arguments. They just need to be made to feel that the arguments are valid. And because they generally are not incredibly well-informed about critical scholarship, you just have to simulate a valid argument. You don't actually have to produce one. So apologetics is primarily aimed at performing

an argument that's good enough to convince non-specialists who really, really, really want to be convinced that the dogma is justified. That's the main purpose of apologetics. Again, I just have to point out that he doesn't address my point, but uses the clip as a launching ground to criticize apologetics. Now because I'm an apologist and I teach in a Masters of Apologetics program, I'm going to take a minute to offer a different perspective here. He said, quote,

Apologetics is primarily aimed at performing an argument that's good enough to convince non-specialists who really, really, really want to be convinced that the dogma is justified. That's the main purpose of apologetics. Now, this is a caution to apologists to say, make sure you're not making bad arguments. Make sure you're just not trying to convince somebody of something that's not true.

But this is not the primary purpose of apologetics. Rather than listening to an outsider who's critical of it, seems like we should ask the leading apologists today. You ask anybody in the know who's the top apologist today and they will most likely say William Lane Craig. In his book, Reasonable Faith, he cites three reasons for apologetics. One is to shape culture. Two is to strengthen believers, which is internal, and three, evangelizing unbelievers. Those are the primary tasks of apologetics. Now he says the evidentiary bar is lying on the ground.

Look, does that happen sometimes? Sure, some apologists can do that, but this is just simply not characteristic of the apologetics community as a whole. And the vast majority of apologists I know and I work with. Now, so I think of, for example, people like William Lane Craig and his recent philosophical theology,

Stephen Meyer and his case when it comes to intelligent design, J.P. Morland, his case for substance dualism. These are top level, in many cases, peer reviewed critical cases that are being put forward to try to persuade academics. Now, is that most of apologetics? No, just because by number most people are not academics. But you could say apologetics has a popular level, such as helping my dad update his book more than a carpenter, sure, but also academic,

such as I've done in my book, Fate of the Apostles. So I just wanna push back on the idea that apologists are just performing something to make people feel good. I mean, I taught high school part-time and full-time, 21 years, and we take students on trips to engage atheists. And not only my students read the God Delusion letters to a Christian nation, but we go to places like Berkeley, and we actually find that most thoughtful atheists we could find, Richard Carrier came in a few times and talked with our students.

So we're not putting the evidentiary bar low, we're actually challenging our students to think. My last point on this, Jonathan, that I want to know what you think is my father's been just a profoundly influential apologist over the past half century. And I told my dad, I was like, dad, you know, this is, I got to do the math, maybe 30 years ago or something like that. 25, 30 years ago, I was like, dad, I'm not even sure I think Christianity is true.

He didn't do some performance apologetic argument, didn't add a low evidentiary argument. He basically said to me, son, I love you no matter what and follow what you think is true. Follow truth. So I think Dan is giving a fair cautionary warning that apologists should heed

and this is an encouragement to say, okay, let's keep getting better. But just this throwing all apologists into this and saying here's the rhetorical goal, I think really is a mischaracterization. What's your take? No, I completely agree. As you know, I direct an organization, talkaboutdowse.com, where we basically mentor Christians to struggle with doubts about faith and also former Christians who want to explore whether there's a rational

path back to faith, and also people who are not Christians but are seeking and are interested in exploring the evidence for Christianity. And we not only mentor Christians with doubts about faith, who want to explore the evidence and find answers to their objections, but we also, as I said, talk to non-Christians, including former Christians, and sometimes we see conversions to Christianity from people who had previously walked away from the faith or people who are simply exploring. For example, in the summer we had a girl who was an Orthodox, from an Orthodox Jewish background, not ethnically Jewish, but religiously Orthodox Jewish.

And she wanted to talk to us about Messianic prophecy and answering rabbinic objections to Jesus. And after three discussions, she became a Christian. So that's just of several examples I could give of people who were not Christians who became a Christian as they were presented with evidence. So this is just simply not, not true. Good stuff, Jonathan. Let's look at the next clip. So here we have this, if there are two, there are one notion and try that in a court of

law where you have differing testimonies about how many people were robbing a bank or something We have this, if there are two, there are one notion. And try that in a court of law, where you have differing testimonies about how many people were robbing a bank or something like that. That's a context where you're expected to provide all of the relevant data and not omit relevant data. And with the Gospels, we kind of expect the same, don't we? I mean, at least the author of the Gospel of Luke says, I'm going to give you all the relevant details. And so for one to say, oh, there was one young man there, sitting, and for another to say, well, there were two angels standing. Like, that's not really reconcilable unless you retreat to the notion that a contradiction cannot be a contradiction unless and until you can and have conclusively demonstrated, prove beyond any reasonable doubt, that there is no logically or physically possible way for the two propositions to be true at the same time.

That's a conceptualization of contradiction that is not standard, but is necessary for the performance of these arguments. Eyewitnesses are evaluated in a typical trial before they go to trial. And then they can be re-interviewed when there's differences to see if they can be reconciled or how they're reconciled. But in a cold case, which would be more comparable to the gospel accounts, we don't have access to the witnesses. Does that mean we throw out testimonies with differences of the kinds that we see in the gospels? The answer is no. Cold case detectives know that such differences would be easily

resolved if they could talk with witnesses. Yet they're still able to utilize such testimony at times in a trial. The Gospels have the kind of differences that are expected of common testimony. Such differences, by the way, do not mean that a crime did not occur. Now, one of my favorite books on the historical Jesus is called The Jesus Legend by Paul Rhodes, Eddie and Gregory Boyd and there's just an example in here that I think is really important to read in the section in their book. This is on page 424 and they said this, they said there's the case of

the 1881 lynching of two young men, Frank and Jack McDonald, known as the McDonald Boys in Michigan. One account claimed that the boys were hung from a railroad crossing while the other claimed they were strung up on a pine tree. Aren't those contradictory accounts? The accounts seem hopelessly contradictory until Allen and Montell discovered old photographs that show the bodies hanging at different times from both places. As macabre as it is, the McDonald Boys apparently had first been hung by a railroad crossing, then taken down, dragged to a pine tree, and hoisted up again.

Sometimes reality is stranger and more gruesome than fiction. Now this story partly reveals just how horrific and racist these people were who did this, but it also points out that two different accounts, although they totally seem to be in contradiction,'t necessarily contradict I think of those photographs had not arisen the conclusion based on Dan's methodology would have been clearly these contradict now even if they did contradict we still should have concluded without the photographs that the boys were hung that's the key factor. But nonetheless, in this case, we find a harmonization.

So how do we approach gospel accounts? Clearly when photographs are not going to emerge. Now, two other things. Some of this really rests on what's meant by a contradiction, Jonathan. Cambridge Dictionary defines contradiction as a fact or statement that is the opposite of what someone has said. So a contradiction, philosophically speaking, involves affirming a and non-a. Such claims cannot be reconciled. So referencing one angel is not a contradiction with referencing two. If only one angel was said and referred to the same visit at the same time, that would be a contradiction with two angels.

And we might not have all the details to reconcile the different accounts, but our task is to offer possible or plausible scenarios by which they don't logically contradict. That's the task of a historian. Now, I just got to draw one more point out because we'll bring this back later. He refers to Luke giving us all the relevant details. I'm not sure that Luke says that. If you go back to Luke 1, 1 through 4 in his prologue,

he says, many have undertaken to drop an account of things that have been fulfilled among us. So Luke is saying there's other accounts written before, probably at least Mark, just as they were handed down to those who were first eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Luke's not eyewitness, but he's investigating eyewitnesses. With this in mind, since I myself carefully investigated everything from the beginning,

I decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent theophilist. You may know the certainty of things you have been taught. Luke's not giving us all the relevant details. He's giving us sufficient detail for his audience and for his purpose. Your take. No, I completely agree with you. And I don't even see this as an apparent contradiction. Matthew and Mark simply spotlight the angel who spoke.

They omit mention of the other who presumably did not speak. And omission is not the same thing as denial. And moreover, the scene with Mary Magdalene in John 20 is an entirely separate episode, which occurs later, right after Peter and John have already inspected the tomb and gone away again. And Mark and Luke speak of the angels as a young man and two men. This is not at all an unusual way to describe angels in scripture. Angels are often said to appear as humans.

For example, you'll recall in Genesis 18, Abraham, by the oaks of Mamre, is approached by three men who turn out to be angels. In fact, one of them turns out to be God himself. In Hebrews 13, too, we're told that some of entertained angels unaware, which is why we should show hospitality to strangers. So angels in scripture appear as men. And in fact, Bar-Ehrman, in his book, Jesus Interrupted, actually,

this is one of many mistakes that he makes in Jesus Interrupted. He remarks that none of the three accountants states that the woman saw two angels. This is just factually false. Luke 24, 23, in fact, indicates that the two men were angels. There's a report that the woman had seen a vision of angels, which, and of course, we read earlier in Luke 24 that it was an appearance of two men.

And so the angels was the woman's interpretation of what they had witnessed. So that's just incorrect. And McClellan also emphasizes that in Mark the angel is said to be sitting in Mark 16, 5, whereas in Luke the two angels are said to be standing in Luke 24 verse 4. But there's nothing impossible about one or both angels changing their position in the course of events.

So I don't see this as being a particularly potent objection at all. Let's go to the next clip. But it's even worse than that because the four gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus do not differ just in the number of angels. They differ in most of the narrative details. Let's take a look. Here's Mark's account. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought

spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week when the Sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. When they arrived, they arrived to a tomb where the stone had already been rolled back. They encountered no one outside of the tomb. Unless this narrator is profoundly negligent and incompetent, this narrator does not think they encountered anything out of the ordinary outside the tomb, because they go on as they entered the tomb. They

saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. Now let's go to Matthew. After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other

Mary went to see the tomb. Fair enough. We have consistency. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descending from heaven came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. Now I want to point out this narrative, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, indicates that this was something that they witnessed. If they're giving background information and saying off in the distance, beyond their ability to perceive this was going on,

they wouldn't have said, and suddenly. The and suddenly is internal to the narration of their journey to the tomb. That's how the Greek is to be read. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guard shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, do not be afraid for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised. As he said, Come, see the place where he lay." So here, according to the Greek of Matthew, the women see the cause of the stone being rolled away from the tomb. And then before they enter the tomb, they encounter an angel sitting upon the

stone that was just rolled away telling them what's going on. Now in order to reconcile Matthew and Mark we have to imagine that these women are encountering multiple stations of angels who are going to scare them and tell them not to be scared. First on the outside and then on the inside and Mark was profoundly negligent to say, oh First on the outside and then on the inside. And Mark was profoundly negligent to say, oh, yeah, they went in and there was a dude sitting there and they were like, ah! But according to Matthew, they were already freaked out by an earthquake and an angel descending from heaven and rolling the stone away from the tomb and sitting there and telling them stuff. These two accounts are not reconcilable, not plausibly.

You know, you could say, well, you can't say it's impossible, and that's debatable, but that demonstrates that the goal is not to actually generate a legitimate argument, it's just to try to gin up the tiniest little sliver of not impossible and to live and breathe and have your being in that tiny little sliver of not impossible because that's all your audience needs to feel justified in accepting that dogma. Jonathan, you've actually done a deep dive and you list some of this out in your article in response to this video that he's posted. Give us your thoughts on why you think a plausible harmonization works here.

Yeah, I find it curious that McClellan insists on an interpretive rendering of Matthew 28 to the rendering. And suddenly, the Greek text there says, kit edu, which is a very common expression in the New Testament. And its literal meaning is and behold. Which is how it's translated in the ESV, for example. I think most translations render it and behold. And so McClellan has offered an interpretive translation,

not the literal meaning of the text. And it does not necessarily imply that the woman witnessed the earthquake or the descent of the text. And it does not necessarily imply that the woman witnessed the earthquake or the descent of the angel. In fact, a better way of conveying the meaning of and suddenly would be a phrase like exephenis, which is also used in the New Testament to denote the meaning of and suddenly.

So, and in fact, the passage regarding the angel versus two through four is introduced by the particle gar, and its purposes to explain the earthquake and the state of affairs is found by the woman upon the arrival of Tim. And in describing the descent of the angel, Matthew employs an heiress participle, a kata vas, which can be rendered for an angel of Lord Hadith, in fact some translations render it that way.

And so there's no reason then to infer from Matthew that the woman necessarily witnessed the descent of the angel. Sure, it could be read in that way, but it doesn't necessarily have to imply that. In fact, I understand the kit do as simply giving us some background to explain the situation as the woman discovered it upon their arrival at the tomb. Let's keep going.

But wait, there's more. But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they went to the tomb taking the spices that they had prepared. Wait a minute. We heard in Mark that they bought the spices after the Sabbath had passed. But according to Luke 23 56, they prepared spices before the Sabbath. And here it says they brought the spices that they had prepared. Jonathan, you wanted to weigh in on specifically the issue of spices. Go. So McClellan observes that in Luke, we read that on the first day of the week,

at early dawn, the women went to the tomb taking the spices they had prepared. That's Luke 24 verse 1. And, McClellan understands Luke to indicate that these spices were prepared before the Sabbath. But, according to Mark 16, 1, the women bought the spices after the Sabbath had passed. So, how might we go about harmonizing those texts? Well, first of all, I note that Luke does not, in fact,

say explicitly that the spices were prepared before the Sabbath, right? In verse 56, the first part of that verse, it merely indicates that the woman purchased spices following Jesus' burial without specifying where this took place before or after the Sabbath. Now, the second part of that verse clarifies that the woman rested on the Sabbath day in accordance with the Jewish law. And possibly, Luke does not know exactly

when the spices were purchased, whether it was before or after the Sabbath. And so he perhaps leaves it intentionally ambiguous. Now, even if one adopts McClellan's interpretation and takes Luke 23, 56 to indicate the spices were in fact prepared before the Sabbath, the text don't seem to me to be particularly difficult to harmonize. So one could envision, for example, that Joanna being better off than the other woman, remember she's the wife of Husa,

Herod's household manager, already had spices at her house potentially, where she had time to, at which she had time to prepare at home. Perhaps Joanna and one of the, one one of the other women spent the Sabbath at Joanna's house and had time to prepare the spices before the Sabbath began. Well, the two Marys and Salome had to purchase them after the Sabbath at first dawn. Luke 24, 10 lists two Marys, Joanna, and an unspecified number

of other women who went to the tomb. So we don't know how many women came to the tomb on Easter morning. Joanna may even have been the primary source behind Luke's account of the women at the tomb. Luke is in fact the only evangelist who mentions Joanna at all, including her relationship to her household manager, Huza. So if that's the case, it's consistent with the conjecture that she was the one who already had spices at home

and that she could prepare. Perhaps one or more other women stayed with her that evening. We don't know, but that's at least a plausible harmonization of that text. The task is to provide a plausible scenario in which they don't contradict, given that we're not given greater detail. A plausible scenario is sufficient to remove the charge of contradiction and I think you've done that. Well said. Let's look at the next clip. Uh-oh. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb so Luke agrees

with Mark that the stone had already been rolled away by the time they arrived and Matthew is the one who says they witnessed the stone being rolled away by the angel, the first angelic station that they had to encounter. But when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. So Mark said they went in and saw one man seated. Luke says they went in and were sitting there scratching their heads when suddenly there were two men standing beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead?

He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again. So Luke's account is entirely different. And I really think the notion that these women went from angelic station to angelic station and had to be terrified anew at each station as these angels told them the same thing each time is a pretty laughable way to try to resolve these contradictions. Now it's possible we're losing folks here in some of the nuance, but this is really the meat of it.

And these details matter. Give us your take on this one. Sure, so McClellan emphasizes that in Mark the angel is explicitly said to be sitting inside the tomb, right? So it says in Mark 16 and five, entering the tomb saw a young man sitting on the right side. And McClellan believes that Matthew indicates that the woman encountered the angel on the outside of the tomb before entering.

But the text actually doesn't say that in Matthew. It merely indicates that the angel said to the woman, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said, come see the place where he lay. There is no indication in the text of where specifically the angel was when the woman encountered him or when this was set Let's go to the next one. But wait, there's still more we can go to John Early on the first day of the week while it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb

Wait a minute. The other account said the sun had risen, it was dawn. John says no, it was still dark. And this agrees with Mark and with Luke that the stone had already been moved by the time Mary arrived, but that's not what Matthew says. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him." Then we get this story about Peter and the other disciple running to the tomb looking in. Jesus is not there. There are no angels there, but Jesus is definitely not there. Then we go to verse 11, but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb as she wept. She bent over to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white

sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet They said to her woman. Why are you weeping? She said to them they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him When she said this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there But she did not know that it was Jesus and then Jesus tells her these things So this account is entirely different from the others the synoptics at least share some details even as other details wildly contradict each other, but here we have a totally different sequence of events. The angels never tell Mary anything.

It is Jesus who reports on the events of His resurrection, which stands in direct contradiction to the accounts of the synoptic gospels, where the angels, either outside the tomb or inside the tomb, either sitting or standing, either after they have witnessed the stone being rolled away from the tomb or not, are telling the ladies these things. So he's claimed there's contradictions in the synoptics. Matthew, Mark, and Luke now brings in John and said this adds another layer of contradiction.

What's your take? Sure. So he points out that Mary came to the tomb according to John 20 verse 1, while it was still dark, whereas Luke 24.1 indicates that the sun had risen. But the expression in the Greek that's used by Luke is orthro-vathos, which literally means deep dawn. And it refers to the very early hours of the morning. In fact, the ESB renders this early dawn.

So it's not at all implausible, I think, to believe that at early dawn it might still be somewhat dark. So I actually argue this is probably one of the weakest of McClellan's examples. As far as the sequence in John and how it allegedly is different from the sequence in the synoptics, so he observes that in John's account Mary Magdalene reports to Peter and John that the tomb is empty,

and she doesn't know what's happened to Jesus. And then Peter and John then come and inspect the tomb. They find it empty, and then they leave Mary alone, and she has an encounter with the risen Jesus. But the angels don't tell Mary anything in John. And then McClellan notes that this is an entirely different sequence of events from the synoptic gospels. But the episode with Mary at the tomb

in John is clearly an episode that's distinct from the woman's encounter with Jesus in the synoptic gospels, right? So there's no contradiction there because these are two separate and independent events. And moreover, I think plausibly Mary left a larger group of women prior to their encounter with the angel and with the risen Jesus. And this is even lightly suggested by the word choice of Mary when she's addressing Peter and John in John 20, verse 2, where she says, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb,

and we do not know, in Greek it's uke udamen. We do not know the verb udamen is in the plural where they have laid him. So, the use of the plural verb there, udamen, implies that she is speaking on behalf of other women even though John spotlights Mary Magdalene in particular. So this would explain why she doesn't know what's happened to Jesus even though according to the Synoptic Gospels the group of women who went to the tomb on Easter morning encountered an angel and the risen Jesus at the tomb. All right we got just a handful more left.

So these accounts cannot all be reconciled. I would love to see someone try to demonstrate that all of these details are inerrant and historical and happened exactly as the account stated. Because if you try to do that, you basically have to claim that all of the storytellers are profoundly negligent and incompetent because they are leaving out very, very critical details. And that's just so clearly not what happened. That is the result of prioritizing the dogma over and directly against what the texts are actually saying. You have to throw the gospel authors under the bus and say they were

terrible at their jobs. But we can weave together this Frankenstein's monster of a sequence of historical events by imagining that everything they said was true. They just each omitted numerous details that they very clearly should have included. And we get this sequence of events that very obviously never took place. Even if we ignore the supernatural aspects, this whole, ah, there's an angel, ah, there's an angel inside, ah, there are two angels standing next to us, and, bah, actually there was this whole event where these two dudes ran to the tomb in between all these things happening, and ah, we saw the stone being rolled away, but we're perplexed about how the stone was rolled away when we first arrived here. The notion that that sequence

of events took place is absolutely laughable. That obviously didn't happen. These accounts are obviously very different stories told at different times by different folks, two different audiences for different reasons. And for that reason, they included very different details. They crafted stories that contradicted each other. I want to focus on one particular thing he said there. He said, if you try to reconcile the accounts, you basically have to claim that all the storytellers are profoundly negligent and incompetent because they are leaving out very critical details.

Here's the key. You can't infer a contradiction or negligence or incompetence from what is absent. It has to be from what is present. Again, what I said earlier is he assumes that Luke gave us all the relevant details, but Luke doesn't say so. And it raises the question, relevant details, but Luke doesn't say so and it raises the question relevant details for What Luke gave sufficient? Details for his particular audience

Now Dan says there are details that gospel writers should have included now If their goal was to write an account that lines up in all the detail with other Gospel accounts, then yes, they should have included more details. But that's not their goal. Now, what is their goal? I actually think Dan said it best himself. He said these accounts are obviously very different stories, told at different times by different folks to different

audiences for different reasons for that reason they included very different details he said different six times in that sentence and I say yes amen that's why it's all the differences that he's highlighting about who they're focusing on when they wrote who they're writing on, when they wrote, who they're writing to, their motivations for writing that shape what they include and shape what they don't include. That's why we have the kind of differences that we see in the gospel accounts. Totally agree and I am an avid advocate of harmonization. I think harmonization is good, responsible historiographical practice, particularly when we're

dealing with sources as demonstrably reliable and trustworthy as the gospel accounts. Why shouldn't we allow the accounts to illuminate and clarify one another? I think that's just good historical practice, and that's not a practice that I would employ exclusively to Scripture, but I think that whether you're dealing with the Bible or secular sources, we should engage in harmonization where it's the least plausible and exercise real-world

imagination for how these sources could illuminate and bring clarity to one another. Well said. All right, we've got just a little bit more. Let's keep going. And third, what we do find in the Gospels in particular are agreement on the big issues, but the kind of disagreements we would find on careful eyewitness testimony. So loads of problems here. To begin, none of the Gospel accounts is actual eyewitness testimony, because even if we accept

traditional authorship and even if we accept traditional authorship, and even if we take the Gospel authors at their word regarding what happened, none of them claimed to have witnessed what Mary Magdalene and perhaps the other Mary experienced when they arrived at the tomb. At best, they're giving us secondhand testimony given to them from one or both of the Marys.

But that doesn't result in four different accounts unless one or both of the Marys are telling the stories differently to the different Gospel authors or the Gospel authors are altering the stories as they were delivered to them. So you do not get four accounts from two eyewitnesses unless things are changed along the way. And the notion that disagreements between eyewitness testimonies is evidence in favor of their truth is nonsense because disagreements are contradictions. And so you've already given away the store. If disagree they contradict and so you have to say at that point Well, they disagree because they perceive things differently or they remember them differently. That's still contradiction

one or both of them is Misremembering or Misunderstanding or mis-presenting the data they cannot all be true So then you've got to go to, well, they are all true. We just have to assume that one is giving one set of details and the other is omitting that set of details while giving a different set of details. So either those disagreements can be harmonized and they're not disagreements at all. They're just omissions of data from the narrative, or they are disagreements and they cannot be harmonized and therefore they are contradictions. So this type of apologetic approach is a kind of scattershot,

throw the spaghetti against the wall, and hopefully the spaghetti will stick to somebody who needs to be justified by this. Because you cannot argue that there are disagreements and that's evidence of the truth of the testimonies, but there aren't disagreements because they're actually all true and they're just omitting details because they are awful storytellers. These cannot all be true at the same time. Either these stories contradict or they do not, and they very clearly contradict. By saying the Gospels are eyewitness testimony does not mean every aspect of the Gospels is eyewitness testimony. That's not my point. He said none of the accounts is actual eyewitness testimony.

Now there are accounts in the Gospel that are passed on secondhand, of course, such as what the women experienced and he pointed out. That's obvious. Of course, there are accounts like that. Anybody who reads it knows that they had to pass that on to the gospel writers. My point here is about the gospels as a whole. So earlier, I used the women at the tomb and the number of angels as an example. But here I'm talking about the Gospels as a whole.

Now, I'm not going to stop and make a case that they involve eyewitness testimony. That would take us far aside. But I point to some very careful scholarship. People like Richard Bauckham in his book Jesus as Eyewitnesses. I mean, Richard Bauckham, his scholarship, he's a professor emeritus at University of St. Andrews, senior scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. I'm only pointing this out because Dan has kind of characterized all apologetics as just low bar

performing something to make people feel good. You have again another leading scholar making a case. Now one more thing here and then you weigh in here Jonathan is he says specifically either those disagreements can be harmonized and they're not disagreements at all or they are disagreements and they cannot be harmonized and therefore they are contradictions. This is a binary either-or way of thinking. In other words, it's A or it's B.

It's either-or binary thinking. There's actually a third option and it's largely called splitting the horns of the dilemma. And this is what I'm going to suggest, that neither of his two binary options are actually right. But see, there are disagreements and they can be plausibly harmonized. Disagreements exist because they are not simply copying each other and thus as a result offer sometimes multiple attestation of events and sayings of Jesus.

But these disagreements have plausible harmonizations and they're not contradictions. They're differences not contradictions to emphasize a point I don't think he sufficiently responded to. This is what detectives, I don't think he sufficiently responded to. This is what detectives, journalists, and careful historians often do with accounts that agree on the whole, but differ on the kinds of secondary details we see in the Gospels. Your take. No, I completely agree. And oftentimes when you find apparent discrepancies in ancient sources,

when you discover a new piece of information or simply exercise real-world imagination, the accounts actually can fit together quite well without strain. And I think that's the case for the vast, vast majority of discrepancies between the Gospels. In fact, when you calibrate your expectation by looking at other sources, both ancient and modern, we find that even in reliable testimony, we find discrepancies. So, for example, Luke Van de Wey, who's a New Testament scholar, recently published a book called Living Footnotes in the Gospel of Luke, and he has a chapter in that book on testimonies concerning Anne Frank in

Auschwitz during the Holocaust, and he points out that there are undesigned coincidences between those testimonies, just like we have in the Gospels, as well as points of apparent discrepancy between these sources, just like we find in the Gospels. And there's other examples that one could document. For example, there's a book by Andrew Norton called Internal Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, and he has a chapter where he talks about ancient accounts of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and he notes all the discrepancies that exist between those ancient accounts

of the assassination of Julius Caesar. But we don't conclude from that that therefore Julius Caesar was not in fact assassinated in the forum that's taken as an historical given. So points of alleged, points of apparent discrepancy, I think are less evidentially forceful than the points of historical confirmation of the Gospels and Acts. Because there are, supposing that these accounts are historical reportage, there are far more numerous ways

in which you might simply be missing a crucial piece of information that would harmonize the sources, or in which a minor good faith mistake might have become incorporated into the sources. Then there are ways in which the numerous points of specific historical confirmations might have arisen, supposedly against to be fictitious. So there's an epistemic asymmetry there,

if that makes sense. Good stuff, Jonathan. We got one last clip, and then we'll wrap this thing up. Contradictions are apparent contradictions. Don't raise the challenge of the Bible. Many people think it does. Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm not challenging the Bible.

I'm challenging dogmas about the Bible. And what I have shown here is that dogmatic approaches to the Bible result in absolutely laughable attempts to rationalize those dogmas. All right, so my last thoughts are that I think we've actually made known in this that all sides have certain assumptions. All sides can have certain dogmas that they bring to the text. And we've clarified that there might be differences about whether we should approach harmonizations, about what a contradiction is,

about historical method, about whether or not history and what we experience is largely an unbroken chain of kind of naturalistic events and the supernatural is so extraordinary it has an incredibly high evidentiary bar. At this point, while a ton more can be said, I will let our audience decide and weigh in in terms of what they think regarding this conversation. Any last thoughts, Jonathan? No, and I just second what you said.

I think that obviously we haven't been able to get into the historical reliability of the gospels and Acts here, because that would take way too long and take us off on a tangent to what we're focusing on here. But I think there's an avalanche of evidence, a torrent of evidence that the Gospels and Acts are composed of individuals who are very well-informed,

close up to the facts and in the habit of being truthful. And that then supplies us with justification for exercising real-world imagination to harmonize these texts when there is an apparent discrepancy because we ought to give otherwise trustworthy sources the benefit of the doubt when we encounter apparent discrepancies such as those that we find in the Gospels in Acts. If you want to dig deeper into the subject of discrepancies

between the gospel accounts, the book I'd probably recommend most highly on this would be The Mirror or the Mask, Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices by Lydia McGrew. I also recommend some of our other books on the reliability of the Gospels and Acts, such as Hidden in Plain View, Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts, The Eye of the Beholder,

The Gospel of John's Historical Reportage, as well as The Testimony to the Truth, which is our most recent book. The subtitle is Why You Can Trust the Gospels. Peter J. Williams also has a good book on this topic called Can We Trust the Gospels? Jefferson White has a good introduction to the reliability of Acts called Evidence of Paul's Journeys, An Historical Investigation to the Travels of the Apostle Paul, Colin Heemer's book on Acts, the Book of Acts and Siding and Hellenistic History,

and so forth. These are just a few resources that I would recommend on this topic. Good suggestion. And there is live debate going on right now within the evangelical community and beyond how we approach contradictions. Michael Kona has weighed in on this and written some books, and this is an ongoing debate and discussion within the evangelical world. And the evidentiary bar is not set low.

People are taking facts seriously, publishing things with excellent presses, and going back to the sources themselves to see how best to read these ancient documents. Last thing I'll say is Dan finished his video by showing his fit. Well, I'm gonna show my fit, Jonathan. This is a Biola University Spider-Man shirt, by the way. I didn't make this up years ago. Somehow, Marvel partnered with all these universities,

and I got this one at Biola, I think before I was even teaching there, and I think it might be one of my favorite shirts Hey, really appreciate you coming on. This has been excellent. Those of you watching make sure you hit subscribe Don't expect a lot of other response videos for me. This is not my primary lane But in fact, I'd actually love to know below was this helpful if you stayed with us. Do you want more from me? Let give give me your feedback Do you want more from me? Let give give me your feedback

And I'm gonna read these comments to see if this is helpful or not If you want to study apologetics and probe into these more deeply I teach at Biola and we have a full-time tablet school theology online and we have a In person masters in apologetics. We'd love to have you. Jonathan, this is fun. We'll do it again.