"Well officer, I know I said that I was in Florida when the murder occurred, and I know the victim's doorbell cam showed me in Pennsylvania. But that's not a contradiction, because I said I was in Florida, but I never said I was NOT in Pennsylvania! So logically I must be innocent."
@@toughbiblepassages9082 Did you skip the part of the video where Dan state that contradiction has multiple uses and the creator is limiting it to a single meaning in order to reinforce their point?
@@toughbiblepassages9082, to be fair, McClellan has provided outlines of sections which he says contradict and to a lay person, it sounds like they very well might. What is the missing piece which will allow all these passages to be entirely true simultaneously to each other?
The apologist's argument violates common practice of speech when citing a number. A witness can state that he saw one man beating up the victim, but if the victim says two men beat him up, then the witness is clearly either lying or mistaken. He cannot keep his credibility by saying "I chose to focus on one man, because, reasons, my testimony is still reliable."
You’re glossing over certain factors in your hypothetical, questions that would need to be asked in a real world investigation. 1) Did the witness see the entire event from start to finish? 2) Did the witness have an unobstructed view? That said, we don’t have eyewitness accounts. We have second or third hand accounts. Nor do we have a usable timeline to determine if different witnesses visited the tomb at different times. The claim of the empty tomb needs strong evidence that the Bible doesn’t supply. While one might say, “The contradictions in (reported) testimony could POSSIBLY resolved”, they are not resolved by the data. Possible resolution of a contradiction at some future date is not a resolution of the contradiction. Is any of this important? Yes. It’s all well and good to tell an apologist “You didn’t prove your claim.” But it’s a much stronger argument to outline what evidence they would need to satisfy their claim. It effectively shuts down the “but it’s still possible” argument by saying, “Sure it’s possible, and be sure to tell us when you have a shred of evidence.” Keep sending them back to the drawing board.
@roehlanobriones3179 When “God” provides a number, it means that number or any higher number 😂 That’s why 1 and 7 pairs of clean animals is not a contradiction in the Flood story. 😂
But the Gospels are well known today to not resemble personal testimonies. They are literary creations based on amalgamations and conflations of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman literature. Matthew and Luke more directly being dependant on Mark and John remotely following them, yet distancing from them all the more. They are not eyewitness testimonies like Richard Bauckham used to argue a dozen years ago.
@MarcosElMalo2 And you, my dear, _dear_ man, are glossing over *_the existence of an entire angel!_* I mean, do you not see how loopy you sound? Did he get a call and have to beat it rq? Was he like the other dude's minder, or the chauffeur of the flaming chariot? I mean, at least come up with something credible like ‘the other angel was a _female_ and therefore insignificant in His sight’, jfc
Now I'm imagining Muriel the Always Forgotten. An angel so ordinary and bland they never gets mentioned even though they're always there. They stand in the background and don't make eye contact and just shuffle their feet. They were there when Gabriel brought Mary the good news, but hung back because they didn't want to get in the way.
I’m always amazed that people don’t make more of the fact that Matthew says there was a great earthquake and the women witnessed the stone being moved. It’s so incredibly different from the other accounts. Although I have seen apologists claim that it doesn’t technically say the women were around to witness the stone being moved (so that it aligns with the other texts) but that’s a very generous reading of what Matthew says
"Why'd you eat two slices of pie? Now there isn't enough for everyone else" "Well you see, when you said I could have a slice it didn't explicitly exclude having more than one, as to have two slices I still had a slice" "I want a divorce"
Being fair is where you say the boy believes that listed dictionary definitions are ranked in order of popularity fitness, like the Music Hit Chart, or an Olympic event or something.
@@PopulusVultDecipi Nope. "the fact of something being the complete opposite of something else *or very different from something else, so that one of them must be wrong:*" that second part is the thing apologists want to avoid because there being 1 angel does contradict there being 2 angels. more generally if B implies Not A then both A and B cannot both be true.
What's also important is that each of the Gospel authors either includes or excludes material found in other Gospels to make his text internally coherent. And they have to do this because the story is different every time. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples that he will go ahead of them to Galilee and the young man tells the women to go tell the disciples that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee. The author of the Gospel of Luke looks at this, thinks to himself "hmmm, do I want to copy this into my text, just like I'm copying other things word-for-word, or do I want to leave that out?" And he choses to leave it out. Why does he do that? Because in the "cinematic universe" of the Gospel of Luke, nobody goes to Galilee so it makes no sense for the disciples to be told to go there. Similarly, in Mark and Luke, the women go to the tomb to perform funerary rites and so they prepare spices to do that. But Matthew and John don't mention the spices. Why? Because in Matthew and John, funerary rites have already been performed by Joseph of Arimathea (plus Nicodemus in John). Each of the gospels (including non-canonical gospels) is a "soft reboot" that tells a different story.
It's so funny to use modern analogies, because the textual interlinks that exists and we take for granted now never existed, it wasn't a thing, so they created something absolutely new that we now take for granted in our consumerized society.
There were one hundred thousand angels at the tomb, but the various authors only saw fit to mention the presence of either one or two entities, depending on which they felt actually contributed something worthwhile instead of just loafing about.
“Apparent contradictions”. Apparently you have access to dictionaries. Let’s pray that we don’t start banning dictionaries. The apologist shitheels would love to impose a Christian Nationalist Newspeak dictionary on us.
Alternatively, if all these things aren’t actually contradictions - somehow - then the Bible is confusing AF. So much for the obviousness of its truths 🤷♂️
Interestingly, @NeedGodnet's attempt to rationalize away contradictions between accounts of the number of angels in NT accounts is the precise method Mormons use to explain away the contradictions in Joseph Smith's First Vision accounts, in which only Jesus appears in some versions, and both Jesus and God the Father in others: "Just because Jesus was the only one mentioned doesn't mean God the Father wasn't there!"
If the only contradiction you'll accept is a formal logical contradiction, then you won't find any in the Bible because the Bible doesn't say anything precisely enough to apply formal logic to it. But this is a weakness. The more room for weasling out of contradictions, the more room for differing interpretations, and the less you can rely on the Bible as a foundation.
You're missing the point just as badly as these apologists do. The point is not the factual historicity of the accounts. The point is what Jesus is reputed to have taught and what his life and death is supposed to have meant.
"If the only contradiction you'll accept is a formal logical contradiction, then you won't find any in the Bible because the Bible doesn't say anything precisely enough to apply formal logic to it." Not really. In places, sometimes many places, the bible explicitly says 1) God is love (it doesn't say God is like love, it directly says, God is love (that's in 1 John, I think)) 2) Love is not jealous (everyone's favorite in Corinthians that is said at every wedding) 3) God is a jealous god (all over, especially in the OT) By formal logic, all three of these cannot be true.
@@flowingafterglow629 You're demonstrating my point. In math and logic, you can only have a contradiction if the words are all defined the same way and used in the same precise way. You're treating statements like "God is love" as a mathematical equivalency, and then assuming that the word "love" means the same concept in other verses of other books by different authors. Words like "love" and "jealousy" are not defined precisely enough to have logical contradictions in them. Now if you want to argue that there is a contradiction between the intent of the authors, then you could make a case. You would need to do what Dan does: actually inspect the original language and theology of the authors to determine what they were getting at. But this can never be a logical contradiction, only a theological contradiction.
@@incredulouschordate "You're treating statements like "God is love" as a mathematical equivalency, and then assuming that the word "love" means the same concept in other verses of other books by different authors. " It's the same word, why wouldn't you interpret it similarly? If the answer to contradictions is, "Well, you can't assume the bible really means what it says," then this is a fools errand. Can we do this with every verse in the bible? It doesn't matter what it says, we can just assert that it means what we want it to mean? Dan, you may as well give up. It doesn't matter what the bible says, we can just believe it to mean whatever we want.
The ( John?)story about Mary staying there crying, and the being gently reassured (?) by an angel sounds like effective writing, tugging the heartstrings, But how do you compete with (Mathew) An Angel doing a HALO Drop and busting JC out of the place he is in ??
No, wait it was quantum physics.The stone was simultaneously in place and not in place until Schrödinger's cat looked at it. All four Gospels mention a cat being there if you read them properly. 😜
there are also maxims of communication that basically tell us that language doesn't (usually) work like maths. "an angel told me" when there were multiple angles is fine, but "i saw one angel" when there were two is weirdly formed communication.
I tried to have a conversation with this guy online and it was absolutely pathetic. He never dressed anything that I said about a contradiction and I even explained to him what a contradiction was from Webster's Dictionary and gave great examples of contradictions in the Quran and he agreed and similar in the Bible and he disagreed I wonder why
@@digitaljanus And both decided not to focus on the fact that they were accompanying the women and instead just want you to know what the women experienced. Makes sense!
Love how he poisons the well from the beginning "Any contradiction is only a contradiction if it happens at the same time and place because the eternal omnipresent unchanging God might have changed his mind between those two events."
Apologetic gaslighting can be sliced and diced when you are open to all information sources, especially examining the contradictions directly. The apologist always always always speaks like the Wizard of Oz; "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Too late.
The existence of a 624 page book entitled "The Big Book of Bible Difficulties" that purports to apologetically explain away all the contradictions and other problems with the Bible, kind of speaks for itself. In addition to being incredibly ironic.
It seems that these four accounts are coming from four different oral traditions. It does not seem like one of the authors was ready the others account
Well, the theory is Mark was first and Matthew and Luke have a copy. Starting from Mark, Matthew simplifies the story while Luke adds material. John writes for the stage..
Even if we grant his absurdly narrow definition of what a "contradiction" is, it kinda seems like he hasn't read the Bible enough to even validate _that_ claim. Like, he clearly hasn't read the very verses he's citing here in any depth... but equally there are a whoooooooole bunch of others. Like Jeremiah 32:17 saying nothing is too hard for God, but then there are multiple instances where YHWH fails to achieve an outcome - like Genesis 6-8 where he attempts to eliminate evil and explicitly fails because _according to YHWH_ that'd require killing Noah and his sons and their wives too and so just rolls with it, or Judges 1:19 where "the Lord was with Judah" but they still couldn't overcome chariots of iron, or 2 Kings 3 where Elisha prophecies that "This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord; he will also deliver Moab into your hands" but then one human sacrifice by the king of Moab and oh, no he can't, and the Israelites give up and leave... ...Or just any of the numerous numerical contradictions, where if you follow this creator's logic, I guess 1 Chronicles 21:12 is choosing to focus on just three of the seven years of famine that 2 Samuel 24:13 says God threatened? Or 2 Samuel 8:4 is choosing just to focus on 1,700 of the 7,000 horsemen 1 Chronicles 18:14 says David captured from from the king of Zobah? Or I guess 2 Chronicles 9:25 is choosing just to focus on a particular 10% of the 40,000 horse stalls 1 Kings 4:26 claims Solomon had since that's a full order of magnitude difference in reporting there? Maybe when 2 Smauel 24:9 says Joab told king David that the number of fighting men he had available to him was 800,000 in Israel and 500,000 in Judah, and yet 1 Chronicles 21:5 says Joab reported 1,100,000 in Israel and 470,000 in Judah, two different scribes were really just focused on different parts of Joab's report? ...Or the bit where Matthew and Luke both say Jesus's birth/Mary's pregnancy happened in the time of King Herod (Matthew 2:1, Like 1:5) but Luke also says that Jesus was born during a census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:1-2) which are two non-intersecting time periods. Definitely not a contradiction, they're just... focused... on two... different... time periods... This creator is kind of relying on his audience to be as vague and unfamiliar with the Bible as they seem to be.
He probably doesn't know the text he follows all that well. I've witnessed that many times now. People defending aspects of their beliefs by misquoting, misremembering, or not understanding the text they use in their defense. For example, the guy in the video yesterday who defended the KJV by saying it was sticky and so the verses were easy to remember and then proceeded to misquote his example verse.
Any chance one of his 5 is issues with the birth narratives? That's a favorite of mine. Then again, they're not typically included in the softballs that apologists love to pitch to themselves, so probably not.
Mary could have been in labor for 10 years, that would cover a lot of the holes. Since people were living to 900 years old, a 10 year birth becomes logical.
@@emptyhand777 Nah they'd stopped living to 900 years old a few millennia earlier. The _real_ solution is she actually got pregnant twice, ten years apart, and the author of Luke just decided not to focus on the part where they were different children or that there was any intervening time. You know, like an inerrant recorder of fact would do!
@@Zahaqiel - now you got me thinking. The real REAL solution is Mary was pregnant twice but neither kid was Jesus. The real Jesus was Joseph. That is why you never hear about Joseph after Jesus got "lost" in the Temple. Herod got the 1st one, and Joseph and Mary sacrificed the 2nd one. Joseph became Jesus and started calling Mary "Mommy". Precisely why there are no Jesus awkward teenage Gospels. Case closed.
@@emptyhand777 That'd make the events of the gospels approximately 30 years earlier than people think... sounds like the premise of a new Dan Brown biblical conspiracy novel...
I was mauled by a lion! How horrible! Where did it go? Well, all 9 lions that mauled me flew away. 9, I thought you said A lion? Well I did… and 8 more and a hippo.🙄
The entire Bible becomes far more realistic when you acknowledge it was written entirely by human beings, all of which had different levels of spirituality from very high down to absolutely none. Of course human eye witness accounts contradict each other. Human eye witness accounts still contradict each other to this day-nothing there has changed. And just like in contemporary modern times, the subjective interpretation an eye witness comes up with is in no way validated by what they witnessed-even if their facts were accurate. No true understanding of the Bible is even remotely possibly when starting from the entirely erroneous assumption/belief that it is the unified and literal "Word of God."
John 20 has Mary Magdalene in hysterics that the *tomb is open* and she goes to tell disciples the body has been taken out of the tomb (yet she never actually goes into the tomb to confirm this is the case) yet she had already met Jesus when coming back from the tomb the angel had *already opened* Matthew 28:8-9.
"Thou shalt not kill!" - Exodus Followed by a huge list of people that are unalivable because of crimes in the next chapter(Leviticus). Lets not forget the contradictions between the King James 2.0 version that most revisionists are using instead of the Catholic version. But I mean... they're already deep in the doublethink already.
In philosophy, a contradiction is indeed when a proposition is claimed to be true and its negation is claimed to be true. Somene saying 1 angel, someone saying 2 angels and someone not mentioning angels at all aren't necessarily contradictory therefore. They are quite inconsistent though.
And then there's the question of likelihood: what is the most LIKELY explanation for these apparent, glaring inconsistencies, if not explicit contradictions? Is it that there is some sublime pattern or template which, if employed, would line these tales up into a coherent story where all the elements fit neatly without flying in the face of any of the others? Or is it more likely that the reports became garbled and confused, the details muddled, over the years and decades as they were passed mouth-to-ear or written down in different places and different times by different people? I think good old William of Ockham suggests the more probable scenario, no?
Elvis was at the tomb too. The "earthquake" was just him playing rock and roll (you can imagine how that would confuse people in the first century). Although I rather like Jailhouse Rock, the gospel writers were unimpressed and so left out the details of his performance. But it totally happened. No contradiction with the Bible.
To ague there were two but only one drew attention is fair enough as a possible reconstruction. The real issue is that he ignored every other discrepancy. Whatever happened, it all happened quickly, emotions were high, and everyone was confused. Discrepancies in what people recalled and recounted is understandable. Thus to discount the discrepancies is to ignore the real life drama of the situation.
That's actually (more or less) a very common way of defining the term "contradiction" in academic philosophy. There are other related notions that are also problems, and showing something isn't a contradiction doesn't thereby show it's at all plausible. But it's pretty much standard practice for philosophers (of any faith or none) to use the term "contradiction" specifically as a claim that something both is and is not the case at the same time and in the same way. Not just an apologist's definition.
I feel like apologists often pretend the gospels are just four different "layers" of a single unified compilation that can be combined additively like music tracks. Speaking of which, has anyone ever done that to the gospels? I bet it's absurdist nonsense all the way through.
I wouldn’t even say contradictions are the biggest problem for Christians. The bigger issue is how poorly written the book is, from beginning to end. If some all powerful, all knowing god has any part of it, his mental stability, clarity, and communication skills are certainly in doubt.
@@WhatYourPastorDidntTellYouActually, it does not matter what his motives are. The bottom line is he didn’t. He wasn’t capable or he would have. He’s incompetent.
How many birds were on Noah’s ark? Genesis 6:19-22 says “two of every kind of bird” while Genesis 7:2-5 says “seven pairs of every kind of bird.” Not a contradiction??
"Gin up." What is that, anyway? A detective interviewing four different witnesses to a bank robbery and murder will find all four include different details. Does that mean only one is really telling the truth? Of course not. It means they remember this extremely emotion laden event from their own perspectives. One remembers two robbers. Another remembers one. Another remembers the color of their shoes. Another makes no mention of shoes. One remembers one of the robbers having a tattoo on his hand. Another remembers no tattoo. *In the end what matters is what they agree on not where their memories are different.* If it were otherwise we would expect that they had gotten together to get their stories straight. The several visit to the tomb accounts are like that. We don't need to "gin them up" or harmonize them. We can detect, however, what is common to them all: The tomb was empty. There were angels or men who had a message for them that Jesus had risen. That difference in memory of the event is actually the best evidence for authenticity we will find in the Bible.
1. An angel rolls away the stone from the tomb before sunrise (Matthew 28:2-4). The guards are seized with fear and eventually flee. 2. Women disciples visit the tomb and discover Christ missing (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1-4; Luke 24:1-3; John 20:1). 3. Mary Magdalene leaves to tell Peter and John (John 20:1-2). 4. Other women remain at the tomb; they see two angels who tell them of Christ's resurrection (Matthew 28:5-7; Mark 16:5-7; Luke 24:4-8). 5. Peter and John run to the tomb and then leave (Luke 24:12; John 20:3-10). 6. Christ's First Appearance: Mary Magdalene returns to the tomb; Christ appears to her (Mark 16:9-11; John 20:11-18). 7. Christ's Second Appearance: Jesus appears to the other women (Mary, mother of James, Salome, and Joanna) (Matthew 28:8-10). 8. At this time, the guards report the events to the religious leaders and are bribed to lie (Matthew 28:11-15). 9. Christ's Third Appearance: Jesus privately appears to Peter (1 Corinthians 15:5). 10. Christ's Fourth Appearance: Jesus appears to Cleopas and companion (Mark 16:12-13; Luke 24:13-32). 11. Christ's Fifth Appearance: Jesus appears to 10 apostles, with Thomas missing, in the Upper Room (Luke 24:36-43). 12. Christ's Sixth Appearance: Eight days after His appearance to the 10 apostles, Jesus appears to all 11 apostles, including Thomas (John 20:26-28). 13. Christ's Seventh Appearance: Jesus appears to 7 disciples by the Sea of Galilee and performs the miracle of the fish (John 21:1-14). 14. Christ's Eighth Appearance: Jesus appears to 500 on a mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:15-18; 1 Corinthians 15:6). 15. Christ's Ninth Appearance: Jesus appears to His half-brother James (1 Corinthians 15:7). 16. Christ's Tenth Appearance: In Jerusalem, Jesus appears again to His disciples (Acts 1:3-8). 17. Christ's Eleventh Appearance: Jesus ascends into Heaven while the disciples look on (Mark 16:19-20; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-12). God Bless
I know we’re not supposed to comment on the creator’s speech and appearance, but I do love his speech and appearance. So cute! And the blue shirt, blue set, and the Perry the Platypus doll! Adorable! ❤
@@Jd-808 I see. Well, in creating propaganda, one needn’t come up with good arguments. Any argument will do when your audience is not thinking critically in the first place. Some children naturally have critical thinking skills, but many haven’t had the chance to learn such skills, yet, obviously.
Still can't rap my head around how Dan survived getting a degree from BYU... and actually taught there without getting either brainwashed or booted out. LOL
The Sepulcher After Jesus’ Resurrection 1)In Matthew 28 the two Marys experienced an earthquake then noticed that the stone had been rolled away from the sepulcher. In Mark 16 they looked up to see the stone rolled away. This does not mean there wasn’t an earthquake in Mark 16 as the Marys simply looked up after experiencing the earthquake, which must have been stunning, and saw that the stone was rolled away by the angel 2)The angel was wearing white apparel and sat on the right side. Just because Matthew 28 doesn’t say he was sitting on the right side doesn’t mean he wasn’t. Mark 16 mentions him as a “young man”. If one knows the scriptures they see that angels are always in the masculine and do not have wings. This is why the two Marys supposed he was a young man 3)Matthew says an angel was sitting on the stone. Mark says an angel was sitting where Jesus was laid. Luke says there were two angels. Mystery solved. These are different accounts in all four gospels but some give more information than others on certain events. These are not contradictions but actually compliment each other
I was able to point out of different version of the story as a young kid and was given the it's not impossible theory. I didn't buy it then and I certainly don't buy it now.
"Hey guys. How many contradictions do you think are in are in a book that contains two seperate compilations of ancient texts, not only being all authored by different people at different times and languages, but many of the texts have multiple authors as well? I'll give you a hint... None 👁️👄👁️"
Why can't we just accept the story as true, while also accepting the writers from a century or two later didn't get all the details right? Other than the doctrinal reasons.
That apologist self-defining what a "contradiction" is so he can make his task easier in an attempt to justify the problems occurring in biblical texts is pathetic. In any investigation to an event, if there are witnesses, they must be 1) interviewed ASAP, and 2) separated, i.e., interviewed separately, and 3) determine if the witnesses knew each other prior to the incident, and 4) if witnesses were interviewed much later after the incident, and they knew each other, but their stories don't comport with evidence, then their narratives are viewed with a greater level of suspicion, and they themselves may be considered as potential suspects. If the eyewitness stories differ slightly, which is not uncommon, then when trying to determine what actually happened, if evidence corroborates their narrative, then their testimony is relevant. For example, tire skid marks at an accident scene, or lack thereof, or a check of the part of the seat belt that passes thru the inertial lock to see if there are teeth marks on the belt, because that would indicate whether or not the occupants of the vehicle were using seat belts, or not. There are many other factors for investigating incidents, and these are a few basics. Having said that, because witness statements are rarely identical, if the fundamental witness narratives are corroborated by the evidence, then their testimony is believable, and of course it's much easier [for the investigator] to determine what happened with confidence. However, if the stories are identical, or nearly so, but do NOT seem plausible, given the evidence, then their statements are not viewed as credible, and possibly suspicious.
I'm not an apologist. But I will take an apologetic view for one way of looking at divine inspiration. I think it's better that the stories don't match. If they matched, we could simply say they are copies of the first. Since they don't match, it's obviously not about the details. It's about the overarching story. So what do all four have in common? Would it really matter if there were three Beatles at the tomb? All but Ringo? And would it matter which song they sang?
"we could simply say they are copies of the first" the problem is while the some stories differ, the gospels themselves literally do what you say, they copy word for word in Greek from Mark. What matters is whether the stories are true and unfortunately there is no evidence they are true.
@@downshift4503 yes, as produced, they are different. And no, when it comes to divine inspiration, the stories do not need to be true. The stories only need to be true if one's beliefs hinge on them being true. Christianity has never been dependent on evidence. The dependence upon evidence is in direct proportion to how much one is trying to point to evidence. There are Christians who believe the King James Version is divinely inspired to the point that it overrides older texts, including "original" text. If the very first text was presented, it wouldn't matter. The way divine inspiration works, a prophet could arise today and the prophet's words could override everything that came before.
They might have thought that it did not matter, they knew the story did not match but let it to the reader to judge which one was true, they did not figure that some reader would insist that everything was true.
By the time the Bible was being compiled, each of the gospels had been circulating for some time already. The compilation, such as it was, was initially people putting together lists of the most accepted gospels out there (as well as Paul's letters). There wasn't a redactor (or group of them) making some effort to weave the disparate stories together as there was with the two Joseph stories, the two Flood stories, combining the different Abraham-Isaac-Jacob cycles, and tweaking things like the ages of the pre-Flood types to make sure that the people listed as being good weren't drowned. The Bible, especially the New Testament, is an anthology, not a single work.
These gospels circulated independently for decades before being arbitrarily put together in a group of books called the New Testament. Second point, myself and the vast majority of christian’s didn’t even notice these contradictions until they were pointed out by skeptics and scholars. Most christian’s don’t really read the gospels side by side in this way so in their head it’s all one big story. Thirdly the idea that the gospels and the Bible on a whole had to all agree word for word is most likely a newer dogma that the original compilers didn’t care about as much. Especially knowing that the vast majority of the church members couldn’t read to begin with, they could simply cherry pick the readings to make the contradiction less apparent, which is still how churches operate today
It's a mistake to say "Matthew never says the women enter the tomb". The angel tells the women "Come see the place he was lying". If he invited them to come somewhere, where else would they have gone but inside.
According to this appologist if you say "x can only happen on tuesday" and then say "x happened on wednesday" thats not a contradiction, youd have to say "x can only happen on NOT tuesday" 😂
So this issue is not that there are contradictions, but why do this POV contradictions exist. There is a fifth implicit contradiction also and it’s that in the source shared by Matt and Luke has no tomb and Paul mentions no Tomb, in fact he says Jesus was buried. And so, we need to dive into the motivations of the author. What we find is all the stories, including John are roughly based on the narrative in Mark, which beginning with Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem is a stack of fictional elements. 1. Mark’s passion narrative is fictional literature with some verisimilitude. 2. The motivation of Mark is to remove the authority of the Jerusalem followers of the way of the light and give it to those outside that initial group of followers. In this way he is superseding Paul’s effort to paint these followers as the anti-Christ because they do not believe in a ‘celestial’ Christ in the same way that he does. Matthew who closely aligns with Jewish sentiments refutes Mark in several places in his gospel, nonetheless, he is emotionally compelled by the popularity of Marks version to both include it and change it. His version does have the disciples go to Galilee to receive their visions, but it is there where a great commission is given. We should note that this appears to be something given to Peter in Acts 10, much later and not to the other disciples. In the epistles the great commission was given to Paul, which he shared with the 1st council which they agreed he could proselytize to the gentiles (but not to Jews). 3. Matthew’s goals are to show the women recognized the messengers of god, and they were not afraid to report back to the disciples. Moreover, Paul never reports the women are the first to see visions. The angles in this story are prop devices. These are added on top of Marks version in order to create a more appealing end to the story which would in turn make Mark’s version obsolete. 4. Matthew’s goal is to steer people away from Mark’s version and to reject his politicization and to make the movement also a Jewish movement. We have to be clear here however, Matthew has major biases against all three major sects of Judaism (none predominant) so basically his message is also to Jews that have not aligned themselves to a particular sect. The gospel of Luke is a Harmonization. However, Luke is a derivative Pauline christian who is trying to reconcile Mark’s view with the Jerusalem Jesus followers. The prose in Luke is magnificent however this is given that Luke is using much source material (today it looks like Q, Mark, Marcion’s gospel, and many others) and so Luke is not writing from scratch, he is reorganizing and narrating. 5. Luke’s goal is to move a Galilean movement to Jerusalem to Rome, so that he does not need the disciples moving back to Galilee. In addition, he does not want Matthew’s version to emphasize the Jewish qualities of Jesus and so he wants his Luke to be more enchanting than Matthew so that people will follow his version. The author of Luke claims he is gathering from others sources, which is truthful, but what is not true that everything is sourced based, as Marion points out, someone is adding stuff to the text, Luke appears to have added an entire birth narrative which most people in the Levant recognize as fiction at the time. 6. Luke further embellishes by adding angles and putting them into the tomb, but he extends the period of resurrection sightings to months, moreover it appears from Luke and Acts that he is combining stories from different sources. So he is crossing out Matthew’s Galilean adventure and adding in a separate source while at the same time further embellishing the text over that which Matthew has done. The gospel of John is unfortunately not understood well by modern Christians. As Origen pointed out, it’s not a factual account but a motivation of spirit. The story in John is meant to be motivational via the reading or listening to the text, a kind of harmonization of the individual with the movement touching the father through the son through the writer through the reader and listener. The text itself, from a literary perspective is fantastic, from a historical perspective is a dirty laundry list of repurposed mythology. 7. The gospel of John appears as a layered text, it has an early layer that follows Greek literary schemes popular during the period. As a consequence the author is trying to get people interested in Dionysus or other mystery cult figures to consider the Jesus cult as an alternative. There may be facts about Jesus painted into the text, the Author of the text tries to correct some of the more obvious flaws in Mark about the passion narrative. Whether these repairs are based on accounts or simply verisimilitudes is unclear. 8. The final pre-version version of John was intended for an audience who probably already read or was aware of the content of the other gospels. He may have been trying to compete with other ideas, such as the primitives with the secret sayings. This author is trying to say, we got all that, but our Jesus is a messiah for all, and he was raised in the flesh and we are going to get you to heaven no matter what happens. In the gospel of John the focus is not on what Jesus says but the transactional messiah as he proceeds to his final glorification (through the cross) and resurrection. It is an extreme embellishment of the original Mark. I don’t think John was intended to replace the other three gospels, but to reframe them as a stepping stone to what the author must have felt was an ultimate goal, which was to spiritually unify with the heavenly leaders. So the question is then were these contradictions intentional or mistakes in understanding. There can be no misunderstanding. Mark intended what he wrote and he wrote what he knew was not true, Paul had pointed out that the disciples and 500 had visions of Jesus and they believed, Mark is denying this. Matthew intended to correct Marks missteps. Luke intended to move a Jewish movement away from Galilee to Rome, in other words away from the Jewish movement toward Paul’s gentile. So the answer is the contradictions are intentional in the hope of silencing an earlier point of view.
I find it fascinating how the author of Timothy warns against fighting over words. It’s not beneficial. At the end of the day, Jesus lived, died and rose from the dead
I am sure there are contradictions in the Bible. Because Truth can be expressed in different ways. In poetical and prophetical and literal. forms of expression.
dan... A friend told me the Bible is "a book by Jews, about Jews, for Jews", this is lens I must use to understand scripture and that anything extending this to gentiles was a 1st century redeployment after Christianity was successful with the Jews. He points to Matthew 15:21-28... where Jesus called the Canaanite woman a dog. What is the scholarly view of this?
“So if I get to make up all of my own definitions, then I win!”
Every apologist ever.
"Well officer, I know I said that I was in Florida when the murder occurred, and I know the victim's doorbell cam showed me in Pennsylvania. But that's not a contradiction, because I said I was in Florida, but I never said I was NOT in Pennsylvania! So logically I must be innocent."
Schrodinger's reasonable doubt
Neither you nor Dan know what a logical contradiction is if you think that represents the logical/philosophical reasoning on contradictions
@@toughbiblepassages9082Dan knows what a contradiction is, he’s a bible scholar.
@@toughbiblepassages9082 Did you skip the part of the video where Dan state that contradiction has multiple uses and the creator is limiting it to a single meaning in order to reinforce their point?
@@toughbiblepassages9082, to be fair, McClellan has provided outlines of sections which he says contradict and to a lay person, it sounds like they very well might.
What is the missing piece which will allow all these passages to be entirely true simultaneously to each other?
Imagine seeing two angels and being so thoroughly unimpressed that when you come to write about it you forget to even mention one of them.
I mean, if you've seen one angel, you've seen 'em all.
Meh. Divine sightings and miracles were so common place people got tired of them.
Imagine being in a conspiracy to create a controlling religion, knowing those four stories, and putting them all in your tool to control everyone.
The eyewitness was like… there was another angel but his shinning brightness was weak AF.
@@wingedlion17 Assistant angel.
The apologist's argument violates common practice of speech when citing a number. A witness can state that he saw one man beating up the victim, but if the victim says two men beat him up, then the witness is clearly either lying or mistaken. He cannot keep his credibility by saying "I chose to focus on one man, because, reasons, my testimony is still reliable."
You’re glossing over certain factors in your hypothetical, questions that would need to be asked in a real world investigation.
1) Did the witness see the entire event from start to finish?
2) Did the witness have an unobstructed view?
That said, we don’t have eyewitness accounts. We have second or third hand accounts. Nor do we have a usable timeline to determine if different witnesses visited the tomb at different times.
The claim of the empty tomb needs strong evidence that the Bible doesn’t supply. While one might say, “The contradictions in (reported) testimony could POSSIBLY resolved”, they are not resolved by the data. Possible resolution of a contradiction at some future date is not a resolution of the contradiction.
Is any of this important? Yes. It’s all well and good to tell an apologist “You didn’t prove your claim.” But it’s a much stronger argument to outline what evidence they would need to satisfy their claim. It effectively shuts down the “but it’s still possible” argument by saying, “Sure it’s possible, and be sure to tell us when you have a shred of evidence.” Keep sending them back to the drawing board.
@roehlanobriones3179 When “God” provides a number, it means that number or any higher number 😂
That’s why 1 and 7 pairs of clean animals is not a contradiction in the Flood story. 😂
One day is as a thousand years, but who's counting?
But the Gospels are well known today to not resemble personal testimonies. They are literary creations based on amalgamations and conflations of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman literature. Matthew and Luke more directly being dependant on Mark and John remotely following them, yet distancing from them all the more. They are not eyewitness testimonies like Richard Bauckham used to argue a dozen years ago.
@MarcosElMalo2 And you, my dear, _dear_ man, are glossing over *_the existence of an entire angel!_*
I mean, do you not see how loopy you sound? Did he get a call and have to beat it rq? Was he like the other dude's minder, or the chauffeur of the flaming chariot?
I mean, at least come up with something credible like ‘the other angel was a _female_ and therefore insignificant in His sight’, jfc
Now I'm imagining Muriel the Always Forgotten. An angel so ordinary and bland they never gets mentioned even though they're always there. They stand in the background and don't make eye contact and just shuffle their feet. They were there when Gabriel brought Mary the good news, but hung back because they didn't want to get in the way.
Introvert angel!
I’m always amazed that people don’t make more of the fact that Matthew says there was a great earthquake and the women witnessed the stone being moved. It’s so incredibly different from the other accounts. Although I have seen apologists claim that it doesn’t technically say the women were around to witness the stone being moved (so that it aligns with the other texts) but that’s a very generous reading of what Matthew says
"Why'd you eat two slices of pie? Now there isn't enough for everyone else"
"Well you see, when you said I could have a slice it didn't explicitly exclude having more than one, as to have two slices I still had a slice"
"I want a divorce"
‘Mine was the bottom half!’ joke only worse. (I'm talking about his wide-eyed lie about the angels, not you.)
As soon as the apologist stated that a contradiction has to be an opposite, my BS meter pegged on the total BS end.
Being fair is where you say the boy believes that listed dictionary definitions are ranked in order of popularity fitness, like the Music Hit Chart, or an Olympic event or something.
@@PopulusVultDecipi Nope.
"the fact of something being the complete opposite of something else *or very different from something else, so that one of them must be wrong:*"
that second part is the thing apologists want to avoid because there being 1 angel does contradict there being 2 angels. more generally if B implies Not A then both A and B cannot both be true.
The empty tomb stories are among the most contradictory in the New Testament.
What's also important is that each of the Gospel authors either includes or excludes material found in other Gospels to make his text internally coherent. And they have to do this because the story is different every time. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples that he will go ahead of them to Galilee and the young man tells the women to go tell the disciples that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee. The author of the Gospel of Luke looks at this, thinks to himself "hmmm, do I want to copy this into my text, just like I'm copying other things word-for-word, or do I want to leave that out?" And he choses to leave it out. Why does he do that? Because in the "cinematic universe" of the Gospel of Luke, nobody goes to Galilee so it makes no sense for the disciples to be told to go there. Similarly, in Mark and Luke, the women go to the tomb to perform funerary rites and so they prepare spices to do that. But Matthew and John don't mention the spices. Why? Because in Matthew and John, funerary rites have already been performed by Joseph of Arimathea (plus Nicodemus in John). Each of the gospels (including non-canonical gospels) is a "soft reboot" that tells a different story.
“Soft reboot,” I like that
It's so funny to use modern analogies, because the textual interlinks that exists and we take for granted now never existed, it wasn't a thing, so they created something absolutely new that we now take for granted in our consumerized society.
There were one hundred thousand angels at the tomb, but the various authors only saw fit to mention the presence of either one or two entities, depending on which they felt actually contributed something worthwhile instead of just loafing about.
Where does it say there were one hundred thousand angels at the tomb?
If the Bible really had no contradictions, there wouldn't be all these contradictions for apologists to debunk.
Best comment ever !
“Apparent contradictions”. Apparently you have access to dictionaries.
Let’s pray that we don’t start banning dictionaries. The apologist shitheels would love to impose a Christian Nationalist Newspeak dictionary on us.
Exactly!
Alternatively, if all these things aren’t actually contradictions - somehow - then the Bible is confusing AF. So much for the obviousness of its truths 🤷♂️
@@81caspen Whoever said the truths of God are obvious?
Yea! Finally some Superman love!
I'm an atheist but genuinely learn a ton from you. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Ha, he should just as well said, "I'm going to perform an interpretive dance for you while talking about the Bible."
A fan dance, at that.
0:11 I should not have been sipping coffee at this moment. 😂
Yeah I don't know what this kid has against caffeine, but f me and my keyboard
Interestingly, @NeedGodnet's attempt to rationalize away contradictions between accounts of the number of angels in NT accounts is the precise method Mormons use to explain away the contradictions in Joseph Smith's First Vision accounts, in which only Jesus appears in some versions, and both Jesus and God the Father in others: "Just because Jesus was the only one mentioned doesn't mean God the Father wasn't there!"
"There are no contradictions in the bible, because I have redefined the meaning of 'contradiction' to let me say that"
So what's a contradiction
@@OnuigboChimaobi two things that can't both be true
I always like your shirts. Comics rock, and great channel.
God couldn’t even get the Synoptic writers to agree. They literally had one job 😂
Barney Stinson: "Suit Up!"
Apologists: "Gin Up!"
But Mark didn’t say the young man wasn’t really two angels 😂
Slaying apologist yes!
If every book agreed word for word there would be skeptics. Anything can be dogma. Not just the Bible interpretations
The Quran isn’t 💀😂 don’t try to wash away ur problems by generalizing
@@Bashar_hamaddeluded
If the only contradiction you'll accept is a formal logical contradiction, then you won't find any in the Bible because the Bible doesn't say anything precisely enough to apply formal logic to it.
But this is a weakness. The more room for weasling out of contradictions, the more room for differing interpretations, and the less you can rely on the Bible as a foundation.
You're missing the point just as badly as these apologists do. The point is not the factual historicity of the accounts. The point is what Jesus is reputed to have taught and what his life and death is supposed to have meant.
"If the only contradiction you'll accept is a formal logical contradiction, then you won't find any in the Bible because the Bible doesn't say anything precisely enough to apply formal logic to it."
Not really.
In places, sometimes many places, the bible explicitly says
1) God is love (it doesn't say God is like love, it directly says, God is love (that's in 1 John, I think))
2) Love is not jealous (everyone's favorite in Corinthians that is said at every wedding)
3) God is a jealous god (all over, especially in the OT)
By formal logic, all three of these cannot be true.
@@flowingafterglow629 You're demonstrating my point. In math and logic, you can only have a contradiction if the words are all defined the same way and used in the same precise way. You're treating statements like "God is love" as a mathematical equivalency, and then assuming that the word "love" means the same concept in other verses of other books by different authors. Words like "love" and "jealousy" are not defined precisely enough to have logical contradictions in them.
Now if you want to argue that there is a contradiction between the intent of the authors, then you could make a case. You would need to do what Dan does: actually inspect the original language and theology of the authors to determine what they were getting at.
But this can never be a logical contradiction, only a theological contradiction.
@@byrondickens > You're missing the point
Different people have different points to make. I'm not sure whose point you're referring to.
@@incredulouschordate "You're treating statements like "God is love" as a mathematical equivalency, and then assuming that the word "love" means the same concept in other verses of other books by different authors. "
It's the same word, why wouldn't you interpret it similarly?
If the answer to contradictions is, "Well, you can't assume the bible really means what it says," then this is a fools errand.
Can we do this with every verse in the bible? It doesn't matter what it says, we can just assert that it means what we want it to mean?
Dan, you may as well give up. It doesn't matter what the bible says, we can just believe it to mean whatever we want.
Thank you.
"Gin up" is a phrase im gunna need to use more often. Idk the etymology but I like it.
“Atheists and Muslims point out.” I have listened to Jews point out New Testament contradictions as well
Yes, but Jews do not compete with Christians to convert the greatest number of people.
Bang on as always! Good job, Dan.
The ( John?)story about Mary staying there crying, and the being gently reassured (?)
by an angel sounds like effective writing, tugging the heartstrings,
But how do you compete with (Mathew) An Angel doing a HALO Drop
and busting JC out of the place he is in ??
I love the way Need says "here."
Jesus boi Fan Fiction.
❤ Ya Dan
What people don't get is that all four are different mutiverse timelines. Take that you atheists!
Lol!!!
Matthew and Mark went just fine, but for John someone messed up with the Time-Turner and got spotted, hence there were two.
The Bible Comic Universe
No, wait it was quantum physics.The stone was simultaneously in place and not in place until Schrödinger's cat looked at it. All four Gospels mention a cat being there if you read them properly. 😜
Maybe the real Jesus was the cat we schrodingered along the way
As soon as the boulder is moved, it either does or does not break the vial of acid.
there are also maxims of communication that basically tell us that language doesn't (usually) work like maths. "an angel told me" when there were multiple angles is fine, but "i saw one angel" when there were two is weirdly formed communication.
It is what it is.
I tried to have a conversation with this guy online and it was absolutely pathetic. He never dressed anything that I said about a contradiction and I even explained to him what a contradiction was from Webster's Dictionary and gave great examples of contradictions in the Quran and he agreed and similar in the Bible and he disagreed I wonder why
There were always two angels but the gospel author decided to only mention one of them. Seriously? 😂 You couldn't make this stuff up. Oh wait .....
Matthew didn't notice the shorter angel was standing behind the taller one, but clearly Luke was looking from a different angle and did, obviously. 😂
@@digitaljanus 👍 it all seems so clear now. 😂
@@digitaljanus- well, that's not impossible, so...
@@digitaljanus And both decided not to focus on the fact that they were accompanying the women and instead just want you to know what the women experienced. Makes sense!
No, no....one disciple got on a rock and was able to see the second halo. 😂
Love how he poisons the well from the beginning "Any contradiction is only a contradiction if it happens at the same time and place because the eternal omnipresent unchanging God might have changed his mind between those two events."
"Contradictions in the bible. Are there any? No!"
🤣
Deuteronomy has god saying there should be no poor "among you", but Jesus says the poor are always with you. Whoops!
Apologetic gaslighting can be sliced and diced when you are open to all information sources, especially examining the contradictions directly. The apologist always always always speaks like the Wizard of Oz; "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Too late.
If the several different versions of a story you tell would be considered contradictory by the police or court, then that's a contradiction for me.
The existence of a 624 page book entitled "The Big Book of Bible Difficulties" that purports to apologetically explain away all the contradictions and other problems with the Bible, kind of speaks for itself. In addition to being incredibly ironic.
Why should they want to anoint a body that is already two days in his grave? That's the first problem!
It seems that these four accounts are coming from four different oral traditions. It does not seem like one of the authors was ready the others account
Well, the theory is Mark was first and Matthew and Luke have a copy. Starting from Mark, Matthew simplifies the story while Luke adds material. John writes for the stage..
Reign of the Supermen was good. Simpler times.
Even if we grant his absurdly narrow definition of what a "contradiction" is, it kinda seems like he hasn't read the Bible enough to even validate _that_ claim. Like, he clearly hasn't read the very verses he's citing here in any depth... but equally there are a whoooooooole bunch of others.
Like Jeremiah 32:17 saying nothing is too hard for God, but then there are multiple instances where YHWH fails to achieve an outcome - like Genesis 6-8 where he attempts to eliminate evil and explicitly fails because _according to YHWH_ that'd require killing Noah and his sons and their wives too and so just rolls with it, or Judges 1:19 where "the Lord was with Judah" but they still couldn't overcome chariots of iron, or 2 Kings 3 where Elisha prophecies that "This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord; he will also deliver Moab into your hands" but then one human sacrifice by the king of Moab and oh, no he can't, and the Israelites give up and leave...
...Or just any of the numerous numerical contradictions, where if you follow this creator's logic, I guess 1 Chronicles 21:12 is choosing to focus on just three of the seven years of famine that 2 Samuel 24:13 says God threatened? Or 2 Samuel 8:4 is choosing just to focus on 1,700 of the 7,000 horsemen 1 Chronicles 18:14 says David captured from from the king of Zobah? Or I guess 2 Chronicles 9:25 is choosing just to focus on a particular 10% of the 40,000 horse stalls 1 Kings 4:26 claims Solomon had since that's a full order of magnitude difference in reporting there? Maybe when 2 Smauel 24:9 says Joab told king David that the number of fighting men he had available to him was 800,000 in Israel and 500,000 in Judah, and yet 1 Chronicles 21:5 says Joab reported 1,100,000 in Israel and 470,000 in Judah, two different scribes were really just focused on different parts of Joab's report?
...Or the bit where Matthew and Luke both say Jesus's birth/Mary's pregnancy happened in the time of King Herod (Matthew 2:1, Like 1:5) but Luke also says that Jesus was born during a census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:1-2) which are two non-intersecting time periods. Definitely not a contradiction, they're just... focused... on two... different... time periods...
This creator is kind of relying on his audience to be as vague and unfamiliar with the Bible as they seem to be.
He probably doesn't know the text he follows all that well. I've witnessed that many times now. People defending aspects of their beliefs by misquoting, misremembering, or not understanding the text they use in their defense. For example, the guy in the video yesterday who defended the KJV by saying it was sticky and so the verses were easy to remember and then proceeded to misquote his example verse.
Netflix should make a series. One Body Problem.
Any chance one of his 5 is issues with the birth narratives? That's a favorite of mine.
Then again, they're not typically included in the softballs that apologists love to pitch to themselves, so probably not.
Mary could have been in labor for 10 years, that would cover a lot of the holes.
Since people were living to 900 years old, a 10 year birth becomes logical.
@@emptyhand777 Nah they'd stopped living to 900 years old a few millennia earlier. The _real_ solution is she actually got pregnant twice, ten years apart, and the author of Luke just decided not to focus on the part where they were different children or that there was any intervening time.
You know, like an inerrant recorder of fact would do!
@@Zahaqiel - now you got me thinking.
The real REAL solution is Mary was pregnant twice but neither kid was Jesus. The real Jesus was Joseph. That is why you never hear about Joseph after Jesus got "lost" in the Temple.
Herod got the 1st one, and Joseph and Mary sacrificed the 2nd one. Joseph became Jesus and started calling Mary "Mommy". Precisely why there are no Jesus awkward teenage Gospels.
Case closed.
@@emptyhand777 That'd make the events of the gospels approximately 30 years earlier than people think... sounds like the premise of a new Dan Brown biblical conspiracy novel...
I was mauled by a lion! How horrible! Where did it go? Well, all 9 lions that mauled me flew away. 9, I thought you said A lion? Well I did… and 8 more and a hippo.🙄
The entire Bible becomes far more realistic when you acknowledge it was written entirely by human beings, all of which had different levels of spirituality from very high down to absolutely none.
Of course human eye witness accounts contradict each other.
Human eye witness accounts still contradict each other to this day-nothing there has changed.
And just like in contemporary modern times, the subjective interpretation an eye witness comes up with is in no way validated by what they witnessed-even if their facts were accurate.
No true understanding of the Bible is even remotely possibly when starting from the entirely erroneous assumption/belief that it is the unified and literal "Word of God."
John 20 has Mary Magdalene in hysterics that the *tomb is open* and she goes to tell disciples the body has been taken out of the tomb (yet she never actually goes into the tomb to confirm this is the case) yet she had already met Jesus when coming back from the tomb the angel had *already opened* Matthew 28:8-9.
But Dan, they are only contradictory if the text says they are NOT contradictory.
Apologist: is dishonest
Rest of the world: Tuesday
If I correctly understood the reasoning of the apologue 1 = 2. Indeed the 2 appears if we pay attention to the details. Ah these pesky details.
This stuff is just ridiculous. Always the "maybe it was just that" argument
"Thou shalt not kill!" - Exodus
Followed by a huge list of people that are unalivable because of crimes in the next chapter(Leviticus).
Lets not forget the contradictions between the King James 2.0 version that most revisionists are using instead of the Catholic version.
But I mean... they're already deep in the doublethink already.
In philosophy, a contradiction is indeed when a proposition is claimed to be true and its negation is claimed to be true. Somene saying 1 angel, someone saying 2 angels and someone not mentioning angels at all aren't necessarily contradictory therefore. They are quite inconsistent though.
All comments are superb!
Beware anyone beginning a point by saying, 'Honestly....'.
And then there's the question of likelihood: what is the most LIKELY explanation for these apparent, glaring inconsistencies, if not explicit contradictions? Is it that there is some sublime pattern or template which, if employed, would line these tales up into a coherent story where all the elements fit neatly without flying in the face of any of the others?
Or is it more likely that the reports became garbled and confused, the details muddled, over the years and decades as they were passed mouth-to-ear or written down in different places and different times by different people?
I think good old William of Ockham suggests the more probable scenario, no?
The only kind of gin I like is the kind that goes with tonic water! 😉🍸
Elvis was at the tomb too. The "earthquake" was just him playing rock and roll (you can imagine how that would confuse people in the first century). Although I rather like Jailhouse Rock, the gospel writers were unimpressed and so left out the details of his performance. But it totally happened. No contradiction with the Bible.
Are you sure it wasn't Billy Joel? That's what I heard.
@@yadabubIt was both, obviously. No contradictions here.
To ague there were two but only one drew attention is fair enough as a possible reconstruction. The real issue is that he ignored every other discrepancy.
Whatever happened, it all happened quickly, emotions were high, and everyone was confused. Discrepancies in what people recalled and recounted is understandable. Thus to discount the discrepancies is to ignore the real life drama of the situation.
That's actually (more or less) a very common way of defining the term "contradiction" in academic philosophy. There are other related notions that are also problems, and showing something isn't a contradiction doesn't thereby show it's at all plausible. But it's pretty much standard practice for philosophers (of any faith or none) to use the term "contradiction" specifically as a claim that something both is and is not the case at the same time and in the same way. Not just an apologist's definition.
I feel like apologists often pretend the gospels are just four different "layers" of a single unified compilation that can be combined additively like music tracks. Speaking of which, has anyone ever done that to the gospels? I bet it's absurdist nonsense all the way through.
The Spiderman films have plots that contradict but I dont see people saying those aren't true stories!
I wouldn’t even say contradictions are the biggest problem for Christians. The bigger issue is how poorly written the book is, from beginning to end. If some all powerful, all knowing god has any part of it, his mental stability, clarity, and communication skills are certainly in doubt.
You’re assuming certain motives of God that aren’t justified. What evidence do we have to think God was concerned with clarity?
@@WhatYourPastorDidntTellYouActually, it does not matter what his motives are. The bottom line is he didn’t. He wasn’t capable or he would have. He’s incompetent.
@@hardwork8395 say you miss the point saying you missed the point
@@TLW412 perfect beings can’t produce imperfection.
@@hardwork8395did God write the Bible?
Dan debunking a debunk. 😂❤
How many birds were on Noah’s ark? Genesis 6:19-22 says “two of every kind of bird” while Genesis 7:2-5 says “seven pairs of every kind of bird.” Not a contradiction??
"Gin up." What is that, anyway?
A detective interviewing four different witnesses to a bank robbery and murder will find all four include different details. Does that mean only one is really telling the truth? Of course not. It means they remember this extremely emotion laden event from their own perspectives. One remembers two robbers. Another remembers one. Another remembers the color of their shoes. Another makes no mention of shoes. One remembers one of the robbers having a tattoo on his hand. Another remembers no tattoo. *In the end what matters is what they agree on not where their memories are different.*
If it were otherwise we would expect that they had gotten together to get their stories straight.
The several visit to the tomb accounts are like that. We don't need to "gin them up" or harmonize them. We can detect, however, what is common to them all: The tomb was empty. There were angels or men who had a message for them that Jesus had risen.
That difference in memory of the event is actually the best evidence for authenticity we will find in the Bible.
He's just lucky the Gospel of Peter didn't make the cut
1. An angel rolls away the stone from the tomb before sunrise (Matthew 28:2-4). The guards are seized with fear and eventually flee.
2. Women disciples visit the tomb and discover Christ missing (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1-4; Luke 24:1-3; John 20:1).
3. Mary Magdalene leaves to tell Peter and John (John 20:1-2).
4. Other women remain at the tomb; they see two angels who tell them of Christ's resurrection (Matthew 28:5-7; Mark 16:5-7; Luke 24:4-8).
5. Peter and John run to the tomb and then leave (Luke 24:12; John 20:3-10).
6. Christ's First Appearance: Mary Magdalene returns to the tomb; Christ appears to her (Mark 16:9-11; John 20:11-18).
7. Christ's Second Appearance: Jesus appears to the other women (Mary, mother of James, Salome, and Joanna) (Matthew 28:8-10).
8. At this time, the guards report the events to the religious leaders and are bribed to lie (Matthew 28:11-15).
9. Christ's Third Appearance: Jesus privately appears to Peter (1 Corinthians 15:5).
10. Christ's Fourth Appearance: Jesus appears to Cleopas and companion (Mark 16:12-13; Luke 24:13-32).
11. Christ's Fifth Appearance: Jesus appears to 10 apostles, with Thomas missing, in the Upper Room (Luke 24:36-43).
12. Christ's Sixth Appearance: Eight days after His appearance to the 10 apostles, Jesus appears to all 11 apostles, including Thomas (John 20:26-28).
13. Christ's Seventh Appearance: Jesus appears to 7 disciples by the Sea of Galilee and performs the miracle of the fish (John 21:1-14).
14. Christ's Eighth Appearance: Jesus appears to 500 on a mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:15-18; 1 Corinthians 15:6).
15. Christ's Ninth Appearance: Jesus appears to His half-brother James (1 Corinthians 15:7).
16. Christ's Tenth Appearance: In Jerusalem, Jesus appears again to His disciples (Acts 1:3-8).
17. Christ's Eleventh Appearance: Jesus ascends into Heaven while the disciples look on (Mark 16:19-20; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-12).
God Bless
Schrodinger's angel
I know we’re not supposed to comment on the creator’s speech and appearance, but I do love his speech and appearance. So cute! And the blue shirt, blue set, and the Perry the Platypus doll! Adorable! ❤
Yeah, it’s calculated because he’s on tik-tok to evangelize to children.
Way to go!
@@Jd-808 I see. Well, in creating propaganda, one needn’t come up with good arguments. Any argument will do when your audience is not thinking critically in the first place. Some children naturally have critical thinking skills, but many haven’t had the chance to learn such skills, yet, obviously.
@@Jd-808grooming for the Lord.
LOLOLOLOL! Xtian telephone game.
Still can't rap my head around how Dan survived getting a degree from BYU... and actually taught there without getting either brainwashed or booted out. LOL
What's the likelihood that someone will ignore telling about the 'earthquake' that happens?
The Sepulcher After Jesus’ Resurrection
1)In Matthew 28 the two Marys experienced an earthquake then noticed that the stone had been rolled away from the sepulcher. In Mark 16 they looked up to see the stone rolled away. This does not mean there wasn’t an earthquake in Mark 16 as the Marys simply looked up after experiencing the earthquake, which must have been stunning, and saw that the stone was rolled away by the angel
2)The angel was wearing white apparel and sat on the right side. Just because Matthew 28 doesn’t say he was sitting on the right side doesn’t mean he wasn’t. Mark 16 mentions him as a “young man”. If one knows the scriptures they see that angels are always in the masculine and do not have wings. This is why the two Marys supposed he was a young man
3)Matthew says an angel was sitting on the stone. Mark says an angel was sitting where Jesus was laid. Luke says there were two angels. Mystery solved. These are different accounts in all four gospels but some give more information than others on certain events. These are not contradictions but actually compliment each other
I was able to point out of different version of the story as a young kid and was given the it's not impossible theory. I didn't buy it then and I certainly don't buy it now.
"Hey guys. How many contradictions do you think are in are in a book that contains two seperate compilations of ancient texts, not only being all authored by different people at different times and languages, but many of the texts have multiple authors as well?
I'll give you a hint...
None 👁️👄👁️"
Why can't we just accept the story as true, while also accepting the writers from a century or two later didn't get all the details right? Other than the doctrinal reasons.
That’s a contradictory proposition
That apologist self-defining what a "contradiction" is so he can make his task easier in an attempt to justify the problems occurring in biblical texts is pathetic.
In any investigation to an event, if there are witnesses, they must be 1) interviewed ASAP, and 2) separated, i.e., interviewed separately, and 3) determine if the witnesses knew each other prior to the incident, and 4) if witnesses were interviewed much later after the incident, and they knew each other, but their stories don't comport with evidence, then their narratives are viewed with a greater level of suspicion, and they themselves may be considered as potential suspects.
If the eyewitness stories differ slightly, which is not uncommon, then when trying to determine what actually happened, if evidence corroborates their narrative, then their testimony is relevant.
For example, tire skid marks at an accident scene, or lack thereof, or a check of the part of the seat belt that passes thru the inertial lock to see if there are teeth marks on the belt, because that would indicate whether or not the occupants of the vehicle were using seat belts, or not.
There are many other factors for investigating incidents, and these are a few basics. Having said that, because witness statements are rarely identical, if the fundamental witness narratives are corroborated by the evidence, then their testimony is believable, and of course it's much easier [for the investigator] to determine what happened with confidence.
However, if the stories are identical, or nearly so, but do NOT seem plausible, given the evidence, then their statements are not viewed as credible, and possibly suspicious.
I'm not an apologist. But I will take an apologetic view for one way of looking at divine inspiration.
I think it's better that the stories don't match. If they matched, we could simply say they are copies of the first.
Since they don't match, it's obviously not about the details. It's about the overarching story.
So what do all four have in common? Would it really matter if there were three Beatles at the tomb? All but Ringo? And would it matter which song they sang?
"we could simply say they are copies of the first" the problem is while the some stories differ, the gospels themselves literally do what you say, they copy word for word in Greek from Mark. What matters is whether the stories are true and unfortunately there is no evidence they are true.
@@downshift4503 yes, as produced, they are different.
And no, when it comes to divine inspiration, the stories do not need to be true. The stories only need to be true if one's beliefs hinge on them being true.
Christianity has never been dependent on evidence. The dependence upon evidence is in direct proportion to how much one is trying to point to evidence.
There are Christians who believe the King James Version is divinely inspired to the point that it overrides older texts, including "original" text. If the very first text was presented, it wouldn't matter.
The way divine inspiration works, a prophet could arise today and the prophet's words could override everything that came before.
Why didn't the compilers just fix the contradictions? Did they just not realize there were any?
They might have thought that it did not matter, they knew the story did not match but let it to the reader to judge which one was true, they did not figure that some reader would insist that everything was true.
By the time the Bible was being compiled, each of the gospels had been circulating for some time already. The compilation, such as it was, was initially people putting together lists of the most accepted gospels out there (as well as Paul's letters). There wasn't a redactor (or group of them) making some effort to weave the disparate stories together as there was with the two Joseph stories, the two Flood stories, combining the different Abraham-Isaac-Jacob cycles, and tweaking things like the ages of the pre-Flood types to make sure that the people listed as being good weren't drowned. The Bible, especially the New Testament, is an anthology, not a single work.
These gospels circulated independently for decades before being arbitrarily put together in a group of books called the New Testament. Second point, myself and the vast majority of christian’s didn’t even notice these contradictions until they were pointed out by skeptics and scholars. Most christian’s don’t really read the gospels side by side in this way so in their head it’s all one big story.
Thirdly the idea that the gospels and the Bible on a whole had to all agree word for word is most likely a newer dogma that the original compilers didn’t care about as much. Especially knowing that the vast majority of the church members couldn’t read to begin with, they could simply cherry pick the readings to make the contradiction less apparent, which is still how churches operate today
It's a mistake to say "Matthew never says the women enter the tomb". The angel tells the women "Come see the place he was lying". If he invited them to come somewhere, where else would they have gone but inside.
Why does Joshua 10 remind me so much of the crucifixion?
No, it isn't it's just contradiction
No, it isn't
Yes, it is you just contradicted me
With christian logic, none of the religions have contradictions. In fact, the word contradictions does not exist.
According to this appologist if you say "x can only happen on tuesday" and then say "x happened on wednesday" thats not a contradiction, youd have to say "x can only happen on NOT tuesday" 😂
So this issue is not that there are contradictions, but why do this POV contradictions exist. There is a fifth implicit contradiction also and it’s that in the source shared by Matt and Luke has no tomb and Paul mentions no Tomb, in fact he says Jesus was buried.
And so, we need to dive into the motivations of the author. What we find is all the stories, including John are roughly based on the narrative in Mark, which beginning with Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem is a stack of fictional elements.
1. Mark’s passion narrative is fictional literature with some verisimilitude.
2. The motivation of Mark is to remove the authority of the Jerusalem followers of the way of the light and give it to those outside that initial group of followers. In this way he is superseding Paul’s effort to paint these followers as the anti-Christ because they do not believe in a ‘celestial’ Christ in the same way that he does.
Matthew who closely aligns with Jewish sentiments refutes Mark in several places in his gospel, nonetheless, he is emotionally compelled by the popularity of Marks version to both include it and change it. His version does have the disciples go to Galilee to receive their visions, but it is there where a great commission is given.
We should note that this appears to be something given to Peter in Acts 10, much later and not to the other disciples. In the epistles the great commission was given to Paul, which he shared with the 1st council which they agreed he could proselytize to the gentiles (but not to Jews).
3. Matthew’s goals are to show the women recognized the messengers of god, and they were not afraid to report back to the disciples. Moreover, Paul never reports the women are the first to see visions. The angles in this story are prop devices. These are added on top of Marks version in order to create a more appealing end to the story which would in turn make Mark’s version obsolete.
4. Matthew’s goal is to steer people away from Mark’s version and to reject his politicization and to make the movement also a Jewish movement. We have to be clear here however, Matthew has major biases against all three major sects of Judaism (none predominant) so basically his message is also to Jews that have not aligned themselves to a particular sect.
The gospel of Luke is a Harmonization. However, Luke is a derivative Pauline christian who is trying to reconcile Mark’s view with the Jerusalem Jesus followers. The prose in Luke is magnificent however this is given that Luke is using much source material (today it looks like Q, Mark, Marcion’s gospel, and many others) and so Luke is not writing from scratch, he is reorganizing and narrating.
5. Luke’s goal is to move a Galilean movement to Jerusalem to Rome, so that he does not need the disciples moving back to Galilee. In addition, he does not want Matthew’s version to emphasize the Jewish qualities of Jesus and so he wants his Luke to be more enchanting than Matthew so that people will follow his version. The author of Luke claims he is gathering from others sources, which is truthful, but what is not true that everything is sourced based, as Marion points out, someone is adding stuff to the text, Luke appears to have added an entire birth narrative which most people in the Levant recognize as fiction at the time.
6. Luke further embellishes by adding angles and putting them into the tomb, but he extends the period of resurrection sightings to months, moreover it appears from Luke and Acts that he is combining stories from different sources. So he is crossing out Matthew’s Galilean adventure and adding in a separate source while at the same time further embellishing the text over that which Matthew has done.
The gospel of John is unfortunately not understood well by modern Christians. As Origen pointed out, it’s not a factual account but a motivation of spirit. The story in John is meant to be motivational via the reading or listening to the text, a kind of harmonization of the individual with the movement touching the father through the son through the writer through the reader and listener. The text itself, from a literary perspective is fantastic, from a historical perspective is a dirty laundry list of repurposed mythology.
7. The gospel of John appears as a layered text, it has an early layer that follows Greek literary schemes popular during the period. As a consequence the author is trying to get people interested in Dionysus or other mystery cult figures to consider the Jesus cult as an alternative. There may be facts about Jesus painted into the text, the Author of the text tries to correct some of the more obvious flaws in Mark about the passion narrative. Whether these repairs are based on accounts or simply verisimilitudes is unclear.
8. The final pre-version version of John was intended for an audience who probably already read or was aware of the content of the other gospels. He may have been trying to compete with other ideas, such as the primitives with the secret sayings. This author is trying to say, we got all that, but our Jesus is a messiah for all, and he was raised in the flesh and we are going to get you to heaven no matter what happens. In the gospel of John the focus is not on what Jesus says but the transactional messiah as he proceeds to his final glorification (through the cross) and resurrection. It is an extreme embellishment of the original Mark. I don’t think John was intended to replace the other three gospels, but to reframe them as a stepping stone to what the author must have felt was an ultimate goal, which was to spiritually unify with the heavenly leaders.
So the question is then were these contradictions intentional or mistakes in understanding.
There can be no misunderstanding. Mark intended what he wrote and he wrote what he knew was not true, Paul had pointed out that the disciples and 500 had visions of Jesus and they believed, Mark is denying this. Matthew intended to correct Marks missteps. Luke intended to move a Jewish movement away from Galilee to Rome, in other words away from the Jewish movement toward Paul’s gentile.
So the answer is the contradictions are intentional in the hope of silencing an earlier point of view.
Thank you great scholar.
Is there a disapproving tut tut emoji
Jeez. They should just admit the book isn't perfect and focus on the fact that the message is the same in all four gospels. 🙄
I find it fascinating how the author of Timothy warns against fighting over words. It’s not beneficial. At the end of the day, Jesus lived, died and rose from the dead
I am sure there are contradictions in the Bible. Because Truth can be expressed in different ways. In poetical and prophetical and literal. forms of expression.
dan... A friend told me the Bible is "a book by Jews, about Jews, for Jews", this is lens I must use to understand scripture and that anything extending this to gentiles was a 1st century redeployment after Christianity was successful with the Jews. He points to Matthew 15:21-28... where Jesus called the Canaanite woman a dog. What is the scholarly view of this?
Someday the Bible will be interpreted in a non-contradictory manner...and that'll be a good day.
Oooooo, He used the D word at the beginning
Dude actually said there are no contradictions in the bible! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!
Is it really possible that the creator/influencer/apologist believes what he is saying??
Well, the guy can't be lying because he's probably never read the Bible himself, he's just repeating what someone else told him. 🤪