Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? The Problem of Contradictions

he's a robust New Testament scholar and the author of numerous popular level works six New York Times bestsellers and the one that really got him on the map that we were talking about just in the past hour was misquoting Jesus we have that book along with Jesus interrupted for sale at the book table and especially I think it's chapter 2 where you really go at it with the difficulties and so I'm sure some of those will come forward here and so this is something new that we've done here at defenders inviting someone who is not a Christian to share their analysis of what we take as sacred scripture and so he's going to be sharing with us the concerns he has and maybe he might light some fireworks with some of the things other speakers have said already so please join me in welcoming dr. Bart Ehrman well thank you very much it's a real pleasure to be with you I actually really appreciate being invited because obviously my views are different from most of yours I mean the views of most of you they're probably also different from most of yours individually my views but and so I appreciate that because I think it shows the kind of an openness to wanting wanting to learn and I have zero interest in converting or D converting anybody you are welcome I just I I hope we can all keep being thinking human beings whatever our personal views happen to be I was trying to think the last time I spoke at an apologetics conference and I think it was probably in 1976 this is not this is not my typical venue so so my my the question I'm dealing with is are the are the Gospels historically reliable the problem of contradictions right so I want to start out by giving some autobiography a little bit about myself in terms of this question I was raised in a Christian household it wasn't an evangelical household it was Episcopalian but I had a fairly traditional view of the Bible growing up that do the Bible's inspired and that what it says is true and that you know I never had any reason to suspect that there was nothing false in the Bible growing up and so I I didn't grow up in a secular household or anything household when I was in high school I I moved away from the Episcopal tradition and became a conservative evangelical I had a born-again experience and committed my life to Christ as my Lord and Savior and became quite fervent then in studying the Bible which I had never done as an Episcopalian Episcopalians typically don't study the Bible that much and but I got into Bible study and I was being directed by somebody who had been a graduate of Moody Bible Institute who believes that the Bible is inerrant and so I just assumed that that was the Christian view and so I went to I went to Moody Bible Institute and that was you know and I I was completely committed to the idea that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God without mistake including of course no contradictions in the Gospels when I went to graduate school at Princeton Theological Seminary I had taken Greek in college and I then I took Hebrew and so I was reading the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek and for it's very long story because it took a long time but I started noticing that there were problems that were serious problems I had known about problems at Moody contradiction I could reconcile them or I could explain them away and and I've finally got to a point where I just started noticing differences that I thought yeah I could explain that away but like the explanation is so complicated that it's like it doesn't make sense to explain what you could explain it away but really I mean is this so I got to a point where I just started thinking you know what do I want what do I want to think about this about these and I didn't it took me a long time before I made any commitment to it but what I really decided was that in the in what I was seeing as how do I put this I was seeing as difficulties that I didn't want to resolve these difficulties simply on the basis of what I believed I actually wanted to use my head and figure it out so there are two approaches to to the Bible you can assume it's a the Gospels you can you can simply assume that there are no contradictions you can come to the task without sitting look the Bible's the Word of God God gives this word it cannot have mistakes in it so there cannot be contradictions you can that was my approach as in heaven Jellicle at Moody Bible Institute and if you come at it with that assumption you will not find mistakes because they're capi mistakes so there can't be mistakes there aren't mistakes okay so it's very simple the other way is just to see if there are mistakes and then figure out what to do about it okay you see it's just two different approaches and I finally decide look I'm just gonna use my head and I know I knew the arguments look you're just a human you know how can you use human intelligence to criticize the Word of God it's like it's you against god you're a peon what do you know you don't know anything and so so I understood that but I thought God had given me an intelligence he'd give me a brain and I thought you know if I if I decide that there are problems well then there you know there were problems and I just I'll just need to deal with it then I figure out what what I think but I am going to use my intelligence you know not that I think I'm smart I think God I was nothing like that yeah I just but you know maybe the people who taught me their mistakes maybe they're the ones who wrong I'd say God is wrong I'm saying maybe they were wrong see what I mean okay so I started finding things I started finding when I allowed that there could be actual contradictions I started finding them and Wow there are a lot more of these than I thought what do I do about these I ended up deciding that the Bible does have mistakes that the Gospels do have contradictions in them some of these contradictions cannot plausibly be reconciled and that it affects the historical reliability of the accounts as I'll explain in a minute my suggestion to you is that you have an open mind very simple just have an open mind be willing to change your views if you're not willing to change your views then you're not thinking I'm not saying you have to change your views of course you don't have to change your views you might think well you know you might look into it inside but yep I was right all along isn't that great huh I'm always right yeah yeah but you don't have to change it but you should you really should genuinely be open to change you genuinely not just saying you are but really being genuinely open to change of you that's that's my suggestion so the terms of the discussion contradiction what do I mean by contradiction I mean two accounts when you've got two or more accounts that are different from each other in ways that cannot be reconciled I'm not talking about just differences yes well you know Matthew tells the story about the wise man but Luke tells the stories about the Shepherd's and so they're different oh yeah they're different but that's not contradiction right a contradiction is when you've got like two things that can't both be true at the same time okay that's what I mean by a contradiction and that's what I'm talking about here I'm not talking about different emphases or talking about different stories or reporting different sayings of Jesus or even dif portrayals of Jesus no I'm talking about contradictions okay to things that cannot be reckoned we be reconciled historically reliable what do I mean by historically reliable if I read a newspaper article or a something on line or I read a book that's describing something that happened in the past and if in fact what describes is not the way it happened in the past then it's not historically reliable if you read a description of something that happened in past that is not how it happened it's not reliable if I tell you that yesterday I walked to Chicago from Chapel Hill that is incorrect that is not how you say well yeah but you got here so it's not really a no it's incorrect I did not walk here I flew here okay so okay see what so if it doesn't say it like it really was it's not accurate it might be accurate in other ways okay so that's why I meant so the relationship between the two if you have two contradictory accounts of the same event if they're actually contradictory both accounts could not be accurate to accounts the same event if they're contradictory they both can't be accurate one of them could be accurate or the other could be accurate or neither could be accurate those are the three options but the option is not that they're both accurate okay with me simple logic Aristotelian logic in fact has been around since the 4th century BCE so what everyone should happily concede in my opinion what everyone should happily concede in theory just about anything can be reconciled if you work hard enough at it I walked to Chicago yesterday well I was on the plane and I walked up and down the aisle so technically speaking I did walk to Chicago okay but that isn't how we talk right that isn't we don't talk that way so in theory you could reckon stand you can reconcile anything in the Bible you want there is nothing you cannot reconcile I mean because when I when I was into angelical I reconciled everything and so I understand that so in theory you can but you talk about plausibility as well right we're using our heads now we're not just trying to be kind of straight literalists who are bound to determine to reconcile everything second contradictions could if you have contradictions there of course there's a range of reasons you could have contradictions okay so for example you might have two sources of information you've got some account of the Second World War and one source says one thing that contradicts was another source one book says one thing that contradicts what another book says it could be because they've heard this from different sources of information and one of the sources of information was just wrong okay so it could be different sources of information with the gospel since like that the gospel authors had different sources of information they heard different stories they saw different things they read different things and they may have difference that that might be why you'd get some contradictions or for example you might have an author as a different point of view and maybe they changed something like they're reading something they disagree that they change it and so that would create a contradiction so just because of a different point of view you know that's not a bad thing to have a different point of view but it could create a contradiction or as mike has written his book if you all know about there could be different right we have ancient writing practices of course in antiquity they didn't didn't write biographies like people do today and so of course you have to understand how people in the ancient world wrote biographies i completely agree with mike on this and we have to study ancient authors to see how they recounted both biographical and historical information we have to read Plutarch and Suetonius and Tacitus I mean I spend my life reading these people and so this is we absolutely have to do that my point though is that even though there are reasons for contradictions to occur that doesn't mean that they're not contradictions they are still contradictions you just know why they happened okay so and I'm perfectly on board with knowing why they happened perfectly on board I think there's completely acceptable reasons why these things happen but I think they did happen so let me tell you some things that I will not concede unless you take me into the torture chamber I am NOT going to concede any of this I'm not going to concede that a contradiction is not a contradiction if it's a contradiction it's a contradiction so I'm also going to not concede that if you've got two contradictory accounts I'm not gonna concede that they can both be accurate they cannot both be accurate I'm sorry if they contradict each other they're not one of them is not accurate or both of them are not accurate it's just okay I'm not gonna concede that one and I'm not going to concede that we should stick to our guns no matter what whatever you've been brought up to think whatever you've been taught whether we should not stick to our guns because we just can't give it up when it comes to anything involving the intellect you can give it up if logic reason truth takes you in a different direction you should follow the truth don't necessarily follow what you've always thought the other speakers and I are surely going to agree it on all of this so I'm not but I want to emphasize it because it's gonna get tricky here in a minute let me urge you to thing one is to see for yourself and not accept somebody else's view you've got to make your decision just because you know a smart person who thinks something doesn't mean you have to think it to use your head figure it out and when it comes to the Gospels what I suggest is that you do a horizontal reading when so people read the Gospels in variety of ways most people of course don't read the Gospels but those who do those who do read the Gospels very well okay several ways some of my students so you know I teach in Chapel Hill it's the it's in the Bible Belt and what a lot of my students do when they read the Gospels this is what I call the Ouija board approach which is like it's a prophecy probably it's like a fortune-telling thing where you kind of open it up and you stick your finger down on a verse and that's like your verse for the day you know and so that you read it like that okay that's why you can read the Bible that way if you want to but you're not really going to understand the Bible if you read it that way so another way the way most people read it the Bible is they probably don't read too like a little bit at a time like they'll they'll read a passage here or a passage there and I think probably most people kind of do it like that but if you really want to know what the Gospel of Mark is saying it's not that helpful to read a passage for Mark then they pass it from Paul and have passage to John because you're reading you are reading things that are on the Bible but you if you want to know what Mark has to say about something it's better you know to read mark can see what Mark has to say because it might it might be different in some ways I'm not saying contradictive well it might be a different emphasis than some other book and so if you want to see what Mark is something you read mark so when people want to do that they typically do a vertical reading which is the way we read books you start at the top of the page you go to the bottom of the page then you go to the next page you go from the top to the bottom it's vertical top to bottom you go from the beginning the book to the end of the book and that's how you read books yes okay so should definitely read the got Bible that way should definitely read the Gospels that way it's the the way to read that's how we read but there's another way to read that most of us don't read which is what I call a horizontal reading and this has its own value it's not the only way it's not the best way to read the Bible it's one way to read the Bible and if you want to see contradictions this is the way to read the Bible you read a passage in one of the Gospels and put it next to a passage in another gospel in the next to a passage in the other guys and read across the accounts horizontally read this one then this one then this one and compare them and see if they line up you don't need an expert to guide you in this just do it read them horizontally and decide is this consistent or not simple hardly anybody doesn't so that's what I urge you to do nothing to be afraid of just do it let me give you a very simple example to begin with of what happens when you do a horizontal reading in the Gospel of Mark and in the Gospel of Matthew you have an account of this synagogue leader named Jairus who comes up to Jesus in order to help him out in a personal situation I put mark here first because most scholars could see that mark was the first gospel to be written for my for this it doesn't matter to me whether you agree with it we will not matter to the example at all but most people think mark was the first and that Matthew had mark as one of his sources so whether you think that or not doesn't really matter for this but that's why I put mark first in mark's account gyruss comes up to Jesus and he says my daughter is very sick could you come heal her so I'm putting these verses here so you can write these down look it up yourself reading horizontally my daughter's sick could you come in he'll her and Jesus tells him not to fear he's going to so he starts to go but before he can get to gyruss his house a woman comes up who has a been bleeding for 12 years she's had a hemorrhage and she touches his cloak so she can be healed and she's healed he feels the power go out and he talks with her and it delays him and while he's dealing with this woman somebody comes from gyruss his house and says it's too late she died and Jesus says don't don't fear Jesus goes any racism from the dead beautiful story in in mark chapter 5 Matthew has the same story in Matthew's account gyrus comes to Jesus and he says my daughter has died can you raise her from the dead the daughter is dead when gyruss comes in mark the girl was not dead when gyruss came i'm calling this a simple example because like you might think who cares right the point is he raised to go over the dad right yeah okay that is the boy that's one but my but but here the point I'm making is how did it actually happen if Mark is right that she wasn't dead yet then Matthew cannot be right that she was dead now you can think of lots of reasons for Matthew I I assume Matthew had mark in it that he changed it first for some reason or you could say say they'll around maybe Matthews first in mark change somebody changed the story and you can think of reasons for why somebody would change the story you know maybe Matthew wanted a shorter story maybe Matthew thought it'd be more dramatic maybe there are all sorts of and this is the kind of thing that ancient historians did all the time they change their sources but my point is they both can't be historically accurate okay now this is not going to like lead you to lose your faith she was dead or not right this is not but my point is that if there's a contradiction in a small thing if one of these accounts is wrong in a small thing how do you know they're not wrong in bigger things okay let me give you some other kinds of examples that are a little more substantive so I'm gonna I'm gonna just I'm just picking look I've got a few examples and you can have you know we could we could spend months talking about the example I'm gonna give you a couple a couple of these are famous people have explanations for these things of course you know everybody's got an explanation for something but here's a question both Matthew and Luke have a genealogy of Jesus okay they both will count who's his father grandfather great-grandfather they do a genealogy they're different in lots of ways these genealogies are very different lots of ways really interesting ways that I'm not gonna go into a lot of the differences are not necessarily contradictions but here's a question in these genealogies who is Joseph's father grandfather and great-grandfather okay simple question read them horizontally and see so Matthew chapter 1 verses 2 through 16 Jose his father's somebody named Jacob his grandfather is somebody named Nathan his great-grandfather's named Eliezer his great-great grandfather is Elias and it goes all the way back matthew's genealogy goes all the way back to Abraham the father of the Jews okay so just read the text that's what it says Luke's genealogy chapter 3 Joe's his father somebody named he lie his grandfather's may that that looks like Nathan but it's a different word may that great-grandfather is somebody named Levi great-great-grandfather somebody named Mel Kai the genealogies are different all the way from Joseph to David now there are lots of explanations for this that people have had over the years when I was when I was committed to there being no mistakes in the New Testament I Robert said earlier that Matthews account seems to be Joseph's account and Luke's account seems to be Mary's account and so one of the ways people reconcile this is by saying that that one is the genealogy of Joseph and the others of the G of Joseph and the other two genealogy of Mary okay so then that's why they're different because once Mary when Joseph okay to two parents two genealogies which makes sense until you read the text the text says it's Joseph's genealogy in both of them this is Joseph's genealogy well maybe Joseph's like had a stepfather and the stepfather was named and he had a real father and so you trace it back like that like you come up with these explanations and if you start digging deep into the text none of them works they're two different genealogies because in my opinion that I might I am certain they contradict each other my opinion about why there's a contradiction is because I think that to two different sources of information contrary to what people say ancient Jews did not keep their genealogies people tell you this all the time it's absolutely not true Jews did not so some Jew living in the year you know 29 ad he didn't know who his great-great grandfather was any more than you do they didn't do that but people think because they were reading the Bible you got all these genealogies this is what Jews are doing the whole day no they absolutely did not do that so they're twos they have no sources of information they wanted to trace Jesus line back to David because he's the son of David well what if you don't know whose great-great-great-great grandfather is well you got to make something up and so they came up with something whether you agree that expedition or not it's a contradiction okay here's an interesting one did Joseph Mary and Jesus flee to Egypt after Jesus birth or did they returned to Nazareth this one is trickier all right so here's what happens in Matthew again just read it yourself carefully you've got to read these things carefully you can't just breeze over them you gotta read them word-for-word and think about what you're reading here's what happens I'm gonna summarize it for you just look it up and you'll see Jesus is born in Bethlehem chapter 1 of Matthew the wise men come following a star to worship Him chapter 2 they come to Jerusalem and Herod makes inquiries that Herod learns that these wise men are trying to come to worship the king of the Jews okay so Herod finds out that the King of the Jews has been born and this is not good news for Herod because he's the King of the Jews there's some other King imagism born you know he's like his positions in trouble here and so Herod learns about the birth of the king of the Jews he sends out troops in order to kill the child because he wants to get rid of the competition so he sends the troops to Bethlehem - can they kill they kill all the baby boys up to two years old in but Joseph and Joseph learns in a dream that this is going to be happening and so he takes the family and they flee to Egypt now the distance from from Bethlehem to say Cairo is about 250 miles okay I've just put that on here so you realize they're walking right they're not they're not flying they are walking to Chicago they're walking to Cairo and so they so what do you do 20 miles a day I don't know what you do but I mean it's like you know so it takes a while to get there and they they actually stay in Egypt until Herod dies so we don't know how long that is you know whether we're talking about I mean I assume it's more than a couple days because otherwise I'm going to just go hide out for a cup of it but it's like you know they're down there for a while and then when they the hair dyes they come back and they don't settle back in Bethlehem because Herod's son are coleus is the king now and our class is worse than his dad was and say we can't settle here we've got to go north and so they go up north to galilee they go way up north into galilee which is another like four or five day journey about foot okay and then they settle nazareth okay fine that's that's the story Matthew familiar story Luke also familiar story but it's very different in Luke Joseph and Mary in the way Luke happens in Luke is Joseph and Mary are from Nazareth and they they travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register because there's a worldwide census Caesar Augustus is the Emperor there's a worldwide census everybody has to register for this tax and so Joseph actually is from the line of King David and so David is from Bethlehem and so he goes to Bethlehem and to register for this tax and and Mary happens to be pregnant at the time and so they go there and she goes into labor there and Beth Lemon and she and Jesus is born then in Bethlehem and the shepherds come and they they worship Him that night on the eighth day they're still Bethlem is very close to Jerusalem if you've ever been there it's you so you can just walk to Jerusalem if you've got an afternoon so the eighth day they he circumcised which the law demands that a Jewish boy has to be circumcised on the eighth day then Joseph and Mary performed the rites of purification in the temple according to the law so this is a this is referring to something that's in Leviticus chapter 12 a woman so in in the Old Testament in the Old Testament when a woman gives birth she ceremonially impure it doesn't mean she's sinful or anything like that but it says there are certain things that make you richly impure like if you touch a corpse you've got to be purified of it if you if a woman has her period she has to be purified of it if a man has a has a emission of semen he has to be purified they're just these kind of rules that you've got to be purified for these things and the rule for purification for giving birth is in Leviticus 12 it happens 33 days after the circumcision so she goes to the temple and she performs the sacrifice and then she's purified and then and then that's fine it just means she can now go to the temple and she can worship and and so she's had the ritual purification so that happens 33 days so that's so the eighth day plus so this is 41 days after Jesus birth and then we're told that when they finished they returned to Nazareth verse 39 okay good the problem is according to Matthew they don't do that according to Matthew they go to Egypt 250 miles away and they stay in Egypt and they wait till Herod and then they come back so if Matthew's right that they fled to Egypt how can Luke be right they went back to Nazareth 41 days later ah okay well you can work hard you can reconcile it you can reconcile anything you want but the reality is these two seem to be at odds with each other okay let me take a couple from the end of the gospel so from the end of the Gospels here's one that's kind of interesting that you can easily come up with an explanation for but it's a contradiction so Jesus is is crucified and in Mark's Gospel you have this amazing scene where Jesus dies and his last words are my God my God why have you forsaken me Eloise Eloise lama sabachthani my God my God why have you forsaken me and he dies it's like he's I think he's gently asking where are you he dies and the curtain in the temple rips in half is the next thing that happens this the Centurion says truly this man was the son of God it is one of the most amazing scenes in the Gospel of Mark because on one hand it seems like Jesus isn't doubt but whether you think's or not it's not that important but the reader is not in doubt the curtain in the temple was the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple God dwelt in the Holy of Holies and nobody could go into the Holy of Holies except one man the high priest once a year on the Day of Atonement could go in the presence of God to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people but normal people had no access to God where he dwelled Jesus dies and the curtain is ripped in half now everyone has access through the death of Jesus it is it's a terrific terrific passage because it's the death of Jesus that gives people access to God for for Mark's Gospel so that's in Mark Luke has the crucifixion of course Jesus is crucified and he has the ripping of the curtain in the temple but Luke is explicit that the curtain rips in half before Jesus dies read it yourself now you know of course you reconcile they're actually you two curtains or actually first time we ripped half way the other time the other half you know or you know but in fact it says you ripped from top to bottom in mark so it couldn't be twice so let's just ripped in different part I don't know it it's different he said well who cares well I think Luke cared because Luke is trying to say something different from what Mark was saying yeah you know and it would take probably 20 minutes so explain what Luke is trying to do with this but the point is he's changed it Luke had Martin just as Matthew had Mark as one of the so did Luke Luke also changed some things and there are reasons for why you change it yes there are reasons but it creates a contradiction which means they both are not historically accurate because it didn't I mean it's one or the other or neither okay let me give you another example did the disciples see the resurrected Jesus in Galilee or did they stay in Jerusalem this this relates to one of the issues that Rob was talking about earlier but it's not that it's not the same issue it's a different issue so in both Matthew and Luke Jesus is raised from the dead and he appears to his disciples okay in Matthew Luke and and John it doesn't happen in mark actually Mark's Gospel prade looks like it ends with when them finding the empty tomb but it doesn't matter from our purposes here my purposes here are comparing Matthew and Luke and I think there's a contradiction here that cannot be solved where did the disciples see the resurrected Jesus in Matthew it's very simple in Matthew Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and tells her to go tell the disciples to go to Galilee and meet him there Galilee so if you if you go from say this is taking place in Jerusalem so from Jerusalem to Capernaum is about 80 miles okay so say about for a four day walk okay all right so tell us Mary go tell the disciples go to Galilee and they go and they see Jesus there and he gives them the Great Commission and then that's it all right so Jesus meets the disciples in Galilee and that's the only place he meets the disciples Matthew okay so just make note of it and then think about Luke for a second where did the disciples see the resurrected Jesus in Luke 24 this is a little more complicated story it's a longer story the women go to the tomb and they learn from the two men there that Jesus has been raised from the dead he's been raised and they go to tell the disciples and the disciples don't believe them those crazy women they're always dreaming up stuff disciples don't believe the women that same day literally it says that same day so this is the day Jesus was raised from the door that yeah it's the third day after his death the same day that they discovered the tomb the same day Jesus appears to two followers on the road to Emmaus the famous story of the road to Emmaus happens the same day the the two at that same hour we're told literally the same hour of that day the do go and tell the disciples that they've seen the other disciples they've seen Jesus alive laughter so this is the day of his resurrection okay same day same hour while they're talking about it Jesus appears to them this is in Jerusalem Jesus appears to them and Jesus tells them to stay in Jerusalem do not leave do not leave Jerusalem they do so and they're still in Jerusalem at the end of the gospel the very last verse of the gospel they are still in Jerusalem in the book of Acts written by the same author Luke the disciples are still with Jesus for forty days in Jerusalem he appears to them for forty days proving to them that he's been raised from the dead and then he ascends to heaven right outside of Jerusalem he ascends to heaven they remain in Jerusalem until later chapters later they get driven out of Jerusalem by the by the persecution that arises okay in Matthew's Gospel they leave Jerusalem right away to go to Galla that's where they meet Jesus and in Luke they do not leave Jerusalem ever until till long after his ascension so which is it you can't say well they stayed in Jerusalem then they they left for a few days and came back no they're told to stay and they stay or do they go to Galilee there are there are very good reasons for this contradiction you can think of there are good reasons for I mean there were reasons that Matthew wanted to say one thing and Luke wanted to say another thing well my point is they say opposite things so they both cannot be historically reliable okay you can do this a hundred times in the Gospels and at a point you just start saying you know maybe there are some differences that can't be reconciled and if you can't reconcile the differences they can't be all historically reliable and maybe that doesn't matter to you which is fine if it doesn't matter to you it's fine but you shouldn't say then that every word in he is accurate because it's not there are other kinds of contradictions besides contradictions between Gospels for example there are contradictions with known facts of history this it will be much harder to convince you of this and so I'm not basing my argument on this and so if you don't buy this it's fine you still got to read the Gospels horizontally but there are known facts of history that that in fact the Gospels contradict take for example this census so according to Luke chapter 2 I mentioned it earlier Caesar Augustus is the is the Roman Emperor and we're told that under Caesar Augustus there was a census and the entire world had the register for the census well that's obviously not true I mean people in China are not really who going to some to register for some census that's taking place in the Roman Empire's let's so okay if we just say it means the entire Roman Empire there was no worldwide it census under Caesar Augustus Caesar Augustus his reign is really well documented there was never a census throughout the Roman Empire that everybody had to follow let alone a census where everybody registered for the census by going to their ancestral home Joseph goes to Bethlehem because David is his ancestor and David came from Bethlehem this is so problematic David lived a thousand years earlier you mean people are going where their ancestors lived a thousand years ago so all right suppose you know the Democrats take over the Senate as well as Congress at the next election and they take the presidency and they dump a bunch more taxes on us and so they think okay we needed some mechanism to make people pay that okay everybody has to go to where their ancestors came from a thousand years ago to register for this tax where are you going to go a thousand years ago and say well okay but maybe Jose is like grew up in that slam so no that's not life says it says the reason he goes to Bethlehem is because he comes from the house of David so he's registering where his ancestor came from well okay where did David's astir Chester come from a thousand years before that did Romans say okay figure out a thousand years ago and then go there really ah so apart from that there was no census of any kind throughout the Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus period alright so they're contradictions no facts of history and there are there issues of just kind of general historical plausibility in the Gospels a famous example is Matthew 27 when Jesus is crucified and these the graves are opened up and these these people rise from the dead and they start walking around in Jerusalem which is often seen as one of the weirder passages in the New Testament and kind of hard to figure out and really I mean so I mean they're these are like zombie figures or something presumably they die again and it's like what that means so much of course I mean there there are a lot of even evangelicals who will say that yeah okay that's that's like it's not really literal okay that's I'm I am so pleased with that I'm happy with it it's fine it's not literal if you don't think that's literal why do you think other passages are literal well that one defies probability okay how about walking on the water does that defy probability no no no you can do that you can do that let me see you do that what Jesus could do that yeah of course cuz God empowered him but God could empower these people to rise from the dead and walk around Jerusalem so if you're going to say this one didn't happen why do you say that one did happen on what grounds do you say that it's easier just to say that the Gospels are filled with information some of which is historically accurate of course a lot of its historically accurate and it has information that's not historically accurate sometimes seem in contradictions when you read horizontally sometimes seen by contradicting facts we know from history otherwise and sometimes just going against our broad common sense I'm I'm urgent we're all aging you be thinking people and use your brains do you really want to think this and if the evidence is against you why do you want to think it all right let me conclude with a residual questions I sometimes am told that since I'm a non-believer I am required to find contradictions in the Bible that is absolutely true the Bible could be inerrant I would still be a non-believer I'm a non-believer for none of these reasons this has nothing to do with why I don't believe contradiction nothing to do with why I don't believe it's a completely different story why I'm not a Christian and I think there are inerrant books in the world I think there are books that don't have mistakes in them of course there are probably you know we used to get phone books I mean theoretically they could be without mistakes doesn't mean God inspired them it just doesn't mean they have any mistakes in them well how do you figure if it does have a mistake you find out if there's a mistake it's like that with a Bible you find out if there's a mistake so you don't have to say they're contradictions if you're not a believer to see these contradictions you have to reject miracles or have an anti supernatural this bias if I had a nickel for every time somebody told me that the reason I have these views is because I've an anti supernatural this bias I would buy a Beach condo in the Bahamas I mean it's got nothing to do with whether miracles happen or not whether you believe miracles or not doesn't matter I believe in the traditions the Bible when I was a Christian a committed Christian so it's got nothing to do with naturalist or supernaturalists biases to seeing these contradictions mean you have to reject your faith no you might have to shift your faith you might have to change things but if you're an intelligent person of course you're going to change your mind about things otherwise you're not an intelligent person sorry but you have to be willing to change your mind and it does not mean you give up on your Christianity it means you have a more sophisticated Christianity it's much better to be an intelligent believer then an ignorant believer it's better and in this case you need I think you just you need to figure out what you think about these it doesn't mean rejecting your faith can two accounts both be historically reliable if they're contradictory no they both might be meaningful they both might explain what this author is trying to achieve they might show that this authors following ancient ways of writing history and biography they might show all sorts of things but they can't both be right historically is there anything to fear from the truth so here here's my back to my personal story when I started seeing these things I started freaking out uh how can there be mistakes in the Gospels this look this is the Word of God and I I was comforted by the idea that Saint Agustin propounded to paraphrase that if there's anything that's true it comes from God God is the God of truth which means all truth is God's truth if something's true it's from God if it's true that there are contradictions in the Gospels then that's true and that means it comes from God that was my thinking at the time and I'm no longer a believer but I still think that that's the right attitude you don't have to be afraid of the truth simply because it's going to make you change your mind about something even if that something is near and dear to you you should follow the truth no matter what thank you very much [Applause] all right I had to put my sunglasses on for that all right I hope it didn't blind you to the truth oh that's better okay all right so we've got a number of questions coming in the first one some people were curious you just referenced here that you you have other reasons for rejecting the Christian worldview not to give us a 20-minute spiel on it but roughly what are those reasons yeah so when I when I realized that there were difficulties and the Gospels and throughout the Bible that there were contradictions and historical mistakes I continue to be a Christian for many years people have sometimes said that I became said about me without even asking me that I became an atheist once I realized there were problems with the Bible it's like so wrong it's like had nothing to do with it I was a practicing Christian for many years very active in my church for many years after realizing these problems in the Bible I left of the faith for unrelated reasons the reason has to do with problem is suffering in the world and how you explain that there's so much pain and misery in the world if there's one God and he's ultimately in charge if you believe in the sovereignty of God that God answers prayer that he intervenes on the behalf of people that he loves why doesn't it happen now I know I'm over lunch I'm gonna hear 29 explanations and people I know the I know the explanations and you you've heard most of them too and some of them are satisfying to many people some of them are satisfying to me but I don't believe it I left the faith because I just don't I don't think that if God answers my prayer that I got that job or that I got that parking space whatever I prayed for I got and seven children have starved to death in the world since I started answering this question why did God answer my prayer but not theirs and of course people believers will say oh it's because of this this and this and that that's why all right we've got a question from texture 287 - which is going to be related I think to some things that may be brought up at the panel discussion this person asks could one gospel report events in chronological form and another gospel report the same events but add other events that happened to the timeline that were omitted by the first or see the same event from a different perspective that would appear to make it a contradiction yes well of them all right so on you have it happens all the time yeah but those aren't contruct I mean something that appears to be a contradiction that's not a contradiction is not a contradiction so I'm only talking about things that really are contradictions okay all right let's see if somebody if somebody wants to propose a particular instance of this we look at it and see whether it works or not for example if you could say you know Luke is Matthew saying that they go to Galilee after resurrection Luke's saying the same drew salam and maybe like matthews reporting something that didn't get into luke and so like he did both like and so like that's the reason and i say no luke is explicit they didn't leave it's not that like he's like leaving some information out to allow for a time period where they could have left he says they didn't leave and that's a difference so that's a contradiction so but that the kind of thing you're describing yes absolutely the gyrus is you know if gyrus comes and says you're my daughter's sick come and then this hemorrhaging woman comes and he gets delayed so he gets there later or another story tells it without the hemorrhaging woman that's not a contradiction just that somebody put something in and like it changes the story but it's not a contradiction the contradiction is did the girl die before or after Jesus came see that's a contradiction and the interposition of the hemorrhaging woman has no bearing on it so let me ask you a sort of a follow-up on here Mike use an example last night of the cursing of the fig tree yeah it occurs seemingly at different times or between different events would that be a contradiction to you or that wouldn't qualify because it's oh no I don't see that as kind of a big contradiction you know I think I'll say I mean this isn't about Mike's example there but I will say that whenever I've had whenever I've had not not with my I have debated Mike several times as you know and I but whenever other times when I've had debates with with New Testament scholars about the contradiction thing one thing they invariably have done is they've gone through a bunch of alleged contradictions and then show that they are not contradictions but the alleged contradictions are almost always things that nobody says is a contradiction so what looks like they've like won all these arguments but I don't know who they're arguing with and so I mean okay I'll name a name why not all right so so I had this I had this debate with Pete Williams y'all know Peter Williams so he's been a friend of mine for years he's a he's a really good scholar textual critic he's a Sirach specialist I mean I really respect his work in textual criticism he's smart he's interesting we have this debate he wrote this book and we trust the Gospels and he has a chapter on contradictions and he lists something like seven contradictions then explains why they're not contradictions and the debate I said well Peter I don't understand what you're saying are the contradictions are not things that anybody points out as a contradiction so yes you can answer those but why not answer the ones that people say are contradictions see because it looks like you won the argument we were just knocking down a straw man right and so oh yeah so we yeah we will debate about this we've had a couple questions come in I'm gonna rephrase them to sort of synthesize them so over your experience you two sort of discovered these contradictions has there been anything in the reverse order has there been something where you've you've seemed to have encountered a contradiction and you thought oh you know what actually that's that's not yeah no it happens a lot but I'm not sure I'm didn't think of a specific example would absolutes happen yeah hold on no I can't think of what we're like like the reason I'm remembering this is because when I was going into this debate with with Pete I was with a friend of mine named Jeff Jeff seikar is a good friend of mine a New Testament scholar taught New Testament for 30 years out in California and I found me doing this debate about actually the Gospels and he said oh yeah and he started naming these things and I like he came up with three or four and I said yeah I used to think that I said yeah I don't think that's a contradiction then I explained why it's not a contradiction so I absolutely yeah Millis I'm just trying to find what are the contradict side I have no commitment to like any particular thing yeah one person seven seven one three is wondering what led you to your original born-again experience I was I got active in high school in a campus life Youth for Christ group which is y'all know young life I don't know if you know campus life but it's comparable and the fellow who's in charge of that was a very dynamic person who had gradually is probably in his mid-20s who had graduated from Moody Bible Institute a few years earlier and he convinced me that even though I went to church every week and said the prayers and confessed the Creed and confessed my sins and even though I was doing that every week that I wasn't really a Christian because I hadn't made a personal commitment to Christ as my Lord and Savior and that if I want to be a Christian a real Christian that's what a real Christian is and if you don't do that you're not a real Christian and so he convinced me that you know of course I want to be right with God and I you know I do believe in to you I need to make that commitment so I made that commitment and that was for me that was that was when I was born again we've had a couple questions about this so three one eight nine asks it this way does the existence of factual contradictions among historical accounts presuppose we should reject the other claims in the sources so another person phrased it like this even if the Gospels are mistaken here and there on a few minor things does that really mean we should reject them on the big things that they all agree on no but some of the contradictions are rather big I mean when you're talking about something about like the virgin birth or the resurrection you know these are big issues and what what it does what it did for me is once I realized that there could be contradictions I realized that the different authors are saying different things in these contradictory accounts and that each author has to be taken for what he's trying to say because if they're contradicting each other they're not saying the same thing but that also means that if you want to know what mark means you cannot assume that he means the same thing that John means and once you start looking at the Bible like that that each author has something different to say it changes how you read the Bible and it isn't now it's no longer just about whether there are little contradictions about whether the girl is dead or not yet it's about is this portrayal of Jesus and Mark is it really the same as betrayal of Jesus and John and is the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount really like the teaching of Paul and Galatians and of course they're different but like are they different in ways that might even be significant and so what it does it's that lead you start realizing these authors all have their point of view and you need to take each author seriously as an author instead of assuming they're all saying the same thing because they're not saying the same thing dr. Ehrman thank you so much okay thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 304,849

Rating: 4.7329836 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: AymnA526j9U

Length: 59min 18sec (3558 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Hey iameduard! We ask that all videos be accompanied by a short summary. Please post that summary in the comments. For more information, please see our Subreddit Rules on video posts. Thank you!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/c-rockett88]

basically the new test is a sales pitch and should be thought of as advertising.
the old testament is as accurate as any other cave drawing of the time...

[u/redpiano82991]

I always just ask why God needs to use figures of speech instead of just saying what he means. According to the kosher laws in the Hebrew bible you're not supposed to cook a calf in its mother's milk. Why should it be interpreted to mean you can't have a cheeseburger? Or even less all why you couldn't have chicken with dairy.

[u/rondd5]

...because it’s bullshit..don’t need to watch a video to understand that.

[u/Numb3r_Six]

I don't argue the Bible with theists. I ask them questions such as why God made testicles.

At the very least their answers will be more entertaining than frustrating.