While I will admit that on the surface the four Gospels say some things that are difficult to reconcile with each other, this by no means indicates that they are in error. Critics say that there are many errors or mistakes in the Bible. But I like to say that these are not really errors but difficulties.
One of the most interesting so-called contradictions in the Gospels concerns the place where Jesus healed a blind man. As this account will show a knowledge of the history and geography is essential to clearing up this apparent contradiction. Charlie Campbell gives us an excellent summary of this situation:
“Luke 18:35 says Jesus healed him “as He was approaching Jericho.” But Mark 10:46 says He healed the man “as He went out of Jericho.” So, critics say, “Surely Luke or Mark made a mistake. They can’t both be right.” And that appears to be the case, until you do a little homework and find out that an archaeologist named Ernst Sellin discovered “The Twin-Cities of Jericho” in Jesus’s time. There was the old city of Jericho (destroyed in Book of Joshua, but rebuilt in 1 Kings 16:34) and there was the new Roman city of Jericho. There were two cities called “Jericho,” separated from one another by about a mile. Knowing this solves the dilemma. It’s likely that Luke referred to one of the cities and Mark referred to the other. A plausible explanation is that the miracle took place between the two cities (Mark mentioning the city Jesus had just left, Luke mentioning the city Jesus was approaching).”1
So, you see this apparent contradiction can, with a little knowledge of biblical geography, be cleared up. Some may ask why does God leave these difficult to reconcile situations in the Gospels – why not make each of the four Gospel accounts agree exactly with each other? There are several good reasons why these apparent difficulties are found in the Gospels.
First, since the Gospels are eyewitness accounts we should expect differences. Imagine three people witnessing a car accident. Each person will probably, when questioned about the accident, share some common elements as well as some divergent elements. Does this mean that these divergent details are contradictions? Not at all. Each one of the three eyewitnesses will choose to focus on the accident from their unique angle as well as certain details that the others may leave out. This is just the nature of eyewitness accounts.
Second, these differences disprove collusion. According to Pastor John MacArthur: “But the very fact that there are difficulties to harmonize show that they didn’t get together. If the Bible was written out of collusion, then it would agree with itself. The fact that there are any difficulties at all is a good indication there wasn’t any collusion in the writing.”2
And third, they force us to study. In order to understand certain things in the New Testament Gospels you need to know the Old Testament; and some people only like to read the New Testament. And as a result, they get an incomplete understanding of the four Gospels. Another area concerns the culture during biblical times. Without a good knowledge of the culture, we again will find it difficult to understand certain passages in the Bible. Not knowing the history of the biblical times in which the Word of God was written will also cause us to miss out on important details in the biblical narrative. And of course, we in America are reading translations from the Greek in the New Testament. This obviously has implications to our understanding of certain passages in the Bible. All of the above issues should clearly indicate we need to study more.
In conclusion let’s not be too quick, therefore, to call something an error in the Gospels that we can’t seem to reconcile – it may just be a difficulty.
1 Contradictions-B (alwaysbeready.com)
2 John MacArthur, Jr., Is the Bible Reliable? (Panorama City, CA: Word of Grace Communications, 1982), p. 69.
“Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them.”