BIBLICAL CONTRADICTIONS THAT ARE NOT CONTRADICTIONS

The Quora website sent out an invitation for its atheistic readers to submit their favorite biblical contradictions. Most of them were the same old tired reruns that appear again and again in various places, and which I have attempted to address in numerous posts (see especially any posts starting with the words “Biblical Contradiction”). Now a biblical contradiction almost always means a conflict between two or more different passages of Scripture, and that was certainly what the editor of Quora intended. But apparently not all atheists are capable of understanding that concept. I have already dealt with one such “contradiction” which even the author admitted was no contradiction at all, but just some passages she couldn't stand. And below are two more such contributions:

“God couldn't be omniscient as it would violate this universe's speed of light limit on the transfer of information.”

That comment is of course a supposed contradiction between theological claims based on a number of passages in the Bible and what we now know regarding the laws of science. And it actually sounds rather similar to something I, when an aspiring scientist in high school, thought I had discovered in the Bible.

My naive “insight” was based on Revelation 8 which begins with silence in heaven for one-half hour followed by an angel given incense to mingle with the prayers of the saints. I figured that these must have been spoken prayers since that was how people prayed in biblical times. And since they couldn't travel any faster than the speed of sound, it must have taken one-half hour to reach heaven. Therefore from that information, I was able to calculate how far heaven was away from earth. As I recall, I managed to prove in that manner that heaven was located somewhere in our solar system between the orbits of two of the further planets.

I realize that this sounds utterly ridiculous, but it is no more audacious and an example of gross hubris than the sophomoric attempt to try to put limitations on a Being who created the whole universe along with the “laws” to govern it, and to do so by quoting one of those “laws” that He came up with in the first place. Assuming that there is such an omnipotent Deity, His thoughts and His ways are obviously so far above us, that the best we can possibly do, and then only partially due to our limited earthly and intellectual perspective, is to “think God's thoughts after Him,” as Johann Kepler put it.

By the way, this same general train of argument was used by the Deists generations ago. They were utterly shocked at the very concept that God would possibly resort to any miraculous means whatsoever to accomplish His will. They felt that this would be highly underhanded and unfair of Him and demanded that He not “disobey” the very rules that He was making the rest of us abide by.

We must also keep in mind that time after time, accepted and “universal” verities in science have later been overthrown or shown to apply only under certain conditions. For example, Einstein's findings were not accepted until verifiable experiments proved them to be true. And then in turn, Einstein refused to accept later theories that introduced uncertainties into the equation and spent the last part of his life vainly attempting to disprove them. And in my own restricted field of the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds, I have even been a very small part of that process of correcting past findings and breaking new ground during my career as a research scientist.

“The peaceful tale of shepherds visiting a new baby before the parents peacefully returned home to present their new offspring at their own home temple.”

I fully realize that there are difficult passages in the Bible which need careful study to properly understand. But understanding these is nowhere near as difficult as trying to make sense out of the above comment. It appears to be a total non sequitor. So please forgive me if I am just too obtuse to see what the above sentence has anything to do with a biblical contradiction. I am therefore going to try to read the author's mind and propose the following interpretations as to what that person is driving at.

We can first assume from the information given above that he or she is referring to the nativity story as narrated in Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1-2 since neither Mark nor John record these particular events.

Possibility #1

Since the author of this “contradiction” repeats rather needlessly the word “peaceful(ly),” I might guess that it is to be read sarcastically. If so, then the point may be that this story is just too sickeningly sweet to take seriously. But in fact this narrative was never meant to be taken as a peaceful story. It is anything but that, as evidenced from the following taken from those same passages in the Synoptic Gospels:

Mary is a teen or pre-teen who, probably though an arranged marriage, is forced to marry an elderly widower who may have already had two sons who could have been older than Mary herself.

Not only that, but she becomes pregnant while still engaged to Joseph, and it is only by the goodness of Joseph that he decides to cancel the marriage quietly rather than bring total disgrace on Mary. But that would of course have left her alone to raise her child.

They must travel to Bethlehem from their home in Nazareth while Mary is nine-months pregnant.

The reason they need to travel is to obey the command of their conquerors, the Romans, who ruled the land at the time.

The purpose of the travel was to conduct a census of the people for the purpose of assessing future taxes on them, which the poor, such as the Holy Family, could ill afford to pay.

The town is so crowded that they can't even find a decent place to stay and are forced to occupy a stable, which may have been nothing more that a simple lean-to.

They share their abode with a group of smelly animals.

Mary has to put her newborn baby in an empty feeding trough.

They have to put up with a group of even smellier shepherds, generally accepted to represent the very dregs of Jewish society.

Possibility #2

Perhaps the objection is that Luke's account purposely ignores the gory details found in Matthew's version. Thus it leaves out the subsequent events in which Herod attempts to kill Jesus; he murders the children of Bethlehem instead; and the family is forced to flee to Egypt in exile until Herod dies. There is no disputing the fact that of the four Gospels, each one contains details that the others leave out. So you can chose to take that as a contradiction if you wish. However, there is a good reason for all four narratives being included in the Bible. All are needed to get what one commentator calls a stereoscopic view of the events that transpired. It is only natural that different people would emphasize or de-emphasize one or another of the details in order to make their own theological points. In short, no one who has really read the story in all four complementary accounts would take it to be a pleasant, whitewashed account of reality. And the differences between the accounts, at least concerning the nativity and early events in Jesus' life do not contradict one another.

Possibility #3

Or perhaps the “contradiction consisted of the fact that it is unrealistic to assume that the parents would have had an audience with a group of mere shepherds before presenting Jesus at “the local temple.” That would have been an insult to God.

This approach makes just as little sense. Did the author of the objection really think that there would be any high officials, political or religious, around at the time of the birth in a tiny backwater village? Or perhaps he/she thinks that Joseph and Mary should have sent the shepherds on their way because they were too unworthy to see their child. But then why didn't they alternatively go to the “local temple” immediately instead of waiting a whole eight days before doing so?

At this point, it is helpful to inject a little reality into the situation. The fact is that even the mention of a “local temple” would have been considered heretical to a Jew at the time. There was only one temple and that was in Jerusalem.

As to waiting eight whole days before getting the child circumcised, that was the legally specified waiting time. And the procedure was not carried out at the Jerusalem temple at all, but done by some local person trained to do it, presumably in Bethlehem itself although that fact is not mentioned in the narrative.

Also, the Jewish law said that a whole 40 days after the birth needed to transpire before the mother and son were allowed to go to the Jerusalem temple for a purification ceremony. Thus, the biblical story demonstrates how Joseph and Mary were quite scrupulous in obeying all of the Old Testament laws governing their situation.