Contradictions in the New Testament
“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24).
In the November 25, 2012 Spiritual Perspectives article, I reported a conversation between Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller concerning where America is and what its future might be. As a preface to those remarks I pointed out O’Reilly’s credentials as a historian, including his huge bestsellers: Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy. The second paragraph of that article began with these words:
That does not mean that he is always correct, of course; we have shown in previous articles how he misses the mark with respect to the Bible and to the subject of faith when he discusses these concepts with atheists (see May 13, 2007 and October 18, 2009).
These words proved to be not only accurate but prophetic. On February 27th, Roma Downey (the former star of Touched By an Angel) and her husband, Mark Burnett, were guests on The O’Reilly Factor; they had been invited to promote their series they had produced on The Bible, a ten hour series airing on the History Channel this month. In the course of the interview, the host asked them if they were going to present the Bible as literal or allegorical. They looked a little surprised at the question, but they answered that they understood the Bible to be literal. O’Reilly indicated that he did not consider Adam and Eve, the serpent, and Jonah as literal.
Worse, however, was a statement he made in connection with his forthcoming book, Killing Jesus. He said that he and his researcher had some interesting material in the book and that he had found contradictions in the New Testament that had led to things that he discovered. I had already cringed when hearing the news that he would be writing about Jesus based on his past misunderstandings of what faith is and the way he argued against atheism. There seemed to be no other choice than to send an e-mail the following day:
Regardless of what you may have been taught, the New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit would give the apostles remembrance of what the Lord said (John 14:25-26) and that He would guide them into all truth (John 16:12-13). Therefore, the New Testament does not contain contradictions—a charge which usually atheists and agnostics make. There are “seeming” contradictions, but everything harmonizes when all of the information is taken into account. Entire books have been written toward this end. You might want to check with some of them before erroneously concluding that the Bible writers contradict each other. If they conflict in any point, then nothing they write can be trusted.
P.S. Send me an example of what you or your co-writer consider a contradiction, and I will attempt to explain the verses to your satisfaction.
No reply came, but with thousands of e-mails coming in, who knows whether he even saw it? However, it was plain that he was receiving e-mails on this subject. One person in the audience informed him that Jesus taught that Adam and Eve and Jonah were literal history; he replied: “That is entirely false! That is wrong! That never happened!” (3-1-13). Of course, Christians know that it is true (Matt. 9:3-9; 12:38-40; 16:1-4).
Although I almost never send e-mails to radio or television programs, it seemed important to send another one on March 2nd; this time it was a little longer.
Pardon the lack of pithiness, but some subjects require more than one paragraph. I do not anticipate a favorable response from you, but it is worth the effort anyway. What many of your viewers are trying to tell you is that your perspective of the Bible is not accurate. Let me appeal to you as a historian. You are undoubtedly aware that Thomas Paine was one of the heroes of the American colonists, inspiring them with Common Sense. Yet when he attacked the Bible in Age of Reason, he was utterly deserted. (I am expecting my refutation of this work to be published later this year.) Benjamin Franklin tried to warn him, but he ignored the advice.
Bill, when you say the New Testament is full of contradictions, you are attacking the Bible and will also lose favor with many of your viewers. Please give careful consideration to a few brief points.
1. A New Testament containing contradictions would prove that the writers cannot be trusted in anything that they say and that they cannot be inspired by the Holy Spirit Who could not inspire errors. You may not understand this point, but others do.
2. The historical narrative regarding Adam and Eve is not an allegory. It is told as literal, and the New Testament refers to Adam as a historical figure. Luke includes him in Jesus’ genealogy (Luke 3:38). Are all the other people allegorical also? Paul contrasts Adam and Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:45. Are both allegorical? Paul writes that Adam was formed first, then Eve (1 Tim. 2:13). Jude writes that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. Hmm. The seventh from an allegory?
3. You implied that science would discount Jonah being swallowed by a great fish and preserved until thrown up on dry ground. Science would also say that Jesus could not heal a blind man, raise Lazarus, or Himself be resurrected. Miracles, by definition, are contrary to science. You told a viewer that Jesus speaking of Jonah as a person is “…wrong. That never happened.” Have you never read Matthew 12:40? Jesus said, “For as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus endorsed Jonah as a literal person and based the time He would spend in the tomb upon what literally happened to Jonah.
Jesus and His apostles considered both Adam and Jonah as literal, historical figures. Anything you write or publish to the contrary will immediately undermine your credibility as a scholar and a historian. Please reconsider.
Once again, there was no response, but again O’Reilly must have received a barrage of e-mails from a number of people who had watched the program. So, on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, he had a guest on for about a seven-minute segment. Robert Jeffress, the “Senior Pastor” of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, participated in a discussion on this very topic, and he did a credible job in most areas. Below are the pertinent parts of the exchange. O stands for O’Reilly; J refers to Jeffress; my comments follow the G.
O: “Adam and Eve. Did they literally live in the Garden of Eden and usurp the evolutionary process?”
J: “Absolutely. They lived. They were actual human beings, and Jesus affirmed that, Bill, in Matt. 19…. Jesus said that God created man and female in the garden, and He brought them together in marriage.”
G: Adam and Eve did not usurp evolution; evolution tries to infringe on the Bible. The events of Genesis were considered factual for 3,300 years before Darwin’s theory was even published.
O: “He didn’t name Adam and Eve…. Now if you believe in Adam and Eve, there are a number of other things that you have to believe. Incest is one of them…. Then you have to reject the science of evolution and carbon dating and all of those things…. It’s kind of incompatible with science, or am I wrong?”
J: “The Bible does not contradict true science. It may contradict the passing fads of scientific theory that are always evolving.” [He cites Sir Frederick Hoyle who challenged the idea that the cosmos has always existed and introduced the Big Bang Theory.]
G: It is inappropriate to take modern thought about incest and project it back to Adam’s and Eve’s children, who knew nothing else. Furthermore, God knew about genetics long before man did and arranged for this system to work. Evolution is a current scientific theory, not fact, and carbon dating had been shown to be flawed.
O: “Do you believe that the universe started 13.6 billion years ago?”
J: “I do…. I think it very well could have been. One of the things that fundamentalist Christians mess up on is that they try to say the earth is 6,000 years—the Bible never makes that claim anywhere.”
G: Study Genesis 5 and 11. Add up the years and see whether 13,600,000,000 is better than 6,000.
O: “…my belief system is that there is a higher power and that evolution was the way He created the world. Now I was taught in my Catholic school that a lot of the stories in the Bible are allegorical. There are stories that, just like Jesus spoke in parables, lessons were put forth…and that a lot of believers (such as myself) don’t take them literally.”
J: “Here’s the problem with that, Bill. If you start labeling these stories as fictitious or fable, where do you stop? It’s like peeling the layers of an onion. You end up with nothing.”
G: It is not a matter of what one was taught. It’s a matter of truth. The host of the “no-Spin Zone” should not have difficulty understanding that. Saul of Tarsus was taught the traditions of the elders and rejected Jesus. Faithful Jews were taught the Law of Moses, but that changed when Jesus died on the cross. It does not matter what teachers said; what matters is what the Bible says.
O: “Well, I think you stop with human reason. A whale swallowing Jonah for three days? That doesn’t happen.”
J: “OK, let’s go to the New Testament. The virgin birth seems to defy reason. The resurrection defies reason as well.
O: No, no, no. There’s a difference between the New and the Old.”
J: Why would you just say the Old Testament—these stories are too fantastic to believe—but I’m going to believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection?”
G: Exactly. The only reason that Bill accepts the virgin birth and the resurrection is that, as a Catholic, he was taught that these were true while the others were allegorical. Both are true. So are the Ten Plagues of Egypt, unless these are allegorical, also. If all miracles in the Old Testament are merely allegories and should not be taken literally, then there is no basis not to have the same view of all the miracles in the New Testament.
O: “It’s certainly possible that the Lord, the God Who created the universe, could have had Jonah in the belly of the whale. It’s possible, all right, if you’re a believer at that level. But more pragmatically it isn’t possible that Jesus embraced the stoning of people and the enslavement of people…. When you start to look at the totality of all of the stories by the prophets, you see that you don’t have to take them literally to get the theological message.”
J: “But here’s a problem with that, Bill. Jesus treated them as actual stories. He, for example, linked His resurrection to the story of Jonah.” [Jeffress quotes Matthew 12:40: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”] “He linked the story of Noah to His second coming.” [He quoted Matthew 24:37: “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”] “If Jesus believed that story of Noah was fictitious, why would He link it to a future probability?”
G: Bill finally admitted that Jonah could be a true story. But what does stoning have to do with the subject? God commanded stoning for certain offenses (Num. 15:32-36; Joshua 7). O’Reilly may not like capital punishment, but God authorizes it. The Israelites were literally enslaved. They suffered hard bondage. None of this has anything to do with allegory. What does, “You’re a believer at that level,” mean?
O: “Because of its allegorical power…to vividly show… what it’s going to be.”
J: “That would be like saying: ‘As it was in the days of the Easter bunny, so shall it be when I come again.’ You don’t link a future certainty with a past allegory.”
G: Give one instance of an allegory that is used to signify a future event. An allegory can only have power to teach a lesson. It cannot be appealed to for the purpose of describing a future event that is real and actual.
O: Can I be a good Christian if I believe that the Bible in some cases is allegorical? Can I be?”
J: “You can certainly be a Christian and go to heaven. All you have to do is believe in Christ as your Savior, but your faith—but faith is built on fact.”
O: “That’s what I thought. I feel better now.”
G: Great. Jeffress told him what he wanted to hear. Can you be a good Christian and believe that in some cases the Bible is allegorical? Yes—if it is, in fact, an allegory. When the Bible uses allegories, they are clearly identified as such. If they are pure historical narrative, then they ought not to be made into allegories—unless by inspiration (Gal. 4:24). The historian Philo did that very thing; he spiritualized or allegorized practically everything in the first few chapters in Genesis—but without proper evidence or authority to do so.
O’Reilly should have been told, “If it is just as acceptable to God for you to believe error as well as truth, then, sure, allegorize whatever you want. But if you want the approval of God, then you must accept the fact that Adam was a literal person who, along with Eve, lived at “the beginning.” Paul and Peter both endorsed events from Genesis 1-11 as being literal. That is the truth of the matter.
Jeffress takes the usual Baptist stance that all one had to do is believe in Christ as Savior, which is not the truth. Nowhere in the New Testament is salvation predicated upon this one condition. Only by taking a verse out of its context could anyone come to this conclusion. Faith only eliminates both repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins as being part of salvation (Acts 2:38; 22:16). Biblical faith includes them as necessary.
It was interesting that Jeffress did sneak the point in that faith is built on fact. Whether O’Reilly heard it or not is questionable, since he was talking at the time; from what he has said in the past, it is evident that he thinks faith is simply wishful thinking. With his attitude toward contradictions in the New Testament, one wonders just how accurate Killing Jesus will be.