Richard L. Fricks

Mithras and the Messiah: Who’s Borrowing from Whom?”

This post is part of The God Question, an ongoing response series to Mark Clark’s apologetic book The Problem of God. Each post critically examines a section of the book using reason, evidence, and the lens of The God Question’s Core Philosophy: Begin with curiosity, not belief. Today’s focus: Clark’s handling of Mithras in Chapter 4, “The Problem of the Christ Myth.”

🧱 The Core Claim

Christianity, we’re told, is utterly unique. It didn’t borrow from other religions. And when someone points to parallels with pagan gods like Mithras, it’s all just “copycat conspiracy” nonsense—so says Mark Clark.

But let’s be honest.

If you were inventing a religion in the Roman Empire in the first few centuries AD, and needed it to feel familiar yet new, would you:

Invent every symbol from scratch?
Or lean on recognizable mythological themes like miraculous birth, divine meal-sharing, and resurrection?

Clark accuses critics of the Christ Myth theory of sloppiness—but then turns around and dismisses symbolic and ritual parallels as irrelevant or reversed. Let’s look closer.

🪨 Born of a Rock Isn’t Virgin Enough?

Clark begins by mocking the claim that Mithras was “born of a virgin.” Why? Because the myth says he emerged from a rock.

But the point of the comparison is not human biology. It’s mythic symbolism.

Just as Jesus is born of a virgin without sex, Mithras is born without sexual union—fully formed, weapon in hand. It’s miraculous. It’s non-sexual. It’s symbolic. That’s what matters.

If Clark thinks this isn’t “virgin” enough, then by that logic, Jesus’ birth isn’t “miraculous” enough unless someone saw Gabriel hand Mary a DNA kit.

🐑 Shepherds at the Birth of a God

Clark concedes that shepherds were present in the Mithras myth—then shrugs it off as coincidence. But ask yourself: in a world of countless gods, why do both Mithras and Jesus have shepherds at their miraculous births?

This kind of overlap in imagery—especially when tied to humility, countryside, and innocence—should raise questions. But Clark doesn’t explore them. He dismisses them. Because if Christianity is a “revealed” religion, such borrowing must be impossible.

🔟 The Myth of the Twelve

Clark claims Mithras had no twelve disciples—citing that in one version he had one, in another two. He fails to mention the dozens of Mithraic images showing Mithras surrounded by twelve figures, often understood to be the twelve signs of the zodiac.

Were they literal men? No. Were they twelve symbolic companions? Yes. And that’s all you need when tracing mythological influence—not historical one-to-one matches, but adapted storytelling archetypes.

⚰️ The Resurrection That Wasn’t?

According to Clark, Mithras was never buried, never resurrected, never rose after three days. But again, he’s reading myth like history. In Mithraic initiation rituals, the initiate underwent symbolic death and rebirth. That’s resurrection. That’s transformation.

The Christian ritual of baptism (death to sin, raised to new life) mirrors this. The Eucharist (eating the god) mirrors similar pagan feasts. But instead of exploring these parallels, Clark invokes church fathers who accused the pagans of copying them.

So which is it?

Did Christianity invent these motifs? Or did the pagans have them first and “mimic” the Christians afterward—even when Mithraic rituals predate the New Testament?

This is chronological cherry-picking at best—and apologetics in reverse at worst.

🔄 Copying or Converging?

Clark argues that Mithraic traditions came later than the Gospels. But the Mithraic cult’s roots go back to Persia centuries earlier, and its Roman expressions were flourishing when Christianity was still underground.

Even if textual evidence for Mithras post-dates the Gospels, the rituals, symbols, and iconography were well-known in the Roman world.

It’s not about who wrote it down first—it’s about shared mythological DNA. And the evidence suggests Christianity didn’t invent its key motifs. It absorbed them—then canonized them as history.

🧭 Final Thought: Start With Curiosity

You don’t need to believe Jesus is a repackaged pagan god. But you do need to admit this:

Christianity arose in a sea of myths. And the water it swam in was full of gods born without sex, gods who rose again, and gods who shared holy meals.

Dismissing this isn’t curiosity. It’s fear.

And The God Question starts by letting go of fear—and asking, what’s really behind the story we’ve been told?

Taking on the Christ Myth: Does Horus Really Parallel Jesus?

Why This Series Exists

This post is part of The God Question’s response series to The Problem of God by Mark Clark, a book that aims to defend Christianity from common objections. We believe these objections deserve more serious engagement than Clark provides. Using reason, evidence, and clear thinking, we’re exploring each chapter’s claims—pointing out what holds up, what doesn’t, and what’s missing. We begin not with belief, but with curiosity. That’s the difference.

Horus and Jesus: Does the Parallel Hold Up?

In this section of Chapter 4, Mark Clark attempts to debunk the “Christ Myth” theory by challenging the alleged parallels between Jesus and Horus, the Egyptian deity. According to Clark, the proponents of the myth theory—like Acharya S (D.M. Murdock), Peter Joseph (of Zeitgeist), and Tom Harpur—fail to engage primary sources and rely instead on one another’s claims without verification. His tone is confident, and he appeals to academic discipline to suggest the entire Horus-Jesus parallel falls apart under scrutiny.

But how accurate is Clark’s own critique?

A Fair Point… But Also a Straw Man?

Clark’s strongest point is methodological: many popularizers of the Christ Myth theory don’t cite original Egyptian texts or hieroglyphs when making claims like “Horus had twelve disciples.” Instead, they cite 19th- and 20th-century authors such as Gerald Massey, who often wrote without scholarly accountability.

Clark pounces on this, arguing that no Egyptologist affirms such parallels and that the twelve-disciples claim isn’t found in the Book of the Dead or any known Egyptian text. He notes Massey couldn’t even remember where he had read it.

Fair enough. Credibility matters. But here’s the problem: Clark then suggests that because one exaggerated claim is weak, the entire discussion is nonsense. That’s the real fallacy here.

The Danger of Dismissing Everything

Even if it turns out that Horus didn’t have twelve disciples, or wasn’t born of a virgin on December 25, that doesn’t mean all parallels between mythological figures and Jesus dissolve. It means we need to separate exaggeration from evidence.

Clark frames the issue as if any failed parallel—no matter how minor—proves that Jesus is unique and historical. But that’s not how comparative mythology works. Many ancient religious stories share thematic structures: divine births, suffering saviors, resurrections, cosmic battles, miraculous healings, and chosen disciples. These motifs span cultures because they speak to universal human longings. We shouldn’t dismiss them outright—we should ask what they reveal.

Let’s Talk About the Virgin Birth

Clark challenges the claim that Horus was “born of a virgin” by offering a gruesome counter-narrative: that Horus was conceived after Isis hovered over the severed phallus of her dismembered husband Osiris. He concludes that this is not a virgin birth.

He’s right: the Horus myth is not a one-to-one match for the nativity in Matthew and Luke. But his rebuttal misses the forest for the trees. Virgin or magical conception stories are not unique to Christianity. They appear in various forms across mythological systems—including Greek (Perseus), Roman (Romulus), and even Buddhist traditions. The existence of these birth legends raises a real question: Why do so many religious founders need miraculous births to validate them?

What About December 25?

Clark argues that Horus did not share a birthday with Jesus—and that, in fact, Jesus wasn’t born on December 25 anyway. The Christian date, he says, was chosen later by Pope Julius I to challenge Saturnalia, not based on history.

This argument defeats itself. If Jesus wasn’t born on December 25, then there’s no reason to deny the Horus-December 25 claim as a meaningful parallel. It’s irrelevant. More importantly, the broader point still stands: both Horus and Jesus had festivals celebrating their births during the winter solstice period—a key symbolic time in ancient religions. That’s what matters here: the motif, not the calendar accuracy.

Miracles, Disciples, and Crucifixion

Clark attacks the idea that Horus had disciples—pointing to depictions of Horus with animal companions (a turtle, a lion, a bear, a tiger) and claiming they were not disciples in any religious sense. He suggests this stretches all credibility.

And perhaps it does. But here again, the rebuttal feels too smug and too convenient. Christianity does not get to claim historical superiority merely by mocking the mythologies that came before. If anything, the similarities—however stylized or exaggerated—should prompt deeper reflection: Why does the Jesus story echo so many earlier themes?

Even if the parallels aren’t exact, the recurrence of crucifixion, death, and resurrection in pre-Christian stories should make us wonder: Is Christianity building on a mythological foundation it never acknowledged?

What Clark Gets Right—And What He Avoids

To be fair, Clark is right to call out sloppy sourcing. Some Christ Myth proponents have overstated their case. But Clark’s selective rebuttals also avoid stronger scholarly arguments—such as those presented by Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and others—who offer more rigorous critiques of the historical Jesus.

Instead of wrestling with their evidence, Clark chooses easy targets and brushes the rest aside.

The Real Issue

Ultimately, this section is less about Horus and more about how people engage inconvenient questions. Clark defends Christianity by insisting the Jesus story is utterly unique. But the evidence suggests otherwise: Christianity borrowed, absorbed, and reshaped common religious themes that came long before the first century.

That doesn’t automatically prove Jesus never existed. But it does undercut claims of originality—and invites us to take the Christ Myth idea seriously, not sweep it away with a chuckle.

Did Jesus Exist? What the Sources Really Say

Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist? In Chapter 4 of The Problem of God, Mark Clark says yes — and claims we have reliable, non-Christian sources that confirm it. But a closer look at those sources — and the logic behind Clark’s argument — tells a different story.

The Tacitus Reference: Echoes, Not Eyewitnesses

Clark quotes Tacitus to show that a Roman historian confirmed Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate. But Tacitus was writing almost a century after Jesus’ supposed death, and there’s no evidence he had access to Roman archives. More likely, he was reporting what Christians already believed, not what Rome officially recorded. That’s not historical confirmation — it’s hearsay written down late.

The Josephus Passage: A Tampered Text

Clark also cites Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian. The problem? The passage he quotes contains clear Christian interpolations — later edits inserted by Christian scribes. Phrases like “He was the Christ” and “on the third day he appeared” would have been blasphemous to Josephus, a loyal Jew. Even many conservative scholars admit the original text was doctored. It’s shaky ground for historical claims.

“They Died for What They Saw!” — Or Did They?

One of Clark’s boldest claims is that the disciples died because they had personally seen Jesus rise from the dead — and no one dies for a lie. But this assumes far too much:

We have no firsthand records from any disciple describing what they saw.
Most martyrdom stories come decades or centuries later, often with legendary embellishments.
And people across history have died for all kinds of religious ideas — Islam, Hinduism, Heaven’s Gate, even Jonestown.

Dying for a belief doesn’t make it true. It only proves how strongly that belief was held.

The Spread of Christianity: A Miracle?

Clark says Christianity’s explosive growth proves it must be true. But other religions — including Islam and Mormonism — also spread rapidly. Movements grow when they offer compelling stories, eternal rewards, and a sense of belonging. Christianity had all three, plus Roman roads, missionary zeal, and, eventually, imperial support.

Rapid growth explains popularity, not truth.

Conclusion: Yes, There May Have Been a Jesus — But We Know Almost Nothing About Him

Most secular scholars today agree that some man named Jesus probably existed — a wandering apocalyptic preacher in Galilee who got himself executed. But the “Christ” we meet in the Gospels — the miracle worker, the resurrected Son of God — is the result of decades of oral tradition, theological reflection, and myth-making.

The question isn’t just “Did Jesus exist?”

It’s: Who created the Christ we now know?

And the answer to that isn’t in Tacitus, Josephus, or the tales of martyrdom — it’s in the minds and hopes of the early church.

Is Jesus a Copycat of Ancient Myths? Debunking the Christ Myth

Welcome back to The God Question, where we explore today’s biggest spiritual doubts with thoughtful reflection and intellectual honesty.

In today’s post, we enter Chapter 4 of The Problem of God by Mark Clark, tackling one of the more provocative claims in modern skepticism: the Christ Myth — the idea that Jesus never existed and was merely invented by the early church, copied from older mythological gods.

You’ve probably encountered this claim in viral videos or documentaries like Zeitgeist, Religulous, or The God Who Wasn’t There. They say Jesus is just a rebranding of gods like Horus or Mithras — born of a virgin, performed miracles, died, and rose again after three days. Sounds suspiciously familiar, right?

But here’s the thing: this argument, while loud in pop culture, doesn’t hold up in serious historical circles. Clark reminds us that even scholars who don’t believe in Jesus’ divinity — like Bart Ehrman — affirm his historical existence. The question scholars debate isn’t if Jesus lived, but who he really was and what he really did. Even H.G. Wells, no Christian apologist, called Jesus “the very center of history.”

So why does the Christ Myth remain so popular?

Because it’s simple. It’s edgy. And it lets people reject Christianity without having to dig into inconvenient questions. But as with any conspiracy theory, we need to slow down and examine the facts.

The truth is, most of the supposed parallels between Jesus and pagan gods don’t hold up under scrutiny. Many are exaggerated, misrepresented, or cherry-picked. Others rely on post-Christian sources or questionable interpretations. What they share is often superficial — more coincidence than copycat.

So here’s today’s challenge: If you’ve dismissed Jesus because of the Christ Myth, take a second look. Not at the memes or TikToks or fringe films — but at the actual historical evidence. Because when you do, you’ll find something surprising: not a myth, but a man who changed the world.

And that’s where the real question begins — not “Did he exist?” but “What if everything he said was true?”

—

📚 Next up on the blog: Did Jesus actually exist? We’ll explore the historical sources outside the Bible that say yes.

Personal Trust: The Bible Is Not About You

This post is part of our ongoing series examining The Problem of God by Mark Clark. Each installment applies The God Question’s core philosophy: we begin not with belief, but with curiosity. We pursue clarity over certainty. And we never grant authority to claims that are unproven, incoherent, or morally compromised—no matter how loudly they are repeated. If a religion is true, it should welcome questions. If it is not, questions are the way out.

“The Bible Isn’t About You” — And That’s the Problem

Mark Clark closes Chapter 3 of The Problem of God with an emotionally charged appeal: the Bible may seem like a burden, he argues, only because people mistakenly believe it’s about them. The liberating truth, he insists, is that the Bible is not about you—“it’s about what Jesus has done.” His version of Christianity is one in which humans are completely incapable of doing good on their own, utterly unworthy of saving, and only redeemed when God chooses to act in spite of them.

This is not a message of liberation. It’s a message of psychological abuse wrapped in theological language.

Let’s examine what Clark claims—and why it falls apart under the light of reason.

1. A Gospel of Inherited Guilt

At the heart of Clark’s argument is this:

“Everybody fails at these things. That’s why you needed someone to succeed for you, and I am that someone.” (Jesus, paraphrased)

This idea—rooted in what theologians call penal substitution—is that Jesus died not to inspire us, or to awaken love or compassion, but to be punished in our place because we are incapable of moral success. Clark echoes this when he writes:

“You and I are not brave like Moses or David or Samson—so God had to be brave for us.”

Notice the subtle cruelty here: the assumption that you are fundamentally defective, that you deserve punishment, and that the only path to being “loved and saved” is by accepting that someone else had to be tortured and killed because of your failures.

This is not justice. It’s not love. It’s a doctrine of inherited guilt—one that strips you of agency, dignity, and worth apart from obedience to an ancient blood narrative.

2. The Disempowering Psychology of ‘Not About You’

Clark writes:

“The point is that the Bible isn’t about you. It’s not about what we can do so God will love and save us. It’s about what Jesus has done.”

To a weary believer, this may sound comforting. But let’s be honest: the same Bible that supposedly isn’t about you also commands you to obey, believe, submit, suffer, evangelize, tithe, forgive your abuser, and deny your own reasoning whenever it conflicts with divine decree. You are told the Bible isn’t about you—yet if you fail to accept its story, you are the one who will burn.

This isn’t humility. It’s gaslighting.

It says: You don’t matter. Your conscience doesn’t matter. Your questions don’t matter.

Only God’s script does.

3. A Story That Demands You Be the Villain

Clark tells a dramatic conversion story: as a young man smoking outside his school, he read the Bible, encountered Jesus, and was transformed. He credits “the Word behind the word” for saving him—not church or people, but the Bible itself. It’s powerful testimony—but notice how it depends on the same narrative spine:

You are broken.
You deserve punishment.
You are incapable of saving yourself.
So trust Jesus to do it for you.

This framing turns all moral and spiritual questions into one binary: submission or rebellion. You’re not invited to evaluate truth claims. You’re told that you are the problem, and that the solution is surrender to a cosmic scapegoat.

Even if it feels emotionally moving, this is still theology by threat.

4. But What If the Bible Is Actually Wrong?

Clark never considers this question. His entire defense assumes that the Bible is not only correct, but divinely inspired. He doesn’t examine the violent commands in the Old Testament, the contradictions in the Gospels, or the ethical incoherence of eternal punishment. Instead, he insists:

“They speak, and if we will listen and heed them and let them take us over, they will transform us, forever.”

This is not curiosity. This is indoctrination.

What if the reason people walk away from Christianity isn’t because they misunderstood the Bible—but because they understood it perfectly well, and found it morally bankrupt?

What if the real act of courage is not submission—but walking away?

The God Question’s Closing Thought

We are not villains in need of a cosmic rescue.

We are thinking, feeling beings capable of goodness, growth, and moral clarity without fear-based religion.

The Bible is about you.

Because it demands your belief.

It threatens your soul.

It claims authority over your life.

You are allowed to ask: What if the story is false?

And when you do…

You may find that the truest liberation isn’t being saved in spite of yourself—

but being free because you finally trusted yourself.

Does the Bible Really Endorse Slavery and Misogyny? A Response to “Cultural Trust” in The Problem of God

This post is part of our ongoing series examining Mark Clark’s book, The Problem of God, one section at a time. Each post critically analyzes Clark’s claims through the lens of reason, evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: we don’t begin with belief—we begin with curiosity. This installment responds to Chapter 3, Section 6: “Cultural Trust: Slaves, Women, and Polygamists” (pp. 78–82).

Cultural Context or Moral Failure?

In this section of The Problem of God, Mark Clark tackles a deeply uncomfortable question: Can we trust the Bible when it seems to endorse slavery, misogyny, or polygamy?

Clark’s answer: You’re reading it wrong.

He argues that modern readers misunderstand ancient culture—and that, when rightly interpreted, the Bible is more subversive than supportive of these outdated norms.

But that defense raises a bigger question:

If a text that claims to be divinely inspired requires centuries of cultural and academic translation just to avoid obvious moral failures… can it really be trusted?

Slavery: Just a Misunderstood Institution?

Clark insists that biblical slavery wasn’t as bad as modern slavery. It wasn’t racial, he says, and often allowed slaves to earn freedom.

But the problem isn’t how bad biblical slavery was. The problem is that a holy book treats it as normal—offering no clear condemnation, only regulations and instructions.

Paul’s command for slaves to “obey their masters” (Col. 3:22) isn’t ambiguous. No amount of historical footnoting can turn that into moral leadership.

Misogyny and Polygamy: Descriptive, Not Prescriptive?

Clark points to the dysfunction of patriarchal families as evidence that the Bible is critiquing—not endorsing—those practices. And yes, the family drama of Genesis is a mess.

But here’s the catch: God never condemns any of it.

Jacob has multiple wives.
Women are treated as property.
Children are bartered and favored like livestock.

If God is using these stories to critique injustice, he’s doing so silently.

When Apologetics Becomes Interpretation Gymnastics

Over and over, Clark asks us to reinterpret difficult passages more charitably. But that’s the problem. If the Bible is God’s revelation to the world, why does it require so much explaining?

Why does the “real meaning” always seem to be just one apologetic step away from what the text plainly says?

A message from God shouldn’t need modern filters to be morally sound.

Final Thought: Shouldn’t a Holy Text Be Better Than This?

Clark wants us to trust the Bible’s moral compass. But when that compass seems to point toward slavery, patriarchy, and gender hierarchy, “trust us—it doesn’t really mean that” isn’t good enough.

A truly inspired book shouldn’t look like every other book from its time. It should rise above.

And maybe—just maybe—it doesn’t.

How Trustworthy Are the Gospels? A Response to “Historical, Cultural, and Personal Trust” in The Problem of God

The Gospels and the Illusion of Certainty

📘 In Chapter 3 of The Problem of God, Mark Clark tries to defuse skepticism about the Bible by declaring the New Testament “the best-attested document in antiquity.” He begins with manuscript comparisons and ends with a claim that the Gospel writers were just too honest to have made things up. But beneath the surface, this section reveals more about apologetics than about history.

Let’s take a closer look.

Manuscript Numbers Are Not a Trump Card

Clark’s opening move is to compare the New Testament’s 25,000+ manuscript copies with the much smaller manuscript bases for works by Thucydides, Aristotle, or Caesar. But this is misleading.

Quantity doesn’t prove reliability.

Christian scribes copied the New Testament because they believed it was sacred. Copying error rates were high. Interpolations occurred. And most early copies come from centuries after the events they describe. What matters more than how many copies we have is how early, how consistent, and how free from doctrinal tampering those copies are.

Early Doesn’t Mean Eyewitness

Clark claims the Gospels were written 30–50 years after Jesus’ death and suggests that timeframe is “early.” But let’s ask an honest question:

If someone today published a story about an event that happened in 1974—with no surviving audio, video, or documents—how would we evaluate its historical accuracy?

Being close in time doesn’t make a source true. Especially when those decades were filled with oral storytelling, theological interpretation, and religious evolution.

Were the Gospels Written to Be Eyewitness Reports?

Clark wants us to believe that eyewitnesses would have corrected errors. But he never shows that:

The authors were present at the events.
The authors had access to eyewitnesses.
The early church even prioritized factual correction.

What we do see is theological shaping—Jesus’ last words differ in every Gospel, Judas dies in contradictory ways, and stories grow in drama and detail from Mark to John.

“They Wouldn’t Include That If It Weren’t True”

Clark tries to bolster credibility by pointing out embarrassing details—Jesus’ fear in Gethsemane, Peter’s cowardice, or obscure names like Rufus and Alexander. But this apologetic tactic is weak. Ancient writers often included such “realistic” touches to build emotional resonance or narrative depth.

These details don’t prove authenticity. They prove storytelling skill.

What This Section Reveals

This chapter reveals a lot—just not what Clark intends. It reveals:

The apologetic impulse to defend certainty at all costs.
A reliance on rhetoric over historical rigor.
A refusal to address what actually undermines biblical trust—namely, contradiction, anonymity, theological bias, and historical silence.

Conclusion

If you’ve been told the Bible is historically reliable because it has lots of manuscripts or includes embarrassing details, it may be time to revisit that claim. Real trust requires evidence, not slogans. And when it comes to the Bible’s origin and evolution, the evidence is far more complicated—and far less certain—than this chapter would have you believe.

Chapter 3: “Are There Contradictions Between the Old and New Testaments?”

Welcome back to The God Question, where we examine religious claims through the lens of clarity, logic, and real-world evidence. This blog series is dedicated to exploring the most influential apologetics works in modern Christianity—one argument at a time. Our goal is not to mock or belittle, but to illuminate. Using The God Question’s Core Philosophy, we challenge faith-based claims with curiosity, courage, and a commitment to truth—wherever it leads.

“Are There Contradictions Between the Old and New Testaments?”

(The Problem of God, Chapter 3, pages 71–74)

In this section, Mark Clark attempts to dismiss a common objection raised by skeptics and ex-Christians alike: that the Bible contains obvious contradictions between the Old and New Testaments. He presents this objection in the form of a caricature:

“Read the Old Testament,” people say. “It says that you can’t eat shellfish or pork, but you do! You get tattoos, and you work on the Sabbath!” (p. 71)

Clark concedes that Christians do, in fact, ignore many of the Old Testament laws—but insists that this is not evidence of contradiction. Rather, he argues, it reflects the progressive nature of divine revelation. God’s commands evolve, he claims, because they were never meant to be timeless. They were issued for specific people in a specific season of salvation history, and those rules have now been fulfilled and superseded by Jesus.

Let’s examine this claim using The God Question’s Core Philosophy—with particular attention to clarity, logic, evidence, and coherence.

1. The Shifting Goalposts of Divine Command

Clark’s argument hinges on the idea that God’s laws were always meant to be temporary. He quotes Jeremiah 31:31–33 to suggest that the coming of the Messiah would replace the old covenant. He also cites Paul’s metaphor in Galatians 3:23–29, which compares the Old Testament law to a “childminder” whose role was to guide God’s people until something better came along.

But here’s the problem: if God’s moral commands change based on the season, then morality itself is no longer objective. It becomes relative—not to culture or human consensus—but to divine mood or era. And if divine commands can shift this dramatically, how can anyone today be confident that current Christian teachings won’t be revoked tomorrow?

Clark tries to sidestep this issue by saying the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old. But this does not solve the problem—it merely repackages it. The Bible still contains mutually exclusive laws and expectations:

In Leviticus, eating pork is an abomination. In Acts 10, it’s divinely permitted.
In Exodus, Sabbath-breaking was punishable by death. In Mark 2, Jesus says the Sabbath was made for man.
In Deuteronomy, uncircumcised men are cut off from God’s people. In Romans, Paul says circumcision no longer matters.

By any standard definition, these are contradictions in doctrine, practice, and theology. “Fulfillment” doesn’t erase contradiction—it just rebrands it.

2. God’s Moral Character Is on the Line

If the Old Testament laws reflected God’s will, then repealing them later raises serious theological questions. Did God change his mind? Were the original laws flawed? Were they a test—or a temporary system of control? Clark attempts to reframe the tension by calling the Old Covenant a “shadow” of what was to come (Colossians 2:17), but this merely reinforces the critique.

Imagine a human parent who forbids their child from eating pork under threat of death—but later tells a sibling, “Actually, pork’s fine now. Eat as much bacon as you want.” Would we call that consistent moral leadership? Or would we call it arbitrary, contradictory, and deeply confusing?

Clark wants us to view this as “progress,” but if divine morality is capable of being superseded, it’s not eternal. And if it’s not eternal, then God is not immutable.

3. Cherry-Picking and the Illusion of Consistency

Clark acknowledges the embarrassing commands in Leviticus 21:20, such as forbidding men with “crushed testicles” from entering the assembly of the Lord—but he brushes these aside as “outdated” temple codes no longer relevant to Christian life. This is classic cherry-picking.

What standard is being used to decide which commands were for “a specific people in a specific time” and which are binding for all time? The answer, of course, is the authority of the New Testament. But this is circular reasoning:

“How do we know the New Testament supersedes the Old? Because the New Testament says so.”

You cannot defend the coherence of the Bible by appealing to the Bible’s own internal claims—especially when those claims conflict across books and centuries.

4. Jesus Did Not Clearly Revoke the Law

Clark references Acts 10 and Peter’s vision of the sheet filled with unclean animals. But Peter initially refuses to eat: “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14). This suggests that Peter—who walked with Jesus—did not believe the Old Testament food laws had been revoked during Jesus’s earthly ministry.

If Jesus truly intended to nullify the Mosaic Law, wouldn’t he have made that crystal clear to his disciples?

Instead, we find Jesus saying the opposite in Matthew 5:17–19:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets… Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law.”

The attempt to dissolve Old Testament commands via post-resurrection visions and Pauline reinterpretation only underscores the fragmented, patchwork nature of Christian theology.

5. Conclusion: Contradiction Repackaged as Progress

Clark’s closing line says it all:

“This is of course far different than contradiction. It is the by-product of maturation.” (p. 74)

But maturation implies growth from ignorance to knowledge, or from crudeness to refinement. That might be fine for a human species evolving morally over millennia—but it’s devastating for the idea of a timeless, perfect, all-knowing God. Why would such a being need to mature his moral code?

The truth is that contradictions between the Old and New Testaments exist because the Bible is not a single, unified revelation—it’s a sprawling anthology of evolving human thought about the divine. Different authors, different eras, different agendas.

That’s not a flaw to cover up with theological gymnastics. It’s a clue.

It points not to divine authorship—but to human invention.

Chapter 3 Response, Section 2: Two Case Studies in Contradiction

This post is part of an ongoing series analyzing Mark Clark’s book The Problem of God, which claims to present a case for Christianity in a skeptical age. Each entry evaluates a chapter or section of the book through a critical, secular lens—applying The God Question’s Core Philosophy: evidence over assertion, logic over tradition, and intellectual honesty over inherited belief. If you’re exploring or questioning Christian faith, this series is for you.

The Preacher’s Excuse

In this section of Chapter 3, Mark Clark tries to explain away contradictions in the Bible by telling a story from his days in Bible college. He recalls noticing discrepancies between the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 and the parable of the minas in Luke 19—stories that seem nearly identical but differ in key details. Alarmed, he approached his professor, who handed him recordings of Clark’s own sermons. Each sermon, the professor pointed out, used the same illustrations in slightly different ways.

The implication? Jesus did the same thing. Like any preacher, he reused parables and adjusted details for different audiences. So the Gospel contradictions aren’t real contradictions—they’re just variations of the same teaching moment.

It’s a clever move. But it’s also a dodge.

The Gospel writers never indicate that they’re recording multiple tellings of the same parable. They present these as historical, eyewitness events. And they differ not just in nuance—but in content, sequencing, and meaning. That’s not literary flexibility. That’s inconsistency.

This section continues with two of the most famous examples.

1. Judas’s Death: A Bloody Contradiction

Clark tackles the conflict between Matthew 27 and Acts 1 regarding how Judas Iscariot died.

Matthew: Judas returned the silver and hanged himself.
Acts: Judas bought a field, fell headlong, and burst open.

Clark’s defense? These are “complementary” accounts. He suggests Judas hanged himself, the rope eventually snapped, and his body fell and burst open.

But this isn’t explanation—it’s imagination.

The texts themselves say nothing about a fall in Matthew, or a hanging in Acts. In fact, Acts directly says Judas bought the field, whereas Matthew says the priests did, using the returned silver. These are not two versions of the same story. They are two conflicting stories.

Apologists often attempt to harmonize by inventing plausible scenarios—but these scenarios don’t exist in the text. If two court transcripts offered accounts this contradictory, no one would claim they “complement” each other. We’d question whether either could be trusted.

2. The Angels at the Tomb: Silent Subtraction

Next, Clark addresses the inconsistency between resurrection accounts:

Matthew says there was one angel.
John says there were two.

Clark insists there’s no contradiction—Matthew simply chose to focus on one angel, while John mentioned both.

But this isn’t how precision works.

Matthew doesn’t write, “one of the angels said…” He writes, “the angel said…”—as though there was only one. If two angels had been there and Matthew had simply chosen to omit one, it would raise the question: why omit half of the divine messengers at the most important event in human history?

This isn’t a minor discrepancy—it’s a detail that calls into question the accuracy of either (or both) accounts.

The Larger Problem

Clark closes by accusing skeptics of applying “a level of precision and perfection” to the Bible that we wouldn’t apply to any other ancient text.

But that’s the point.

Apologists claim the Bible is inerrant, God-breathed, and perfect—not just another ancient text. If the Bible is to serve as the foundation of divine authority, it must meet the higher standard that Christians themselves claim for it.

If it’s just human literature, then Clark’s excuse works.

But if it’s God’s Word, it doesn’t.

Are the Bible’s Errors Overblown? A Response to “Contradictions and Mistakes” in The Problem of God

In The Problem of God, Pastor Mark Clark attempts to calm concerns about biblical contradictions by calling them exaggerated and irrelevant—more the product of internet skeptics than serious inquiry. But brushing aside the issue with sarcasm and misdirection doesn’t make it go away. Chapter 3 of his book, titled “Contradictions and Mistakes,” invites a closer, more honest look—not just at the surface-level examples, but at the deeper implications they raise. If the Bible is God’s perfect Word, why are there inconsistencies at all? This post examines Clark’s apologetic claims and offers a critical response rooted in transparency, logic, and respect for the reader’s intelligence.

Are the Mistakes Just Typos?

Clark argues that the 400,000+ variants in the New Testament are largely insignificant—mere spelling errors or different wordings that don’t impact doctrine. And while it’s true that many variations are minor, what Clark doesn’t mention is that we don’t have the originals. All we have are copies of copies—with no way to verify what the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John actually wrote.

And yes—some of the variants do matter:

Who was at the tomb? (Mark vs. Luke vs. John)
What did Jesus say on the cross? (compare all four Gospels)
How did Judas die? (Matthew 27:5 vs. Acts 1:18)

These are not “typos.” They’re incompatible eyewitness accounts—right where Christians claim we should see divine consistency.

“Only Two Disputed Passages”?

Clark also claims that only two passages in the entire New Testament are seriously disputed—Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11. But that claim is misleading. Those two are the longest disputed blocks, but there are dozens of disputed and contradictory statements throughout the New Testament. They may not be flagged in your English Bible—but they are known to scholars.

Even minor contradictions cast doubt on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy—a core tenet of Southern Baptist fundamentalism. Once you admit that human error exists, the entire foundation of certainty begins to shake.

When Apologetics Avoids the Real Question

Rather than addressing the deeper issue—how can a perfect God allow imperfect transmission of His Word?—Clark spends most of this section trying to discredit Bart Ehrman and skeptical readers. He uses false equivalency (comparing Bible copies to book typos), rhetorical minimization, and selective framing.

But these tactics don’t answer the question.

In fact, they prove why The God Question exists in the first place: when belief is built on certainty, even small cracks must be ignored or explained away.