Biblical Contradictions – God or Delusion?

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.

Jesus in the Tomb Three Days?

📅 Today is Day 17 of The 20-Day Easter Special

Each day leading up to Easter, we’re critically examining a core resurrection claim—one at a time—through the lens of reason, evidence, and The God Question’s Core Philosophy.

Math Problems in the Passion Story

Category: Biblical Literalism, Chronology Issues Method Applied:The God Question’s Core Philosophy

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” — Matthew 12:40 (NIV)

The Gospels claim that Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and then rose on the third day—fulfilling both prophecy and Jesus’ own predictions. But a closer look at the timeline reveals a serious problem:

There are not three days and three nights between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Let’s apply The God Question’s Core Philosophy to this contradiction—examining not just what we’re told, but how it holds up to scrutiny.

🧠 1. Does the claim rely on evidence or belief?

The “three days and three nights” claim is based entirely on Gospel narratives, which differ in detail but generally agree that:

Jesus was crucified and died on Friday (“Preparation Day”)
His body was placed in a tomb before sundown (start of Sabbath)
Women discovered the empty tomb “early on the first day of the week,” Sunday morning

This is a faith-based timeline, not an evidence-based reconstruction. There is no independent, external source confirming when Jesus was buried or when he supposedly rose.

📅 From Friday evening to Sunday morning, at best, we get:

Friday night

Saturday (day and night)

Early Sunday morning

That’s two nights and one full day, not three days and three nights.

🔍 2. Are alternative explanations considered?

Christian apologists have proposed numerous rationalizations to reconcile the math:

Inclusive reckoning: Any part of a day counts as a full day.
Jewish idiom: “Three days and nights” doesn’t require 72 hours.
Wednesday crucifixion theory: Some suggest Jesus died earlier in the week.
Double Sabbath theory: Suggests both a High Sabbath and the weekly Sabbath occurred, lengthening the burial time.

But each of these explanations creates new problems:

They lack textual support in the Gospels themselves.
They contradict early Christian tradition, which consistently affirms a Friday crucifixion.
They raise new inconsistencies with surrounding events—like the Passover meal, Roman procedures, or the women visiting the tomb.

Conclusion: These are retroactive patches, not genuine explanations. They protect belief but fail as objective alternatives.

🧪 3. Is there independent corroboration?

No.

There is no historical or secular record confirming:

The exact day of Jesus’ death
The length of his time in the tomb
The specific date of resurrection

Even within the Bible, the Gospels disagree on key timeline details:

Gospel	Crucifixion Day	Resurrection Timing
Mark	Friday (Preparation for Sabbath)	Sunday, early morning
Matthew	Same	“At dawn” on Sunday
Luke	Same	“Early dawn” on Sunday
John	Contradicts others—Jesus dies before Passover meal	Sunday, still dark

John places the crucifixion before the Passover meal; the Synoptics place it after. These timelines cannot both be true.

Conclusion: There is no independent corroboration and the internal sources conflict.

🧪 4. Is the claim falsifiable?

Yes—and it fails the test.

If Jesus himself predicted he would be “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40), then a two-night burial falsifies that claim on its own terms.

Christian defenders often retreat into metaphor here, saying “three days and nights” isn’t literal. But Jesus explicitly compares his burial to Jonah’s time in the fish—which was literal in the story.

If the timeline doesn’t add up literally, then a literal reading fails.

Conclusion: The claim is falsifiable—and it fails the criteria it sets for itself.

🧩 5. Does the explanation raise more questions than it answers?

Absolutely.

Why would Jesus make a verifiable time-based prophecy that doesn’t align with the timeline?
Why would all four Gospels handle the same historical event with inconsistent details?
Why does John contradict the Synoptics on the date of death?
Why do modern believers dismiss the literal meaning of “three days and three nights” when it’s used to prove Jesus’ divine foresight?

In trying to defend a “literal Bible,” Christians are often forced to abandon literalism whenever it creates contradictions. This inconsistency raises deep questions about what “truth” even means in the biblical context.

🧠 Final Thought: When the Math Doesn’t Add Up

The claim that Jesus was “in the tomb for three days and three nights” is not a minor slip—it’s a failed prophecy, a chronological contradiction, and a litmus test for biblical literalism.

Literalists who defend it end up relying on non-literal interpretations. And once you allow metaphor, idiom, and approximation into the equation—the entire resurrection account becomes even murkier.

So we ask:

If the timeline used to prove Jesus’ divine authority doesn’t hold up, what else might not?

🧭 The God Question’s Invitation

This is not about attacking faith—it’s about following the evidence wherever it leads. If the resurrection story contains internal contradictions, that should concern anyone who values truth over tradition.

Faith begins where evidence ends. But so do fables. Only critical thinking can tell the difference.

📅 Note: After we wrap up our 20-Day Easter Special on April 20, we’ll return to our regular schedule of posting three times a week:

Tuesdays & Fridays – our structured explorations through all 11 blog categories
Sundays – our Sunday Special Feature, where we critically respond to real-world religious claims in real time

We hope you’ll stay with us as we continue asking bold questions and applying reason to faith.