Does the Bible contain errors, contradictions, or discrepancies?

There are no contradictions in the Scriptures.

Remember, there is no discrepancy whatever. No more impudent belief can well be, than to set one part of the New Testament against another, or indeed any part of the Bible against another. Such a handling of scripture is not only dishonest, but profound ignorance. There is not in all the Bible one passage that really contradicts another. Of course, there are passages that may seem at variance; but then, as we begin to get a little more light, these diminish in their number; and hence modesty would feel, if there were but fuller light, all the appearances of inconsistency would vanish away. It is just the same thing in the moral world, nor is it otherwise in the natural world. There are everywhere apparent contradictions and exceptions, but a larger knowledge of things bring these under a deeper rule. So it is with the word of God. Greater spiritual wisdom causes these apparent anomalies to disappear. Sometimes they may be in the translation; sometimes they may be in faulty manuscripts of the original; sometimes, and most frequently, they are in our own understanding. But the great lesson learnt throughout is, that the Bible becomes more manifestly the word of God in its every detail. No doubt the more ignorant people are, the more fault they find with the Bible; the wiser they become, the more they rejoice in it, and bless God for it.

The Bible puts man into the light of God. This is why the natural man hates this book - and has tried to find contradictions everywhere. However, 90% of these are due to either ignorance or bad intentions, or both. Then there are real difficulties, such as differences between Gospel reports. Here it is a matter of asking God to help us understand the Divine design of the scriptures. If we do, the difficulties disappear and the beauty of inspiration is seen. In some extremely rare cases an error may have occurred: in 2 Ki. 8:26 an age of 22 years is given, while in 2 Chr. 22:2 the age given is 42 years - possibly the result of a copying error. But our faith does not depend on this detail.

A very small number of difficulties now remain to form the third class, which is composed of little discrepancies, the source of which cannot be discovered with certainty. An example of this class is the question of the age of Ahaziah when he came to the throne of Judah. 2 Kings 8:26 states it as 22, while 2 Chronicles 22:2 says 42. The error evidently crept in through a very early mistake In copying, but when and how we have no means of knowing.

The next objection (Phases, p. 108) is Acts 7:16: "And were carried over, and placed in the sepulchre which Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Hamor, the father of Sychem." That there is a difficulty in this passage is beyond a doubt; and some mistake difficult for us now to solve. There is a name which is inexactly connected with an historical fact in the Old Testament. It is also one of those difficulties long since discussed. But to call in question inspiration because of it, is to put what an error in copying would produce, in competition with all the moral and spiritual evidence of divine power, manifest in the whole contents of the book itself, and in its effects in the world for ages. It is so falsely measuring the intrinsic importance of evidence, and the character of proof, that the person rejecting the scriptures because of it would prove nothing but his own incompetence to measure evidence. A book two thousand years old has a mistake in a sentence, which the omission of a word entirely rectifies, without changing anything — a word very likely to creep in. And this is used to discredit what bears the largest, fullest, strongest, positive proofs of every kind, of being the testimony of God, and has produced, and does produce, effects which nothing but the testimony of God could do.

But many difficulties melt away when we look at them at all closely, and it will be found useful to remember the following six statements: — (1) We have an original text somewhat mutilated by copying and translation, but only to a very limited extent. (2) The suggestion that inspiration is not verbal destroys the absolute authority of the Bible — "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail" (Luke 16:17). (3) In any divergence between two accounts of an event only direct contradictions can afford any proof against inspiration (but see (1)). (4) Silence is no proof of ignorance — see St. John's declaration, "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they were written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written" (John 21:25). (5) The events narrated in the Gospels are not arranged in chronological order. (6) Statements which are apparently contradictory may record different facts, e.g., the feeding of the five thousand, and again later of the four thousand, often confused as one.

Now, much difficulty has arisen in some minds from the fact that the four Gospels do not appear to agree in every detail. With reference to this difficulty I would say that it would be surprising if they were all exactly similar, for, as we have seen, the four Gospels present Christ in four different lights. In recording the same event the different historians relate different circumstances, some giving more, some fewer than the rest: the fuller account in‘ eludes the shorter, and the shorter does not contradict the fuller. Take the case of the blind man at Jericho recorded in Matt. 20:30-34; Mark 10:46-50; Luke 18:35-43. Read the three narratives carefully and see how one adds to the other. Was it ignorance that caused Mark to write "a beggar" instead of "two beggars"? As we shall see, the apostles did not write according to their knowledge, but according to the guidance of the Spirit of God.

On consideration of these points of diversity it must be admitted that in no instance are they such as to render the narratives incompatible one with another. Luke does not contradict Matthew and Mark, nor do they him. It must further be admitted that in no one of the accounts, nor in all of them taken together, have we the whole of the details of the incident. This is unnecessary, and would indeed be impossible (John 21:25). Details not essential to the purpose of the Gospel are omitted. And while these omissions may sometimes prevent us from piecing together the four narratives into one "harmonious" whole, we are not, in consequence, the losers. On the contrary, the Gospels, as we have them, present the truth exactly as it was intended by the Divine Author that they should. It is only shallow-minded man who regards it as a defect in inspiration that one Evangelist does not supply the historical omissions of his predecessor. He would have arranged them so, because they would then form a series of Sunday school exercises to fit the four one with another like parts of a dissected map. What a poor idea of inspiration is in the minds of many!

I have brought the facts together from the different Gospels, so that you may see that there is no contradiction. Though the differences are striking, yet how beautifully do the accounts agree.

Even if one only considers the accounts of bare facts, it is John who alone tells us of the leading of the Lord before Annas. It is from him we learn that the maid who first charged the apostle was the portress, and that it was through the other disciple that Peter was let in to the scene of his fall. It is to him we owe the remarkable link which reconciles at one stroke in the simplest and surest way the diverging accounts of the three Synoptists as to the second denial. And he alone lets us know the interesting connection of the slave, wounded of Peter and healed of Christ, with him who was the most pointed of those who drew out the third and most aggravated denial. And this even on human grounds, is the one who "was not so accurately informed!" Never were accounts so evidently above the just imputation of one copying another; never was harmony demonstrably more perfect, without hiding or diminishing but fully unfolding the difference, of each succeeding account. Nor can any fact be more triumphantly apparent, notwithstanding discrepancies to the superficial glance, than their really consenting testimony, the more minutely investigated the better, to the full truth of the story as a whole.