Reconciling Discrepancies in Scripture

The Bible’s Tenacity, Integrity, and the Problem of Apparent Discrepancies

Thank you for, again, getting the opportunity to talk about the tenacity, integrity of your Word, and I pray, Lord, that today as we look at those subjects and we look at the subject of discrepancies which are supposed in Scripture, that we would understand that faithfulness is what you have shown us through your Word so much, and that faithfulness should remind us to always be steadfast in looking for the answer and not just accepting that what we have seen is a contradiction.

For, Lord, we know that you do not contradict yourself, for you are a God of truth, and Satan is the father of lies. So we pray that we would be subject to you and to your truth today. In Jesus' name, amen.

Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Infallibility

This morning we are going to begin looking at reconciling discrepancies in Scripture. I am confident that, given the opportunity, a person reading the Bible will have at times questions about why it might say something in one passage and say something else in another passage, and why those two things do not line up with the degree of certainty that we often like to see.

The Bible was written over a 1 ,500-year period of time. It was written by over 40 different authors. It was written in two primary languages, and then we see marks of a third language, Aramaic, that falls in at times.

So we have a book that is amazingly complex in how it came and where it came from, and who had a hand in contributing to it from a human standpoint. And so it is not without some expectation that we're going to run into parts that are difficult and might seem to contradict another part.

And yet, we as Bible students who are Reformed and who are, I would say, conservative and fundamental in our approach to Scripture, we would say that the Bible has three distinguishing features, and this has been the subject of the last few weeks, that we say the Bible is inspired, we say the Bible is inerrant, and we say the Bible is infallible.

And last week we ended, in fact, Lee and I were talking on the way out, about the difference between inerrancy and infallibility, you know, because people often use those interchangeably. And there is a little bit of a difference.

When we talk about inspiration, we're talking about the source. This is, it's from God. But when we talk about inerrancy, we're saying the Bible does not err, doesn't make any errors. It's all true. Infallibility, though, is a little stronger than inerrancy.

If I say something is inerrant, I'm saying it did not err. If I say something is infallible, I'm saying it cannot err. And so one is a little stronger term. For instance, I can say a sentence that's true, but I can also say a sentence that's false.

I'm not infallible, but I can say something that is without error. So for that moment, I can be inerrant, but not infallible, because I could have said something wrong. So when we say the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible, we're saying it came from God.

It does not err, because it cannot err, because of the source. And all three sort of flow together as to how we understand Scripture. So then we come to the Bible, and we start to deal with discrepancies and apparent contradictions.

James, Paul, and Salvation by Faith and Works

And we're going to get to the ones in the notes, but just to kind of throw one that's sort of a simple one out there is when we see the Bible talking about faith alone. This is a good Reformed one, because James tells us in James 2 .24 that we are justified by works and not by faith alone, right?

I mean, that's the absolute statement. James says we are justified by works and not by faith alone. But then you go over to Romans 4, and Paul tells us Abraham was justified not by what he did, but by his faith.

For if he had been justified by his works, he would have something about which to boast. But he was not justified by his works, but he was justified by faith to bring all glory to God. And then you go over to Ephesians 2, and it says without any ambiguity, it says, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that is not of yourself.

It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So you have the Apostle Paul saying you are justified or saved not by works, and James says you're justified by works. Seemingly an impossible contradiction, so much so that the venerable Martin Luther found James's writing so repugnant at one point that he called it the Epistle of Straw, meaning that he felt like it was not, in and of itself, really on the same level as the writings of the Apostle Paul, that James was errant, or at least had miscommunicated a very foundational truth.

Now, I don't really want to spend the rest of this time I could explaining why there is no contradiction between James and Paul, because there isn't. And the reason is very simple. James and Paul are speaking about two entirely different functions of salvation.

James is talking about the product of salvation, which is good works, and if you go back to Paul's writings in Ephesians 2, he does say we are saved just by grace through faith and not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Paul tells us you're saved not by good works, but you're saved for good works. You're saved to do those things which are pleasing to God, and essentially that's what James says, because he says if you say you have faith and you don't have works, then your faith is necros, it's dead, right?

It's not alive, it's not a real faith. And what kind of faith is that? Matthew 7 tells us Jesus said, many will come to me on that day and will say, have we not done this and not done that? And he said, I never knew you was at me.

You never had a living faith. You had a verbal profession, as they say, without an inward possession. It also says not everyone called me Lord normally, but those that do the will of my Father will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Very good. Exactly. And that's on the same level. Who are the ones who do the will of the Father? The ones who have genuine faith. And who are the ones who have genuine faith? The ones who have been born again.

And so there is a consistency, but it would be easy for the unbelieving skeptic to simply take Ephesians 2 and take James 2 and say, here's two contradictory statements. And without context and without harmonization, they would be in contradiction with one another.

So that's why we have what we call harmonization. And if you look at your notes, page 11 or note 11, you'll see the different approaches to harmonizing or to reconciling discrepancies. And we're not going to really kind of go through all of those because I really don't see a lot of value in looking at the various things.

Because I will say this, we take a harmonistic approach. Meaning this, we believe that just like in music, and some of you have studied music, some of you played in bands or orchestras or whatever, and so you understand a little bit.

But you know in music, if you play one note, you'll get one sound. And if you play that same note on another instrument, it doesn't change the sound. It simply adds to that sound. But if you play another note on another instrument, you're either going to get a kickback and they're going to sound terrible because they don't harmonize.

Or if you play the three notes together, or two notes together, and they are harmonious notes, it will sound like a new note. Does that make sense? If you play two notes that don't go together, it'll go, and it's like my band director used to say, he said, if you're drinking a bottle of milk, and it's nice, and then you get a lump.

Yeah, that's what it sounds like when you're, when you hit the wrong note. Because everything sounds out of whack, right? And that's what happens when it's not in harmony. But when you take two or three notes, or even more, and they all fit together, and they're all played at the same time, it makes a new sound.

That sound of the harmony. And that's what we're doing when we come to these texts. Okay, well we have a text over here that says this. We have a text over here that says that. We want to find where they harmonize to give us the truth.

Harmonizing the Gospels and Reading Scripture with Trust

We're getting close to Christmas, and I'll never forget a few years ago, I was teaching another Sunday school class, and we had some guests. It was the Sunday before Christmas. We always have guests on the Sunday before Christmas.

They came into Sunday school, and I taught on, and maybe I'll do this for us this year, maybe on the, on one of the Sundays before Christmas, but I taught on the four different perspectives of Christ's birth.

No, no, I'm sorry. No, I was, it was Easter, and I was doing the four perspectives of Christ's resurrection. But the same thing can be done with Christ's birth. They're, but really with Christ's birth, you only have two.

You have Matthew and Luke's account, because Mark doesn't really address it, and John doesn't really address the birth narrative. But in the resurrection narrative, all four gospels address the resurrection narrative.

And there's four stories, and there can be competing stories if you take it in a competition, but you can harmonize it as well. But I just know, I'll never forget this Sunday, because the people who were there, I'm showing how, you know, in one story you have a single angel, another story you have different angels, and there's one story the angel's outside, one story the angels are inside, and so you kind of have the, you have to sort of harmonize the story and say, okay, well, this is likely how it happened.

They're following you. If you follow the narrative and combine them together as a harmony, you can sort of see how it moved. But again, if you just read one and read the other, and you don't try to harmonize them, you'll get two competing stories.

Well, the person sitting there, he just was amazed. I didn't realize that there was so much discrepancy. Yeah, and he seemed disheartened. Now, he was a CEO, you know, a CEO, Christmas, Easter only. He was a guy who came to church twice a year, so it didn't surprise me that he wasn't aware of the apparent discrepancies.

I can stay home now. Yeah, well, hopefully not. But my point in it was almost like, how did you not know? If you've read the Bible, but then again, that's taking a big assumption, isn't it, that people have read the Bible, or that they've read the Bible with, you know, with a real discerning heart.

One of my great desires, and I haven't pulled the trigger on this because I see it as no less than a four to five-year project, and I just, I can't imagine it being less than a four or five-year project.

But I want, before I die or retire from ministry, whichever, you know, whatever happens, I want to do a study and a teaching study through all four Gospels at the same time, a full harmony of the Gospels, beginning with the birth narrative of Christ.

Actually, it would begin with John's Gospel, because his begins even before the birth narrative of Christ, referencing the beginning and Christ being in the beginning. But I want to take through all the stories of the Gospels to show the harmony in the Gospels.

But it really, I don't see it being, certainly not less than three years of intense, you know, week-to-week going in, looking at the stories. So, you know, Lord willing, He'll lay it on my heart to really to take that, undertake that at some point.

But I do believe, and the reason I want to do it is I want to show, number one, that there is harmony there, but also to kind of make people, force people out of their comfort zone. Because a lot of people, if you read just Matthew and then you read just Mark and you read just Luke, you might not notice the discrepancies, because you're not reading them on top of one another.

You're not sort of superimposing one on the other and trying to get the full story. And I think that's one of the reasons why God gave us three Gospel narratives that are so similar. And then one that's dissimilar is to show us that, you know, there's so much, there's such a, there's a deep well here from which to draw.

It's not just a simple story. It's a life of a man who changed our lives and changed the world. And so what attitude do we approach the Scripture with? I heard an analogy years ago which really affected me.

And ever since I heard this analogy, I've really tried to take this approach when dealing with any type of supposed discrepancy. Imagine if you're a man, imagine coming home and you're pulling into your driveway and you see your wife standing at the door with another man who is walking out of your home.

Okay. And you don't know the man. And it's for a moment. Let me finish. But possibly. No. You get home, you see your wife at the door, and this man's walking out. You've never seen him before. You have no idea who this guy is.

Your trusting of your wife and her fidelity will be based on, or your response will be based on your trust of your wife's fidelity. If your immediate thought is, okay, who's this guy? What's he doing wrong?

Blah, blah, blah. You know, and you immediately sort of have that downturn in attitude. It possibly is because there's some doubt in your mind about the fidelity, but your immediate thought will be based on how she has behaved up until that point.

I mean, if you've been married 15 years, five years, 10 years, whatever, if she's always been faithful, then there'd be no reason to doubt her faithfulness now. And if you walked up and she said, yeah, the cable man came and he had to fix something, or there was something fell in the backyard and this is one of our neighbors, he came to help.

You'd have no reason to doubt because she's always been faithful before. Right? And so, that's the way that we should come to scripture. Why, when we come to a discrepancy, when we see the guy standing in the doorway, do we automatically say, oh, this has got to be wrong?

No. We look at the way scripture has always been faithful before and we say, okay, there's no reason to automatically think the worst. Let's look at the best. Let's look for the positive because that's what we find when we really dig in.

The atheist assumes the infidelity. The atheist is assuming the unfaithfulness of scripture. And so, he comes with the attitude, it's going to be wrong. And even when he sees something and we show him, no, this isn't wrong.

If you look here and look here, they're not discrepancy. No, no, it's a discrepancy. I remember Bart Ehrman being at the debate, listening to him and Dr. White go back and forth and him saying, the Bible is a married bachelor or God is a married bachelor because he says this in one place, he says this in another place, and he just is so contradictory.

You know, a married bachelor can't be, can't be married and be a bachelor. And that's the way I see the God of the scriptures. He's so contradictory, I can't believe in him. And Dr. White was just, but you're not even attempting any type of harm in it.

You're not attempting to understand these things. Yeah, exactly. So they've already living in a state of denial, in a state of unbelief. So, like I said, when we look at these and the ones in the book have been chosen by the author of the book, there are others, but I do think that we can look at a couple today.

Numerical Discrepancies and Copyist Errors

We're looking at our time real quick. Oh, we got a few minutes, 10 minutes left. We can look at a couple of these. I'm going to read the, the outline at the top. It says, the following chart reflects a summation of the response given by Gleason Archer to alleged errors and discrepancies in scripture is set forth by William Lasore and Dewey Beagle.

These are considered to be the most difficult of the many discrepancies alleged by critics against the original manuscripts of the Lasore set forth 10 objections, only six of which are charted here because two were unanswered with one response.

One was withdrawn and two of his objections were leveled at another person's reason rather than at scripture itself. Beagle set forth 11 objections. Archer addressed only 10 of them since the 11th was a repetition of an area that also concerned Lasore.

In regard to the allegations, the obvious intent of this chart is to simplify or to simply identify the areas of concerns and not to provide a full summation of the allegations. This may be obtained by reference to the sources used for the chart and the sources are in the bottom if you want to look them up.

But let's look at some of the discrepancies. The first one on the chart is numerical discrepancies. In the history books of scripture, and this was, this was proposed by Lasore, William Lasore pointed to several Old Testament passages where there are numerical discrepancies.

If we'd like to look at these, so if somebody has a bible turn to 2 Samuel 10 18 and I'll do the same. 2 Samuel 10 18. All right, would somebody read that when they get there?

For Israel and David killed of the Syrians the men of 700 chariots and 40 ,000 horsemen and wounded Shobach the commander of the army so that he died there.

Okay, so that, yeah, so there's a numerical number. 700 chariots and 40 ,000 horsemen. Now the next passage is in 1 Chronicles 19 18. So if you want to just kind of make your way over there. 1 Chronicles 19 18.

Okay, all right, so what's the discrepancy? 700 versus 7 ,000, right? So in English, what would be the discrepancy? One additional zero, right? 700 becomes 7 ,000 with one additional zero. It's the same it is in Hebrew.

So, I mean, as far as there would only be one additional change that would cause it to move from the 700 to the 7 ,000. All right, we can do this with all of them. I don't think it's necessary, but if you were to look at all of these passages listed here, this is what you're going to find.

You're going to find times where in one place there will be a number and another place there will be a number and in almost every time it is separated out by a single digit of change. Okay, now here is the part that I want you guys to hear.

As you all heard me teach on textual variance and textual criticism, right? I mean, I haven't gone through the, I haven't done the whole series in here, but you've heard me reference it several times in my sermons and I mentioned textual variation before.

It's one of my favorite fields of study and this is where I think this makes a good point. It says in the, I'll read it to you, it says, there is no proof that this discrepancy existed in the original manuscripts.

It was probably difficult to make out numerals when copying from earlier worn out manuscripts and ancient systems of numerical notation were susceptible to mistakes leaving off or adding zeros. One of the things that we need to remember, and this is hugely important and I hope that you would never forget this, is when we talk about inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility, we're always talking about the OM.

What is the OM? The original manuscripts. The original manuscripts are the ones that we would say are inspired, inerrant, and infallible. Does anyone here own an original copy of First Corinthians? Yeah, everybody had to own the original copy.

I say an original copy, it'd be the original copy, right? Only one. Anybody own the original copy of First Chronicles? That's a thousand years older than First Corinthians. Okay, so we would have to say no.

So the burden of proof for the unbeliever or the person who's making the argument is that the original manuscript was an error. We do not deny, at least I don't deny, that the copyists have made errors, particularly in this issue of numerical copying, because when you make numerical writings, it's easy to leave the zeros or things like that.

It's easy to make those errors of sight. So the original manuscript, there's no reason to believe that it had this mistake. And also, I think, and this is again because of my desire to say the Bible is faithful, and I do believe the Bible is faithful, and my, you know, within my conscience saying I believe this, I think it's amazing when you say, okay, well, what is the difference here?

It's only one zero. You're talking about ancient manuscripts and ancient writings, and to say, yeah, there was one zero makes it seven to seven thousand, seven hundred, seven thousand, but the fact that there's still so much consistency here, I think that is an amazing testimony to the truth.

So is it a place where we could say there are potential copyist errors? Well, there would have to be. There would have to be a copyist error somewhere for us to end up with seven hundred, one point, seven thousand, other points.

So the next question is the more obvious question, and this is the one that atheists would bring up, and it's not a bad question, and they're not all, they're not all seven-headed, you know, serpents.

Some of them might have a legitimate question, and here's a legitimate question, Lee. I'm going to let you answer this one. Which one's right? I'm just kidding. I'm not going to make you answer that question, but if asked that question, you know, what would we probably say?

We don't know. I don't know which one is correct. I know this. In regard to the narrative, it's not an important figure because in regard to the narrative, it's talking about David winning the battle and whether he won the battle against 700 or 7 ,000.

The 40 ,000 number seems to be the consistent between the two. So we have 40 ,000 horsemen, or 40 ,000 foot soldiers, whatever it said in the other one. So you have these numbers which are consistent, and it tends to make me think that maybe there were 7 ,000 based upon the number of men.

You know, if you have 700 chariots among 40 ,000 men, that's not very many chariots, but 7 ,000 chariots seems to make more sense, but we don't know. Like I said, some of these aren't the answer that we might want, but it's the answer that we have.

And on this, I don't...

The names, one says Shobach, another one says Shoph, instead of the B, there's a PH there also.

Well, that could be as simple as simply different ways of writing the same name. I mean, we see that throughout Scripture. You know, there are times when Simon is called Peter and Cephas, you know, but we know it's referring to the same person.

And those being so close, I wouldn't even say that that would be necessarily a contradiction. It might just be how it was written in the Hebrew. It could be one to the other. Just filling it out phonetically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone doesn't want to believe... That's not going to have that much of an effect, because they already don't want to believe it.

Anyway. No, but this would be one of the things that they might use as an argument. This is one of their 10, as I said. He's saying, I can't believe the Bible is true because it says, you know, the number.

If there's errors in numbers, there can be errors in other places.

Point doubt at something more important.

Yeah, yeah. Because there's doubt here, there's certainly going to be doubt over there. I remember one of the things, a buddy of mine went to seminary at a semi-liberal seminary. Not a really liberal, but more liberal than the seminary that I attended.

And one of the things that was pointed out about errancy in the Bible was there's a tribe in the Old Testament, one of the pagan tribes, and it says that God was going to wipe their name out from history, or I forget exactly how it's worded, but essentially that their name would be wiped out from all the earth.

And the argument of the seminary professor, and I remember I had lunch with my friend, and he was telling me about this argument. And he said, well, what my professor said just kind of makes sense. He says, God didn't wipe their name out because their name's in the Bible.

And I was like, you know, he said, it's right there. How could he say he wiped it out if it's still in the Bible? Yeah, yeah. And I said, well, I said, I think again, it comes down to what is God saying?

Is he saying that there'll never be a record of these people ever, ever? Or is he saying he's going to destroy them utterly to the very foundation of who they are and there won't have any descendants?

I think that's the more reasonable way of looking at it. And he couldn't tell the story if the name was totally wiped out. But it was an interesting way that the professor sort of looking for something to argue about.

Well, it says it's going to wipe their name out. Their.

Name's right here. So obviously God's wrong. The fact that we even have discrepancies means that the copyists were still faithful to whatever script they were copying from.

That's true. They didn't go back and try to change it. And that's a good point. And that's studying New Testament textual criticism. New Testament textual criticism really bears that out because you'll find places in the New Testament where it's obvious that there was an error by copyists.

And all the later copyists follow along. They don't try to make changes. They don't try to fix it. And so you can see that sort of stream come in to the mix. The Old Testament and the New Testament are much different.

We do not have the copious amounts of copies of the Old Testament that we have in the New Testament. The Old Testament, we have a very few handwritten copies compared to the New Testament, which is several thousand.

And the reason is because the Old Testament was held within one particular tradition of people, the Hebrew people. And it was held up among them. They had scriptoriums. Even before Christ, there were specific places where scribes would sit and write scripture, and they had rules.

And some of them even bathed before. They had like a sort of a baptismal ceremony that they would go under before they went and wrote. The Essene community, we see there's where we believe the Dead Sea Scrolls are written.

They have a baptistry there where they would go in and get essentially cleansed before they would go in and write scripture. And so there was a lot of painstaking rigidity to their task, where the New Testament doesn't have that at all.

Because the New Testament is being written by poor people who are a lot of times on the run, a lot of times in dangerous conditions. And, oh, you have a copy of Romans. I want a copy of Romans. So he handwrites a copy of Romans.

Now we have two copies of Romans, and you get thousands of copies that way when everybody wants one. So long story short, yeah, once that's entered in by the copyist, it has a line now, and it continues on.

So, yes, that is an important part of the tenacity of the copyists and their desire to be correct in what they're copying.

Saul’s Song and the Consistency of the Larger Narrative

Another thing, somebody said, well, we don't know which one, but a little farther over in 1 Samuel, you know, that's where the women were dancing and singing that Saul has killed his thousands and David his ten thousands.

And so, you know, if there's any accuracy in that,.

Then that may lend itself to the larger number. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's 1018, so we do have to have to break. But this is where we'll start next week or next time. The genealogies of Christ is one of my favorite things to talk about.

So we'll begin there next time. Let's break. Father, I thank you for your word, for the truth of it. May we be faithful to that truth as it has been so faithful to us in Christ's name. Amen.