>How do Christians deal with discrepancies in the Bible? G. Jeffrey MacDonald wrote an article published in the section “On Faith” of the Washington Post in which he presents the views of several people on the problem of Biblical discrepancies and whether discrepancies in the Bible shake the faith of Christians. The following is an excerpt from the article:

As Christians prepare to mark Easter, the culmination of the holiest week of the year, many are mindful of hard-to-ignore critiques that would deem creeds and Scripture, at best, untrustworthy and at worst, downright false. Many have heard “Jesus Wars” author Philip Jenkins insist their beliefs are merely the result of ancient politicking. Still, they trust what the Gospels say about Jesus’s last days, despite the doubts of biblical scholars like Bart D. Ehrman, whose public questioning has made him a best-selling author.

Christians aren’t necessarily dismissing the research of naysayer scholars. Many just think conclusions have been way overblown — sometimes by scholars with an anti-faith agenda.

Some scholars “get fixated on some of the marginal issues about who was where and when,” said Craig Evans, professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia

In the Gospels, “the discrepant witnesses are allowed to stand side by side, and I think that’s a strength in the end, not a weakness. But the naive reader — the person beguiled by the notion that discrepancies somehow cast doubt on the truth of the entire report — might not know that,” Evans said.

Many people are offended because of discrepancies in the Bible. People say that these discrepancies show that the Bible is unreliable and should not be trusted. However, people who reject the Bible because of real or alleged discrepancies misunderstand the nature of the Bible.

The most important thing about the Bible is not how many supervisors Solomon had when he built the temple or whether his architects new the values of π. The most important thing about the Bible is what it says about God and about the human condition. People who reject the message of the Bible may do so in order to ignore the fact that they are created in the image of God and must give an account of their lives to the Creator.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Bible, Bible Discrepancies