On frivolous claims of contradiction
by Lydia McGrew
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
An excellent set of quotations taken from 19th-century lawyer Edmund Bennett, The Four Gospels From a Lawyer's Standpoint (1899)
Is the story of Barabbas a myth, merely because one evangelist (John) says he was a robber, and two others (Mark and Luke) call him a murderer? Was there no king of Tyre because in some places his name is spelled Hiram and in other Huram? Is there no true time of day, because all the clocks in your house strike at a different moment?... ...[H]ow vastly...improbable that four different persons, at different times and in different places, should deliberately sit down without any apparent motive to write four similar fictitious stories without any knowledge of each other's work; or, if they had such knowledge, that they did not make their stories agree better with each other! It is too absurd to be worthy of even denying. Here again we may learn from secular matters that the actual occurrence of some event is not to be doubted because of some discrepancy, or even some contradiction, in details between the different narrators thereof. For instance, some historians assert that Lord Stafford was condemned to be hanged for his alleged participation in the popish plot in 1680, while Burnett and other historians narrate that he was beheaded. But that he suffered death for the charge, though probably unjustly, no one doubts....Do not, therefore, I pray you, give up your Bible, your religion, or your God because of such flippant talk about the contradictions of the Gospels, come from whom it may! (pp. 35-55)
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