Is The Bible Full of Contradictions?

Why the Bible Stands Victorious After Two Thousand Years of Scrutiny

A friend called me the other day to hash out the best way to quickly explain the differences between the Gospels. Apart from being thrilled that I had an excuse to nerd out, it reminded me of a challenge many Christians today face.

When discussing the truth of Jesus, many skeptics will state that “the Bible is full of contradictions.” This charge is aimed squarely at the credibility of Scripture itself. If the Bible cannot be trusted, then the primary source through which we know Jesus is called into question, possibly weakening one’s faith.

The moment can quickly become unsettling if a skeptic follows up by confidently citing a specific example. If you are unprepared for such an encounter, you will be left humbled.

For that reason, this objection is a favorite tactic among those seeking to deconstruct people’s faith. It exploits a real imbalance as most people have not been taught how the Bible was transmitted, how to evaluate these alleged contradictions, or how to respond when left unsure.

Yet, while such challenges sound decisive upon first hearing, they become less impressive, and sometimes even humorous once you understand the problems with them. What initially appears forceful usually collapses under basic historical awareness, literary context, and a clearer understanding of how Scripture actually functions.

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Nothing New

Before responding to this challenge, it is important to keep a couple of things firmly in mind. Christianity has endured nearly two thousand years of criticism. When someone like an online influencer claims to have found an alleged contradiction in Scripture, they are not uncovering some new or profound discovery. The collective mind of the Church has been engaging these challenges to Scripture far longer than any of us have been alive.

It is also important to recognize that you are not a human search engine. You will not be able to immediately answer every specific example someone throws at you. That is okay. A momentary inability to respond does not mean an objection is valid, nor does it mean the issue has never been addressed. In most cases, such challenges have been examined and answered multiple times throughout history by people far more capable than we are.

That said, by understanding a few foundational facts as well as how alleged contradictions are evaluated, you can be far better prepared to engage these challenges with confidence.

Typically when one launches a contradiction claim, it focuses on one of two areas.

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Manuscript Variations

One type of contradiction claimed is that there are variations in the Biblical manuscripts. This objection does not attack what the Bible says, but rather the differences found among the thousands of early manuscripts we use to translate and construct our modern Bibles. Before the printing press, scribes copied texts by hand so they could be distributed throughout the ancient world. Anything handwritten is obviously more prone to copyist error.

Because of this, you may hear the claim that there are over 400,000 contradictions in the New Testament manuscripts alone. The goal of this statement is to pressure someone into concluding that we cannot know what the biblical authors originally wrote, because there are too many errors among the copies. While the variation claim itself has a basis, the conclusion of unreliability that follows has no merit.

Consider this adapted demonstration from Don Stewart and Joseph M. Holden.¹ Read the two sentences below and note their structural differences

• YOU HAVE WON A MILLION DOLLARS

• THOU HAST WON $1,000,000

In terms of raw text comparison, these sentences share a very low similarity score of about 10%. Every character that does not match between sentences is a difference. Yet everyone immediately understands that while the physical text is dissimilar, they communicate 100% of the same message. Textual discrepancies are not the same as meaning discrepancies.

Biblical manuscript copies face a similar situation. Scribes copying texts, often in low light conditions, were bound to make spelling and punctuation mistakes. This accounts for the vast majority of copyist variations. In addition, because we possess an enormous number of manuscript witnesses, we should actually expect a higher total variation count. This truth is not an argument against reliability; it is an argument for it.

Because so many copies exist, errors are far easier to identify. A mistake in one manuscript typically stands out when compared with the wide range of other manuscripts available to us. This abundance of evidence is what allows Bible scholars engaged in textual criticism, the discipline devoted to reconstructing the original wording of a text, to work with exceptional confidence.

Even in the small number of passages where scholars do continue to debate the precise original wording, no essential Christian doctrine rises or falls on the outcome. Moreover, most modern Bibles will actually note these areas for you with phrases such as “some early manuscripts do not include.”

As Stewart and Holden note:

Greek scholar A. T. Robertson pointed to a preservation accuracy of approximately 99.9% for the New Testament, a rate unmatched by any other document from antiquity.

Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar who rejects Christianity, even acknowledges that the vast majority of manuscript variations have no meaningful impact on the overall message of the text.

That level of reliability is remarkable.

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Narrative Contradictions

Another type of claim often raised involves narrative details. These are usually harder to address on the spot because they tend to rely on very specific examples, often ones you may be hearing for the first time. Most people will not be able to answer these immediately, and that is okay.

A common example is the account of the angels at the tomb of Jesus in the Gospels. John 20:12 describes two angels at the tomb, while Matthew 28:2–5 describes only one. At first glance, this can appear to be a contradiction. However, Matthew never says there was only one angel present. He simply centers the narrative on the angel who speaks. Moreover, it never fails that where there are two of something, there is always at least one. This is not a contradiction, but a complementary difference in narrative focus, where Matthew is simply focused on the angel who spoke.

We should actually expect such differences if the accounts were not the product of collusion. Independent sources, shaped by different backgrounds, audiences, and literary purposes, naturally recount the same events from distinct yet complementary perspectives.

In other cases, objections rely on passages being lifted out of their proper context. The differing genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are a popular example of this. Skeptics often point to the two differing lineages as if they represent an error, without first considering that genealogies can be traced in more than one legitimate way. Each of us has more than one ancestral line, after all. We all have two parents, four grandparents, and so on. The line you choose to trace depends on the purpose you have in view.

While the historical details are certainly worth examining, the widely held view is that Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience, emphasizes royal succession through David’s kingly line, whereas Luke, writing with a broader Gentile audience in mind, traces physical descent to underscore Jesus’ connection to all humanity.²

Differences in emphasis are not contradictions. They reflect distinct purposes meant to convey different aspects of the account. What is often labeled contradictory evidence is in fact complementary evidence that provides a fuller picture of the events.

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Scripture Cannot Be Broken

It is important to remember that we can be confident in our Bibles. Jesus Himself affirmed that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). The fact that it has stood victorious through two thousand years of scrutiny, criticism, and attempted dismantling supports just how right Jesus was.

Even with that confidence, it is wise to continue studying so that we are better prepared to respond to criticism. At the same time, we must remember that none of us is all-knowing, and we will not have an answer ready in every moment.

But if you are willing to put in a bit of work, and build a basic understanding of how the Bible functions, its historical context, and the common misunderstandings behind many alleged contradictions, you will find that your confidence grows rather than shrinks. A little effort goes a long way.

But either way, you can stand firm in your faith, not because you have mastered every objection, but because the foundation it is built upon is solid.

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Note: Trusted study Bibles and commentaries are excellent tools for addressing challenges in Scripture, as they supply the broader historical, literary, and theological context surrounding the text.

1. Joseph M. Holden, ed., The Comprehensive Guide to Apologetics, chap. 29. Example adapted. Similarity calculated using the Levenshtein distance formula.

2. ESV Journaling Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), study notes on Matt. 1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–38.