Are there errors and contradictions in the Bible?

“He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it” (1 Kings 7:23).

“How can you trust the Bible? It’s full of errors and contradictions!” The critics are sure the Bible is full of errors. Some of them can even give a couple of examples if pressed. But it’s easy to find lists if you search. One of Bart Ehrman’s many books is a compendium of “contradictions” he assures the reader are completely irreconcilable. (They’re not.)

Before we talk about the alleged errors, it’s important to lay down some ground rules. Rule #1: Give a text the benefit of the doubt. Any text, even those not in the Bible. If a text can be understood in two ways, and one of them makes sense, assume that is what the author meant. It’s just good manners. To put it another way, the burden of proof is on the skeptic.

Rule #2: Pursuant to Rule #1, a plausible solution is a solution. All we need to do is show that there is a reasonable way to allow the text to make sense.

Rule #3, which I borrow from Rick Cornish’s 5 Minute Apologist: “A hard passage does not imply a mistaken passage.” Some things are hard to understand. Your inability to understand it does not make it a mistake.

Rule #4: Context, context, context. The vast majority of alleged “errors and contradictions” you’ll find on the web are simply taken out of context.

Norm Geisler, in When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook on Christian Evidences, gives some guidelines for handling difficult passages.

1. Be sure you know what the text says. Often a misquoted text will mislead someone.
2. Be sure you know what the text means. The Bible uses some words and phrases that may not mean exactly what you expect them to mean.
3. Don’t confuse imprecision with error.
4. Don’t confuse perspective with falsity.
5. Language about the world is everyday language. We all use phenomenological language.
6. Remember that the Bible records things it does not approve.

I would add that we must remember that culture influences writing. Modern readers see quotation marks and assume, well, that it’s a direct quote. Ancients not only didn’t have quotation marks, they didn’t even have the concept. They would move from direct quote to paraphrase and back without blinking. A story didn’t have to be retold with the same amount of detail every time nor all the details in the same order.

Also, ancients gave authors a fair amount of license. Minor details weren’t important to them. They were free to round numbers. Times were not precise. People didn’t have watches, so they estimated the time in very broad terms. 10 AM would be called “about 9” by one and “about noon” by another.

Adding to the above about imprecision, realize that ancient people frequently didn’t share our interest in precision. Unless is was absolutely required, it was more trouble than it was worth. Many cultures didn’t have fractions or decimals. In the passage quoted above, the Bible’s not suggesting that pi is 3; the "Sea" was roughly 10 cubits across, roughly 30 cubits around, and was mostly circular. We joke about “one, two, many,” but some cultures literally used large numbers to mean “many.” Some have suggested that “120 years” in the Bible is a metaphor for “a ripe, old age.”

The Bible quotes people who lie. And people who make mistakes in what they say. And people who tell the same story in different ways. These are not mistakes in the Bible; they’re simply what happened.

That said, there are some places in the Bible, even in the gospels, that can’t be just brushed away. Why are two different genealogies given for Jesus? How could the sun stand still for Joshua? What day was Jesus crucified? How did Judas die? There are answers to these questions, but they’re not the kind of thing that can be dismissed as the critics being picky.

Just as there are entire books that list these issues, there are entire books that exist to answer these issues. No one has found a new “contradiction” in the Bible. We’ve been studying the same book for 2000 years; there are no surprises. So when you have a question, or when someone brings up a supposed error you can’t answer, don’t panic. Look it up. Give the word of God the benefit of the doubt, and do the hard work of finding answers to your questions.


For detailed examples, see the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason L. Archer.


Part of Christianity 101