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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Contradictory Account?

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If Mr. X wrote, "all sides of the 6-foot cube are green" and Mr. Y wrote, "the 6 foot cube is yellow on all its sides". Would you say that's a contradiction? Yes you would if they were both referring to the same original cube--nothing changed, nothing modified. You should say No if they were not referring to the same cube or if the same cube underwent some repainting before Mr. Y saw it. Since these are the only data we have, to say one of them deliberately lied or one of them is color blinded is merely conjecture or assumption.

If, while referring to the same cube, Mr. X wrote, "I saw a 6-ft cube, the side of which is green", and Mr. Y wrote, "I saw a 6-ft cube, its side is yellow." Would you consider that a contradiction? No. Not yet at the least since, you were not there, and you did not see the cube that they were referring to. You should at least give the account of witnesses some benefit of the doubt. They might have viewed the 6-foot cube from a different locations or perspective, and as you may know a cube has 6, sides and we live in a 3D world!

In the light of this, how should we treat a historical document recorded by different writers? We should treat it how Mr. Aristotle (Greek Philosopher, 384-322 BC) would:

 “The benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not to be arrogated by the critic to himself”

In other words, the author probably knows more about the event than we do, and so we should allow him the benefit of the doubt unless we have clear evidence to the contrary.

Simply put, a contradictory account has this pattern:

Mr. X recorded an event to be A but Mr. Y recorded the same event to be NOT A.

Contradictory accounts are irreconcilable. 

Going through a careful study of the alleged contradictions in the Holy Bible we find that they are not really contradictions at all.  Because we always find the following pattern:

Mr. X wrote the event to be A while Mr. Y writes the same event to be AB.

We can’t just jump to a conclusion that the testimonies we have are contradictory, Mr. Y might be giving us a more detailed account since he included the event B.

Occasionally we also find Mr. X wrote A while Mr. Y wrote B.

Again, we can’t simply say that these are contradictory since B might be a detailed account of A or, A could have happened prior to event B.

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