What do you consider the biggest contradiction in the Bible?

Because of just how many apparent Biblical contradictions have been documented on various websites, atheists almost face “an embarrassment of riches” when asked to name a single significant contradiction they’ve found in the Bible. We’re so used to seeing them in large groups all bundled together that it’s hard to pick out just one. So in this post, I wanted to step back from linking to various pages that have long lists of contradictions, and just kinda surgically pick a couple that I consider to be some of the most dramatic.

I’m probably somewhat unique in this regard, but I personally separate Biblical contradictions into two categories; external and internal contradictions. Internal contradictions are what most people mean when they talk about contradictions in the Bible; situations where it says two different things about something in different places. What I mean by external contradictions is when the Bible says one thing about reality, and what we now understand about how the world really is says something else.

Most people just refer to these issues as scientific or historical inaccuracies, and that’s fine. I don’t dispute that label at all, I just think that things like that should also be counted as contradictions. If the Bible says that the universe is six thousand years old (though, technically the Bible doesn’t say that explicitly, you have to calculate it by adding up the genealogies), and multiple methods of scientific testing tell us that the universe is 13 billion years old, then that is a contradiction between those two statements.

If the Bible calls the Earth a circle (Isaiah 40:22), and we now know the earth to be a sphere (or more accurately, an oblate spheroid), that’s a contradiction. If the Bible records camels being used in the time of Abraham (Genesis 24:46), but the archaeological evidence indicates that there were no camels in the Middle East that long ago, that is a contradiction. To me, the biggest external contradiction is what blogger Neil Carter called, “The Most Fantastically Failed Prayer in History” (although I suppose that could also be considered an unfulfilled prophecy).

In terms of internal contradictions, we could further subdivide them into “technical” and “narrative” contradictions. Technical contradictions would be contradictions in something like a number or a genealogy. For instance, in 1 Kings 4:26, it says, “Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots,” but in 2 Chronicles 9:25, it says “Solomon had 4,000 stalls for horses and chariots.” I don’t think apparent contradictions like this should be entirely dismissed, but I recognize that they’re a lot easier to excuse by claiming that this was simply a clerical error, or these numbers were reported at different times, or other things like that. There’s a lot more wiggle room with this kind of contradiction.

The other type of internal contradiction is a bit more meaningful, because narrative contradictions are making claims about what events actually took place within stories that they’re claiming are historically real. For instance, Matthew 27:5 says that Judas returned the money he got for betraying Jesus, and then went and hung himself. Acts 1:18, on the other hand, says that Judas used the money to buy a field (which he obviously couldn’t have done if he gave the money back), and then “falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out” (which is kinda hard to do if you have a rope around your neck).

That seems like a very straightforward example of two different writers (who Christians believe were both inspired by God) making two different statements about events that they claim occurred in historical reality, and those two claims contradict each other. I think this anecdote about Judas is one of the best examples of this, because each claim is a single verse which disagrees with the other claim on two separate counts. That’s a lot of bang for your contradiction buck.

But even so, that’s not what I consider the biggest internal contradiction in the Bible. For what I consider to be an even bigger contradiction, let’s look at a well-known moment before Jesus’ crucifixion, which is repeated in all three of the Synoptic gospels (Mark 14:36, Matthew 26:39, and Luke 22:42). In these verses, Jesus prayed, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” It’s one of the significant moments of the crucifixion story, because it shows how even Jesus himself is so aware of what an intense ordeal is coming, that he prays for it to not happen. It’s a very human moment, really; from a storytelling standpoint, it makes Jesus more relatable.

That’s why it’s so interesting that in the Gospel of John (the one most often cited to support the claim that Jesus was actually God, and not just a great prophet), this moment is never mentioned. Of course, that in itself isn’t a contradiction, because different authors are gonna leave out different details. However, it’s not simply left out; it seems to be referenced negatively in a different part of John’s gospel.

In John 12:27, Jesus says, “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour?’ But for this purpose I came to this hour.” In fairness, I will say that only one-fifth of the translations on Biblehub add Jesus answering “no” to his rhetorical question. So, if a person were starting with the presupposition that the Bible never contradicts itself, then they could just interpret this as Jesus saying, “Shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ Okay, sure, I will say that, but I’m still gonna submit to his will after I do.”

That’s not the way I read it, though. Without that filter of simply assuming that every apparent contradiction can be harmonized, the way this appears to me is that the writer of John (whoever that may have really been) read that verse in one of the other Synoptic gospels, and said “Pff, Jesus wouldn’t have said that!” Then he wrote that part of his own gospel to put in the mouth of Jesus himself a repudiation of that statement from the other gospels. To me, this is a very metatextual statement. It’s almost like the writer is having Jesus say, “you know that thing they claimed I said in those other stories? I would never say that.” But remember, those other stories are believed by Christians to be inspired by God as well.

The way I see it, that’s a much bigger contradiction than even an overt narrative disagreement like the death of Judas.