Transcript
Oftentimes, when we talk about biblical contradictions, an example that’s brought up is the number of women at the tomb, because if you read Matthew, Mark, or John, you get different numbers. Let's read the different texts and then see how these things might fit together or even if there's the appearance of a contradiction. Here's what Matthew says, "Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave." There are two Marys there.
What about Mark? Here's what he says, "When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices so that they might come and anoint him. Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen." Mark presents three women. Matthew presented two. What about John? Here's what he says, "Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb while it was still dark." Isn't that interesting? There's only one woman listed there.
Now many people will present this as a contradiction. "See, one gospel says three, one says two, and one says one. The Bible's not true!" I want to address this in a few different ways. The first thing is, let's say the number of women at the tomb is actually a contradiction between the three gospels. Does that somehow mean Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? No, it doesn't. Just because you find what you think is an error or even, let's say, what is an error in scripture, that does not prove that Christianity is false or that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead or that Jesus wasn’t God. It doesn’t prove any of that.
Now I don’t think there's a contradiction here, and there are a few reasons for that. The first is that the gospels are not giving us an exact account of every detail that's true in every place from every perspective. Each of the gospel writers, called evangelists, have a perspective. They are highlighting different things. They might be tracing different characters. They're all saying something that’s true, but they're saying it from different perspectives.
For instance, if you were to ask me who was at my wedding, I would say, "Well, I was there, my wife was there," and I would list other specific names. I would be leaving people off, though. Does that mean they weren't there? No. If you ask my wife who was there, are you going to get a different list? You are. If you asked her friend or one of my friends, you're going to get a different list each time. What each person is going to be doing is highlighting people that were memorable to them or that played a key role or that they just wanted to emphasize.
By leaving people off, that doesn’t mean the person is saying who was not there. No gospel writer says, "This is the exhaustive list of everyone who was at the tomb." They don’t say that. We shouldn’t think that that’s indeed what's happening. I think it puts artificial constraints on the Bible, on the text, to say that whenever anyone makes a list, it has to be exhaustive. We don’t talk like that today. They certainly didn’t talk like that back then.
Let's look at John where he says that there's one woman. At least on the face of it, that’s what he says. Here's the whole text from John 20, "Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb while it was still dark and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb, so she ran and came to Simon Peter, to the other disciples, and said to him, 'They have taken away the Lord of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.'" Who's the "we"? It's just talking about her. She goes to another group …
