I'll certainly try. I don't have the answers to everything in Scripture but I certainly can appreciate a challenge. My fear is that this was probably a general list that you got from the internet somewhere and not the result of your own dedicated research. As a result, I fear you may not be interested in my answers and will instead find a quick way to brush them off. I guess we shall see.
NOTE: I do wish you had at least added references in them so I didn't have to take all the time to find these supposed "contradictions" before even being able to answer them.
Very impressive Rojoloco. Very impressive indeed. Please accept my apologies, next time I'll be sure to point out my references to make things a little less arduous.
This one isn't too difficult to explain. Luke and Mark both describe the angel as being a man while Matthew and John both describe it as the angel that it was. However, notice that it is Luke and John that speak of 2 "people" while it is Matthew and Mark that only speak of 1. There is all sorts of crisscrossing going on here. Of course, it isn't abnormal for the Bible to speak of angels as men. The point to look at here is not the amount of angels but rather, the angel being focused on. Luke and John both refer to there being 2 angels while Matthew and Mark choose to focus on the "lead" angel who does the talking. This is actually fairly normal in any person's recount of a story even today. One witness might describe the scene in general while another witness may choose to highlight certain facts.
I like how Norman Geisler puts it: "Matthew does not say there was only one angel. John says there were two, and wherever there are two there is always one; it never fails! The critic has to add the word
"only” to Matthew’s account in order to make it contradictory. But in this case, the problem is not with what the Bible actually says, but with what the critic adds to it."
I don't have to many problems with this apologia, but I do have a few. Geisler points out that a contradiction is not necessarily present because 1 is a subset of 2, and so we can safely assume that there were probably 2 present at the tomb, and depending on the author's stylistics either one or two were focused on. However, by this same reasoning we have no way of knowing exactly how many were present. For all we know it could have been as many as 50 men present at the tomb, and certainly still two men were there...it never fails. So by your own reasoning, how reliable is your own acceptance that "only" two were present?
This is not a contradiction at all. He did carry his own cross. John merely omits the point of how he was helped at a later point. Notice that the entire passage is less detailed than the other Gospel accounts. Again, this is more a matter of how detailed the author is being and not a matter of contradiction.
Actually, if read in the original Greek, John makes it a point to state that Jesus was not helped at all. It is not an omission, it is a blatant correction of the other three gospels. As John was written later, and is undoubtedly the most evangelical of the Gospels, the author wanted to portray Jesus as more supernatural or divine than any of the other three, John was attempting to make Jesus look tough enough to do it all on his own. It's almost as if he was trying to quiet the other Gospels of the notion that Jesus ever needed help. This is still a contradiction.
Between Matthew, Mark, & Luke, at face value, there does appear to be a contradiction. However, when you look at the bigger picture, you can see the point is not in what they are bringing but in how they are trusting God. They were not to take anything but the clothes on their back and a staff which was customary in that day. They were not to take 2 tunics, 2 pairs of sandals, or acquire another staff. The context clearly shows it is more than 1 that they are not supposed to bring and even Matthew points out that they are to not acquire a staff. In fact, even the KJV uses the word in the plural sense. They were to take what they had and trust God on their journey.
You are dodging the question, and trying to paint a pretty picture about trust instead. The fact remains, one verse says "Take NO staff (not staffs)," While other verses suggest taking only a staff. If we are in disagreement here, it is at least because the translations are faulty.
There is no way to know for sure. However, none of this matters. Where there is "Mary and Mary Magdalene," there is surely Mary Magdalene. Where there is "Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome," there is surely Mary and Mary Magdalene. Again, this is not a contradiction but a matter of exposed detail. In much the same way, John describes Mary as weeping whereas the other accounts do not. Would any skilled debater count this a contradiction as well? Of course not!
This again is a numbers problem and a demonstration of how easily even ridiculous numbers can be read into Scripture without necessarily contradicting it. It could have just as likely been, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Salome, Jeff, Dave, Susan, Robert, Nancy, and Pat too, right? Not necessarily a contradiction, sure...but an inaccuracy? Yes.
There were 2. Again, where there are 2, there is undoubtedly one. Yet another matter of detail where the author chose to focus on the more dominant one doing the speaking.
We went over the numbers concept already. No need to rehash the past. If there are one or there are two or there are 26 the numbers cannot be relied upon.
He was riding one donkey but there were 2 in attendance. This is a fulfillment of the prophecy found in Zechariah 9:9. The mother donkey was there possibly to console her offspring who had never been ridden (Mark 11:2).
That sounds great on the face of it. Who doesn't love hearing about a mother taking care of her offspring...but you're reading things back into Scripture. The mother may be consoling her offspring, but that's both an anthropomorphism of a donkey, and it's also not what the Bible says.
Both. It appears as if the tree in which he hung himself was on the lot of the field he bought and was overlooking a cliff. More than likely, the rope or branch snapped causing him to fall to the rocks below. This isn't a contradiction but rather, one account complimenting the other.
Again, this is not what the Bible says. You are reading things into Scripture.
First, Matthew and John don't really give any real info on this. That leaves Mark and Luke. However, it is in Acts 1:3 where it says 40 days. Before going any further, we should also note that the text in Mark cannot really be used. The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not contain Mark 16:9-20. Because of this (and many other reasons), we cannot form doctrine from those verses because they were probably added in at a later point. This leaves only Luke. Considering it was Luke who wrote both Luke & Acts, we don't really have to wonder if there is a contradiction between 2 authors. It was clearly just his style in which he wrote each of them.
So in one case Luke is saying Jesus was carried up to heaven on the day he resurrected. And in Acts, Luke says he stuck around until the Pentecost 40 days later. We know that Luke said both of these things. But which one is true?
From the looks of things, they were probably both reviling him and then one of them repented shortly thereafter.
From the looks of things? Again, this is not what the Bible says.
Matthew calls it wine and gall while Mark calls it wine and myrrh. Gall simply meant that it was something bitter. Myrrh was a numbness inducing agent that was often mixed in with wine and given to crucifixion victims so that they would not struggle as much. Even in Proverbs 31:6, it says to give strong drink to those who are perishing. Again, there is no contradiction here.
Curious how God encourages us to trust in Him through all suffering in some cases, and to trust in the numbing effects of alcohol in other situations.
There are many possibilities here. Notice that it never really says they told the disciples in Matthew. It says they ran to tell them but it never says they actually did tell him. This could mean they never really did at all or, perhaps, they told later on. However, there is the question of why would they run to tell if they were so afraid that they didn't want to tell anybody. Remember, there were multiple women there. It could have been that Matthew focused on the women who went to tell whereas Mark focused on the women who were afraid. There is no way for us to know for sure.
This question was a little more rhetorical. I think we can both safely assume that they ran and told. If they hadn't, how would we know today, right?
I know this is long, but there is a point I had to all of this. You're obviously well versed, but here's where I have a problem. This collection of books is supposed to be perfect, without deficiency. If the Bible were truly perfect, there would be no room for interpretation. There would be no questions, no doubt. There would be no excuse for getting it wrong. There would be one denomination, not 38,000. The fact that you have to exercise your impressive and vast knowledge of apologetics demonstrates that the Scripture itself is lacking and incapable of standing alone. I think you and I could have done a better job together at crafting a flawless and perfect work.
