"The Bible is full of contradictions! you cant trust it!"

Well this is something I hear all the time and I am sure you whether you are atheist or theist have heard it many times as well.  Just yesterday I was pointed towards a website by a guy I got chatting with as we were having coffee that proclaims there are over 1500 full blown contradictions.  Now first I will tell you this is a powerful claim.  Is it totally off base?

First thing I always ask people when they say this is "can you name a couple?" the answer is usually no, but not always.  The fellow I was chatting with did know two "contradictions" and they are tough ones.  First was "How did Judas die?"and second "at what time was Jesus crucified?"

So the first thing you have to do is identify exactly what we are talking about, so with Judas we are talking about the 2 descriptions of his death.  Matthew says that he hanged himself, but in the book of Acts Luke says that Judas fell down and burst open and his intestines spilled out.  So the question is how did he die, and is this a contradiction?

What is the Law of Non Contradiction? The Second Law of Logic, the Law of Non Contradiction, says that something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense. So can both of these descriptions of Judas' death be true?  Neither one negates the possibility of the other so this is not a contradiction.  What happened with Judas is that he went out and hung himself, then later he fell probably due to the weight on the branch and when he hit the ground split open.  When you examine the two accounts a bit closer you see Matthew being specific in that Judas hanged himself, and in Acts you do not see how he died.

So next, what time was Jesus crucified?  Now I will tell you I struggled with this for a while.  I had it come up in conversations and did not have an answer.  But the good thing about those times is that we can get excited to learn more so that next time we will have an answer.  Also remember that it is perfectly fine to admit that you don't know.  We don't need to know everything to prove God.  Its humble and acceptable to tell the person that you don't know but that you will look into it and get back to them in a week or so.

 So in Mark 15:25 Jesus is crucified at the third hour and in John 19:14 Jesus was crucified at about the sixth hour.  Obvious contradiction right?  Well we need to look a bit deeper.  When we read any book, especially a book not from our culture and time period we have to do a little digging and understand context.  I'm sure everyone has heard "context is everything"

The difference here is in the Jewish times of the day and the Roman time of day which is the same as the one we use today.   

Third hour--6am-9am
Sixth hour--9am-12pm
Ninth hour--12pm-3pm
Twelfth hour--3pm-6pm
First Watch--6pm-9pm
Second Watch--9pm-12am
Third Watch--12am-3am
Fourth Watch--3am-6am

So as you can see Mark is just using the Jewish time system and John is using the Roman.  Hence not a contradiction.

So we spoke for another hour or so and had a good hearted argument about the Bible, and it was fun.