It is refreshing to see Evangelical apologists admit that there could indeed be true contradictions in the Bible. In his (rather good) book defending the historical Jesus and related issues, Robert Hutchinson wrote:
True Contradictions
Finally, some of the discrepancies in the Gospels do involve what appear to be actual contradictions, not merely differences in details. For example, in Mark 16:8, the evangelist writes that after the women fled from the empty tomb in terror, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (NRSV). Yet in Matthew 28:8, it says the opposite: “They left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples” (NRSV). So which was it? Did the women report the empty tomb to other people or not? Another example is the date of the Last Supper. The Synoptics say that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper on the eve of Passover and that he was crucified on the first day of Passover. In John, on the other hand, Jesus is crucified on the day of preparation for Passover (John 19:14). Many scholars think only one of these alternatives can be correct.
Of course, for the average Christian in the pew, these discrepancies don’t threaten their faith nearly as much as some critical scholars seem to think they should. If anything, they strengthen their conviction that the Gospels describe real events—events about which we have divergent eyewitness reports—and are not simply fictions created out of whole cloth or, as scholars such as Robert Price claim, fictionalized retellings of stories from the Hebrew Bible (known as midrash). As one British barrister says in his book on the resurrection, testimony that never contradicts itself is inherently suspect (Charles Foster, The Jesus Inquest [Nashville, T: Thomas Nelson, 2010]). It means the witnesses got together to make sure they told the same story. It’s when the witnesses disagree that you know you are closer to the truth! (Robert J. Hutchinson, Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth and How They Confirm the Gospel Accounts [Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Books, 2015], 17-18, emphasis in bold added)
With respect to the text I have put in bold, one should compare something similar John A. Tvedtnes once wrote in a short article on differences in the canonical gospels:
Those who believe the Bible to be inerrant and to contain all the things God revealed to mankind may be disappointed by the fact that variants exist among the gospels. For my part, it is the variants in detail that demonstrate the essential historical nature of the Bible. (Gospel Variants)
Elsewhere, Hutchinson chastises some of his fellow co-religionists who engage in a lot of special pleading to avoid admitting to their being true contradictions and historical issues vis-à-vis the inerrancy of the autographs of the biblical texts:
Christian apologists often go to elaborate lengths to harmonize these factual divergences in order to maintain the doctrine that the Bible in inerrant down to the last detail. For example, some apologists contend that Quirinius may have had two periods as a governor in Syria and, if so, Luke could be referring to the earlier period. “Being the meticulous historian that he was, Luke demonstrated his awareness of a separate provincial census during Quirinius’ governorship beginning in A.D. 6 (Acts 5:37,” writs David Miller. “In view of this familiarity, he surely would not have confused this census with one taken two or more years earlier. Hence, Luke claimed that a prior census was, indeed, taken at the command of Caesar Augustus sometime prior to 4 B.C. He flagged this earlier census by using the expression prote egento (“first took place”)—which assumes a later one (cf. Nicoll, n.d., 1:471). To question the authenticity of this claim, simply because no explicit reference has yet been found, is unwarranted and prejudicial.” David Miller, “Luke, Quirinius, and the Census,” available online at: https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=907. However, other Christian scholars, even those who, like Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary, affirm the inerrancy of the Bible, find these arguments based on Greek grammar unconvincing or a variety of reasons. They simply insist that the difficulty has yet to be resolved. See Daniel Wallace, “The Problem of Luke 2:2: ‘This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria,’” available online at: https://bible.org/article/problem-luke-22-ithis-was-first-census-taken-when-quirinius-was-governor-syriai. Still other New Testament scholars, such as Raymond Brown, say that Luke simply made a minor mistake in chronology and concludes that “this information is dubious on almost every score, despite the elaborate attempts by scholars to defend Lucan accuracy.” See Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 413. (Ibid., 288-89 n. 12).
One has to give credit to Hutchinson; many of his fellow co-religionists are pretty open about the fact that absolutely no evidence will ever convince them that there is a genuine error or internal contradiction to the text of the Bible. As I have written before, it is abundantly clear by reading the apologetic work of inerrantists, that they will not accept any evidence that overturns biblical inerrancy No matter how badly a text has erred - historically, chronological or otherwise - no charge against biblical inerrancy will ever stick. It would save us a lot of time if Evangelical apologists will simply admit this. In reality, this is nothing short of historical gymnastics and wishful reconstructions at best - and blatant dishonesty at worst.
