It would be very easy to think the Bible contradicted itself if a reader confused two similar events as one. While both accounts would be very similar, any differences due to the fact that they were different would be thought a contradiction. One of the most amazing similarities between two items was the lives of two contemporaries named Jonathan Edwards.
Both were pious in their youth, were distinguished scholars, and were tutors for equal periods in the colleges where they were respectively educated. Both were settled in the ministry as successors to their maternal grandfathers, were dismissed on account of their religious opinions, and were again settled in retired country towns, over congregations singularly attached to them, where they had leisure to pursue their favorite studies, and to prepare and publish their valuable works. Both were removed from these stations to become presidents of colleges, and both died shortly after their respective inaugurations; the one in the fifty-sixth, and the other in the fifty-seventh year of his age: each having preached, on the first sabbath of the year of his death, on the text: “This year thou shalt die”.1
How easy it would be to look in history books and think there was one man named Johnathan Edwards. Yet, because there were two men, the differences that did exist might be thought as contradictions in the records of the historians.
Is there a contradiction when Luke 9:14 states that Jesus feed 5000 while Mark 8:9 says it was 4000? No, these were two different events (see: Matt. 16:9-10). Is there a contradiction when Bethsaida is said to be located west of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 6:32, 45, 53) and located on its east (John 1:44)? No, like Houston, Austin, Henderson and Bethany there were more than one city named Bethsaida.2 Is there a contradiction when Luke 24:10 reports that there were several women at the tomb of Christ while John 20:11 reports Mary at the tomb by herself? No, Mary visited the tomb twice—once with the others and once by herself. Truly, many supposed contradictions are explained when it is discovered that there are two different events instead of one.
Gary Henson
1 John W. Haley, An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1951), pp. 26-27.
2 The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Erdemans Pub. Co., 1974), 1:451.