Why do gospel contradictions matter?

[Jenny A]

Wow! Self delusion on a grand scale:

Tonus the Bible is a book of wonder. Why is it the greatest selling book of all time and no book even comes close. The bible is the living word and can cut into the soul. You can read it a thousand times and you will always learn something new from it.

You may be right that it's the best selling book of all time. So what? And how many people do you think actually read it? Setting that aside. The number of people who read it has absolutely nothing to do with whether it's true.

Also if gospels dont supposedly contradict then sceptics would say it was made up and copied.

The gospels do contradict each other. They also contradict what we know about the time period from other sources. Any one who can and does read critically can see this. Many theologians admit it.

They are eye witness accounts who died for their eye witnes testimony.

Hardly. First of all the "witnesses" spoke Aramaic and were probably mostly illiterate. The Gospels were written in Greek. The traditional names given to them weren't added to the gospels until more more decades after they were first written. And they were written 20 to 60 years after the events described. And they describe events no one could witness, such as a virgin birth (how would a witness know it was a virgin birth?). Jesus was all by himself when tempted by the devil or talking to god in Gethsemane.

And if all of that doesn't convince you, note that Luke actually says he's picking and choosing among gospel narritives for his patron.

Also pen and paper was not so common 2000 years ago.

Indeed it was not.

People relied more on memory. Rabbis could recite old testament.

Citation please? By the way you do know the OT was not canonized in 30 A.D.?

In any case gospels are eyewitness accounts and you can be sentenced to death based on eye witness testimony.

Not without the right to cross examine the witnesses you can't. There's a reason for that. And as I pointed out above, they are not eye witness testimony. They are compilations of stories repeated over one or more generations.

The bible is a reliable source it shows how holy god is and gives us an escape plan. Jesus words will never die. A fulfilled prophecy

Can't see why you claim it's reliable. Let's see a fulfilled prophecy. It should be:

1) Clearly fulfilled and not a matter of poetic interpretations.

2) It should be clear that the events fulfilling the prophecy happened.

3) The events predicted should be unusual enough that that chances are highly against there having happened.

4) It should be proven that the prophecy actually was made BEFORE the event prophesied. Good luck with that.

[Losty]

First off, I'm not a believer. But I constantly hear from fellow non believers that the gospels aren't reliable because they contain contradictions. Honestly, I don't understand why this argument is used. From my understanding, the gospels spread by word of mouth for at least 20+ years before being written down. And then mark was written down, which the others are based off of. So isn't the real reason they are unreliable due to them being circulated by conversation for over 20 years?

Please, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm happy to be educated.
(Any helpful links would be appreciated!)

It's just that, the reason they are unreliable isn't relevant. The point is that they are unreliable. It doesn't disprove god, just proves the bible is unreliable.

[Crossless2.0]

Tonus the Bible is a book of wonder.

So is Portnoy's Complaint... and much better written than that ancient drivel.

Yes, it's better written; more importantly, it contains useful information. For years I scoured the Bible for advice about how to best prepare liver for a family dinner. Thanks to Portnoy's Complaint, I no longer wonder. And the kids love it!

[YGninja]

Imagine you are a policeman attending the aftermath of a supposed armed robbery of a shop. If all of the cashiers claimed the masked man entered the building at precisely 20:47, would you be more or less suspicious about their story than if they had given slightly varying times? "10 to 9", "about quarter to 9", "just before closing time at 9"...??
The differences are natural and demonstrate that there wasn't a conspiracy to invent the entire story.

[Minimalist]

Shouldn't fucking 'god' know what time it is?

[Crossless2.0]

The differences are natural and demonstrate that there wasn't a conspiracy to invent the entire story.

The differences don't preclude the stories having been invented. They might also reflect evolving theological positions, faith traditions current in different communities of believers for whom the Gospels were written, or spin added to shore up what the authors might have perceived as problems with earlier narratives.

For example, what of the nature of Jesus' relationship to John the Baptist? Are the differences in the way the Gospels portray their relationship differences in the way "witnesses" perceived this or that event, or are the differences a result of successive Gospel authors deciding for theological reasons to gloss over the potentially embarrassing 'fact' that Jesus might originally have been a follower of John's ministry -- a successor after John's arrest -- and not clearly John's superior?

[Jenny A]

Imagine you are a policeman attending the aftermath of a supposed armed robbery of a shop. If all of the cashiers claimed the masked man entered the building at precisely 20:47, would you be more or less suspicious about their story than if they had given slightly varying times? "10 to 9", "about quarter to 9", "just before closing time at 9"...??
The differences are natural and demonstrate that there wasn't a conspiracy to invent the entire story.

A more realistic analogy:

Imagine you are a policeman in New York taking a report of a supposed robbery of a store in Boston. The store owner who witnessed this robbery died ten years ago. He spoke only Korean. Four immigrants from Singapore who do not speak Korean and live in New York and L.A. want to report the robbery twenty years after it happened. None of them claim to be eye witnesses. One of them tells you the robbery happened on Christmas Day. Another tells you it happened on Christmas Eve Day.

They all say that though the robber was from Singapore, the dirty Koreans made him do it.

Oh, and by the way, when the robbery happened the sun stopped in the sky and and all the graves in Boston opened up and the bodies flew into the sky. Or not, depends on which guy you talk to.

Then they tell you the store owner was a saint who never sinned and was born of a virgin. He was born in New York because all immigrants had to return to their port of entry in 1980 for a countrywide census. But he grew up in Boston. His parents fled to Canada after the birth, or not, depends on who you talk to. One of them tells you that the store owner was born in the year Gerald Ford was President. Another tells you that Bush Sr. was then Vice President. (The fact that Ford wasn't president in 1980 and Bush was vice president then and Bush was never Ford's vice doesn't make them any less certain. The census never happened either. )

Though they have all this detail about the store owner's birth, none of them can remember what year the robbery took place.

Then a fifth guy from Korea shows up and tells that after the store owner died he came back from the dead to tell him about the robbery.

[Crossless2.0]

Then a fifth guy from Korea shows up and tells that after the store owner died he came back from the dead to tell him about the robbery.

Saul of Seoul, I presume?

[CapnAwesome]

From a historical context, the contradictions are not that important. It's easy to understand why they'd be there (word of mouth, etc, like you said) However if you are claiming that the Gospels are the irrefutable and unchangeable word of an omnipresent being then they become a very obvious problem.

[JesusHChrist]

Imagine you are a policeman attending the aftermath of a supposed armed robbery of a shop. If all of the cashiers claimed the masked man entered the building at precisely 20:47, would you be more or less suspicious about their story than if they had given slightly varying times? "10 to 9", "about quarter to 9", "just before closing time at 9"...??
The differences are natural and demonstrate that there wasn't a conspiracy to invent the entire story.

You believers really should stop with the whole eyewitness testimony thing. Time and time again, we've demonstrated the fallibility of human memory and recollection of events. Bottom line? It's poor. Very, very poor. Studies have been done. Papers written. Case closed.

In court, one piece of circumstantial evidence will blow away 50 eyewitnesses. Case in point - all of the convictions overturned with DNA evidence. If the DNA doesn't match, it makes no difference what a fallible, emotional human "testifies" to. "But I SWEARS he done did it! I SWEARS!!" Please.

So, do yourselves a favor and stop with thinking your so-called eye-witless testimony helps your case in any respect. It does not. Not to mention, the eyewitless accounts are relayed by a fucking 3rd party such as Paul. There are no eyewitness accounts of the tales of Jesus and his Merry band. None. Paul never met him in the flesh. Everything else was written post-hoc, decades later - at best.

You really think this is compelling? Maybe if half your brain was knocked out and stomped upon the ground by a herd of escaping llamas and then boiled and served back to you as a breakfast cereal. Then, just mebbe.