When Did Jesus Die?: Resolving an Alleged Contradiction

Introduction

Those who deny the authority and reliability of Scripture often appeal to discrepancies between the works that comprise the volume that is colloquially referred to as the Bible.

One of the most well known critics of Scripture is the apostate known as Bart Ehrman.

What is interesting is that Ehrman has all of the bona fides of a believing scholar having begun at fundamentalist and conservative institutions like Moody Bible Institute, before moving on to Wheaton College, before attending Princeton Theological under the tutelage of the immanent conservative biblical scholar Bruce Metzger.

In his apostasy, which he attaches to the problem of evil, he has spent a great deal of time digging into discrepancies and difficulties between the gospels, producing a number of popular-level books severly criticizing believing Christians.

In his very popular 2009 book Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them), Bart Ehrman set out to expose—at least on a popular level—many features of the Bible or at least the New Testament from a critical perspective that, from a critical perspective, he believes are hidden or unknown to the average reader of the Bible. 

Indeed, there are often elements of the biblical texts that have been illuminated by archeological and linguistic discoveries that have shaken certain elements of modern Christian beliefs about their understanding of the Bible, and have forced them to abandon naive beliefs and seek more coherent ones that can exist in the light of modern scholarship. Such scholarship has been used by men like Ehrman to discomfort believers, and has even destroyed the faith of some. 

The most difficult issue of which to deal with, especially when one begins to deal with the text as the text, is the fact that one will encounter elements that will appear to be contradictions or discrepancies.

These often appear because the Bible is not a singular text, written by a single author but is an anthology of ancient books, a handheld library of varied, yet related texts. This is simply the reality of the Bible’s variegated types of texts. However, through careful thinking, close reading, and considerate application of the background context of the text of the Bible one will undoubtedly recognize that one can navigate problems, discrepancies, and even apparent contradictions that arise as one encounters the text of Scripture. 

It’s often through that careful, contextual analysis that reasonable solutions can arise to issues one encounters. However, some require deeper inquiry, either into the matters of the text itself, such as when problems arise as a matter of textual transmission, or even how the biblical text arises reflecting habits common to similar documents in antiquity or even an author’s own peculiarities or points of view. 

The Source of the Problem 

As someone who is convinced of the inerrancy of Scripture[1], what I often look for when someone alleges a contradiction or an error in the text, I am often looking to see if I can detect a number of underlying presuppositions that the person is often projecting onto the text. 

Often the target is the doctrine of inerrancy, as such an attack seeks to undermine the authority of Scripture. However, most of the time the target is really a caricature of inerrancy that tries to make the Bible or, more specifically, a particular English translation of the text the standard for inerrancy. 

Ehrman, in his defense, rightly points out that most Christians, especially those who take his classes, are often woefully ignorant of the Bible as a work. 

People, both believers and not, often treat the Bible as a book, as a singular work with a singular storyline. And so, treating it in such a way will often result in jarring experiences when confronted with discrepancies that are often related to the fact that revelation occurred in time and across various circumstances, and that the authors (and editors), operating under the influence of the Spirit, often had tremendous freedom to emphasize or perspectivize elements. 

We are often ignorant of the fact that the Scriptures were not all together in a single volume but were often floating around in communities that had different questions and that it wasn’t until a specific point in time, sometime in the 4th century CE that they began to be brought together and bound between two covers. 

We forget so much because it’s just been the way that we have encountered the Bible, and as a result a mythology has arisen about how that was accomplished. And it’s often a mythology imbued with more fiction than fact. 

So-called “higher criticism” often spins similar yarns about how the Bible or specific readings there came to be, or became prominent while “lower criticism”, which is more nuts-and-bolts, often finds that the reasons are more simple and real. 

That is to say that higher criticism can oftentimes seem to be more about finding facts to fit the narrative while lower criticism is about explaining the facts as they are. 

Indeed, the challenge comes when they intersect in a person who has been steeped in both. Someone who has the technical skills of lower criticism but is swept up in the imaginative narratives of higher criticism. Someone like Ehrman. 

Playing Fast and Loose With the Facts 

Ehrman’s gift is his jovial manner in which he presents solid facts but can also slide in unfounded or unjustified assertions dressed as facts. 

He’s quick to assert his bona fides as a former fundamentalist evangelical who went to a conservative evangelical school before winding up at at an Ivy League university where he was compelled by various evidences to abandon his once, alleged, strong faith and adopt agnosticism. 

He’s confident that anyone who just looks at the evidence will come to the conclusion that he has. 

However, it’s when he presents the evidence that things begin to get sloppy. 

Chapter two of Jesus, Interrupted presents a number of alleged discrepancies from the gospels. Most of these discrepancies can be explained by choices made by the authors and how they chose to narrate events, sometimes they are more difficult, often intractable. 

One particular portion that Ehrman returns to, repeatedly, is the Passion narrative. How the writers present or highlight various elements in accordance with their individual narrative aims is an interesting area of study, and Ehrman returns to that well with aplomb in hopes of proving his point that, “[t]here are … differences that, in the opinion of a large number of historical critics, simply cannot be reconciled without doing real violence to the text.”[2]

As I have noted in other studies on this topic, it’s true that sometimes attempting to harmonize texts in a way that attempts to remove the distinctiveness of the writers, just for the purpose of creating a new, unified narrative, indeed does violence. However, harmonization for the purpose of history, which seeks to find the underlying rhythm that joins two or more distinct presentations together, isn’t concerned with removing those distinctions. 

The former is a necessary element of history that deconstructs disparate narratives and then sorts through the parts to create a new, distinct discourse. The latter treats the various narratives as discrete, self-contained units but listens carefully for the subtle harmony that necessarily unites them. 

Both are necessary parts of doing history and so serve different purposes. 

As I noted, Ehrman apparently considers the Passion narrative one of those places where there is an irreconcilable element as he returns to it repeatedly. 

In fact, it is one of the first alleged contradictions that he mentions in the chapter, writing regarding it,

[The Passion] is an illustration of discrepancies within the New Testament that I frequently use with my students. It is a “textbook case” because both Mark and John give explicit indications of when Jesus dies. And he dies at different times, depending on which Gospel you read.[3]

Indeed, the question of what day Jesus died is one that, superficially does seem fraught with difficulties because when we compare Mark and John and, just as texts without considering either the terminology they employ or the background context, they can appear quite different. 

However, as we proceed we will see that John and Mark are very much in agreement, even though they are focused on different elements and that when it comes to the facts, Ehrman tends to play fast and loose, hopeful that no one will throw a speed bump of caution into the conversation. 

This exploration will not be easy because there are many paths that must be traced in order to bring the picture into full focus.

First we will need to explore the backgrounds related to Passover itself, then we will need to examine Ehrman's specific arguments related to the discrepancies, as well as examine certain considerations that are necessary to deal with the text, then we will see how Ehrman mishandles the text in light of the facts, as well as how he either misunderstands or misrepresents terms used by the writers, before concluding the study.

I believe that this is a worthwhile journey, not merely from an apologetic standpoint but from a position where one would want to be able to understand the text properly.

Notes

1. Inerrancy here defined as, the belief that Scripture is true in all that it affirms with regard to events, causes, and ends, while recognizing that it is a product of history written in accordance to the styles of various periods and expectations of those original audiences and needs to be understood in such a manner.
2. Bart Ehrman. Jesus, Interrupted:Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). Harper-Collins Publishing. 2009. p. 22
3. Ibid, p.25