Problem: After healing the men who were possessed with demons on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:28-34), Jesus passed over to the other side and “came into his own city” (probably Capernaum—Matthew 9:1). Soon thereafter, a man by the name of Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue, fell at Jesus’ feet and worshipped Him saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live” (Matthew 9:18). Normally, we would continue telling this wonderful story and rehearse how Jesus raised the twelve-year-old girl from the dead. However, the purpose of this article is to answer the skeptics who claim that a contradiction exists between Matthew’s account of this story and the accounts recorded by Mark and Luke. Whereas Matthew records Jairus telling Jesus, “My daughter has just died” (Matthew 9:18, emp. added), the other two accounts indicate that his daughter was “at the point of death” (Mark 5:23, emp. added) and that “she was dying” (Luke 8:42, emp. added). Critics of the Bible’s inerrancy assert that the difference in these accounts represents a blatant contradiction.
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Problem: God’s Word is perfect and cannot contradict itself; therefore, whenever we see two or more passages of Scripture that appear to contradict each other, we need to study the passages in more detail. We must make sure we are examining the same event, do not take words out of context, recognize any figures of speech or poetic language being used, and be aware of any translational issues of words or phrases, from the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek into English.
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Problem: The first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) each give an account of Jesus healing demoniacs. Matthew states that the place where the healing took place was the country of the Gadarenes. However, Mark and Luke say it was in the country of the Gerasenes.

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Problem: “You can’t trust the Bible! It’s full of contradictions!”

It is a popular view these days. Many people have the impression that the Bible is simply an outdated book of fairytales and contradictions. We are told that biblical stories are fine for children, and perhaps they even contain some moral value. “But, surely” says the critic, “such stories cannot be taken seriously in our modern age of science and technology.”
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Problem: Matthew recorded that Jesus commanded demons to come out of two men (8:29). This account is recorded in all three of the synoptic gospel accounts, but with two different renderings of the name of the place where the miracles occurred. The Greek word commonly accepted in Mark 5:1 and Luke 8:26 as the basis for the name of the people who inhabited the place where Jesus and the disciples went is rendered Gerasenes in English (Metzger, 1975, pp. 84,145). The Greek word in Matthew 8:28, however, reveals that Jesus went to the country of the Gadarenes (p. 23). Were the writers of the synoptic gospel accounts confused about where Jesus was when He healed the men? Albert Barnes explained the difference between Gadara and Gerasa:
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When we hear of alleged Bible contradictions, and then carefully examine the passages in question, we find that they are not really contradictions at all. One such supposed contradiction is that the Gospel accounts seem to indicate that Jesus was anointed before and after the Triumphal Entry. If the Gospels are recording a single event, then this would indeed be problematic, but that is not the case. In this article, we’ll examine the four accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and demonstrate that there was not a single anointing of Jesus for his burial, but two or even three separate occasions of a woman anointing Jesus, and the first one was not done as a memorial for his burial.
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Problem: Some have tried to claim a biblical contradiction between John 1:29–36 and the parallel passages of Matthew 11:2–3 and Luke 7:19–20. “Did John the Baptist know Jesus was the Messiah?”
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Problem: When Jesus entered Capernaum he healed the slave of a centurion. Did the centurion come personally to request Jesus for this? At first glance, there appears to be a contradiction between Matthew 8:5, which seems to imply that the centurion came to Jesus, and Luke 7:3 and 7:6, which say he did not.
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Problem: Considering how many people within Christendom teach that an individual can be saved merely by professing a belief in Christ, it is not surprising that skeptics claim that the Bible contradicts itself in this regard. Although Peter and Paul declared, “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13; cf. Joel 2:32), skeptics quickly remind their readers that Jesus once stated: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21; cf. Luke 6:46). Allegedly, Matthew 7:21 clashes with such passages as Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13 (see Morgan, 2003; Wells, 2001). Since many professed Christians seem to equate “calling on the name of the Lord” with the idea of saying to Jesus, “Lord, save me,” Bible critics feel even more justified in their pronouncement of “conflicting testimonies.” How can certain professed followers of Christ claim that they were saved by simply “calling out to Christ,” when Christ Himself proclaimed that a mere calling upon Him would not save a person?
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