AskAnything.sg

Answer:

Explaining  “inconsistencies” is indeed important to our understanding of the Bible. In fact, people use apparent inconsistencies to pass judgment on the whole of the Bible, reasoning if one part is “wrong” then it all is wrong. Yet, we need to understand a bit about the Bible before we jump to this conclusion.

Each author of each book in the Bible (66 books in all written by 40 authors) wrote in a different style and perspective. This is not to be construed that they wrote whatever they wanted. Rather, the Bible teaches that God guided those authors in the words He wanted communicated, but did so in such a way so as to provide for their writing style to come through  (2 Peter 1:21).

The narrative accounts given in the Gospels (Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John) each provide a perspective of the life of Christ. Each, depending on the purpose of the book, provides for different aspects of Christ life to be highlighted. Think of it this way, if you and four of your friends spent 3 years living, working, and traveling together and I were to ask each of them to write a book about your adventures, with the focus being around you, each would provide slightly different accounts, but I suspect we would find more in common than different. In fact, I would expect their to be some differences or perspectives of what they might communicate given their unique interactions with you.  If their accounts were word for word I would think that they colluded. Now, in fairness to the Gospels, this is somewhat overly simplistic. For example, the Gospel of Luke was not written based on Luke’s first-hand experiences. Instead, he spent the majority of his time speaking with people, who were with Jesus during his ministry, talking with town’s folks, religious leaders, and common folks, trying to sort out what went on (no to dissimilar than what a reporter might do).

Did the authors of the gospels, and subsequent books keep a consistent theme (i.e. Jesus preformed miracles, confronted religious leaders, spoke with common folk / sinners, handed over to Romans, was crucified, rose from the dead)? Yes, they did. What happened in in-between these key themes may indeed be different based on the perspective of the writer and what God wanted conveyed (i.e., was it one angel at the tomb or two? Were the disciples permitted to take a staff or not?).

However, what we don’t see is one book showing Jesus claiming to be God, and another not. We don’t see one book saying He was crucified, and risen from the dead and another not. Again, knowing the perspective of author is important.

Having said this, we live in a day and age when Post-modernism is all the rage. Part of the baggage of this perspective holds that we can’t truly know the meaning of any literature, rather each of us should construct or construe what we want from the text we are reading, never mind the authors intentions. When reading a book, especially those reported to be “holy, religious, or sacred” this can invoke dire consequences.

The following site provides numerous examples of how the gospel accounts do differ, but without contradicting one another.
http://bible.org/seriespage/are-there-contradictions-gospels