EASTER WEEK SATURDAY: Are the Gospels ‘Hopelessly Contradictory’?

Right off the bat, let’s answer the question posed in the headline above: “No.” The reason the answer is so definitive and concrete is the simple reality that requiring multiple witnesses to provide the exact same details about an event they witnessed is a prescription for mis-understanding the event or missing it entirely.

Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace, who spent several decades as a Los Angeles Police Detective solving old murders that had defied resolution is emphatic when he says witnesses who give the same, exact story are witnesses who got together and agreed on what they would say before being questioned.

Now along comes Erik Manning of Is Jesus Alive? to take on Dr. Bart Erhman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Erhman is a highly respected New Testament scholar who does not believe the resurrection of Jesus was a literal event, in part because the Gospels are “hopelessly contradictory.” Manning begs to differ and makes a persuasive case in the following video: