CONTRADICTIONS: Is It Six Days (Matthew and Mark) or Eight Days (Luke)?
Among the many examples of apparent contradictions skeptics of the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God is the difference in counting days between Jesus prophesying something hugely important about the coming Kingdom of God on Earth and the Transfiguration seen in Matthew 17:1, Mark 9:2 and Luke 9:28.
Eric Lyons of The Apologetics Press has reasonable explanations for every alleged Bible contradiction.
Matthew and Mark both say six days elapsed from the day Jesus prophesied that some people would live to see the kingdom on Earth. But then over in Luke, the physician declares there were eight days.
Aha! Obvious contradiction, right? And if there is a contradiction about such a simple fact as how many days were between the prophesy and the Transfiguration, what else does the Bible provide conflicting information for readers to sort out? And this is the inerrant, never wrong Word of God?
Not so fast, Mr. Skeptico!
As Eric Lyons points out in the first of his three-volume “The Anvil Rings” compilation of responses on alleged contradictions in the Bible, there is more than one way to count six days, especially if there are some special events involved.
“Admittedly, at first glance, it may seem to the casual reader that Luke’s timeline contradicts Matthew and Mark’s account of the time that elapsed between Jesus prophesy and His Transfiguration,” Lyons writes.
“However, a closer examination reveals that Luke never intended for his readers to understand that exactly 192 hourse (eight 24-hour days) elapsed from the moment Jesus finished His prophecy to the time Jesus and the others began their ascent to the ‘Mount of Transfiguration,'” Lyons continues.
Lyons goes on to point out two important facts. First, Luke qualifies his time figure with the key word “about.” In other words, Luke was a physician, but he was not adverse to providing an estimate rather than a precise time.
Second, Lyons points out that saying eight days and counting the days the prophesy and Transfiguration in the figure, as Luke does, is not a contradiction of Matthew and Mark counting only the six days between the two events.
Again, we see how skeptics assume there is no other plausible explanation for what at the surface appears to be two different time estimates. Unfortunately, how many congressional aides now working on Capitol Hill were taught in college by skeptical professors that “the Bible is full of contradictions?”
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Want another source? Check out “When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties” by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe. Geisler taught philosophy and theology for five decades at Trinity Evangelical Seminary. Howe is a professor of the Bible and Biblical Languages at Southern Evangelical Seminary.