Does the Bible have contradictions in it? If it does, do they matter? In one sense, (alleged) biblical contradictions certainly do matter for they undermine the Christian conviction that the Bible is inspired by God and therefore inerrant. On the other hand, any (proven) biblical contradictions do not necessarily entail that Christianity is false. For, even if the Bible were filled with contradictions, the core beliefs of Christianity could still be true. That is, it could still be true that God exists, and that Jesus Christ died and rose again. And as long as these two things are true, then Christianity is true in some sense.
From a historical perspective, it is also worth noting that historians do not necessarily reject a document simply because it contradicts another document. Historians recognize that when two sources disagree, one of them can be wrong and the other right. It would be foolish to conclude that both documents are completely wrong simply because they disagree on a particular point. The prominent Christian scholar, Dr. William Lane Craig, makes this point with respect to the accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
No historian just throws out a source because it has inconsistencies. Indeed, the very task of the critical historian is to sift his sources to distinguish the historical from the unhistorical… I think that most of the inconsistencies… [in the gospels] can be harmonized… Let me simply point out that the gospel accounts are unanimous and harmonious in their historical core…
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Reference
Drcraigvideos, "Are there Inconsistencies Between the Four Gospels?" December 9, 2007, YouTube video, 2:38, https://youtu.be/sgdsIaqFAp4?t=8.
Timestamp: 0:08 - 1:08
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