Since today is the 10th day of the 10th month in a year whose numbers add up to 10, I thought today would be a perfect day to list my top 10 contradictions from the Bible.
Yes. Contradictions. Not “apparent contradictions.” Not “passages that seem different until you understand the context.” Actual places where the Bible says one thing over here and something quite different over there.
Sometimes that “over there“ is the very next line. As you’ll see in contradiction number 5.
Since people love to tell me, “The Bible clearly says …” I thought it might be fun to make a list of what it clearly says.
So, here we go.
1. Which came first: humans or animals?
Genesis 1 gives us animals first, then humanity — male and female together. Genesis 2 tells the story differently. The man appears, then the animals are brought to him in search of a suitable companion, and finally the woman appears.
Different order. And these stories are practically sitting next to each other. Barely two chapters into the Bible and already the witnesses disagree.
2. Has anyone ever seen God?
John says, “No one has ever seen God.” Except Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face.” And Exodus says Moses spoke with God “face to face.” Except later in the very same chapter, God tells Moses, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”
So nobody has seen God. Except the people who have.
Moving on.
3. Does God change Its mind?
Numbers says God is not a human being who changes his mind. Samuel says essentially the same thing. Except in Exodus, Moses argues with God until “the Lord changed his mind.” God changes course with Nineveh in Jonah too.
Apparently God never changes Its mind. Except when It does.
4. Are children punished for their parents’ sins?
Exodus describes God as “visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children” for generations. Ezekiel says: “A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent.”
That’s not exactly a minor detail.
5. Should you answer a fool?
This one’s probably my favorite.
Proverbs 26:4: “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself.” Literally the next verse: “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.”
Don’t answer the fool. No wait. Do answer the fool.
Could it be that Proverbs anticipated social media?
6. Does God tempt people?
Genesis gives us the terrifying story of God testing Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac. And later James says God “tempts no one.”
So does God test human beings with terrible choices or not? One biblical author says yes. Another says no. So, at least that’s clear.
7. Faith or works?
Paul says a person is justified by faith apart from works. James says: “A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
Christians have written entire libraries explaining why these statements aren’t really contradictory. But on the page, they certainly seem to be having an argument.
8. How did Judas die?
Matthew says Judas returned the silver, died by suicide, and then the priests used the money to buy a field. Acts says Judas is the one who acquired the field and died there by falling headlong and bursting open.
There are ways people have tried to combine these accounts. They require Judas to have had an exceptionally bad afternoon. (It vaguely reminds me of “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” to a biker bar).
9. What happened on Easter morning?
All four Gospels agree that the tomb was empty. The details? Not so much.
Different women go to the tomb. There are different numbers of heavenly messengers. They’re positioned differently. The women react differently. The sequence of events varies.
For the central event of Christianity, the witnesses do not give us one perfectly synchronized account.
And last, though not least:
10. What should we do with our enemies?
Some biblical texts portray God commanding warfare, vengeance and the destruction of enemies.
Then Jesus says: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
And this is where my little list of biblical gotchas stops being a gotcha. Because I don’t actually think any of this is embarrassing.
I think it’s magnificent.
The Bible contradicts itself. Thank God.
Because the Bible isn’t one book written by one person at one moment in history. It’s a library created across centuries by different people, communities, cultures and generations trying to understand the same enormous questions:
Who is God? What is justice? Why do we suffer? What do we owe one another? What does love require?
And sometimes later biblical voices appear to challenge earlier ones. One generation says children bear the consequences of their parents’ sins. Another says no, they shouldn’t.
One tradition imagines divine justice through the destruction of enemies. Jesus says love them.
One proverb says answer the fool. The very next one says don’t.
That’s not necessarily a defect in scripture. That’s what wisdom looks like when human beings have been wrestling with it for generations.
And here’s why I think this matters: Whenever someone says, “I don’t interpret the Bible. I just believe what it says,” that’s just plain impossible.
The Bible itself won’t let you.
If one passage says one thing and another says something different, you have to decide which wisdom applies.
If one passage portrays vengeance as righteous and another commands love of enemies, you have to decide which vision of God will guide you.
The contradiction forces you to interpret. Which means the Bible does not relieve us of moral responsibility.
We have to bring something to the text: reason, conscience, historical understanding, lived experience, humility, compassion — and an awareness of what our interpretation actually does in the world.
That changes the question.
Instead of asking only, “What does the Bible say?” we might also ask, “What conversation is happening inside it?”
“What direction is it moving?”
“Which voices lead toward greater justice, compassion, dignity, and love?”
And most importantly: “What kind of human being does this interpretation produce?”
So yes. I have 10 favorite contradictions in the Bible. I could probably draw you up a list of 50.
But I don’t reflect upon them because they prove the Bible is ridiculous. I consider them because they remind me what the Bible actually is: a record of human beings wrestling with God, morality, one another and themselves.
The wrestling is the point.
After all, in Genesis, Jacob wrestles through the night with the Divine and walks away changed.
He also walks away with a new name: Israel. Not the state. The name.
The one who wrestles with God.
It would seem that scripture has been telling us how to read it all along.
Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister of the First Church in Lancaster at the Bulfinch Meetinghouse in Massachusetts, progressive theologian and essayist on optimistic spirituality in the Information Age. Follow him on Substack, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
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