Thread: Apparent Contradiction in Scripture

Hey,

Well im reading through bart ehrman's "misquoting Jesus" and he brought up an apparent contradiction in scripture:

we see in Mark 2, where Jesus is confronted by the pharisees because his disciples had been walking through a grainfield, eating the grain on the sabbath, Jesus reminds them of what king david had done and he quotes 1 Sam. 21:1-6.

However, it turns out that Jesus said that this occured "in the time of abiathar the high priest" but the verses being quoted by Jesus in this passage, show that in fact that it was Ahimelech in 1 sam. 21:1-6 who was the high priest.


whats your views on this? is it a scribal error or an error by mark himself or not an error at all but can be explained?

The text says "ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως" ἐπὶ with the genitive means "in the time of," and the rest says Abiathar the high priest. Abiathar was present while David was there and in fact would soon be anointed high priest by David. Jesus did not say that Abiathar was high priest during the event, to give a similar example one might say something like this, "Now when King David was a shepherd." This episode did happen "In the time of Abiathar."

After you finish Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" I would suggest reading Timothy Paul Jones' "Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus".

He deals a little with this on page 23-24:

THINK IT OUT

So do the words of Jesus in Mark 2:26 contradict 1 Samuel 21:1-6? Here's one possible alternative: Mark's reference to "high priest" indicates the position that Abiathar eventually obtained. Abiathar was present in the tabernacle during the incident described in 1 Samuel 21 (see 1 Samuel 22:20), but he didn't become high priest until later.

And his footnote is especially helpful:

See R.T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 146. It is still commonly accepted practice to refer to a person by the office or status that he or she ultimately attained. For example, a children's biography of George W. Bush asks, "Where did President Bush attend college?" <http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/president/>. Even though Bush attended college more than thirty years before becoming president, the title President is ascribed at this point because this was the office that he ultimately attained.

Actually I would say put down anything by Mr. Erhman and study the reformers and modern biblically sound authors. JMO

I see good explanations have already been given, though it might be worth adding that according to Comfort textually this is a very well supported reading, some manuscripts add the artical but there is no question about "Abiathar" being in original or not. Nor is there a question about either Jesus making a mistake, or Mark making a mistake. This is what Jesus said, you will notice though that there is no record of the well taught pharisees questioning Jesus. Nor have there been any attempts to alter the text to cover up this 'mistake,' and I would expect that in a man made religion. If the pharisees accepted Jesus as being right, and if 2000 years of Christainity have had no problem understanding this text, I don't think we need to fear it either.