And the only reason there is something that seems like a contradiction in the NT is that there are 4 Gospels. Don't you think the council of clergy that decided what was to be the Church's authorized bible knew there was some supposed contradictions. Obviously they must have felt that using those 4 gospels presented a fuller more informative account of the life of Christ and this was more important to do then worry about some minor detaills that appear to contradict.
They made their decisions based on perceived authorship and they argued vociferously about which books to include and not include.
But all that is beside the point. You can decide that the books were written by men and do not mesh completely or that they were inspired by God and they contain contradictions, which is itself a contradiction. You can't have it both ways.
If they were really concerned about what appears to be minor differences as skeptics are obsessed with, they would have just picked one or two gospels instead of the fuller more informative 4.
What in the world makes you think that there was some sort of consensus about these books? There were violent arguments for decades about them. The reason that the four gospels we have were agreed upon was because they fit the emerging proto-orthodox position that tried to maintain a tightrope walk between competing conceptions of who and what Jesus was.
They were not at all obsessed over minor differences, which is why those differences of fact and perspective are there for all to see. The were concerned with a particular view of who Jesus was -- so the differences didn't matter to them at all. They had bigger concerns to deal with --there were competing views that threatened to become the majority.
Sceptics don't care about the contradictions either except when Bible-thumping halfwits suggest that everything in the New Testament is true -- which obviously cannot be the case since contradictions of fact do exist.
And as I have said before the perceived differences kill the theory that the gospels were just copies of each other. Skeptics complain that the gospels are too different and then they complain that they are too similiar and copies of each other.
If you paid any attention you would realize that no one has ever made the claim that the gospels are just copies of each other. Where in the world did you ever get that silly idea? The claim is that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source because they very obviously did. They changed bits of Mark and used the exact same wording in other areas. John is part of a different tradition.
Could you, in future, get at least one part of the story correct? How tremendously embarrassing this must be for you. Why do you continue to misrepresent others so thoroughly?
