This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Brian Gougherty in a letter last Saturday took issue with Peggy Fletcher Stack's claim to a Bible contradiction. It might be reasonable to conclude that Stack's cited passages relating to the two accounts of the residence of Joseph and Mary are not contradictory. Gougherty goes beyond that, however, and declares that the Bible contains no contradictions. He is wrong.
One example: The Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah list the numbers of people returning from the Babylonian exile. In 17 cases, the numbers do not match. For instance, Ezra 2:8 says, "The children of Zattu, nine hundred and forty and five," but Neh. 7:13 says, "The children of Zattu, eight hundred and forty five." This is a plain and simple contradiction. The number 945 is not the number 845. If Gougherty refuses to admit this, he is in denial. In addition to these 17, the Bible contains other simple and obvious errors and contradictions.
I do not mean to imply anything beyond the fact of the contradiction. A cookbook that contains a typo will probably still be useful for preparing recipes. The consequences of Bible errors will remain debatable, but let's not pretend they don't exist.
John Burton
Magna