Biblical contradictions

There has been an ongoing debate on another blog over whether the bible has contradictions on it.  On the one hand you have the skeptics. In the middle the realists. And on the other side, for lack of a better word, you have the dogmatics.

There are countless perceived contradictions in the bible. But whether they are truly a contradiction depends on how far you are willing to read between the lines. 

One of the most blatant contradictions in my opinion is the account of how Judas (the betrayer of Jesus) died.  In the book fo Matthew, Judas feels remorse for what he has done, throws his silver coins down and goes off and hangs himself.

But in the book of Acts, Judas keeps the money, acquires a field and falls headling and bursts open his body.

So how do you reconcile these differences?  In my opinion, a reasonable person would say "Oops. one of them is in error."  But to those who obsess over the literal accuracy of every word in the bible then nothing is beyond interpretting or extending to support your fanatical belief.

For example, with regarsd to Judas, the Christian Apologetics Ministry argues:

"There is no contradiction here at all because both are true.  A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another.  In fact, what happened here is that Judas went and hung himself and then his body later fell down and split open.  In other words, the rope or branch of the tree probably broke due to the weight and his body fell down and his bowels spilled out.
     Also, notice that Matt. 27:3-8 tells us specifically how Judas died, by hanging.  Acts 1:16-19 merely tells us that he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out.  Acts does not tell us that this is the means of his death where Matthew does."

But that requires the reader to suspend belief beyond the point where any reasonable person could accept. Here's why:

1) Matthew states explicitly that Judas threw away the money and that the priests then took the money bought a field to bury strangers.  By contrast, Acts says that Judas bought the field and feel "headlong" and his bowels came out.

2) Some argue "well, he didn't die from hanging, that he may have fallen down and that's how he died."  This is really silly because it doesn't say he attempted to hang himself. He hanged himself. Period. If you're going to take the bible literally, you can't start adding your own spin on it.  And if you hang yourself, you don't fall head long. 

3) Another argument I've seen is that well, acts doesn't actually say he died. It just says his bowels gushed out. He may not have died from this.  Please.  At that point, it becomes meaningless.  You fall and your bowels come out, you die.

Common sense says that in one passage, Judas felt guilt, thew away the money, and hung himself.  And the other passage takes the irony path -- Judas the villain keeps the money, buys  a field and ironically dies horribly getting his just deserts.  One is a suicide, the other implies an accident which is a pretty important difference.

This is an age-old debate that pretty much boils down to seperating the zealots from the non-zealots.  After debating the issue myself, I decided to also look to see if others had debated this issue on-line.  In turns out, yep, this particular blatant contradiction has been argued many tiems before.

One writer who looked at it put it like this:

How do these verses contradict each other?

1. In Matthew, Judas threw away the money to the priests before dying, then he went to hang himself. After that, the priests bought a field. In Acts, Judas used the money himself to buy a field.
   
2. In Matthew, Judas threw away the money before dying, and then a field was bought. In Acts, the field was bought before Judas died.
   
3. In Matthew, he died by hanging himself, whilst in Acts he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out.

How could an inerrantist Christian respond to these three points? Let me speculate on some possible counter-arguments.

As for point 1, one could infer that when Acts says that Judas bought the field, what is meant is that the priests bought the field on his behalf. This, however, is not permissible, since if one is allowed to change the meaning of the language, no significant discussion about the actual meaning of anything can be conducted. In ordinary language, we do not say that "this man purchased a field for $100" if someone else purchased it for their own usage with money thrown away by its original owner. Clearly, from Matthew, Judas did not give any order for the priests to buy a field for his money, and even if he did, why would they obey him, who they despised?

As for point 2, it seems hard to come up with a counter-argument, since the past tense is used in Matthew ("went and hanged himself"), implying that the execution of the deed had taken place before the purchase of the field. Meanwhile, Acts clearly presents the case where the field is bought prior to his dying (indeed, since he is said to have bought it himself!).

As for point 3, it is logically possible that the story in Acts is consistent with Matthew in terms of the method of dying, but it seems highly unlikely, from how his death is described. If one is to find consistency, one must include many things not in the text. Amongst other things, one wonders how the bowels could gush out simply from his having died by hanging, and one also wonders how he could fall headlong in a field, and where the tree came from (normally, there are no trees in the middle of a field).

Note that it suffices for only one of the three stated contradictions to hold for there to be a contradiction.

In other words, this isn't a new issue.  The handful of people who dogmatically cling to the belief that the Christian bible contains no contradictions have to be, in themselves, willing to essentially add new passages in the bible to fill in the missing gaps.  At which point, the whole argument becomes meaningless.

And this is just one of the more blatant ones. There are plenty of others.  Contradictions in the bible only are a problem if you take the bible literally rather than as a general guide.  Sadly, there are people who cling to the literal words as being infallible.  I personally think that those who do have much less faith than they let on.  If one truly has faith, then such contradictions would be easier to admit to and they'd be able to move on.