Textual Contradictions and Scholarly Admissions

One of the most effective dimensions of Deedat's approach to the question of biblical authority is his extensive cataloguing of internal contradictions within the biblical text — inconsistencies that are acknowledged by Christian biblical scholars themselves and that raise serious questions about the reliability and divine preservation of the text. These contradictions are not manufactured by hostile critics but are identified in standard biblical commentaries and scholarly works, drawn from the Western Christian academic tradition that has been studying these texts with increasing rigor since the Enlightenment.

The most direct form of biblical contradiction involves numerical discrepancies between parallel accounts. The books of Samuel/Kings and Chronicles often provide different figures for the same events: 2 Samuel 24:9 states that there were 800,000 men of Israel and 500,000 of Judah in David's census, while 1 Chronicles 21:5 gives figures of 1,100,000 and 470,000 respectively. 2 Samuel 10:18 states that David killed 700 charioteers and 40,000 horsemen of the Syrians, while 1 Chronicles 19:18 says he killed 7,000 charioteers and 40,000 foot soldiers. These numerical discrepancies — impossible to harmonize without significant textual gymnastics — suggest that the texts were written by different human authors working from different sources, not preserved from a single divinely revealed original.

The genealogies of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke provide another well-known example. Matthew traces Jesus's lineage from Abraham through David and through Solomon to Joseph, while Luke traces it from David through Nathan (a different son of David than Solomon) to Joseph. The two genealogies diverge after David and cannot be reconciled — they contain different names, different numbers of generations, and follow different family lines. Both cannot simultaneously be historically accurate if Jesus had one earthly lineage.

The accounts of Jesus's final days contain numerous minor inconsistencies between the four Gospels. The day on which Jesus was crucified — before or after the Passover meal — is treated differently by the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and the Gospel of John. The words Jesus spoke from the cross differ between the accounts. The details of the post-resurrection appearances vary significantly. These discrepancies are acknowledged by mainstream Christian biblical scholars who attribute them to the different sources, perspectives, and theological emphases of the individual Gospel writers.

Deedat's broader argument is not that every apparent contradiction in the Bible is necessarily irreconcilable — careful scholarship can resolve many apparent discrepancies — but that the existence of these contradictions, widely acknowledged by Christian scholars, undermines the doctrine of biblical inerrancy that has been held by significant portions of the Christian tradition. If the Bible contains factual errors or irreconcilable discrepancies, it cannot be the literal, word-for-word preserved speech of an all-knowing God.

He also draws attention to the admission of prominent biblical scholars regarding the human dimensions of the biblical text. Bruce Metzger, one of the most distinguished New Testament textual critics of the twentieth century, described the transmission of the New Testament as a process involving human copyists who inevitably introduced errors, corrections, and sometimes deliberate alterations. Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical Christian who became one of the leading popular communicators of biblical textual criticism, has described in accessible terms how the biblical text was changed by scribes — sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately — in the process of transmission.

The contrast with the Quranic text is, again, striking. The Islamic tradition's claim that the Quran has been preserved without alteration since its revelation is supported by the extraordinary uniformity of Quranic manuscripts across all traditions, the unbroken chain of memorization by millions of hafiz, and the absence of the kind of textual variants that characterize the biblical manuscript tradition. This comparison is not intended to denigrate the Bible but to illuminate the specific divine promise of Quranic preservation: 'Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran, and indeed, We will be its guardian' (15:9).