This is the 70th alleged Bible contradiction we refuted. Check out the rest at Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.
For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: How many believers were there at the time of the ascension?
Here are the two answers which the skeptic believes shows a Bible contradiction (skeptics’ comments included):
There were 120 believers after the ascension.
“At this time Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren (a gathering of about one hundred and twenty persons was there together), and said,” (Acts 1:15)
There were more than 500 believers before the ascension.
“After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:6)
(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)
Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:
- When dealing with skeptics’ claim of Bible contradictions it seems one can never be reminded enough of what exactly is a contradiction. A contradiction occurs when two or more claims conflict with one another so that they cannot simultaneously be true in the same sense and at the same time. To put it another way, a Bible contradiction exists when there are claims within the Bible that are mutually exclusive in the same sense and at the same time.
- Readers should realize right away that both Acts 1:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:6 both aren’t focused on the question or issue of how many believers were there at the time of the ascension. None of these verses said that the amount were how many believers there were during the time of Christ’s ascension. So the verses shouldn’t be meant to use as some sort of “census” or population count of how many Christians there were total during Christ’s ascension. Right off the bat the skeptic is already misinterpreting the Bible here.
- Given point two that neither Acts 1:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:6 are population count of the total amount of Christians we also want to find out what these passages are about: They are about specific instances of Christ appearing before His disciples.
- From Acts 1:3 we learn that Christ appeared to His followers in many different instances during those forty days before His ascension. The truth of Acts 1:3 is evident when Scripture presents many accounts of when Jesus appeared to His disciples.
- We shouldn’t be surprised that during various instances when Jesus appeared to His followers that there are different amount of His followers present. For example John 20:24 mentioned that Thomas was not present in some of the early appearances although Thomas was present in later appearances of Jesus to His followers in John 20:26.
- Keep in mind that there are no contradictions with pointing out different amount of disciples present during different appearances.
- Acts 1:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:6 must be different instances of when Jesus appeared to His disciples since on the one hand there were 120 Christians present while another instance there were 500 present.
- Further supporting our claim that Acts 1:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:6 were different instances is the fact that they must have taken place in different locations.
- The account in Acts 1:15 obviously took place in Jerusalem according to its context.
- In Acts 1:4 Jesus addresses the crowd of 120 and He mentioned that they not leave Jerusalem.
- Then in Acts 1:8 Jesus tells them that their evangelistic effort will begin in Jerusalem after the Spirit empowers them.
- The record of the appearances of Jesus to the 500 in 1 Corinthians 15:6 appears more likely to have occurred in Galilee than in Jerusalem.
- At that time many of His followers were afraid of the religious authorities who have just killed Jesus and they were on the run instead of gathering in big groups. This taking place in Jerusalem doesn’t appear as likely. Instead gathering in a location away from Jerusalem and away from where Jesus was killed makes sense.
- Also there are many instances where Jesus told His disciples before His death and after His resurrection to go to Galilee (Mark 14:28, 16:7, Matthew 26:32, 28:7, 28:10). Jesus’ persistence that His followers go to Galilee where He will appear means the believers in Jerusalem would have traveled to Galilee where they would also gather alongside other believers already in Galilee. Galilee was a region that Jesus spent considerable length ministering at before and no doubt would have included many other believers. Thus this combined number of believers makes it plausible that there were 500 plus believers.
- The account in Acts 1:15 obviously took place in Jerusalem according to its context.
There is no contradiction between Acts 1:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:6.
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Thank you Vincent for the reblog, I hope the family project is going well
Hi Brother how are you?
I’m doing well, we just got done from doing VBS this weekend so I’m still kind of recovering from that. How are you?
That’s good how was VBS? I’m good today.
It was good; we had a great time preaching the whole Gospel without anything being sugarcoated. We also had a lot of unchurched kids and family come to our small church which we are thankful for to share the Gospel to them. What have you been learning recently from God?
That’s great being able to preach the whole Gospel with no false teaching. The unchurched if they don’t know Jesus need to Receive Him as Savior and Lord of their life and they also need to be part of the church agree? The sermon on Sunday was about the cost of discipleship.
Agreed! That sounds like a good sermon! Sounds like a good blog post idea for you if you asked me =)
Amen does that count of learning from God recently just wondering.
Off topic here but how does a Catholic priest justify slapping a child it’s insane.
I do think what you shared about the cost of discipleship is something that count with what you are learning. That Catholic priest slapping a child was incomprehensible to me; I don’t know how one can justify it; do you know of anyone trying to justify it? Have you seen the video of it?
Ok I don’t know anyone trying to justify it I saw a little bit of the video I think on the Daily Mail
I asked my Pastor if I could read what the Lord had me say at the funeral he said yes.
Wow did you read it this Sunday at church? Or its this upcoming Sunday?
No I didn’t read it on Sunday I don’t know when I will read it. I don’t know the strength to read it.
I believe you wrote more than one post on yoga; do you have a link for the one where they commented?
They commented on my post Dangers of Yoga!!
When my loved one was sick if remember right I said Lord I’m dependent upon you. He was teaching me to be dependent upon Him I think
Yankee Whiskey Bravo and they are my friend 🙏
This contradiction is so re-dunk-u-lous that I will not even put my red neck spin on it. I will simply sigh and say, “Bless their hearts.”
I’m going to reveal how much of a West Coast guy I am here: I googled “Bless their hearts” and I’m laughing! Love your redneck way of saying things, makes me think of all the funny sayings I heard when I was in the Marines…
I have been doing my own study of the Bible in my Bibliology series at http://www.beardedtheology.wordpress.com. what I have found, more than anythimg, is the unbelievably incorrect use of literal hermeneutics in the atheist and skeptic camp. Penn Jillette says that if people would just read the Bible they would become an atheist. What’s bad about that is they take theor modern, post-modern worldview and read it into the Bible. They do not actually read the Bible literally, meaning law is law (which has to be understood in the history and culture of the time), hyperbole is hyperbole, proverb is a proverb, and poetry is poetry. Also, they misunderstand narrative genre. The heroes of the OT were not meant to be idealized, but seen as not doing what they did wrong. Anyway, the skeptic completely misunderstands the Bible out of their own ignorance.
Brother what you pointed out is so true concerning the fact that many skeptics don’t understand or read the Bible in light of a passage’s literary form. Sometimes when I evangelize on college campuses I have people tell me I read the Bible ignorantly but when they mention problematic Bible passages isn’t it incredibly ironic they become the very caricature of “letterism” reading of the Bible?
Amen!
It drives me crazy when skeptics attack the Bible by pointing out flaws of Bible CHARACTERS; they miss the whole point that it is all about Jesus and that we are all sinners.
So true. One person tried to bring up the point that a holy judge sacrificed his daughter to God and that that was a contradiction. I explained that it wasn’t and why. I told him the point of OT narratives was not for us to imitate the characters and hold them up as perfect. The point was to notice the wrongs the characters made and to avoid doing them ourselves. It was like I blew his mind. These guys think we are so uneducated because they commit the fallacy of overgenwralization of Christianity. They believe that because a majority of Christians don’t hold to the same view of education and science then we are stupid. However, when you analyze their arguments you find that they are blaming you, most of the time not all the time, for interpreting the Bible just as them.
Wow, you’ve done 70? Congratulations! I’m impressed. 🙂
Argh! This alleged “contradiction” is clear evidence that Steve Wells is “grasping at straws.” I think this may be the chessiest smear that I’ve seen in this series so far. Thanks for continuing to fight the good fight!
Wow somehow I lost my comment I wrote; I agree that Steve Wells is grasping at straws here. I remember a few months ago someone attacking me for refuting easy Bible contradiction. I asked the guy for only one of what he thinks is the irrefutable contradiction which was concerning Judas which later I refuted and is course now among the 70 we have refuted. I have a contradiction I’m currently working through from Wells that require some more research but most of the ones on his lists aren’t really that strong. I am not trying to put others down but I’m constantly surprised at the level of ignorance skeptics like Steve Wells display in his attack on the Bible…
Wells probably started out with some legitimate difficulties, but had a certain number of pages to fill and ended up grasping for straws.
This was extremely helpful to me, Pastor Jim! Thank you so much for explaining this so thoroughly.
Once again Jim, this is the first time I’ve heard of a conflict between these two Scriptures. Your explanation is very effective!
Cannot recall which radio teacher related a story about debating over this very topic with a fellow seminary classmate. The skeptical classmate conceded defeat on every topic.Never the less, rather than repent he only lamented that his better would not accept his false premise. Being an obscurantist is no virtue. Jesus clearly taught explicitly and implicitly that He trusted scripture. The devil told Eve that God’s word cannot be trusted. Jesus also explicitly stated, ” those who are not with us are against us”. The devil is never with Jesus. He always in the same camp with all who are against.
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