Bible Contradiction? What did the soldiers give Jesus to drink?

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: What did the soldiers give Jesus to drink?

Here are the two answers which the skeptic believes indicate a Bible contradiction:

Vinegar and gall

“they gave Him wine to drink mixed with gall; and after tasting it, He was unwilling to drink.” (Matthew 27:34)

Wine and myrrh

“They tried to give Him wine mixed with myrrh; but He did not take it.” (Mark 15:23)

Vinegar

“Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink, saying, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down.”” (Mark 15:36)

“The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine,” (Luke 23:36)

Vinegar and hyssop

“A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth.” (John 19:29)

(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

 

1. 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.
2. One should be skeptical of whether this is a Bible contradiction given the Skeptic Annotated Bible’s track record of inaccurately handling the Bible.  See the many examples of it’s error which we have responded to in this post: Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.  Of course that does not take away the need to respond to this claim of a contradiction, which is what the remainder of this post will do.  But this observation should caution us to slow down and look more closely at the passages cited by the Skeptic Annotated Bible to see if they interpreted the passages properly to support their conclusion that it is a Bible contradiction.
3. Just a quick observation: What the skeptics call “vinegar” the NASB calls “sour wine.”
4. The skeptic tries to pit Mark 15:23 on the one hand against Mark 15:36 and Luke 23:36 on the other hand.  According to the skeptic Mark 15:23 teaches that the Roman soldiers gave wine and myrrh for Jesus to drink while both Mark 15:36 and Luke 23:36 teaches that the Roman soldiers gave Jesus vinegar/sour wine to drink.  Yet the two are not contradictory because these two sets of passages occurred at separate time.
   1. Notice for Mark 15:23 wine and myrrh was offered before Jesus was crucified.  How do we know that?
      1. Jesus being crucified is stated in the next verse in Mark 15:24a.
      2. Notice the offering of wine and myrrh occurred right when they got to the place of the crucifixion as the verse before mentioned (Mark 15:22).
      3. Jesus being offered wine and myrrh is also before the soldiers divided Jesus’ garments in Mark 15:24b, suggesting the offer of wine and myrrh was early on.
      4. Why would they offer wine and myrrh?  It was a way to make the pain less painful.  Yet Jesus did not take it.
   2. As a contrast Mark 15:36 and Luke 23:36 recorded chronologically near the end of how before Jesus died the Roman soldiers offered vinegar/sour wine to Jesus.How do we know that?
      1. Luke 23:36 parallel Mark 15:36.
      2. Mark 15:36 which mentioned Jesus being offered vinegar/sour wine is obviously 13 verses after Mark 15:23.  So after Jesus was first offered with wine they offered Him vinegar/sour wine.
      3. Note also Jesus died in the next verse from crucifixion in Mark 15:37.
      4. Why would they offer Jesus vinegar/sour wine instead of wine and myrrh towards the end?  Very likely the better wine ran out.  Don’t forget there were two other men being crucified next to Jesus that day and there’s also the possibility that the Roman soldiers themselves helped themselves to drink the wine.  This observation fit with the biblical timeline.
   3. The two different offer by Roman soldiers to Jesus of something to drink along with the order of first the wine and then the vinegar/sour wine is also confirmed in Matthew 27 (see Matthew 27:33-34 and Matthew 27:48).
   4. Thus it is not a contradiction with Jesus being offered on the one hand wine mixed with myrrh while also being offered vinegar/sour wine on the other hand since these different offering from the Roman soldiers occurred during different time.
5. The skeptic made a mistake when he asserted that John 19:29 teaches the soldiers gave Jesus to drink “vinegar/sour wine and hyssop.”  Hyssop was not something being offered as a drink.  This is a misinterpretation by the skeptic.  In the Greek “hyssop” is in the dative case and signal that it’s the indirect object of the participle “having put on” whereas the direct object is in the accusative would signal what’s actually being offered which in this case the accusative case is the word “sour wine.”  Rather in the dative case the word “hyssop” indicates the means this was brought up to Jesus.  It is clear “hyssop” is not what’s given as a drink when one understands the participle “having put on” is also in the accusative case to be in apposition with “vinegar/sour wine” to indicate more details about the vinegar/sour wine, and the dative case of “hyssop” is indicating the manner in which it was offered: on the hyssop.  Thus John 19:29 is like Mark 15:36 and Luke 23:36 in asserting simply that Jesus was offered vinegar/sour wine.
6. The skeptic rightly noted Matthew 27:34 teaches that the Roman soldiers offered vinegar and gall.  That is what the text says.  However this added detail of “gall” does not contradict with the passages that mentioned Jesus was offered vinegar.  None of those passages said the Roman soldiers offered Jesus only vinegar, with nothing else added.
7. As a side note it is important to note that the Greek word for “gall” doesn’t necessarily have to refer to literal liquid from the liver; it can refer to anything that is bitter and the meaning of bitter can be seen in Acts 8:23 and the verbal form in John 7:23.  Matthew 27:34 indicates that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecy in Psalm 69:21 with what the Roman soldiers offered to Jesus: “They also gave me gall for my food And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.“
8. Again there is no Bible contradiction here.  Its just that the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible didn’t read carefully.
9. We shouldn’t miss that worldviews are at play even with the skeptic’s objection to Christianity.  The worldview of the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible actually doesn’t even allow for such a thing as the law of non-contradiction to be meaningful and intelligible.  In other words for him to try to disprove the Bible by pointing out that there’s a Bible contradiction doesn’t even make sense within his own worldview.  Check out our post “Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview.”

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