Bible Contradiction? Were the men with Paul knocked to the ground?

 

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: Were the men with Paul knocked to the ground?

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

Yes, they fell to the ground.

“And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” (Acts 26:14)

No, they remained standing.

“The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.” (Acts 9:7)

(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 their 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. The skeptic tries to pit Acts 26:14 as affirming the claim “The men with Paul fell to the ground.” against Acts 9:7 as affirming “The men with Paul remain steadfast.”
4. The skeptic rightly interpreted Acts 26:14 as affirming the claim “The men with Paul fell to the ground.” But the skeptic did not interpret Acts 9:7 accurately as affirming “The men with Paul remain steadfast.”  The verse does mention the men with Paul were standing and what that moment was like; but that verse does not say the men with Paul didn’t fall at all.  So the skeptics did not accurately extrapolate from Acts 9:7 to justify his claim.
5. Furthermore Acts 9:8 does mention Paul is on the ground; it makes sense that he fell if he was on the ground.  While it does not mention that the other men with Paul were on the ground still we see something happened powerful enough that Paul as a grown man was knocked down to the ground.  It is reasonable to think others could have also fallen on the ground who were in proximity with Paul.  This of course is confirmed in Acts 26:14.
6. Outside of the Bible we also see that if there’s multiple historical account of the same event and one historical account did not mentioned a detail that doesn’t mean another account that did mentioned the detail is somehow contradicting with the first account.  Outside the Bible we also see that if different accounts mentioned separate incidents that are similar that does not mean there’s a contradiction between the accounts either.  See for example my posts on the Gold Medal at the Cambrian Patrol, the Louisiana Purchase, the Thanksgiving Story, and September 11th.  I bring these examples up is to make the point that the rebuttal to the skeptic here isn’t something that’s unique to the Bible but its also how we deal with historical account in general.
7. There is no contradiction here.  Seems the skeptic needs to learn of How to Handle Bible Contradictions.
8. I know some of you are also searching for the related question of Did Paul see Jesus on the road to Damascus? and  Did Paul go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion?
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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