Bible Contradiction? Did Paul go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion?

 

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: Did Paul go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion?

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

Yes

“When he came to Jerusalem, he tried repeatedly to associate with the disciples; and yet they were all afraid of him, as they did not believe that he was a disciple.” (Acts 9:26)

No

“to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.” (Galatians 1:16-17)

(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 9:26 as affirming the claim “Paul did go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion” against Galatians 1:16-17 as affirming “Paul did not go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion.”
4. The skeptic is not justified to say Acts 9:26 is saying “Paul did go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion.”  While it does record Paul going to Jerusalem sequentially after Paul’s conversion, the verse does not though use any Greek adverb for “immediately.”  So if the verse doesn’t claim Paul immediately went to Jerusalem after his conversion then we don’t have the needed premise to assert there’s a contradiction.
5. The skeptics did rightly interpret Galatians 1:16-17 as asserting “Paul did not go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion.”  The passage record Paul stating he went to Arabia and then back to Damascus before going to Jerusalem.  The next verse in Galatians 1:18 record also that duration span three years before Paul went to Jerusalem and met the other Apostles.
6. The problem here is not with the Bible but the skeptic’s method of reading the Bible.  He’s assuming that one account giving more details than another account means there’s a logical contradiction; but that’s problematic and not to mention its a failure of understanding the law of non-contradiction.  Furthermore 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.  I think of the recent example I gave in my post “First Marine Division History and alleged Bible Contradiction.”  Multiple other examples abound such as 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 Were the men with Paul knocked to the ground? 
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.”