Christians will sometimes ask me why most of my articles focus on "alleged" inconsistencies and contradictions in the Old Testament. They are careful to use the word alleged, because they, of course, contend that there are no inconsistencies or contradictions in the Old Testament, but I suspect that the question betrays a recognition that there are many troublesome passages in the Old Testament that believers in biblical inerrancy would just as soon not have to think about. Their question implies a belief that the New Testament is above reproach and that skeptics will be plumb out of luck if they should try to find discrepancies in the New Testament. If this is what they think, they couldn't be more wrong, because the New Testament, like the old, has plenty of inconsistencies and discrepancies. There are probably no parallel accounts in the Old Testament that are as inconsistent as the resurrection narratives in the gospels, but since I have already published a series of articles on those inconsistencies, I'll feature another New Testament discrepancy in this article.
First, however, I'll just point out that even if the New Testament could be proven inerrant in everything it says, biblical inerrantists would gain nothing by evading problem passages in the Old Testament, because the Bible consists of both the Old and the New Testaments, and biblical inerrantists claim that the Bible in its entirety is completely inerrant, in matters of science, history, geography, chronology, prophecy, and all other aspects, as well as matters of doctrine and faith. Hence, nothing is gained when inerrantists try to divert attention from the Old Testament when skeptics are discussing biblical discrepancies with them. The same deity allegedly inspired both the old and the new, and Yahweh, the god of the ancient Hebrews, was allegedly the kind, merciful, loving "heavenly Father" of the new. If there are discrepancies in the Old Testament, then, biblical inerrantists certainly don't solve anything by just saying, "Well, why don't we talk about the New Testament?"
If, however, biblical inerrantists want to talk about the New Testament, I will be glad to accommodate them. In Mark 2:23-28, there is a problem that has defied many inerrantist attempts to explain it away. Readers should note carefully the parts that I have emphasized in italic print and especially carefully the words emphasized in bold print.
Now it happened that he [Jesus] went through the grainfields on the sabbath; and as they went his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, "Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the sabbath?" But he said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him; how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?" And he said to them, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also lord of the sabbath."
A matter incidental to this article but one that I plan to write about in a future article is the fact that this story has Jesus teaching what biblicists cynically call "situational ethics." To most biblical inerrantists, morality is absolute, and so they will claim that morality is a black-or-white issue or, in other words, that an act is either moral or immoral. To them, the "situation" of an act has nothing to do with whether it is moral or immoral. If the act is immoral, then it is immoral. It was immoral yesterday, it is immoral today, and will be immoral tomorrow, and there is no situation that can make an immoral act moral. In this story, however, we see Jesus defending his disciples in an act that was a violation of the sabbath when they plucked grain as they were walking through a field on the sabbath day. This constituted working, and so to the Pharisees (according to the story), the disciples of Jesus were sinning by violating the sabbath. Jesus, however, defended his disciples on the grounds that the situation they were in justified their act of gathering grain. They were hungry and needed food, and so their situation made an act that would otherwise have been wrong proper for them to do. "The sabbath was made for man," Jesus said in defense of his disciples, "and not man for the sabbath."
Clearly, Jesus was teaching situational ethics. In defense of the position he had taken, Jesus cited an incident in the life of David, and in so doing, he made two statements that were inconsistent with the Old Testament account of the event that he referred to. Jesus said that (1) David went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, ate the showbread that only priests were allowed to eat, and (2) gave some [of the showbread] to those who were with him. This story is recorded in 1 Samuel 21:1-6, and as the story was told there, Abiathar was not the high priest but his father Ahimelech was serving in this office, and David was not in the company of other men at the time but was alone, fleeing from king Saul, who was plotting to kill him. One has only to read the story in 1 Samuel to see that either Jesus or the writer of Mark made two statements that were not consistent with the Old Testament record. Before we look at the passage, some background information is necessary.
For some time before this incident, friction had been building between David and Saul, who was king of Israel at the time. Because of David's increasing popularity with the people, Saul had come to hate him and was plotting to kill him. David had become fearful for his life, and so when the king's feast of the new moon was just a day away, David expressed his concern to Jonathan, the king's son who had become David's best friend, that Saul would try to kill him if David attended the feast. David and Jonathan devised a plan whereby David would hide in a field while Jonathan went to the feast to evaluate his father's mood toward David. If Jonathan sensed that Saul intended harm to David, Jonathan would come to the field on the third day and send a signal to David to let him know that his life was in danger. Jonathan went to the feast and, as anticipated, he found his father furious at David. As previously agreed, Jonathan returned to the field two days later and sent the signal that let David know that Saul intended to kill him. David came out of hiding, talked briefly to Jonathan, and then began a flight from Saul that would take him into Philistine territory where he would live as a guerrilla marauder until Saul was killed in battle with the Philistines (1 Sam. 20:5-42).
The first stop that David made in his flight from Saul was at Nob, where he sought help from the priest Ahimelech and not Abiathar, whom Jesus in the text quoted above, said was the high priest at the time. When Ahimelech saw him, he asked David, "Why are you alone and no man with you?"
In his reply, David lied and said that he was on a secret mission for the king and that the men who were with him on the mission were hiding in an appointed place. Let's look at the full text to get an overview of what the Old Testament says allegedly happened between David and Ahimelech that day.
David came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David, and said to him, "Why are you alone, and no one with you?" David said to the priest Ahimelech, "The king has charged me with a matter, and said to me, `No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.' I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here." The priest answered David, "I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread--provided that the young men have kept themselves from women." David answered the priest, "Indeed women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?" So the priest gave him the holy bread; for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before Yahweh, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away (1 Samuel 21:1-6).
I have emphasized the name Ahimelech in bold print to direct attention to the obvious fact that the priest who gave David assistance on this occasion was Ahimelech and not Abiathar, whom Mark claimed Jesus had said was the high priest at the time of this incident. Abiathar was Ahimelech's son, who succeeded his father after Saul killed him for having aided David in his flight (1 Sam. 22:16-19), so this is just another discrepancy in the book that biblical inerrantists claim is perfectly unified and harmonious from cover to cover.
The situation as recorded in the passage quoted above is rather obvious. David knew that to make his story of a secret mission believable to Ahimelech, he would have to pretend that he had men with him to assist in the mission. That was a lie, of course, because David had not been sent on a secret mission by king Saul; he was, in fact, fleeing for his life from Saul. So when Ahimelech asked why no men were with him, David told another lie and said that they were in hiding. However, there were no men with David, because when he learned from Jonathan that Saul was planning to kill him, he had made a rapid retreat from the field he had been hiding in for three days. He had had no time to find men who would be willing to flee with him. This, then, was the second lie that David told on this occasion (if we are to believe in the accuracy of the Old Testament account). After lying about being on a secret mission for the king, David, who was alone in his flight, told the priest Ahimelech that he had men with him waiting in an appointed place.
Ahimelech, being a priest, wanted assurances that these men, whom David pretended were in hiding, were pure enough to eat the sacred showbread, and so he asked David if they had been with any women recently. The Levitical law required that a man who had had sexually relations with a woman be considered ritually unclean until he had bathed (Lev. 15:18), and men going into battle (as Ahimelech would have assumed that these "men" with David might do) were also required to be sexually clean (Deut. 23:10ff). Hence, the priest wanted assurances that if he gave something as ceremonially sacred as the showbread to David and his men, they would also be ceremonially clean before they ate it. So David lied again and said that "women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition." These men, however, were nonexistent; David had fabricated them as a part of his false scenario to make it believable to Ahimelech that he was on a secret mission for the king. This, then, was a third lie that David told in order to dupe Ahimelech into helping him in his flight from Saul.
The writer of Mark, however, was apparently so superficially knowledgeable in this Old Testament story of David's flight that he thought the men whom David had fabricated were real and had also eaten the showbread.
Mark 2:24-26: The Pharisees said to him [Jesus], "Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the sabbath?" But he said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him.
The same mistake occurred in Matthew's account.
Matthew 12:3-4: He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?
And Luke made the same mistake.
Luke 6:3-4: Jesus answering them said, "Have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat?
So three verbally inspired writers made the same mistake and gave companions to David when none were with him. Furthermore, they had the omniscient Jesus, through whom the world was created, saying that companions were with David, whereas the context of 1 Samuel 20 and 21 make it clear that David was alone on his flight and fabricated companions in order to get help from the priest Ahimelech. If Mark ever read this story, he must have read it so superficially that he didn't understand that David had merely made up a contingent of men waiting in an appointed place so that his lie about a secret mission would seem credible to the priest. Matthew and Luke, in using Mark as their source, repeated the mistake.
At this point, I should be able to put a period and go on to another article, but inerrantists won't let it be that simple. No matter how compelling the evidence for discrepancy may be, they will always invent a how-it-could-have-been scenario to "explain" away the discrepancy. In the matter of David's companions, a popular "explanation" is that other men were with David; the biblical account just didn't mention them except when David referred to them in his conversation with the priest Ahimelech, but to confirm that the "men" David referred to in this conversation were nothing more than part of a lie that David told Ahimelech in order to get help during his flight from Saul, I'm going to take the previous chapter, section by section, and show that, as this story was told by a presumably inspired writer, it left no opportunity for David to gather men to accompany him on his flight from Saul. I'll begin with the section that tells of David's and Jonathan's plan to find out if Saul was plotting to kill David. It is rather long, but the best way to attack an inerrantist quibble like this is to walk the quibbler through his own inspired text to show that it offers him no support.
1 Samuel 20:16-34: Thus Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, "May Yahweh seek out the enemies of David." Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.
Jonathan said to him, "Tomorrow is the new moon; you will be missed, because your place will be empty. On the day after tomorrow, you shall go a long way down; go to the place where you hid yourself earlier, and remain beside the stone there. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as though I shot at a mark. Then I will send the boy, saying, `Go, find the arrows.' If I say to the boy, `Look, the arrows are on this side of you, collect them,' then you are to come, for, as Yahweh lives, it is safe for you and there is no danger. But if I say to the young man, `Look, the arrows are beyond you,' then go; for Yahweh has sent you away. As for the matter about which you and I have spoken, Yahweh is witness between you and me forever."
Certainly, there is nothing in this text to indicate that anyone else was present except David and Jonathan. Indeed, the subject of the conversation was such that we can reasonably assume that they would not have wanted others to overhear it. Furthermore, this conversation took place before David began his flight from Saul, so even if others were present, that would not indicate that they were present three days later. The continuation of the story doesn't even hint that David had anyone with him as he hid in the field.
Verses 24-34: So David hid himself in the field. When the new moon came, the king sat at the feast to eat. The king sat upon his seat, as at other times, upon the seat by the wall. Jonathan stood, while Abner sat by Saul's side; but David's place was empty.
Saul did not say anything that day; for he thought, "Something has befallen him; he is not clean, surely he is not clean." But on the second day, the day after the new moon, David's place was empty. And Saul said to his son Jonathan, "Why has the son of Jesse not come to the feast, either yesterday or today?" Jonathan answered Saul, "David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem; he said, `Let me go; for our family is holding a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has commanded me to be there. So now, if I have found favor in your sight, let me get away, and see my brothers.' For this reason he has not come to the king's table."
Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan. He said to him, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives upon the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die." Then Jonathan answered his father Saul, "Why should he be put to death? What has he done?" But Saul threw his spear at him to strike him; so Jonathan knew that it was the decision of his father to put David to death. Jonathan rose from the table in fierce anger and ate no food on the second day of the month, for he was grieved for David, and because his father had disgraced him.
We learn in this section of the story, that Jonathan and David had made a plan. David, in accordance with the plan, hid in a field while Jonathan went to the feast. We would certainly understand that people were present at the feast of the new moon that Saul had given, but David wasn't there. He was hiding in a field, and the text mentioned nothing at all about anyone else's being with him. Indeed, if David had taken others with him that would have jeopardized the whole plan that he and devised, because the whole purpose of the plan was to hide David in a place where he would be safe from Saul. One person could very likely hide unseen in a field for three days, but a group of men would have increased the chances of being seen, not even to mention the possibility that if David had taken a group with him, he would have run the risk of having one or more of them sneak away to blow his cover. The very nature of the plan that David and Jonathan devised certainly implied that David hid alone in the field.
The day after the clash with his father, Jonathan came to tell David what he had learned at Saul's banquet.
^Verses 35-40:^ In the morning Jonathan went out into the field to the appointment with David, and with him was a little boy. He said to the boy, "Run and find the arrows that I shoot." As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. When the boy came to the place where Jonathan's arrow had fallen, Jonathan called after the boy and said, "Is the arrow not beyond you?" Jonathan called after the boy, "Hurry, be quick, do not linger." So Jonathan's boy gathered up the arrows and came to his master. But the boy knew nothing; only Jonathan and David knew the arrangement. Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said to him, "Go and carry them to the city."
In this section of the chapter, there were only three persons: David, hiding in the field; Jonathan, shooting the arrows; and the boy retrieving the arrows. After the boy had retrieved the arrows, Jonathan sent him back into the city. That left just Jonathan and David, and as the text will later show, only after the boy was gone, did David rise up in the field and go to Jonathan. David's waiting until the boy was gone before showing himself to Jonathan was just another indication of the urgent need that David felt to keep his whereabouts a tight secret, so everything related thus far in this story indicates that David was by himself in the field.
Verses 41-42: As soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, "Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of Yahweh, saying, `Yahweh shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever.'" He got up and left; and Jonathan went into the city.
So as soon as David learned from Jonathan that Saul intended to kill him, David "got up and left," and Jonathan returned to the city. This statement ended chapter 20, and the next chapter began with David's encounter with Ahimelech in the town of Nob. There isn't a hint anywhere in this entire story that anyone else besides Jonathan, the boy, and David were in the field in the final scene, so if Jonathan and the boy returned to the city, who were these men that some inerrantists claim were with David but just weren't mentioned?
Some inerrantists will agree that there were no men in the field and that David took no men with him when he fled, but they find a solution to the problem in the answer that David gave to Ahimelech's question, "Why are you alone, and no one with you?" David's answer was that he was on a secret mission for the king and that he had "made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place" (21:2). In other words, these inerrantists claim that men had been sent, probably by Jonathan, to link up with David at some place but that David and the men had not yet reached the rendezvous point.
There are serious problems with this explanation. After apparently convincing Ahimelech that he was on a secret mission for the king, David said, "What have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here" (v:3). It seems rather unlikely that David, knowing that he was going to link up with a contingent of men who would continue on with him in his flight, would have asked for just five loaves of bread. How long would that have lasted a contingent of any size? The request for just five loaves of bread would suggest instead that the writer of this account understood that David was by himself on his flight. Furthermore, David also asked Ahimelech to give him a sword or spear (v:8), and Ahimelech gave him the sword of the giant Goliath, which was taken to the tabernacle after David had killed Goliath with a stone hurled from a sling (vs:8-9). That David even requested food and weapons from Ahimelech was strange indeed if he knew that he was going to link up with a contingent that Jonathan had sent to help him in his flight from Saul. If Jonathan had sent such a contingent, it would surely have left with food and weapons, and David would have known this. Why then would he have risked exposure by going to Ahimelech for food and weapons if he had known that both would probably be available when he linked up with the men Jonathan had sent to help him?
As the story continues, we find more evidence that the writer didn't just think that no men were with David when he went to Ahimelech for help but that he also didn't know of any contingent of men waiting to meet David in an "appointed place," for after telling about Goliath's sword that Ahimelech gave to David, the writer said, "David rose and fled that day for fear of Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath" (v:10).
David fled that day. David fled that day! It's noteworthy that no one else was mentioned in David's flight, and the rest of the chapter shows why. No one else was mentioned, because the way the story was told, no one else was with David. He was alone in his flight.
When David arrived in Gath, a city of the Philistines, he aroused concern among the people of the city.
The servants of Achish said to him, "Is this not David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, `Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands'?" David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of King Achish of Gath (vs:10-12).
David was "very much afraid of King Achish." If David had had a contingent of men with him, he would surely have commanded some respect from the people of the town, especially since David was the one who had killed the giant Goliath, who was from the town of Gath (1 Sam. 17:4-23). On the other hand, an Israelite in Philistia with no men in his company would have had good reason to be afraid. That the writer did think that David was alone with no one to depend on for his security is evident from the way that David, after having heard the words of concern spoken by the servants of Achish, allegedly feigned insanity while he was in Gath.
Verses 13-15: So he [David] changed his behavior before them; he pretended to be mad when in their presence. He scratched marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, "Look, you see the man is mad; why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?"
In this conversation between Achish and his servants, the king mentioned no one but "the man" and "this fellow." If a contingent of men was with David, why were they not mentioned? We also need an explanation for why David pretended to be insane on this occasion. The reasonable explanation is that he had left Jonathan in haste, stopped at Nob to get help from Ahimelech, and hurried on to Gath, where he was alone in Philistine territory. He pretended that he was an insane man because he had no one in his company to help defend him if he should be threatened. This is a far more reasonable interpretation of this section of the chapter than the assumption that David was traveling with other men but they were just never mentioned.
After chapter 21 closed with Achish and his servants discussing "the man" and "this fellow," the next chapter finally mentioned men who joined David, but this was well after he had stopped in Nob to ask Ahimelech for help.
22:1-2: David left there [Gath] and escaped to the cave of Adullam; when his brothers and all his father's house heard of it, they went down there to him. Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him; and he became captain over them. Those who were with him numbered about four hundred.
So apparently concerned about his security, David left Gath, at which time he was joined by others, and after this point in his flight from Saul, the Bible writer made frequent references to "men" who were with David. David survived in Philistia as a guerrilla marauder, and as the writer told of these exploits, he made frequent references to "David's men," "David and his men," or "the men of David" (23:3, 4, 5, 13; 24:3, 4, 7, etc., etc., etc.). Isn't it strange that David had had men with him for two chapters, who were never mentioned in the narrative, but as soon as 400 men joined him in 22:1-2, the writer suddenly couldn't get enough of referring to the men who were with David?
Let's notice too that the second verse in this chapter (quoted above) says that David was joined at the cave of Adullam by (1) everyone that was in distresss, (2) everyone who was in debt, and (3) everyone who was discontented. Still with all of the everyones in these three categories, David's troop at this time numbered only "about four hundred." So if David had had men with him before he arrived at the cave of Adullam, they certainly couldn't have been anywhere close to the contingent of troops that David implied in 21:5 when he was seeking Ahimelech's help. This is just another indication that David was clearly lying to Ahimelech when he said that he had men with him. It also explains why David asked for only five loaves of bread. Not having any men at all with him, he had had no need for a larger quantity of bread, which would have encumbered him in his flight and undoubtedly molded before he could eat it.
When the biblical account of David's flight from Saul is analyzed section by section, there is no other conclusion to reach except that the writer of this story thought that David was alone until he was joined by other men at the cave of Adullam, which was well after the time that he went to the priest Ahimelech to ask for food and weapons. That conclusion requires also the conclusion that the writer of Mark erred in having Jesus say that David ate the showbread and also gave some of it to the men with him, because there were no men with David. Whoever wrote this tale had superficially read 1 Samuel 20 and incorrectly interpreted David's lie to mean that he had men waiting for him at an appointed place.
Despite all the textual evidence that supports this conclusion, dyed-in-the-wool inerrantists will still insist that there is no inconsistency in this matter. "If Jesus said that David had men with him," they will say, "that's good enough for me, so he had men with him whether the story in the Old Testament mentioned them or not." This, however, is a flagrant resort to begging the question at issue, because those who so argue are trying to prove biblical inerrancy by assuming biblical inerrancy. By so reasoning a believer in just any holy book (Book of Mormon, Qur'an, Avesta, etc.) could prove that it is inerrant.
In the matter of who was the high priest at this time, Jesus
said that Abiathar was, but the Old Testament account says that
Ahimelech was. Is this a discrepancy? Well, not according to confirmed
inerrantists. They have actually argued that there is no discrepancy,
because Jesus said only that this had happened "in the days of Abiathar
the high priest," and even though Abiathar wasn't high priest at the
time, it still happened "in his days." That would be like claiming it
is correct to say that World War II happened in the days of President
Nixon. Is any other comment necessary?
