Matthew vs Mark on the question of Jairus’ daughter’s death

Video: “13 More Bible Contradictions” by Holy Koolaid
The texts in question are Matthew 9:18-26 and Mark 5:21-43 (see also Luke 8:40–56)

Below are Mr. Koolaid’s statements (in bold) followed by my response.

“So when you take a Bible story like the death of Jairus’ daughter, to most people, including myself, it may nitpicky and utterly insignificant that Matthew and Mark disagree about her time of death. Matthew 9 says that she died before her dad asked Jesus to come heal her and Mark 5 said she died after her dad sent for Jesus.”

Craig Blomberg in The New American Commentary writes, “As consistently throughout his Gospel (and esp. with miracle stories), Matthew abbreviates Mark, this time to such an extent that he seems to contradict the parallel accounts (Mark 5:21–43; Luke 8:40–56). Instead of coming to plead with Jesus while his daughter is still alive, Jairus apparently arrives only after her death. Yet to call this a contradiction is anachronistically to impose on an ancient text modern standards of precision in story telling. What is more, in a world without modern medical monitors to establish the precise moment of expiry, there is not nearly so much difference between Matthew’s arti eteleutēsen in v. 18 (which could fairly be translated “just came to the point of death”; cf. Heb 11:22) and eschatos echei in Mark 5:23 (which could also be rendered “is dying”). What is important is not the precise moment of death but Jairus’s astonishing faith.”

In all three accounts you have (simplified for atheistic comprehension):
—Jairus approaching and pleading with Jesus,
—Jesus being interrupted by a woman with a blood problem and,
—Jesus bringing the little girl back to life.

“In Mark she’s only sick and her dad asks for Jesus to come heal her, not revive her. Jesus is delayed, gets distracted, and then another messenger comes along, saying forget about it she’s dead. Literally, he says your daughter has died why bother the teacher further. … At which point Jesus revives her to the shock of all, including her dad. But in Matthew’s account, she’s already dead when her dad first shows up asking for a miracle. He’s straight up expecting a resurrection.”

There’s more to the story than saying “Jesus … gets distracted.” That particular narrative within a narrative shows that Jesus was interruptible. There’s a lot that can be said about that. It also shows that He is the God who is approachable by sinners, since by the Mosaic law a woman with a blood issue was unclean and shouldn’t have touched Him.

As for Matthew’s account, what the text says is “…come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.” He’s not saying “come and lay Your hand on her, and she will be resurrected.” Matthew is saying the same thing that Mark and Luke wrote in a truncated way. While Jairus was looking for a miracle, the miracle He was looking for was for Jesus to cure her of her sickness before she died. This is pretty obvious because in Luke’s Gospel Jesus encourages Jairus to have faith after hearing that his daughter died by telling him, “Do not be afraid any longer; only believe, and she will be made well,” something that Matthew in his truncated narrative leaves out for the sake of brevity.

“These might seem like fairly minor details to the overall story but they’re still discrepancies. She couldn’t have died both before and after her dad sent for Jesus.”

As I said in an earlier post, the antagonist is already looking for problems in the texts before he even touches a Bible. When he comes across what he thinks is a contradiction he simply stops reading, slams the Bible shut, and walks away. It doesn’t even occur to him to look and see if the narratives actually complement each other, which they do.

I also mentioned in an earlier post that there are in existence New Testament Bibles that are written in chronological order. One of them is One Perfect Life by John MacArthur. If you’re interested you can read it (on page 183) to see how the three Gospel narratives in this section fit together to make a comprehensive whole.

“Contradictions like these pose a major problem to biblical inerrantists, because errors like these can’t be reconciled without without admitting that if this story happened at all, then it was written down by fallible human authors with imperfect knowledge who made mistakes.”

I’ve already explained why this isn’t a contradiction so there’s no need to repeat myself.

Secondly, while it’s true that these texts were written by fallible men, the Bible defends itself so there’s no need for the “inerrantist” to defend it. It doesn’t matter what the “inerrantist says,” all that matters is what the Bible says. 2 Peter 1:20-21 makes it clear that we can trust what the Bible says about all that is written in it. That’s why we call the Bible the Word of God.

The Bible has no contradictions and no errors in the original autographs. It’s true that errors do creep in (the vast majority of them are spelling errors and the Greek word order in the New Testament) and it’s also true that a science known as textual criticism helps us to discern what most likely is in the original autographs. We can be confident that we have a text that is inspired and accurate (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The authors of the Gospels and Epistles made no mistakes.

If you’re interested in reading more about New Testament textual criticism, you can buy and read The Early Text of the New Testament. I guarantee it will be over your head because it requires a decent knowledge of Koine Greek, but you can put it on your bookshelf and look really cool. Perhaps an easier book for you to read might be Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism by Harold Greenlee, if you dare.