The New Testament Contains No Genuine Contradictions of Consequence

Man-is-good, it is my pleasure to debate this with you. I look forward to having this debate, and trust that you understand that I will pull no punches. ;)Contention 1) This contention breaks into two sub-pointsC1.a) Only Mark and Luke mention the Virgin birth, so it is in conflict with John and Matthew which do not mention the virgin birth.C1.b) Paul in Galatians writes that Jesus was born of a woman under the law, while in Romans he writes that he was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. While neither mention that he is born of a virgin.Refutations of Contention 1)C1.a) This contention simply is not correct. John does not mention the Virgin Birth explicitly, he does not talk about Jesus' birth at all. While we do not know why John did not include this information, he does not say that Jesus was NOT born of a virgin... this is interesting indeed... but not a contradiction. Matthew on the other hand, DOES reference the Virgin Birth, he jut doesn't use the word Virgin. "When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:18) We see that Matthew makes a point to indicate that Joseph and Mary had never been together sexually, and then again to point out that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Also, to head off a future question (and hopefully save Con some time and character usage): Matthew records Jesus LEGAL genealogy through the ancestry of Joseph (up through Solomon then then to David). Luke records Jesus BIOLOGICAL genealogy through the ancestry of Mary (up through Nathan and then to David). This accounts for the differences between the two genealogies.C1.b) As shown before, not mentioning the virgin birth is not a contradiction to the virgin birth... it is simply an interesting question. Also, the two passages that you cite are easily explainable. Most scholars see the phrase "Born of a woman" in Galatians as an allusion to the Virgin Birth. Why would Paul need to say that he was born of a woman, how else would he be born? Rather, it is out of the ordinary to indicate maternal lineage because women held no legal rights of inheritance or land ownership, they couldn't even be witnesses in court... so to call it out specifically has significance. In regard to Paul's use of the phrase "seed of David according to the flesh," we saw previously that Mary (as well as Joseph) were both descended from David, so he was indeed born of the lineage of David through Mary's lineage.Contention 2)My opponent indicates an apparent contradiction in the dating schema between Matthew and Luke, identifying the reign of Herod the Great (Where Matthew places the birth) and the reign of Quintillus (Where Luke places the birth) which were hundreds of years apartRefutations of Contention 2)I believe that my opponent has made a mistake in a few areas. The Bible does not indicate that Jesus was born during the time of Quintillus... it indicates that he was born during the time of Quirinius. According to Wikipedia [A] Quirinius lived c. 51 BC - AD 21, well within both the reign of Herod the Great (c. 73-74 BC- 4 BC) and the birth range of Jesus (c. 7-2 BC). Quintillus was Emperor of Rome, Quirinius was a governor of Syria. Furthermore, the Census of Quirinius is a historically attested fact by Josephus [B].This is a common mistake as the names are very similar, however as it is a mistake it is not a legitimate contradiction.Sources[A] http://en.wikipedia.org...[B] Antiquities of the Jews - Book XVIII.Chapter 1.Section 1 - http://www.ccel.org...[C] All quoted Scripture is from the ESV Bible, which can be found at http://www.esvbible.org...