Was Jesus approaching or leaving Jericho when he healed blind Bartimaeus? Is this a Bible contradiction?
The Bible Answer
This is a great example of what appears to be the Bible contradicting itself. Read the following scriptures careful and you will see why.
(Luke 18:35) As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.
(Mark 10:46) Then they came to Jericho, as Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus ( which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging.
As you can see in Luke, Jesus is going into the city of Jericho when he comes upon a blind man. In Mark it says Jesus was leaving the city. So which one was it? This is one of many supposed contradictions critics will try to use to prove the Bible can’t be trusted. That’s not to say that everyone who notices something in scripture such as this is trying to prove the Bible to be false. Sometimes it is the Christian who notices these things while reading the Bible. For the critic and the Christian, a little research will go a long way in clearing things up.
The Twin Cities Of Jericho
Archaeology has played a big role in solving a lot of these alleged contradictions. If one is to look up the name Ernst Sellin, they will find he was a German theologian who discovered the twin cities of Jericho during an excavation in Israel between 1907-1909. There was the new Roman city of Jericho, and also the Old Testament city of Jericho that we read about in the book of Joshua. These two cities were separated by a mile in between them.
Bartimaeus Healed In Between The Two Jericho’s
The healing of blind Bartimaeus happened in between the two cities. Mark mentions the Jericho Jesus left, and Luke speaks of the one he was approaching.
If you lived before the discovery of the two cities in the early 1900’s, this would certainly have been a case of needing to have faith in the Bible as being accurate and true, even if something such as these two scriptures may not have made sense back then.
