No Contradiction

[TBC: Skeptics have tried to pin the charge of "Contradiction" on the Scriptures from the beginning. In this commentary from 1910, the author notes how many supposed contradictions are merely sloppy reading coupled with poor reasoning.]

A striking instance of this habit came under my eye recently in reading Prof. H. E. Ryle's commentary on Nehemiah, written for the "Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges." Commenting on Neh:1:1The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace,
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In chapter 2:1 we find that the events described in the beginning of that chapter are said to have taken place in the month of Nisan, in the "twentieth year of King Artaxerxes." Now, Nisan is the first month, Chisleu the ninth month in the year. How, then, comes it that in this verse the events of the ninth month seem to precede those of the first month, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes?

He gives two or three explanations that have been advanced, and then adds:

It is better to acknowledge that we have here a contradiction and to suppose that a mistake has been made either by the compiler or by a scribe who was anxious that the extract from Nehemiah's writings should open with the mention of a date, and inserted, from chapter 2:1, the year of the king's reign, not perceiving the difficulty to which it would give rise. The omission of the king's name is an additional reason for suspecting an error in the text.

It is passing strange to me that a grave and learned commentator should be puzzled by the fact that the ninth calendar month in one year, and the first in the next year, should both fall in the twentieth year of any king's reign. It could not be otherwise, unless his twentieth year began on a month lying between these two. If the reign began on the tenth, the eleventh or the twelfth month, its first year would not include the ninth month of the same year, but it would include the first month [304] of the next year. But if it began on the eighth month, or any other back to the second, it would include the ninth month of that year and the first of the next year. If Professor Ryle had stopped to think of his own professorship, he would have been saved from making this charge against Nehemiah; for if his professorship began, as it most probably did, the first of September, the first year of it included the ninth month of that year, which was September, and the first month, January, of the next year. The same is true of his twentieth year, and of every other year that his professorship continues. And not only would the months September and January be thus included, but so would the months Chisleu and Nisan of the Jewish calendar (J. W. McGarvey, "Short Essays in Biblical Criticism," 1910, pp. 303-306).