1 CHRONICLES 21:1 and 2 SAMUEL 24:1 were written by different authors who each projected their own interpretations upon those events. One saw an act of God, one saw the hand of Satan. There is clearly a difference and clearly a tension that "The Bible" does not resolve. Strictly speaking, however, there is no contradiction. A contradiction can only occur within a single set of premises. Since each of these premises comes from a different book by a different author they don't form a single set and cannot strictly contradict. Is one or both a "mistake "? Since any human attempt to describe reality as it really is bound to fall short, I suppose that both of these descriptions as well as every other description is technically a mistake. But surely that type of criteria takes things too far and deprives the word mistake of its usefulness. Those who seek "contradictio ns" and "mistakes " in the Bible to discredit it and those apologists who spin the text so as to make such "contradictio ns" disappear, both make the same mistake. Both treat the Bible as a single set of propositions. Why? What is the justification for this single set view?
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