How do we deal with contradictions in the Bible? Today, Marianne Seggerman reflects on divine wisdom as something that can never be fully attained – only reached for with outstretched hands.

July 5, 2025: Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Zechariah 9:9–10
Psalm 145:1–2, 8–11, 13–14
Romans 8:9, 11–13
Matthew 11:25–30

Reaching for Divine Wisdom

I spent three months in Israel in 2000. My employer had been acquired by a competitor based in Ramat-Gan, headquartered north and east of Tel Aviv. 60 of us in the IT department went over to learn the systems of our new employer. The first full weekend we got there was Palm Sunday. We were largely housed in Bat-Yam, a suburb south of Tel Aviv. There were two Catholic churches in the Tel Aviv metro area, both in Jaffa, the town between Bat-Yam and Tel Aviv. One was on the road to Bat-Yam, the other closer to town. There was only one English language service a week in either church. I went to my first Mass in Israel in the church closer to town. I recall that instead of palm branches, eucalyptus branches were handed out prior to the start of the service, something I honestly found perplexing. After all, weren’t palm trees native to Israel?

The last weekend we were there, I attended the Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade with my boss, the two of us sporting matching T-shirts sent over by his partner. The parade made its way up the broad avenue Ibn Girvol Street. It passed by the government building where Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated, which was treated a lot more matter-of-factly than the spot in Dallas where Kennedy was shot. It was in many ways like many parades I had been to at that point: banners, flags, marchers, general cheer. What was uniquely Israeli about the parade was the drag queens on donkeys.

I mention these recollections because the first reading from Zechariah foretells Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Now, the late [Episcopal] Bishop Spong of Newark suggests that when details in the New Testament line up with predictions in the Old Testament, it is because the authors of the New Testament wrote them in to show the prophecy was fulfilled. I’m not quite that cynical. Besides, that’s not the point of either the Old Testament or the New. Jesus may be a King, but he lived a life of humility. “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, ” (Zech 9:9). A king rides in a royal conveyance – or at the very least upon a noble steed. A donkey’s gait, ponderous and awkward, may be useful if everyone else is on foot, but it is anything but regal.

I’m not a Biblical scholar. Far from it; the only coursework in religion I ever had was a single class in college on the subject of the Old Testament, over half a century ago. I do, however, know a little something about Rome during the time of the early Christians – thanks to the research done by the mystery novels I read set in the Roman Empire during the time when the New Testament was written.

The Roman economy had a system of slavery as its underpinning. Roman armies would conquer a territory, then kidnap a number of inhabitants as slaves. Manumission – a slave gaining her or his freedom – was common enough for there to be written procedures, but until then, slaves had no control over their bodies or even their lives.

I mention this because some parts of the New Testament were written under the influence of a philosophy that prioritized the spirit over the body. The second reading from Romans certainly supports this stance. “But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8:9). I can see how this emphasis on the spirit might just have been a reaction to the cultural climate of Rome – its inequity, its veniality, its cruelty.

The Bible is riddled with contradictions. Jesus – the Prince of Peace – is opposed to all those Old Testament leaders whose battles were painted as proof of their virtue insomuch as Jesus made all things new. That much makes sense.

However, the Gospel reading from Matthew has not one but two assertions which are in stark opposition to passages elsewhere in the New Testament. “Although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike” (Mt 11:25). What about that bit in Corinthians which goes along the lines of when I was a child I thought like a child… then I put aside childish things? “My yoke is easy, and my is burden light,” but what about all those times Jesus warns just how difficult it will be to follow him (Mt 11:30)? God, please, which is it? How am I expected to gain wisdom (let alone make sense for this reflection) if the reading is in direct opposition to passages elsewhere in the New Testament?

These contradictions can’t be ascribed to the result of translation or Jesus’ perfecting the wisdom of the Old Testament. In the end, I can only suppose divine wisdom as something that will never be attained but always reaching for.

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Marianne Seggerman joined the chapter of Dignity New Haven around 30 years ago. That chapter is no longer alas but she continues to attend the biannual conference. In her day job she is a computer programmer living (and for the moment working) in Westport Connecticut. She is in a long-term relationship with a person raised Jewish who converted to the Mormon faith.