Matthew 20:29

And as they went out from Jericho, a great multitude followed him.

TWO BLIND MEN OF JERICHO

This miracle is recorded by all three of the synoptics, and their various accounts present a nice little package of "discrepancies" which are the peculiar delight of skeptics and agnostics. Trench summarized the difficulties thus:

According to him (Matthew) there are TWO blind men ... and only ONE in the other gospels. Luke appears at first sight partially to contradict one of these statements, and wholly the other; for him, the healed is but ONE; and Christ effects his cure not as he was QUITTING, but at his COMING NIGH to the city. Mark occupies a middle place, holding in part with one of his fellow evangelists, in part with the other; with Luke, he names only one who was healed; with Matthew, he places the miracle, not at the entering into, but the going out from, Jericho; so that the three narratives, in a way as curious as it is perplexing, cross and interlace one another.[2]

The problem of the time or place of this miracle, whether as Christ was leaving or entering Jericho, disappears in the light of what is certainly known about that locality. A. T. Robertson said:

The discrepancy as to place, "as he went out from Jericho," or "as he drew nigh to Jericho," is best explained by the recent suggestion that the healing occurred after he left old Jericho, and as he was approaching the new Jericho which Herod the Great had built at some distance away.[3]

Thus, as always, alleged contradictions flow out of men's ignorance of all the facts, not out of any real errors by the sacred writers. Add to Robertson's observation the obvious and undeniable fact that, with two Jericho's close together, any blind beggar would naturally choose a site between them! Both and all three gospels are correct. He was entering one Jericho, leaving the other. Far from being any problem, therefore, these separate accounts are overwhelming proof that the gospel writers are independent witnesses and completely trustworthy.

[2] Richard C. Trench, Notes on the Miracles (Westwood, New Jersey, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1953), p. 456.

[3] A. T. Robertson, A Harmony of the Four Gospels (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922), p. 149, footnote.