Mark 10:46

And they come to Jericho: and as he went out from Jericho, with his disciples and a great multitude, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar was sitting by the wayside.

THE HEALING OF BARTIMAEUS

And as he went out from Jericho ... Luke has it, "And as they came nigh unto Jericho" (Luke 18:35); and of course this is the type of pseudocon seized upon so gleefully by skeptics. All thoughts of any contradiction in these passages disappear, however, in the fact of there being two Jericho's, the old city destroyed by Joshua, but continuing to exist as a village, and the new city built near the site of the old. Any beggar would naturally have chosen a location between the two places in order to take advantage of more traffic. William Taylor mentioned both Jerichos as follows: "Joshua razed the old Jericho ... a town grew up near the ancient site (which was) fortified in the days of Ahab by Hiel."[45] Likewise, J. J. Taylor noted that "There were two adjacent places of that name, the miracle being wrought at a point between the two, so that passing out of one was entering the other."[46]

Regarding the additional alleged difficulty arising from the fact of Matthew's mentioning two blind men as being healed by Jesus, whereas Mark and Luke mentioned only one, Trench has this:

That rule, which in all reconciliations of parallel histories must be applied, is that the silence of one narrator is no contradiction of the affirmation of another; thus the second and third evangelists making mention of ONE blind man do not contradict St. Matthew who mentions TWO.[47]

Of course, the fact pointed out by Trench is elementary, but it needs repetition to silence skeptics who scream "contradiction" upon the slightest pretext.

[45] William Taylor, op. cit., p. 400.

[46] J. J. Taylor, op. cit., p. 140.

[47] Richard Trench, Notes of the Miracles (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1943), p. 467.