How Many Times Did the Cock Crow?

Gary: Contending for the Faith. Here’s this week’s question: “Dave and T.A., on occasion I get a comment from non-Christians who tell me they don’t bother with the Bible because it’s full of contradictions. I usually respond by asking them to give me a couple. Because it’s usually just a ploy to dismiss God’s Word, few ever do. However, one person recently pointed out that in the gospels, numbers don’t match, regarding how many times the cock was to crow before Peter denies Jesus. Matthew, Luke, and John say once. Mark says twice. How is this reconciled?”

Dave: Well, first of all, Matthew, Luke, and John don’t say “once.” They say, “The cock shall not crow until you deny me thrice.” Now, what that is saying is “the time for the cock crowing.” I think one of the gospels referred to it this way: “the cock crowing.” There’s a time in the morning that you call the “the cock crowing.” It’s not just one cock. They’re just crowing away.

So, the Bible says, “Before the time of cock….” Matthew, Luke, and John say, “Before the time of the cock crowing”—when they all start crowing, “you will deny me thrice.” Now, Mark is a little bit more specific, and it’s quite interesting, because Jesus is being very gracious to Peter. He says, “The cock will not crow twice before you deny me thrice.” Now, you read the Book of Mark, and you find that a cock started…

Tom: A rooster…

Dave: Yeah, a rooster crowed apparently an hour too early. The first time Peter denies his Lord, it says, “Immediately, the cock crew.” The rooster crowed. And that should have been a warning to Peter, but he persisted. And then it’s an hour later before all the roosters begin crowing at once. There’s not a contradiction. In fact, it gives us an insight into the grace of God, and the warning that He gave…  It’s a very strange thing to say: “The rooster won’t crow twice till you deny me thrice.” Wait a minute! When a rooster starts crowing, they all start crowing. So this is a very specific example of the accuracy of scripture, in fact, not a contradiction.

Tom: Dave, one of the things that we have to learn when reading God’s Word, there are…there’s figurative language, metaphors, symbolic language, and then there are things that we are to take literally. Sometimes we do get confused because we want to take something very literally that was not meant to be taken literally, and sometimes, we just do the opposite. We begin to spiritualize or make into a metaphor something that was not the reason it was intended.

Dave: Well, every time you examine a supposed contradiction in the Bible—I have a thick file of what the skeptics, atheists, try to say. You examine it a little further, or you get additional information—sometimes the archaeologists have to dig up something else—you realize the Bible is true. Now, why are these apparent contradictions in there? I think there’s only one reason, and that is to cause us to search a bit deeper and to see that this book was inspired of God, it’s written by eyewitnesses. If you went into a court of law—we’ve probably mentioned this before—and you have four witnesses, each one parrots exactly what the other one says, then I think it’s a setup.

But if the four witnesses seem to contradict one another, at key points, even, and you think, Wait a minute! We’ve got a contradiction here! But when you examine further, you find out in fact they are in agreement, although they’re saying it in a different way and from a different perspective. Then you’ve got a solid case.

And I believe this is why the Bible gave these apparent contradictions in there. You’ve got some serious ones that we could mention if we had time, but we don’t. But like in Luke 3, you’ve got some serious contradictions, apparently. It tells you that in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar (that’s Luke chapter 1), you go down to…I think it’s verse 30 or thereabouts, Jesus was 29 years old. Well, he says he’s about 30, so he must be 29 going on 30. You look it up in the history books and they would tell you that Tiberius Caesar began to reign in 14 AD, so the fifteenth year of his reign would be 29 AD. So, Jesus was 29 in 29 AD, so He must have been born in 0. That’s where the Catholic calendar came from, only it’s wrong, because you know from Matthew chapter 2, He was born in the days of Herod the King, Herod the Great, and Herod the Great died in 4 BC—the historians are pretty well agreed on that.

So, how could Jesus be born in 0 when He was born in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 4 BC? And when you figure it out, the time it took the wise men to come, and so forth, I think Jesus was born in 5 BC. And then, Luke chapter 2 says He was born in the days of Cyrenius, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. Well, you look it up in the history books, governor of Syria from 6 AD till 20 AD. Now we’ve got a problem! Jesus was born in 0, but He was born in the days of Herod, who died in 4 BC, but He was born when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, but He was governor of Syria from 6 AD….. We’ve got real problems!

Well, what do you know? When you dig into it a little deeper, you find out Will Durant, the great historian, quotes the citizens of Rome in 9 AD. They’re upset. They say, “Augustus is still prince, but he’s so elderly and ill that Tiberius has already taken over.”

So, if Tiberius took over in 9 AD, that moves the birth of Jesus back 5 years. Well, we reconciled that: what do you know? The archaeologists dug a little bit deeper, the historians, and they found out Cyrenius was governor of Syria twice! The first time from about 5 BC to 1 BC. So, we’ve reconciled it! But you…the Bible put that in there so you would know this is written by eyewitnesses. It is true. Examine it. Check it out!

And you’ve got names and the places where they were—the governor, the Caesar, the Tetrarch—technical terms, technical titles, the names of the people who held those offices in those places at that date. You can’t escape it. It’s written by eyewitnesses and it’s true.