As Jesus was leaving Jericho
Matthew 20:29-30, 34 (KJV): "And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed him. And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David. ... So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him." Mark 10:46, 51-52 (KJV): "And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. ... And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way."
Cited passages
As they went out from Jericho, a great multitude followed him. Behold, two blind men sitting by the road, when they heard that Jesus was passing by, cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, you son of David!” The multitude rebuked them, telling them that they should be quiet, but they cried out even more, “Lord, have mercy on us, you son of David!” Jesus stood still, and called them, and asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” They told him, “Lord, that our eyes may be opened.” Jesus, being moved with compassion, touched their eyes; and immediately their eyes received their sight, and they followed him.
They came to Jericho. 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 road. When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out, and say, “Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him, that he should be quiet, but he cried out much more, “You son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still, and said, “Call him.” They called the blind man, saying to him, “Cheer up! Get up. He is calling you!” He, casting away his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus. Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “Rabboni, that I may see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go your way. Your faith has made you well.” Immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus on the way.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
All three Synoptics narrate a single Jericho healing: a blind beggar (named Bartimaeus in Mark) hears that Jesus is passing, cries out "Son of David, have mercy," is summoned, and receives instant sight. The frame is identical; two details inside it diverge. On location, Matthew 20:29 and Mark 10:46 place the miracle as Jesus leaves the town — Matthew's ekporeuomenōn autōn apo Ierichō ("as they were going out from Jericho") and Mark's ekporeuomenou autou apo Ierichō. Luke 18:35 places it as he approaches — en tō engizein auton eis Ierichō ("as he drew near to Jericho"). On the headcount, Matthew has two blind men; Mark and Luke each have exactly one.
This is not a case of two separate miracles being conflated. It is one pericope, told three times, with the same Davidic acclamation and the same instantaneous cure, in which the shared frame and the divergent internals cannot both be flat reportage.
The first apologetic move, found in Geisler and Howe, posits two healings — one entering, one leaving — with Matthew bundling both, which is why he counts two men. The difficulty is that the text supplies no warrant for two cures. The reconstruction requires Jesus to heal one blind man on the way in and a second on the way out, both using the identical "Son of David" formula, with each evangelist preserving a different fragment and omitting the other event entirely. That does not harmonize the three accounts; it manufactures a fourth that none of them records.
The second move, associated with Gleason Archer, invokes two Jerichos — the ruined Old Testament tell and the Herodian new city nearby — so that Jesus could be leaving one while approaching the other. The proposal is ingenious but ad hoc: none of the evangelists mentions two towns, and the hypothesis is generated solely to neutralize Luke's "drew near" against Mark's "went out." It is reasoning built backward from the desired conclusion.
On the number, the usual observation — that Mark and Luke spotlight the memorable, named Bartimaeus without denying a companion — reflects a real redactional tendency and is fair as far as it goes. But it leaves the location problem, which is the load-bearing contradiction, untouched.
The parsimonious explanation, and the consensus under Markan priority, is that Matthew and Luke each edited Mark's single Bartimaeus narrative. Davies and Allison and Donald Hagner note Matthew's documented habit of doubling figures — compare the two Gadarene demoniacs in Matthew 8:28 against Mark's single man, and the two blind men of Matthew 9:27–31. John Nolland and Joseph Fitzmyer explain Luke's relocation of the setting to the approach to Jericho as a narrative accommodation: Luke needs Jesus *inside* Jericho immediately afterward for the Zacchaeus episode (Luke 19:1–10), which is unique to his Gospel, so the healing is shifted to the entry to keep the sequence coherent. The change is editorially motivated, not a competing memory.
The choice is therefore stark. One may posit two separate inerrant miracles plus two unmentioned towns, or accept that Matthew and Luke redacted Mark and were not concerned to preserve his geography. The evidence — Matthew's attested doubling, Luke's structural need for the Zacchaeus pericope, and the otherwise verbatim shared frame — points decisively to the latter.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction at the level of flat reportage, fully explained by redaction of Mark.
Sources for this reading