ANTILOGY. - The term (ἀντιλογία) means "contradiction"; it is used by students of biblical sciences to designate those cases in which two passages of the Bible appear to contradict each other.
The contradictions may be real, when the original or translated text has undergone alterations that have changed its meaning, or merely apparent, and in that case they are also called enantiophanies ("contrary appearances"). Real a[ntilogies] are frequent in arithmetical data, which in ancient scripts were easily subject to errors; but even apart from the case of numbers, real a[ntilogies] are found due to graphic or translation errors. It is the task of the biblical interpreter to correct such errors by resorting to the means suggested by sound criticism. Apparent a[ntilogies] arise from the fact that the relevant biblical passages refer either to similar but different subjects, or to different circumstances of the same subject, or are due to different ways of presenting the same subject, and to similar causes. In general the norm of St. Augustine holds: «Si aliquid in eis offendero Litteris quod videtur contrarium veritati, nihil aliud quam vel mendosum esse codicem, vel interpretem non assecutum esse quod dictum est, vel me minime intellexisse non ambigam» (Ep. 82, n. 3). v. FRENEURICA.