The Historical Reliability of the Four Gospels, Part 2 

If you have listened to various YouTube podcasts or videos over the last six months, various atheists and skeptics have been working hard to spread the news that the New Testament writings, which are the foundational documents of the Christian Church’s beliefs and practices, are historically unreliable and do not provide a true record of who Jesus was and what he said and did.  We have already seen that they begin with an assault on the authorship and composition of the Four Gospels, after which they proceed to expose “apparent contradictions and discrepancies” existing between the Four Gospels which, for them, is “proof-positive” that these documents are not historically reliable. However, the “problem” of these apparent contradictions or inconsistencies among the Gospels is not something new. 

Christians Long Aware of and Responsive to this Problem 

From the earliest days to the end of the eighteenth century, the historical reliability of the Four Gospels and Acts was naturally assumed by most Christians, since they were considered an inspired and infallible accounting of God's work of redemption and reconciliation through his Son, Jesus the Messiah. Of course, as early as the third century, biblical scholars and theologians, such as Augustine and Jerome, were aware of "apparent" contradictions or discrepancies found in parallel stories and sayings of Jesus in the Gospels. Therefore, they offered explanations that "harmonized" these passages by appealing to the different theological perspectives of the different writers which shaped the selection and arrangement of their material.

  

Moreover, Augustine argued that since the gospels did not always clearly state the location or sequence of events, that the reader should assume continuity of time and place unless explicitly stated in the text itself. He also argued that while parallel passages might vary in wording yet convey the same sense, highly divergent "parallels" might in fact represent similar events and sayings from separate occasions in Jesus' life and ministry. And during the Reformation, John Calvin argued that certain discourses, such as Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, could be composite constructions that gathered together Jesus' teaching from separate occasions. And whatever anomalies remained that could not be solved by harmonization might resolved in the future by new historical and literary discoveries. 

 

However, with the dawning of the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century, atheistic rationalism, naturalistic/evolutionary materialism, and the perversion of science into scientism began to sprout and then came to full bloom in the twenty-first century. As result the New Testament was treated no longer as a true and reliable record of what Jesus, the Son of God and the Savior of the world had said and done. Instead, it was treated as a collection of fabricated and sometimes contradictory stories about a Jewish rabbi and sage whom, if he ever truly existed, was used by various rogue Jewish communities to justify their existence and to address their religious concerns and needs.

  

In fact, a few years ago, using what many biblical scholars and historians regarded as questionable "authenticating" criteria, a group called the Jesus Seminar, decided which stories and sayings of Jesus were authentic, which were probable, and which were fabrications. In their judgment, only about 20% of the Jesus stories and sayings were authentic. (Of course, because of their prior concept of Jesus as Jewish rabbi and sage, anything that painted Jesus as an eschatological prophet, performing miracles, and confirming he was the fulfilment of Israel's Messianic expectations were dismissed out of hand.) However, if the Gospels are not a compilation of religious myths and legends but are actual historical records and interpretations of Jesus’ life and career, then we have some basis for critical analysis and weighing of their content. So, what kind of documents are the Four Gospels? 

The Nature and Purpose of the Gospels from a Greco-Roman Viewpoint 

Now, when we look at the Four Gospels and start reading them, what kind of books are we reading? Are they a mere compilation of myths and legends about an obscure Jewish rabbi and sage revered by members of an outlandish Jewish sect of the first century? If that is all they are, then how did the Christian revolution, as Tom Holland describes the Jesus movement in his book, Dominion, ever transform the Roman Empire the way it did? And how would scholars, historians, and writers in the centers of ancient Greco-Roman learning have understood these books? Would they have viewed them as compilations of myths and legends, with which they were familiar, or would they have recognized them as something on a different scale altogether?

 

N. T. Wright and Michael Bird, in The New Testament in Its World, point out that if these books had been given to the scholars and librarians resident at the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, they would have recognized them as historical biographies, like Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates, since they follow the literary conventions of historical biography that existed at the time. Such historical biographies were written in continuous prose; they present the stylized career of a public leader; they provide a chronological framework of the person's birth, deeds, death, and legacy; they contain vignettes highlighting their character and achievements; they say quite a bit about the person's manner of death; and such works extol their central figure for his virtues while defending them from accusations from various detractors.

 

But then in addition to this, and quite strange to them, the Gospels clearly seek to connect and integrate the Story of Jesus with the Story of Israel as God's Chosen People, revealing him as the fulfilment to the Abrahamic promise that "all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you and your seed" (Cf. Gen. 12:1-3 with Gal. 3:15-29). They would see that the writers of these books, in their respective ways, sought to demonstrate that Jesus, as the culmination of all Israel's Messianic hopes and expectations, is God's Chosen One through whom his plan to bring about the redemption and reconciliation of humanity and the whole creation with himself has been and, yes, will be accomplished. They would see that the Gospels rehearse OT themes and literary patterns; they would see clear echoes of OT Messianic prophecies and promises; but above they would see that the Gospels insist that if the Jewish OT was telling a Great Story looking for a perfect ending, then Jesus the Messiah and the New Era he had inaugurated based on his death and resurrection was that ending. 

Yet each of the Four Gospels, though sharing many common Jesus stories, sayings, and discourses, are not carbon copies of each other. In seeking to portray Jesus as the Suffering Servant of the LORD (Mark), the Fulfilment of Israel’s Messianic Hope (Matthew), Lord and Savior of the World (Luke/Acts), and The Incarnate Wisdom and Word of God (John), the Gospel writers use various topical and chronological arrangements, as well as selections of stories and teaching, to give substance to their respective portrayals of who Jesus was and is in terms of his identity and Messianic mission. And it is, in part, these differences that give rise to charges of contradictions and discrepancies by the critics and skeptics. So, we will now seek to explain why these “alleged” contradictions and inconsistencies are just that—alleged, not actual. 

Now when you compare Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the so-called "Synoptic Gospels," the unity and diversity between them is clearly seen in how they describe certain common events and the similarity in form which they give to common discourses. This is because Mark, regarded as the earliest and shortest of the Gospels, was used by both Matthew and Luke in writing their accounts of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And they, in the main, follow Mark's geographical/chronological order. Yet it is not a slavish use of Markan material, and in several places, Matthew and Luke add stories and sayings of Jesus that fill out their respective versions of the Story of Jesus.

  

Again, in addition to their use of Mark, Matthew and Luke have records of events and discourses that are abbreviated in comparison with what you find in Mark, or in some cases, they add some stories and sayings of Jesus not found in Mark. And in some other cases, Matthew and Luke have either recast or paraphrased certain statements of Jesus that, due to the rougher and colorful phrasing of Mark, might lead to serious confusion or misunderstanding by Greek and Roman readers not familiar with Jewish literary idioms or cultural references (cf. Craig Blomberg, "Contradictions Among the Synoptics?" The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, pp. 113-152). 

And in some cases, in various locations, we find similar sayings and parables in the Gospels. This is to be explained in the fact that Jesus was an itinerant preacher. As D. A. Carson states,” [T]hat Jesus was an itinerant preacher (cf. comments at Mt. 4:23-25; 9:35-38; 11:21) is passed over too lightly. To attempt a tradition history of similar sayings, which the evangelists place in quite different contexts, overlooks the repetitive nature of itinerant ministry. Of course, each case must be examined on its own merits and depends in some instances on source-critical considerations; but we shall observe how frequently this basic observation is ignored. See especially the introductory discussion on parables at 13:3a." (D. A. Carson, "Matthew," EBC Vol. 8, p.9)