The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Pt 3

There are some NT critics who, apparently assuming that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are "irreconcilably at odds with each other," make their case that at least one of these books cannot be considered an accurate account of Jesus' life, words, and deeds. They point out "variations" in the wording and location of various discourses and stories as "evidence" that supports the case they're making against the trustworthiness of the Gospels. However, as we mentioned in a previous article, these apparent discrepancies and contradictions have been known and explained in various ways since at least the third century A.D.  And in our own day, such answers have been provided as well, e.g., Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties (Zondervan, 1984). 

It amuses me sometimes that these critics think serious Christians are unaware of these problems. The New Testament, since its production and distribution, has been the most scrutinized book of religious literature. So, it comes as no surprise that nearly every passage in the one of the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke which can be compared side by side) has been seen as contradicting a similar passage in another by someone for some reason. Yet most of the charges raised against "evident" errors and contradictions in the gospels have been adequately answered by many who have defended trustworthiness of the gospels. Some of the "alleged" discrepancies or errors raised against the Synoptic Gospels by critics and skeptics come under the following 7 categories: 

1. Conflicting Theology: This supposedly occurs when certain Gospel sayings on a topic are viewed as in contradiction because they express variations in theology. For example, take a critic, who does not believe in prophecy, pitting Jesus' teaching on the Kingdom of God coming and being inaugurated after his baptism and his ministry in Galilee (Lk. 17:20-21), with his teaching that when he returns at the end of history, following certain "signs," he will deliver his people and rule over the nations (Lk. 21:25-32). This critic may argue that both cannot be true in the same way and at the same time. Jesus must have taught the Kingdom was imminent, but when that did not happen, the Church invented a saying of Jesus that made the Kingdon future. But several NT scholars have pointed out (e.g., George Eldon Ladd in The Gospel of the Kingdom), when all the texts in the Gospels pertaining to the coming of God's Kingdom are examined and weighed, it is clear that there is an "inaugural" phase that began with Christ and his ministry; was further manifested in his pouring out the Spirit on the Church and equipping it for its world mission; and then in a future glorious return of Christ, then God's Kingdom will be "manifested' in all its fullness.  Thus, they summarize Christ's teaching as, "God's Kingdom is now, and yet to come." So, the "alleged" discrepancies between Christ's various sayings about the coming Kingdom can be harmonized and integrated without doing violence to the meaning and significance of the individual texts. It is often the presuppositions of the critic, rather than the Gospel text itself, that determines how they analyze and categorize it. 

2. The Practice of Paraphrasing:  Sometimes the words of Christ, instead being "literal" utterances are "paraphrases" that bring out certain nuances of the original utterance that help the Gospel writers make certain points in their version of what Christ (or some other person) said. For example, at Jesus' baptism, Luke and Mark record the Father saying to Jesus, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." But Matthew records the Father's words as, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." As recorded by Luke and Mark, this address is directed primarily to Jesus as an assurance as he begins his Messianic mission, but Matthew paraphrases it to show that this is both an assurance to Jesus and a declaration to the listening crowd as to who Jesus was. "Matthew has probably just reworded Mark to highlight the fact that the heavenly voice spoke not only for Jesus' benefit but also for the benefit of the crowd (and so as well as for those who hear this story later)." And again, Matthew is not doing anything in violation of ancient historiography in doing this. "[An ancient] historian or biographer referring to what a person said did not necessarily try to cite his exact wording. So long as what he wrote was faithful to the meaning of the original utterance, the author was free to phrase his report however he liked, and no one would accuse him of misquoting his source or producing an unreliable narrative." (Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p.118)

 

Some other subcategories of “paraphrasing” that have been mistaken as apparent contradictions or discrepancies by critics and skeptics are the following: 

A. Theological Clarification.  A good example of the first sub-category is found in the contrast between Luke 14:26 and Matthew 10:37, warnings to the twelve disciples and then to a large crowd about the cost of discipleship and how it impacts their relationships with their families. Luke's version of this saying seems very harsh, since it talks about "hating" relatives, possessions, one's own life.  But Matthew talks about "loving (relatives, possessions, one's own life) more than me." Isn't this a discrepancy, a watering down of Jesus' teaching by Matthew? Not necessarily, as pointed out by Dr. Craig Blomberg: "Matthew's paraphrase is a fair interpretation of what Jesus' harsher sounding statement in Luke meant; in semitic language and thought 'hate' had a broader range of meanings than it does in English, including in the sense of 'leaving aside', 'renunciation' or 'abandonment.' Moreover, as G. B. Caid explains, 'the semitic way of saying "I prefer this to that" is "I like this and hate that" (cf. Gen. 29:30-31; Dt. 21:15-17). Thus, for the followers of Jesus to 'hate' their families meant giving the family second place in their affections" (cf. "Contradictions in the Synoptics?" The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 121) So while Luke made a literal translation of Jesus' saying and Matthew gave a paraphrase of it, the meaning and application of the saying is the same.

 

B. Representational Changes. The best example of this is the accounts given by Mark and Luke of the paralytic whose friends take him to the house where Jesus is teaching, but because of the large crowd surrounding the house, they climb up on the roof, make an opening the roof, and then lower the man down so Jesus can heal him (Mk. 2:4; Lk. 5:19). Mark describes them "digging through" a thatched roof and letting the man down, while Luke describes them "removing the tiles" and letting him down in front of Jesus. "Luke's account of lowering the paralytic through the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching removes Mark's reference to 'digging' which would have been necessary with the typical thatched roofs of Palestine, and replaces it with a description of the removal of 'tiles,' more common atop buildings elsewhere in the Roman Empire...All these changes simply help a non-Jewish audience to picture the scenes more vividly and comprehensibly in their minds, even if the actual details of the imagery have changed. Modern Bible paraphrases do much the same thing; the Living Bible, for example changes David's lamp to a 'flashlight' and Paul's command to greet the brethren with a holy kiss to the injunction, 'shake hands warmly' (Ps. 119:105; Rom. 16:16). So, it should not cause distress to discover that the original writers of Scripture did much the same. The meaning of the overall passage in each case remains unaltered; in fact, it is precisely to preserve its intelligibility for a foreign audience that the details of the picture are changed." (Ibid., p. 122)

 

C. Synecdoche. This is a third sub-category, where a part is used to stand for the whole. The best-known example of this is where Jesus promises that God will give good gifts to those who ask him. Matthew records him saying, "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" while Luke who almost quotes the same saying exactly, changes "good gifts" in the final clause to "the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 7:11; Lk. 11:13). Luke makes the change to show that of all the gifts God is eager to give us, the Holy Spirit is the most important one. "Since the Holy Spirit is the preeminent example of the type of 'good thing' which is a heavenly gift (cf. Mk. 13:11 pars.; Jn. 14:16-17; Acts 1:8), and thus the most important part of the whole, the change is justifiable." (Ibid., p.124)

                                           

3. Chronological Problems. In part, we have already addressed this problem in a previous article, where we pointed out that all three Synoptic Gospels follow a general geographical and chronological order, within which stories, discourses, and sayings of Jesus are brought together because of common themes or topics--without violating the Greco-Roman historiographical conventions of the first century. We must remember that from the time of St. Agustine, it was recognized that the Gospel writers did not intend to write a detailed itinerary of Jesus' ministry with every event in its strict chronological order, but at different points in the narrative arrange material under common themes or topics to make certain points about Jesus' identity or the true meaning and significance of Jesus' teaching. "Apart from the infancy and passion/resurrection narratives, the gospels simply do not provide enough information about the time and place of the incidents recorded to enable them to be fitted together with confidence chronologically precise harmony...But if one applies the principle of assuming a chronological connection between two portions of the Synoptics only when the text explicitly presents one, then the apparent contradictions of sequence vanish" (Blomberg, "Contradictions in the Synoptics?" The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 127).

 

4. Omissions. As to why the Gospel writers omit various stories or sayings of Jesus that were found in the sources they used is quite impossible to say; every scholarly attempt to explain these omissions is at best an educated guess based on available evidence. The omissions fall into one of two categories a) omissions of entire passages or b) omissions of various details within passages. For instance, Luke, in his portrayal of Jesus and his ministry, follows a geographical outline that traces Jesus as he travels through Galilee, Samaria, Judaea, Peraea; but he omits what Mark describes as Jesus' "withdrawal from Galilee" (Mk. 6:45-8:26). And in the second category, there is Jesus' well-known teaching on divorce and remarriage. As worded in Mark and Luke (Mk. 10:11-12; Lk. 16:18), it appears that under no circumstances does Jesus ever permit divorce and remarriage; but as it is worded in Matthew, Jesus prohibits divorce and remarriage, "except for porneia (i.e., "sexual immorality, marital unfaithfulness, adultery"). Some critics charge that Matthew has changed Jesus' absolute command as reflected in Mark and Luke because the church, in Matthew's time, found it too severe or impractical. "Yet although the exegesis of these passages is complicated by a number of ambiguous grammatical features, the most convincing solution still remains the one which sees Matthew as simply spelling out what Mark and Luke leave implicit. The debate about divorce in Jewish circles in Jesus' day pitted the followers of the famous teacher, Hillel, against those of his rival, Shammai. The former took a more liberal view, permitting divorce in a wide variety of circumstances; the latter, only in the case of adultery. In other words, both sides agreed on the exception which Matthew adds, so Jesus could have safely presupposed it without fear of misunderstanding" (Ibid., pp. 131-132). 

5. Composite Speeches. Matthew, who in part presents Jesus "as the Prophet like Moses" predicted in Deut. 18:14-18, punctuates his narrative of Jesus' life with five major discourses or "sermons" (chs. 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 24-25). These discourses are unparalleled in Mark's book, while having several partial parallels which are scattered throughout in Luke's work but having a different context than the ones in which they have been placed by Matthew. As a result, some critics believe Matthew took scattered sayings and then creatively "wove them together" into the five major discourses, filling them in with material of his own making. However, since rabbis in Jesus' time not only gave memorable proverbial sayings, but also regularly spoke in coherent, organized discourse on various themes or topics, many short discourses by Jesus on several topics were either memorized or written down. Therefore, it is more likely that Matthew took these short but complete discourses of Jesus and added related material from other sources that helped round out the five major discourses. This was an acceptable practice in ancient historiography. And in some sections of Luke where similar discourses are given in different locales, we may have examples of itinerant repetition.

 

6. Apparent "Doublets." This category applies to what appears as repeated incidents common to all the Gospels or just to those within one of the Gospels. This involves records of Jesus doing similar miracles, healings, and feeding the poor that appear in slightly differing contexts, such as Jesus feeding of the 5,000 and of the 4,000 in Matthew and Mark. However, the different contexts and the difference in details indicates that though similar in many ways, these incidents are separate and may have been done for varied reasons, which must be discerned from the context in which they have been placed by the Gospel writers. But they are not, as some think, "fabricated fillers" designed merely to make Jesus look greater than he was. 

7. Variations in Names and Numbers. This last category involves apparent discrepancies between Gospel parallels that seem to be a confusion of names and numbers. These are often compounded by textual variants where there are variant spellings, or where letters and symbols similar in appearance were often used to represent different numerals. For example, in the story where Jesus heals the demoniac "Legion," Mark and Luke say he did so in the region of the Gerasenes (Mk. 5:1; Lk. 8:26), while Matthew says he did so in the region of the Gadarenes. Apparently, there were two cities across the lake from Galilee, Khersa and Gerasa, the one close to the shore and the other 35 mi. inland; yet both were commonly referred to as Gerasa. Matthew, sensing the ambiguity, gives the name of the province in which Jesus performed the miracle. And then there the complex variations of the names found in the family genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38. Several explanations have been given, but the best explanation is that Matthew is giving the legal succession list for Joseph as a descendant of David, while Luke's genealogy refers to Joseph's actual parents and their family tree.  And as for confusing numbers, Matthew 21:7 has often been read as though Jesus straddled two animals as he rode in triumph into Jerusalem, contrary to what the other Gospels say. However, ambiguous grammar is the problem; most commentators state that the second "them" in the sentence refers to the garments placed on the donkey's colt and that Jesus sat on them, not on two animals at the same time. 

Though I have only touched the highlights, I think I have shown that there are reasonable explanations and solutions to many so-called "discrepancies" or "contradictions." Consequently, the overall historical reliability of the Gospels remains intact, and so does the certainty of what they record about Jesus’ life, words, and deeds. And if the reader wishes to study this issue in greater detail, I recommend they consult Craig Blomberg’s books, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels and The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel. They will also find helpful material in Donald Guthrie’s Introduction to the New Testament.