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A Resource by Mark D. Roberts |
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Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Volume 2 of 3
by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts
Copyright © 2005 by Mark D. Roberts
Note: You may download this resource at no cost, for personal use or for use in a Christian ministry, as long as you are not publishing it for sale. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due. For all other uses, please contact me at mark@markdroberts.com. Thank you.
My Various Writings on Jesus
The Birth of Jesus: Hype or History?
Was Jesus Divine? The Early Christian Understanding
Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
Was Jesus Married? A Careful Look at the Real Evidence
What Was the Message of Jesus?
How Can We Know Anything about the Real Jesus?
What Languages Did Jesus Speak and Why Does It Matter?
Recovering the Scandal of the Cross?
The Passion of the Christ: An In-Depth Review
Unmasking the Jesus Seminar
Book -- Jesus Revealed: Know Him Better to Love Him Better
What Difference Does It Make That There are Four Gospels?
Section B 
Part 11 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable? 
Posted for Monday, October 10, 2005
In my last post I explained how the existence of the four New Testament gospels allows us to evaluate their testimony about Jesus, much as a jury would evaluate multiple witnesses to an event. I also noted the recent tendency among New Testament scholars to highlight, perhaps even to exaggerate, the differences (read "contradictions") between the gospels.
Now I freely grant that there are significant differences between the four biblical gospels on a number of key topics. For example, Matthew alone tells the story of the Magi's visit to the child Jesus, while Luke alone has shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night. I plan to discuss the significance of these and other differences in future posts. But, for now, I want to focus on something that is often overlooked by scholars, but is generally acknowledged by careful readers who have lots of common sense: the striking similarities between the pictures of Jesus found in the New Testament gospels.
Here is a list of some of the details about Jesus's life and ministry that are found in all four gospels:
• Jesus was a Jewish man.
• Jesus ministered during the time when Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judea (around A.D. 27 to A.D. 37).
• Jesus had a close connection with John the Baptist, and his ministry in superceded that of John.
• Jesus's ministry took place in Galilee, especially early in his ministry, and ultimately in Jerusalem.
• Jesus gathered disciples around him.
• The brothers, Andrew and Simon (Peter), were among Jesus's first disciples.
• Jesus taught women, and they were included among the larger group of his followers. (This, by the way, sets Jesus apart from other Jewish teachers of His day.)
• Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God ("kingdom of heaven" in Matthew).
• Jesus used the cryptic title "Son of Man" in reference to Himself and in order to explain His mission. (Jesus fondness for and use of this title was very unusual in His day, and was not picked up by the early church.)
• Jesus saw His mission as the Son of Man as leading to His death. (This was unprecendented in Judaism. Even among Jesus's followers it was both unexpected and unwelcome.)
• Jesus, though apparently understanding Himself to be Israel's promised Messiah, is curiously circumspect about this identification. (This is striking, given the early and widespread confession of Christians that Jesus was the Messiah. If they had made up traditions about Him, surely they would have had Jesus be much clearer about His messianic identity.)
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Talk about different pictures of Jesus! The top painting is by the 16th century Flemish painter, Joos van Cleve. The bottom is a painting on silk by an anonymous Chinese painter from the late 19th or early 20th century.
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• Jesus did various sorts of miracles, including healings and nature miracles.
• Jesus called people to have faith in Him and in God.
• Jesus was misunderstood by many, including his own disciples.
• Jesus experienced conflict with many Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees and ultimately the temple-centered leadership in Jerusalem.
• Jesus spoke and acted in ways that undermined the temple in Jerusalem.
• Jesus spoke and acted in ways that implied He had a unique connection with God.
• Jesus was crucified at the time of Passover, under the authority of Pontius Pilate, and with the cooperation of some Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. (There are quite a few more details concerning the death of Jesus that are shared by all four gospels.)
• Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week (Sunday).
• Women were the first witnesses to the evidence of Jesus's resurrection. (This is especially significant, since the testimony of women was not highly regarded in first-century Jewish culture. Nobody would have made up stories with women as witnesses if they wanted them to gain ready acceptance.)
This is certainly an impressive list of similarities shared by all four gospels. It's especially significant because I've included the Gospel of John here, even though it is the most distinctive among the biblical gospels. I believe, in light of this list, that it would be correct to say that, though the four gospels paint Jesus from different perspectives and in different tones, they are painting what is essentially the same picture. They agree on the most important points about Jesus's life and ministry, not to mention His death and resurrection. Moreover, they agree on the core of the early Christian message, that which came to be called the gospel, and ended up giving the four biblical gospels their name.
In my next post I want to examine in greater detail some of the distinctive elements of the individual gospels. Do these count against the historical reliability of the documents?
Are There Contradictions in the Gospels? Section A
Part 12 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Posted for Tuesday, October 11, 2005
In my last post I showed that the four New Testament gospels agree considerably in their depictions of Jesus. In fact, the same essential aspects of Jesus's ministry can be found in any of the gospels. But that is not to say that the gospels tell exactly the same story in exactly the same way. In fact, each gospel views Jesus from a distinctive perspective, and provides unique insight into His ministry. This means, of course, that there are many variations between the New Testament gospels.
I just used the word "variations" to describe differences between the gospels. Others would use language that carries a more negative connotation. When I was in graduate school, my professors tended to speak, not of variations among the gospels so much as discrepancies or disparities. In some circles, you'll often hear about the disagreements among or the contradictions between the gospels. For example, last December, TIME Magazine ran a cover story on the birth of Jesus (subscription only). This article stated:
Matthew and Luke diverge in conspicuous ways on details of the event. In Matthew's Nativity, the angelic Annunciation is made to Joseph while Luke's is to Mary. Matthew's offers wise men and a star and puts the baby Jesus in a house; Luke's prefers shepherds and a manger. Both place the birth in Bethlehem, but they disagree totally about how it came to be there.
What TIME rightly shows are the variations in the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke. But it wrongly adds that the two gospels "disagree totally" about how the birth came to be in Bethlehem.
When I last checked, disagreement or contradiction involves specifically denying something someone else has said. Saying something different isn't disagreement, unless of course two things couldn't both true. So the fact that Matthew has Magi and Luke has shepherds in a genuine difference, but not a contradiction. It would be a contradiction if Luke placed the birth of Jesus in Bethelehem, and Matthew placed it in Nazareth, or if one gospel had Jesus die by crucifixion, and another had him die by stoning (as is recorded in the Jewish Talmud, b. Sanhedrin 43a). To my knowledge, nothing in the four New Testament gospels actually contradicts something in another gospel. There are differences, to be sure. But actual contradictions? I don't think so.
Most of the differences among the gospels are inconsequential matters of word choice or literary emphasis. But there are some differences that cannot be dismissed as trivial, no matter how we evaluate them. For example, in Matthew, Jesus faces three temptations from the devil: 1) turn stones into bread; 2) throw yourself off the temple, and; 3) worship me (Matt 4:1-11). Luke's narrative also includes three temptations, but in a different order: 1) stones to bread; 2) worship me, and 3) throw yourself off the temple (Luke 4:1-13). Of course many skeptical scholars would deny the historicity of this whole scene because it involves supernatural elements. But those who accept the possibility that this really happened face the peculiar variation in the order of temptations 2 and 3.
Is this a contradiction? I suppose it is if both Matthew and Luke were intending to present the three temptations in the order in which they actually occurred. In this case, either Matthew or Luke would be wrong, and it would be fair to refer to the variation between them as a genuine disagreement. But, if Matthew and/or Luke were seeking to present what really happened but in more of a thematic than a chronological order, then there would be no contradiction.
It does appear that the gospel writers did, at times, order events by theme rather than chronology. Consider another example. In Mark 6, well into Jesus's Galilean ministry in this gospel, there are two crucial events: Jesus's rejection in His hometown of Nazareth (6:1-6) and the arrest and murder of John the Baptist (6:17-29). Yet in the Gospel of Luke, the arrest of John is described in chapter 3, before Jesus begins His ministry (3:20), and the rejection of Jesus in Nazareth is placed at the very beginning of his ministry (4:16-30). If Luke was using Mark, as is likely, then he purposely moved these events for some reason or another. I think the move has to do with dramatic reasons primarily, but also theological emphasis. Luke, it seems, didn't think it was a problem to diverge from Mark's apparent chronology.
Seeing such chronological differences between the gospels, a naysayer might be quick to say, "Ah-hah! So there are contradictions. The gospels aren't reliable. They aren't historical." But, as I discussed in an earlier post, this would be another example of anachronistic judgment. It's taking our contemporary value of chronology and forcing it upon writers who did not share it. In fact, historians and biographers in the Hellenistic world often preferred thematic to chronological orderings of events. So the New Testament evangelists were simply doing what came naturally, and what would be expected by their readers.
We do this sort of thing quite commonly today, though not in the writing of history or biography. Suppose, for example, I was going to tell you about my most recent summer vacation. I'd get the basic chronology in place: Big Sur, California for three days; driving north; Swan Lake, Montana for nine days; driving home via Utah. But as I narrated the events of Swan Lake, it's likely that I'd link common experiences rather than get them in the precise chronological order. I can't remember exactly which days we went tubing on the lake or jumping off the cliff or kayaking down the river. But I can organize my thoughts according to the types of activities we enjoyed. Listening to my narrative, you wouldn't accuse me of lying about my vacation, because you wouldn't expect me to pull out my journal and give you a precise day-by-day account of what happened.
Similarly, the first readers of the gospels wouldn't have expected Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to narrate all of the events in the precise order in which they happened. That's just not how it was done in those days. So if we come along and insist that, in order to be reliable, the gospels must get everything in precise chronological order, we're demanding something that is both anachronistic and inconsistent with the intentions of the evangelists. We're asking the gospels to be something that they're not. |
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Here are two pictures from my summer vacation. In the photo above, my son is jumping off a cliff into Swan Lake, Montana. Below, my daughter and I are kayaking up the Swan River, where we see a moose. It really doesn't matter which event came first chronologically, does it?
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Ironically, this sort of demand has been placed on the gospels by unlikely bedfellows. Some very conservative Christians have argued that the gospel accounts must be 100% accurate in every last detail in order to be truly God's Word. Thus they fight for the absolute accuracy of every jot and tittle of chronology in gospels, believing that one tiny inconsistency brings down the whole authority of the Bible. On the flip side, many liberal scholars and others who want to undermine biblical authority also agree that the smallest inconsistency – read, "contradiction" – in the gospels invalidates their reliability. Thus, both the fundamentalist and the opponent of biblical authority end up making the same kind of mistake when it comes to evaluating the reliability of the gospels. (Note: what I've just said is not true of most leading evangelical scholars today. Many who affirm the inerrancy of Scripture also take seriously the intentions of the gospel writers and the literary conventions of their day.)
In this post I've focused on one particular kind of variation among the gospels (ordering of events) to illustrate both right and wrong ways to approach the question of differences between the gospels. In my next post I'll discuss other sorts of differences and lay out a way of seeing the gospels that values both their reliability and their individual distinctiveness.
Are There Contradictions in the Gospels? Section B
Part 13 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Posted for Wednesday, October 12, 2005
In yesterday's post I acknowledged that there are differences among the accounts of Jesus found in the New Testament gospels. One such difference was apparent chronology. Events in Matthew, for example, seemed to imply a chronological order that was not found in Luke. Yet to call this a contradiction would be to misconstrue the purposes of the evangelists who, like other Hellenistic biographers, were intending to present their material in thematic as well as chronological order.
There are other kinds of relatively common variations among the biblical gospels. These are neatly and comprehensively catalogued by Craig Blomberg in his book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Blomberg is a top-notch evangelical scholar who has written extensively on the gospels. If my blog series doesn't satisfy your desire for a more in-depth discussion of the reliability of the gospels, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels is well worth reading. I can't say I agree with everything in this book, but I can say that everything Blomberg writes deserves serious consideration.
In a chapter called "Contradictions among the Synoptics?" (the first three gospels are called "synoptic" because they are so similar), Blomberg discusses seven main types of supposed contradictions among the gospels:
1. Conflicting theology. This category has to do with genuine differences between the theological perspectives of the evangelists which are understood by some scholars to be in conflict with each other, rather than being complementary (which I would argue).
2. The practice of paraphrase. A verse in one gospel will be found in similar but not quite the same language in another gospel.
3. Chronological problems. I discussed this issue in my last post.
4. Omissions. Often one gospel doesn't include material found in another gospel. For example, Mark 11:12-24 tells the story of Jesus's cursing of the fig tree. This story is included in Matthew 21, but is not found in Luke.
5. Composite speeches. For example, some scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount, in its present form, was created by Matthew out of individual sayings of Jesus, and not actually spoken by Jesus in the from in which it appears in Matthew.
6. Apparent doublets. These are stories in the gospels that could be two different versions of the same event, as in the case of the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000 (Mark 6:32-44; 8:1-10 and parallels).
7. Variations in names and numbers. Examples would include the name(s) of the place where Jesus cast Legion out of a demonized man (Gerasa? Gadara? Matthew 8:28; Mark 5:1), or the healing of one blind man in Mark 10:46, where Matthew 20:30 seems to tell the same story with two blind men.
Let me discuss one example from the gospels that involves two of Blomberg's categories. It's from the story of the healing of the paralytic, where Jesus forgives the man's sins and so gets into trouble with some Jewish leaders (Matthew 9:2-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26). The essential elements of this story are found in all three gospels -- the healing of the paralyzed man, the forgiveness of sins, the controversy with the leaders – as are many details. But one particular element of Mark's story is different in Matthew and Luke.
Mark's story begins with some people bringing a paralyzed man to Jesus so that He might heal him. But because of the crowds, they couldn't easily get to Jesus. So, according to Mark:
And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay (Mark 2:4)
How does this curious detail play out in Matthew and Luke? Matthew omits the digging through the roof part altogether, a case of omitting material from another gospel. Luke includes the roof-breaking scene, but phrases it differently:
[B]ut finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. (Luke 5:19)
In Mark, the paralytic's friends "dug down" through the roof. In Luke they let their friend down "through the tiles." What explains this odd variation? Mark's version of the story reflects the fact that typical homes in Galilee in the time of Jesus had thatched roofs through which one could dig. But Luke, who is writing for a gentile audience, changes the imagery to that which would be intelligible to his readers, who would have been familiar with tiled rather than thatched roofs. It seems clear that Luke paraphrased Mark's text so that his readers wouldn't be confused about how one "digs through" a tiled roof. |
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This is a photograph of the harbor in Rockport, Massachusetts, featuring the red fishing shack known as "Motif #1." It's one of the most commonly photographed and painted buildings in America. (This particular photo was taken by Stan McQueen.) Why am I showing this picture, you might wonder? I'll explain later. |
Though it's common in many scholarly circles to speak of "contradictions" as "the assured results of scholarship," in fact many if not all of the so-called "contradictions" have been carefully analyzed and interpreted by scholars who don't believe true contradictions exist. Many of the apparent contradictions turn out to depend upon superficial or rigid readings of the text. Yet efforts to harmonize the gospels are sometimes rejected as quaint remnants of an earlier day, rather than as legitimate efforts by historians to determine the true meaning of the gospel texts. To be sure, some proposed harmonizations are unpersuasive if not downright silly, but many deserve to be taken more seriously.
At the same time, some scholars – both conservative and liberal – have been reticent to take seriously the nature of the gospels as understood within their own time and culture. If it's true that the gospel writers were doing what biographers and historians were expected to do in the first-century Greco-Roman world, then we shouldn't be surprised to find plenty of variations between the gospels. So, to return to the example I'd noted previously, where Luke appears to change Mark's thatched roof to a tiled roof, some conservative scholars would no doubt try to solve this apparent inconsistency by claiming that the roof had both thatched and tiled portions, or that one could be said to "dig" through tiles, or something to ensure that both Mark and Luke are literally accurate. But these efforts are misguided, in my opinion. They force Luke into a modern mold that defines historical accuracy in a way different from Luke's own definition.
This does an injustice to Luke, and ultimately, in my view, to Scripture itself. It says, "I insist that the gosples be what I want them to be (or my culture wants them to be, or my theology wants them to be)," rather than "I receive the gospels as they are as part of God's Word, and will not require them to be something they are not." If God chose to work through biographers who, like their Hellenistic peers, paraphrased sayings or ordered events thematically rather than chronologically, who am I to say this is wrong? Isn't that asking, not only Luke, but even the Lord to conform to the values of my culture, rather than accepting God's choice to work within the constraints of another culture? Yes, indeed, there's a part of me that wishes God had waited to send His Son until He could have been captured on videotape. But I trust that the Lord chose just the right time to come in the flesh, even if this means I don't get the sort of accuracy in the presentation of the life of Christ that I'd prefer.
In my next post I want to pursue a bit further how we ought to think about the variations among the four biblical gospels, and suggest an analogy that helps me to make sense of this issue.
Are There Contradictions in the Gospels? Section C
Part 14 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Posted for Thursday, October 13, 2005
When we take seriously the nature of history and biography writing in the first-century A.D., and when we treat Matthew, Mark, and Luke as first-century biographies, and when we deal with their differences seriously rather than glibly, it makes little sense to speak of "contradictions" between the gospels. For all of their distinctiveness, the synoptic gospels tell more or less the same story of Jesus in more or less the same way.
The Distinctiveness of the Gospel of John
But the Gospel of John stands apart from the synoptics in many ways. True, the essential story of Jesus is found in this gospel as in the others (see my discussion in Part 11). And, true, the differences between John and the synoptics have often been overstated. But, after browsing through Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where, for the most part, Jesus utters short parables and pithy sayings, even the casual reader is struck by how different Jesus sounds in John. The short sayings have been replaced by much longer discourses. The primary message of the kingdom of God, though present in John, doesn't take the spotlight. Instead, in the fourth gospel Jesus speaks much more of Himself and His relationship with His Father. Here He is the bread of life and the light of the world. He is the good shepherd and the vine to which His disciples must stay connected. Plus, in John the apparent chronology and travelogue of Jesus's ministry is more complicated, with several trips between Galilee and Jerusalem. (Ironically, even many hyper-critical scholars regard John's timetable as fairly accurate.)
For some, the obvious differences between John and the synoptics clearly diminish the historical reliability of John. (A few have argued that John is older and more authentic, but they are small minority.) If Matthew, Mark, and Luke more or less get Jesus right, the argument goes, then John clearly gets Him wrong, from a historical point of view. The speeches of Jesus in the fourth gospel, it is claimed, reflect a long tradition of development within the community that ultimately produced this gospel. They have little to do with the real Jesus.
When I was in graduate school, this perspective reigned in the academic circles in which I danced. But even then there was a growing recognition that John, while distinctive, might actually preserve genuine, independent traditions about Jesus. Why, it was asked, must we assume that Jesus always spoke only in short quips? Didn't it make sense to believe that, in some settings, he spoke in longer discourses? And wasn't it possible that John, though a result of decades of tradition, actually preserved some of these discourses? Moreover, given that most critical scholars believed that John used older written sources (a "Signs Source" and maybe a "Discourse Source" and a "Passion Source"), the later date proposed for the fourth gospel (80s or 90s A.D.) didn't mean that its content was historically unreliable.
Not surprisingly, several conservative scholars have risen to defend the historical reliability of John. None has been more prolific in this regard than Craig Blomberg, the New Testament scholar from Denver Seminary whom I've mentioned earlier in this series. Blomberg wrote a book called, The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel: Issues & Commentary, in which he spends 346 pages defending the historicity of John's portrayal of Jesus. Blomberg is not a naïve harmonizer. And he takes seriously the distinctiveness of John's gospel. This distinctiveness accounts for the differences between John and the synoptics, and doesn't require denigrating the reliability of either.
How the Gospels Portray Jesus: An Analogy from New England
Of course for this approach to succeed, one needs to grant that the pictures of Jesus in the New Testament gospels aren't precise photographs so much as inspired paintings. If you've spent much time looking at paintings, you know that many are not "literal" in the photographic sense. Yet a great painting can capture a slice of reality that eludes the photographer. It can convey mood, feeling, and insight. And it can be profoundly "true" without being literalistic.
Consider the following example. In yesterday's post I included a photograph of the red fishing shack along the harbor of Rockport, Massachusetts, so called "Motif #1." I mentioned that this building is one of the most frequently painted and photographed of American landmarks. Here are four different paintings of Motif#1:
Seeing these paintings, I wonder: Are they reliable witnesses to the reality of the red fishing shack? Yes, I would say so. A couple of the paintings are more literal, a couple more suggestive. None looks exactly like a photograph. (And, in fact, there are many, many distinct photographs of Motif #1.) Yet it would be wrong to criticize the painters because their art wasn't photographic, even as some criticize the gospel writers because they didn't get every jot and tittle exactly the same.
I you only saw one of these paintings of Motif #1, you'd have an idea what it "really" looked like. Chances are, if you were in Rockport and had never seen the red fishing shack, but had seen one of these paintings, you'd be able to recognize the shack, even though there would be some surprises waiting for you.
Similarly, if we only had one of the four gospels, we'd have a pretty good idea of what Jesus really did and said. Yet our perspective would be limited. The fact that we have four gospels enables us to see Jesus from a variety of points of view, and this enables us both to see different things in Jesus and to know with greater accuracy what Jesus was really like.
In tomorrow's post I want to reflect on how the differences among the gospels were dealt with in early Christianity, and how this helps us to evaluate the reliability of the gospels today.
Are There Contradictions in the Gospels? Section D
Part 15 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Posted for Friday, October 14, 2005
In an earlier post in this series I mentioned the attempt of a second-century Syrian Christian named Tatian to produce a single-volume harmony of the four gospels, one that was meant to replace the four as the primary narrative of Jesus's ministry. Though this harmony was popular in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean for a couple of centuries, eventually it was put aside in favor of the four original gospels. The early Christians, it seems, preferred four distinct narratives, with all their messiness, to one, neat and tidy harmonized one.
Sometimes people talk as if recognition of the differences between the gospels is a recent discovery. In fact, these differences have been recognized for as long as Christians have been reading four gospels, well back into the second century A.D. Sometime around 180 Ireneaus wrote a lengthy refutation of the Christian heresies in his day. In this piece, aptly called Against Heresies, Irenaeus not only refers to the four New Testament gospels as authoritative, but also attests to their distinctiveness. In a rather lengthy passage, he uses the four living creatures in Revelation 4:5-11 -- lion, ox, human, eagle -- as symbols for the gospels, noting how the symbols capture unique qualities of each gospel:
It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. . . . For the cherubim, too, were four-faced, and their faces were images of the dispensation of the Son of God. For, [as the Scripture] says, "The first living creature was like a lion," symbolizing His effectual working, His leadership, and royal power; the second [living creature] was like a calf, signifying [His] sacrificial and sacerdotal order; but "the third had, as it were, the face as of a man,"-an evident description of His advent as a human being; "the fourth was like a flying eagle," pointing out the gift of the Spirit hovering with His wings over the Church. And therefore the Gospels are in accord with these things, among which Christ Jesus is seated. For that according to John relates His original, effectual, and glorious generation from the Father, thus declaring, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Also, "all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made." For this reason, too, is that Gospel full of all confidence, for such is His person. But that according to Luke, taking up [His] priestly character, commenced with Zacharias the priest offering sacrifice to God. For now was made ready the fatted calf, about to be immolated for the finding again of the younger son. Matthew, again, relates His generation as a man, saying, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham; " and also, "The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise." This, then, is the Gospel of His humanity; for which reason it is, too, that [the character of] a humble and meek man is kept up through the whole Gospel. Mark, on the other hand, commences with [a reference to] the prophetical spirit coming down from on high to men, saying, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet,"-pointing to the winged aspect of the Gospel; and on this account he made a compendious and cursory narrative, for such is the prophetical character. (Against Heresies, 3.11.8)
In the end, Christian tradition followed Irenaeus's example of associating the gospels with the living creatures from Revelation, but not his particular associations. Matthew and Luke continued to be represented by the man/angel and the ox. But most Christians found the lion to be a better representation of Mark, and the eagle more fitting for John's soaring theology.
Nevertheless, my point is that Christians have recognized from the earliest times that the four biblical gospels are distinctive. Rather than disguising this fact with a single harmony, they celebrated the differences as part of God's plan for revelation.
It's also worth noting that the second-century Christians didn't "clean up" the four gospels. It's true that some of the scribes did harmonize divergent texts, so there would be fewer differences among the gospels. But, by and large, the church kept the original texts intact, even though this meant preserving some of the very elements that could be labeled as "contradictions." This fact suggests two implications.
First, it confirms the judgment that people in the Hellenistic world didn't expect historical or biographical works to get every word exactly right. Second-century believers could accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as authoritative accounts of Jesus's life, even though there are acknowledged variations between them. |
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"The Four Evangelists" by Spinello Aretino, a fresco on the ceiling of the sacristy of the church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence, Italy. You can see each evangelist with a representative "living being," an eagle, an angel, an ox/ram (with wings), and a lion (with wings).
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Second, the fact that the church did not prefer a single harmonized gospel, but instead kept the four distinct ones, suggests that the early Christians did indeed seek to preserve accurately the written accounts of Jesus's life, even with an awareness of the differences among these accounts. To put it differently, there was no conspiracy in the early church to clean up the gospels. The truth needed to be protected and preserved.
I'm aware that what I've just said flows upstream in some rivers of biblical scholarship. It's not uncommon to hear scholars argue that the gospels are primarily theological documents, and therefore are not meant to be historically accurate. Theology and history, it seems, are incompatible. In my next post in this series I want to tackle this issue. If it turns out that the motivations of the evangelists were more theological or pastoral than academic, if they were promoting a religious agenda more than writing history for antiquarian reasons, does this discount the reliability of the gospels?
If the Gospels are Theology, Can They Be History? Section A
Part 16 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Posted for Monday, October 17, 2005
If there's one thing all New Testament scholars agree upon, it's the fact that the gospels were not written merely for reasons of historical curiosity. The most liberal members of the Jesus Seminar and the most conservative scholars at Bob Jones University would surely agree that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John weren't writing simply out of antiquarian interest. They weren't scholars who found Jesus fascinating and decided to write about his life. Rather, they were faithful believers in Jesus who sought to compose narratives of his ministry for pastoral or evangelistic reasons. In the language of our contentious world, the gospel writers had an agenda. They were writing theology, not raw history (as if there were such a thing).
The "Agenda" of Matthew and Mark
If the evangelists had an agenda, it certainly wasn't a hidden one. Each writer revealed his theological inclination quite plainly, as well as his personal faith in Jesus. Matthew begins his narrative by referring to Jesus as "the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (1:1). Not exactly the confession of a neutral observer! Similarly, Mark starts his gospel in this way: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:1). So Mark's telling a story he believes to be "good news," and it concerns Jesus whom Mark believes to be the "Christ" (from the Greek christos, meaning "anointed one," messiah in Hebrew) and "the Son of God." (By the way, Mark speaks of the beginning of the "good news," which in Greek is euangelion, or "gospel." This is probably the origin of the use "gospel" as the genre for the four biblical biographies of Jesus. Mark himself probably didn't use "gospel" in this way, however, but as a summary of the content of his biographical narrative.)
The "Agenda" of Luke
Luke is even clearer about the purpose of his narrative. In an introduction reminiscent of secular historians who may have inspired Luke, he begins:
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)
Why is Luke writing an orderly account of the events concerning Jesus? Why did Luke pay close attention to a variety of sources, both oral and written? Why did he investigate everything carefully? Answer: so that Theophilus (a Christian unknown to us besides this passage and Acts 1:1) might "know the truth" about his faith in Christ. More literally, Luke is claiming to help Theophilus have "certainty" about the One in whom he believes. This is not academic history so much as intentional discipleship. It's teaching meant to help a believer grow in his faith.
The "Agenda" of John
The purpose of the fourth gospel is also plainly stated, though near the end of the book and not at its beginning:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)
According to this translation (NRSV), the primary purpose of John is evangelistic. He wrote "so that you may come to believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God." The Gospel of John may in fact be the first evangelistic tract in human history. (It is also, I expect, the most popular book in the Bible for evangelistic tracts today.)
Ironically, John 20:31 is one of those rare verses in the New Testament where the actual Greek text isn't completely clear in one key place. If you were to look at the Greek behind the phrase "you may come to believe," you'd see something like this: pisteu[s]ete. The brackets were not in the original text, of course. They were added by the editors to indicate uncertainty about whether the original word was pisteuete or pisteusete. The first is in the present tense; the second in a past tense (aorist). Why does this matter? If John originally used pisteusete, then the translation "that you may come to believe" is correct, and the gospel is meant to lead non-believers to faith. But if he used pisteuete, then the translation should be "that you may continue believing," in which case the gospel is meant to encourage Christians to keep on in the faith. |
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Agua Viva ("living water" in Spanish) is an evangelistic tract that features the text of the Gospel of John. |
Yet whether the fourth gospel was originally intended to convert or to encourage, there's no doubt that it was penned with a religious agenda. John wrote to foster belief in Jesus, thus joining the other evangelists as what we might call a theologian.
What I've said about the intentions of the gospel writers is confirmed by the gospels themselves. In the way they are structured, in the emphases of the stories, in the presentation of miracles, and in the stunning conclusion on Easter and thereafter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John show their theological purposes. These are, without a doubt, theologically-motivated writings, composed for pastoral, evangelistic, or apologetic purposes, or some combination of the three. (I'm using "apologetic" here in the technical sense, meaning " to defend the faith" or at least "to equip Christians to defend the faith.")
So, if the evangelists were faithful believers in Jesus seeking to perpetuate or promulgate the faith, if they had various theological agendas, can we still regard them as historically reliable? At this point in the conversation many scholars say "No." Theology precludes history, or so we're told. I'll examine this position in more detail in my next post.
If the Gospels are Theology, Can They Be History? Section B
Part 17 of series: Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?
Posted for Tuesday, October 18, 2005
When I took my first New Testament course in college, I was shocked by the extent to which my professor denied the historical reliability of the gospels. This was my first exposure to the sort of New Testament scholarship that later became all too familiar later on, and it was not a happy one. From everything he said in class, it seemed that my professor could hardly be a Christian.
Yet I knew he was an ordained minister, and one who sometimes did pastoral things, like preach or administer the sacraments. So when I found out that he was preaching in a nearby church, I was eager to attend. That's when I got the next shock from this professor. His sermon, though hardly evangelistic, articulated orthodox Christian truth. His prayers were astoundingly prayerful. He really seemed to talk to God, and mean it, even when he prayed in the name of "our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
Leaving that worship service I felt terribly confused. How could one who believed so little in the classroom believe so much in the sanctuary? How could he affirm so confidently that for which he saw so little historical basis? It was almost as if his faith was completely disconnected from history, and impervious to the skepticism of the academy, even if it was his own skepticism.
What I did not realize at the time was that my professor stood in a long line of theologians that stretched back to the 18th century. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German best known for his plays, sought to defend Christian faith against skeptical historians who were chipping away at it. Lessing argued that theology can never be dependent upon history, because theology has to do with eternal truths, which can be known only by reason, while history produces only contingent knowledge. In his most famous phrase, Lessing argued that there is an "ugly ditch" that separates history and theology.
Lessing profoundly influenced theology in the years to come, providing the intellectual foundation for my first New Testament professor's ability to separate history and theology. It enabled him to say, "As a Christian I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, but as a historian I operate on the assumption that there are no children without natural fathers." Theology on one side, history on the other, and a wide, ugly ditch in between.
Given that much of New Testament scholarship in the last century has been done by scholars under the influence of G.E. Lessing, we shouldn't be surprised that they tend to answer negatively the question I've been asking in this post: If the gospels are theology, can they be history? Theology and history are different things altogether, or so we're told. So if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were writing theology, if they had religious agendas, then we shouldn't expect their work to be historically reliable. For these writers, it is argued, theology trumps history.
Of course it's certainly possible for theology to be based on something other than events that can be studied by historians. The myths that underlie ancient Greek religion, for example, didn't really happen. But even in Scripture there are fictional stories that convey profound theological truths. Consider, for example, the parables of Jesus. There needn't have been a Good Samaritan for Jesus's theological point about love to be both truth and compelling. And we don't have to believe that there really was a Prodigal Son to rejoice in the picture of God's love that we find in the parable about that son. In both of these cases, and many more, theology is independent of history. |
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G.E. Lessing, the German dramatist and theologian. No, there's no evidence that Die Coneheads were descendants of Lessing. |
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Yet, the gospels present themselves as something other than expanded parables. They don't take on the look of what we might call historical fiction. Luke is clearest in this regard, by beginning his gospel with a prologue that intentionally echoes the prologues of other historians from his era. Moreover, for centuries almost all orthodox Christians have taken the biblical gospels as reliable narratives of what Jesus actually did and said, even though many of these Christians have seen far more than mere history in the gospel narratives. (For example, an allegorical approach to the gospels was popular for many centuries.)
The evangelists wrote reliable history because they cared about what happened in the past. And why did they care about the past? Because their theology was anchored in past events. After all, one cannot very well believe that salvation came through the atoning death of Jesus if that death didn't really happen. A nice story about a dying Messiah just wouldn't cut it. In the prologue to his gospel, John wrote: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (1:14). Undeniably, this is a theological affirmation. But it is theology that makes history matter profoundly. Believe that Jesus was really God in the |
