Welcome! Today we have our final installment in
our series on the reliability of the gospels. Two weeks ago we focused on
atheists’ and others’ claims that the gospels are fabrications. We looked at
when the gospels were written, using as evidence early copies, letters by
Christians, and writings by those who were neutral or even opposed to the
Christian faith. We saw strong evidence for a very small gap in time between
the events in Christ’s life and the writing of the gospels as well as
overwhelming evidence that the gospel accounts were not “doctored” in the
following centuries.
Last week we focused on claims that the gospels
must be in error based on what the gospels say. We focused in on the miracles
of Jesus because that is one of the things people have a hard time with. As the
atheist Christopher Hitchens has said, “Exceptional claims demand exceptional
evidence.” I think we showed evidence that was pretty exceptional. Our main
approach was to show that alternative explanations for how the gospels accounts
were written and came to be strongly believed as fact were all severely flawed.
For example, we talked about how if you start with the presumption that the
miracles were “added in” you find the problem that the miracles are completely
integrated into the entire story and, beyond this, essential!
Take out the miracles, and you have no explanation for why Jesus was even crucified, let alone why thousands of the earliest believers were so convinced of Jesus’ resurrection and His post-resurrection appearances that they were willing to die rather than renounce these claims (and many did die). I think of the character of Sherlock Holmes who said, “How often have I said to you that, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” We also looked at alternate theories such as the gospel writers purposely, “accidentally”, or even unconsciously created the miracle stories, and we pointed out the severe flaws of these theories one by one.
Take out the miracles, and you have no explanation for why Jesus was even crucified, let alone why thousands of the earliest believers were so convinced of Jesus’ resurrection and His post-resurrection appearances that they were willing to die rather than renounce these claims (and many did die). I think of the character of Sherlock Holmes who said, “How often have I said to you that, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” We also looked at alternate theories such as the gospel writers purposely, “accidentally”, or even unconsciously created the miracle stories, and we pointed out the severe flaws of these theories one by one.
This week I want to look at the general
area of supposed contradictions in the gospels. A common category of claim can
be expressed in the following form:
Why don’t
the other gospels record the event such-and-such? Doesn’t this mean it is
likely this particular gospel writer added this as an embellishment?
First of all, in other contexts, this
would be considered a very weak argument, as it is what is called an “argument
from silence.” It is in addition an argument for what the person says should be, which right away begs the question, “How
do you know what should be?” An example
of such an argument is the following: “Shouldn’t the other gospels have
recorded the rising of people from the dead after the death of Christ? After
all, this is a really big deal, if it really happened.”
And when Jesus had
cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the
curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the
rocks split and
the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised
to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’
resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. – Matt.
27:50-53
Let’s tackle the particular question
first, and see if our methods apply to the general one. Well, as we have done
before, we can look to see if there is any outside evidence. In this case,
there is! This is from Quadratus, who wrote during the reign of Hadrian,
117-138 AD. Here is what he wrote:
But our
Savior's works were permanent, for they were real. Those who had been cured or
rose from the dead not only appeared to be cured or raised but were permanent,
not only during our Savior's stay on earth, but also after his departure. They
remained for a considerable period, so that some of them even reached our
times. - Quadratus
Now the phrase “so that some of them even
reached our times” doesn’t necessarily mean that they lived for an additional
90-100 years; the Greek idiom means simply that there were still those living
who had seen these raised people.
Furthermore, if you read the Book of
Acts, you see that resurrection didn’t just stop after Christ went up to
heaven. For example, Paul raised poor Eutychus, who fell out the window after
falling asleep while listening (or, rather, not
listening) to Paul preach. And Ireneaus, writing half a century later, writes
of others who were raised by early believers.
The fact that this account is found in
Matthew fits in perfectly with the rest of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew wrote to
the Jews and constantly made theological connections with his audience, showing
how Jesus was the prophesied one. His wording carries echoes of Ezekiel 37:
Then he said
to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones
are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This
is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and
bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your
graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit
in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will
know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’” –
Ezek. 37:11-14
This passage is not yet completely fulfilled in how, at the crucifixion, the tombs are
opened and these people come back to life and enter back into “the land”, but
it is a hint or foreshadowing of the far greater way this will be fulfilled in
times to come. And this future resurrection, and the judgment to come with it,
is a repeated theme in Matthew.
This helps show why Matthew included the
account – it fits with his overall themes and certainly does not appear “stuck
on, out of character” – but it still doesn’t explain why the other gospel
writers did not include the account. To address this question, I think it helps
to look at the various miracles performed directly by Jesus and see how many
gospel writers wrote of each one. This will also go a long way towards
answering the general question of why the accounts differ in what they include.
All four gospels include the feeding of
the 5000 (1 miracle). Three gospels include walking on water, the healing of
Peter’s mother-in-law, healing of a man with leprosy, healing of a paralyzed
man, healing of a man with a shriveled hand, calming the storm, exorcising of
demons from the Gadarene man, raising Jairus’ daughter, healing the
hemorrhaging woman, the exorcism of the demon-possessed boy, and the healing of
two blind men (11 miracles). Two gospels include exorcism of the Caananite
woman’s daughter from a distance, the feeding of 4000, the withering of the fig
tree, exorcisim of a possessed man in a synagogue, healing at a distance of the
Roman Centurion’s servant, and exorcism of a blind, mute, and possessed man (6
miracles). And only one gospel tells of healing of a deaf mute, healing of a
blind man at Bethsaida, healing of two blind men, exorcism of a mute and
possessed man, finding the coin in the fish’s mouth, the first miraculous catch
of fish, raising the Widow’s son at Nain, exorcism of Mary Magdalene, healing
of the crippled woman, healing of a man with dropsy, healing at a distance of
10 men with leprosy, healing of the High Priest’s servant, the wine miracle at
Cana, healing at a distance of the official’s son at Capernaum, healing of a
sick man at the Pool of Bethesda, healing of a blind man, raising Lazarus, and
the second miraculous catch of fish (13 miracles). More miracles are only given
in one gospel than in two, in three, or in four!
I think it is important to note that John
acknowledges this:
Jesus
performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not
recorded in this book. – John 20:30
Also he writes at the end of his gospel,
Jesus did
many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose
that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be
written. – John 21:25
This is very interesting because Luke,
Acts, and Matthew are almost exactly the same length in terms of their ancient
scrolls. In particular, according to experts, Luke, Acts, and Matthew were
close to the maximum length for
scrolls, between 32 and 35 feet. In addition, publishing a scroll was a very
expensive endeavor, and so the idea of putting extra material in a Volume 2 was
not a realistic option, especially if the goal was to produce something you
could affordably make as many copies of as possible.
I would therefore argue that given these
limitations, each gospel writer had to
pick and choose their material. Given the huge number of miracles in the 4
gospels, and given what John says, I think each gospel writer was extremely
selective. Each gospel writer had a theme or purpose to what they included,
and, for example, the inclusion of the tombs opening and people rising from the
dead at the crucifixion fits directly in with Matthew’s theme and purpose but
not that of Mark, Luke, or John.
What is
each gospel writer’s purpose? Matthew begins by calling Jesus “the Messiah, the
son of David, the son of Abraham,” and it is clear he has an agenda of telling
the Jews that Jesus is their long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Mark begins by saying
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ [Messiah], the Son of God” and
so it is clear that he sees what Jesus has done to be wonderful news (this is
where we get the word “gospel” from), that He is the Messiah, and that He is
the “Son of God.” Luke is writing so that Theophilus (whether a real person or
people everywhere who love God – which is what Theophilus means) would know the
truth:
Many have
undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among
us, just
as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses
and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I
myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided
to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been
taught.
– Luke 1:1-4
And John is the most clear of all when he
says, continuing the verse we looked at earlier,
Jesus
performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not
recorded in this book. But
these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of
God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. – John 20:30-31
By the way, does the fact that each gospel writer has
an “agenda” mean that they are untrustworthy? No. Everyone has an agenda! There
is no such thing as unbiased news reporting, back then or today. The very act
of choosing what to report is an editorial process influenced by one’s agenda.
But that doesn’t make what they say false or untrustworthy! In fact, the
remarkable harmony of message and content and theological impact of the four
gospels despite their individual
agendas only adds to the believability of what they say.
One last note on this topic – as early as Irenaeus in
180 AD, people characterized these differences by analogy of saying they were
like the living creatures with four faces described in Revelation 4:7. Early
Christian art reflects these beliefs. After Irenaeus, most associated Matthew
as the man/angel, Luke as the ox, Mark as the lion, and John as the eagle (for
John’s soaring theology). Other early Christian writers who spoke of this
connection include Augustine of Hippo, Pseudo-Athanasius, and Jerome. They each
have slightly different reasons for the associations they make, but my point is
that they are all associating a four-faced creature with the four gospels, four
“faces” on the single “body of truth” of who Jesus was and what He did.
A related question to the question of
whether omission in one gospel means embellishment in another is the following:
In telling
a historical series of events, isn’t the lack of telling central things that
happened a contradiction?
The answer to this is “of course not.” We
do this all the time. If you were to tell someone how you came to become a
Christian, with a little work you could come up with a 30-second version, a
1-minute version, a 2-minute version, and so on. On multiple occasions I have
told you versions of how I came to Christ, but there are things that happened
that are important to me, even, you could say, central, that I do not normally
mention because they kind of open a can of worms that moves the focus away from
what I want to focus on. This does not mean I am untrue in the least in what I
say; it simply means I am not telling you everything.
Every historian does this.
Many so-called contradictions in the
gospels are entirely this kind of thing. Regarding the birth narratives in
Matthew and Luke, for example, we have these quotes by those hostile to the
concept of the reliability of the gospels:
“These two versions of the events cannot
be reconciled.” – Bart Ehrman, New
Statesman, 2011 Christmas issue
“Contradictions are glaring, but
consistently overlooked by the faithful.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
“[Matthew and Luke] flatly contradict
each other on the flight into Egypt.” – Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great
Matthew tells us that after the visit of
the Magi, Joseph is told in a dream to go to Egypt. What does Luke say about
this? Nothing at all! Luke tells us that they return to Nazareth, which is what
Matthew tells us they do (eventually) also. Ehrman says, “If Matthew is right
that the holy family fled to Egypt, Luke can scarcely be right that they
returned home just a month after the birth.” But where in Luke does it say they
returned home just a month later? Nowhere! What the text says is
When Joseph
and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to
Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and
the grace of God was on him. – Luke 2:39-40
To say that this passage says “when” means
“immediately when” is a severe case of reading into the text what you want it
to say so you can bash Christianity. What is really going on here is what is
called telescoping, the leaving out
of some events so you can move things along. Telescoping was a common practice
before, during, and after the time of Christ. It has to be common, because it
is impossible to just say everything! In this case it is especially obvious
that verse 40 is using telescoping in a huge way; why would one think verse 39
would be dramatically different?
Ehrman also tells us that in Matthew, “Joseph and Mary
live in Bethlehem before, during, and after the birth.” Dawkins also says that
Matthew has “Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem all along” whereas, he says, Luke
“acknowledges that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth before Jesus was born.”
But Matthew doesn’t say this! Its first mention of Bethlehem is
After Jesus
was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the
east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has
been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to
worship him.” – Matthew 2:1-2
This is in agreement
with Luke 2:6-7 which also says the baby was born in Bethlehem. Matthew
doesn’t tell about traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, but that is not a
contradiction!
I like what
Lucian wrote in the 100s AD about how to write history:
“Rapidity is always useful, especially if
there is a lot of material. It is secured not so much by words and phrases as
by the treatment of the subject. That is, you should pass quickly over the
trivial and unnecessary, and develop the significant points at adequate length.
Much must be omitted. After all, if you are giving a dinner to your friends and
everything is ready, you don’t put salt fish and porridge on the table in the
midst of cakes, poultry, entrees, wild boar, hare, and choice cuts of fish,
simply because they are ready too! You forget the cheaper articles altogether.”
– Lucian, How to Write History
Frankly, this kind of thing is kind of embarrassing
when atheists do it. Of course, “it’s all in C.S. Lewis”; here’s what he said
about this kind of thing years ago:
“These men ask me to believe they can read between the
lines of old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any
sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and
can’t see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight.” – C.S. Lewis, Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism
I also want to give a quote from Glenn Miller, from
the Christianthinktank website:
“For some
reason, these arguments don't ever seem to be satisfied. If we have N witnesses
to an event, they want N+1...And if every single writer talks about the
event in exact detail, they are accused of ‘collusion’ and ‘conspiracy’.
And if every single writer talks about the event, but uses different
vocab, style, levels of precison, of selection of details, then the
antagonists complain about ‘contradictions’ and ‘disagreements’! What's a
mother to do?!!!! (I am always amused at these ‘argument from silence’ literary
positions and the ability to spoof it... ‘Since Jesus never spoke his own name
in the Gospels, he must not have known it!’).” – Glenn Miller,
Christianthinktank.com
I realize we have just scratched the
surface of the topic of reliability of the gospels, but I hope this has been
helpful and encouraging to you. I described in the beginning of the series the
automobile analogy, how we were basically opening up the hood and seeing what it’s
got; sometimes I think we can be a little afraid to look down in there.
I don’t want you to think there are no
‘hard’ passages in the gospels at all; that isn’t true. But I want to encourage
you to not be afraid of these passages, to read in depth what people have said
about them; sometimes, they open up new possibilities, new depths of
understanding that are quite encouraging, not just with regards to the
reliability of Scripture but with regards to what’s really going on. I want to
close today by giving you one example.
A question often posed by skeptics is the
following:
How did Judas die, by hanging or by rupture?
This apparent contradiction is based on
passages from Acts and Matthew. Here are these passages:
(With
the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell
headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in
Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language
Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) – Acts 1:18-19
When Judas, who had
betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and
returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. “I
have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.” “What is that to
us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.” So Judas threw the money into
the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. – Matthew 27:3-5
The chief
priests picked up the coins and said, “It is against the law to put this into the
treasury, since it is blood money.” So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a
burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been
called the Field of Blood to this day. – Matt. 27:6-8
The
standard answer is Judas hanged himself, and then his body fell and broke open.
Here
is one possible explanation of this: Judas hanged himself on a Passover, before
a Sabbath; no Jew would likely want to take the corpse down, as touching a dead
body caused defilement, plus, it would have been work to do it on a Sabbath.
Also death by hanging was especially disgraceful, and nobody would have wanted
to deal with it, especially if it wasn’t on their own property. And so,
perhaps, over the long amount of time that followed, the branch or the rope weakened,
and down he fell.
Another
related plausible explanation is that Judas hanged himself, alone, by jumping
out of a tree with a rope around his neck. Due to the forces involved in the
jump, the tree or rope can’t support the weight, and the person falls at once;
depending on how he landed, he certainly could be ripped open in the process. I
read one commentary that said this still happens sometimes in India, where
suicide is common and the poor use this same method.
According
to websites that exist to point out discrepancies, there is a more serious
issue –
Did Judas
throw the silver away or use it to buy a field?
One
such website says that “This is as blatant as contradictions come.”
The
website tectonics.org has what I think is a good explanation of this. Here is
the order of events:
1.
Judas
returns the silver.
2.
Judas
goes to a field.
3.
Judas
hangs himself.
4.
The
corpse falls on the field.
5.
Because
the field is now defiled by a dead body through suicide, the priests buy it to
bury foreigners in it.
6.
Because
they bought it with Judas’ money, in a sense Judas “acquires the field.”
7.
Because
of all of these events, it becomes known as the Field of Blood.
The
strange part of all this is that, technically, it seems that Judas acquired the
field after he was dead! Can this be right? I think so; because, given the
timeline, it is hard to see how Judas could purchase a field so quickly, right
at the Passover. However, it is believable that the field was purchased “in
Judas’ name” later, perhaps even pre-dated; the leaders were so corrupt, it is
no stretch to think they did this, particularly since they wanted nothing to do
with this money. And then in their smug self-righteousness they could feel good
about providing this field for foreigners to be buried in without being tied to
the blood money. Do we know that this is exactly what happened? No, but it is
entirely plausible, consistent with behavior seen elsewhere in the gospels, and
therefore makes the charge “this is as blatant as contradictions come” ring
hollow.
Let
me wrap up today by encouraging you not to be afraid of apparent
contradictions. Be patient; use good internet tools, obtain good books, or just
ask someone else if there is a particular verse that makes you wonder. And
realize that with what I have done the last three weeks, it is as if I had to
do it blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back, because I did not allow
myself to resort to the reality we as believers know – that the Holy Spirit was
intimately involved with the writing and putting together of the gospels (and
indeed all of Scripture); this does not mean that the personalities and writing
styles of the gospel writers was not allowed to shine through, because that is
not how the Holy Spirit works. But the Holy Spirit did ensure that the gospels
(and indeed all of Scripture) are reliable and true and that they contain
exactly what we need to know in order to come to God and enter into a personal
relationship with Him all made possible by the willing sacrifice of Jesus on
the cross.
Quickly,
let me mention three of my favorite websites that talk in depth about the
reliability of the gospels in particular:
And, finally, I want to end with a
somewhat provocative jab at atheists. You may have heard the saying that
“religion is a crutch;” one such version is from
professional-wrestler-turned-governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura:
“Organized religion is a sham and a
crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.” – Jesse Ventura, Playboy, 1999
I would counter this with the following
quote; I think that for many atheists (including me, a long, long time ago) it
is quite true:
“[…]
Atheism [is] a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.” – Tom
Stoppard
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