In an earlier blog entry, “Differences in the Gospels,” I examined some supposed contradictions in the Gospels. I argued that these are not contradictions, but differences in what and how each author chose to portray the events in question, and that the only reason we find these texts problematic is because we fail to understand how ancient writers wrote. Unlike modern folks, they were not concerned with the minutiae. They were concerned with the big picture: the gist. They even felt free to report the historical facts in such a way so as to fit their literary purpose.
I gave a couple of examples to illustrate my point. In one place, John says Jesus was baptizing in Judea. A little later, however, he says it was Jesus’ disciples who were doing the baptizing, not Jesus Himself. Since both statements were penned by the same author, in the same work, in close proximity, it is clear that there is no contradiction here (interestingly, if they appeared in different gospels skeptics would cite this as a contradiction). This demonstrates for us the flexibility with which the Biblical authors reported historical events. John felt free to say Jesus was baptizing in one place, even though He knew it was not Jesus Himself who was doing so. He was not lying; he was not trying to deceive; he was not mistaken. Both reports were true, even though one was more specific than the other. For John, since Jesus’ disciples were baptizing on His behalf, it was entirely legitimate to say Jesus was baptizing (we might call this “projection”). The problem is not with John, but modern readers who demand that ancient writers conform to the standards common to modern writing.
I also gave the example of John’s account of the discovery of the empty tomb. John only mentions Mary Magdalene as a witness to Jesus’ resurrection (John 20:1), while the Synoptics report a plurality of women. Some point to this as a contradiction, and yet in John 20:2 John records Mary as saying to the apostles, “We do not know where they have laid him.” While John only names Mary as a witness, he is clearly aware of the fact that there were more present than just Mary.
I have stumbled on a third example I would like to bring to your attention as well. According to Luke, when the women returned from Jesus’ tomb to report it empty, Peter ran to the tomb to investigate it (Luke 24:12). According to John, however, Peter and the beloved disciple both ran to investigate the tomb (John 20:3). Many skeptics point to this as a contradiction. Of course, it is obviously not a contradiction. There is nothing contradictory about Luke choosing to report only Peter’s presence, and John choosing to report Peter and the beloved disciple’s presence. One is simply an expanded, more detailed account.
What I find interesting, however, is that upon closer inspection of Luke’s gospel, it becomes clear that Luke is fully aware that Peter was not the only one who ran to Jesus’ tomb. In Luke 24:24, Luke reports the two disciples on the road to Emmaus as saying to Jesus, “And some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see” (NASB). While Luke knew Peter did not go to the tomb alone, he chose only to report Peter’s involvement for His own literary purposes.
This is an example of telescoping, in which an author focuses in on certain details of the story while leaving out others. This was common for historical writers. We do ourselves a disservice if we fail to understand this, and skeptics demonstrate their ignorance of ancient writing when they use examples like this to try to undermine the reliability of the Bible. We need to guard against the temptation to impose our modern standards of historiography on ancient writers. They were not entirely concerned about quoting someone word-for-word, but sense-for-sense. They were not always concerned with reporting events in sequence, but felt free to mix them up to fit their literary purpose. They took liberties with the facts that we might not take today, but such liberties were not due to ignorance, or motivated by an intent to deceive. For them, telescoping, generalizing, extrapolating, and projecting were par for the historical and literary course. They should not be faulted for not being 21st century Westerners. And besides, who says our literary and historiographical and literary standards are the best? Something to think about.
July 25, 2008 at 6:38 am
Ye do err in that ye know not the scriptures.
You wrote: “A little later, however, he says it was Jesus’ disciples who were doing the baptizing, not Jesus Himself. Since both statements were penned by the same author, in the same work, in close proximity, it is clear that there is no contradiction here (interestingly, if they appeared in different gospels skeptics would cite this as a contradiction).” – and all of this is correct.
However based on the foregoing example you conclude that: “This demonstrates for us the flexibility with which the Biblical authors reported historical events.” But this is a false conclusion that derives from a failure to recognize the concept of AGENT (which is used in scripture just as it is used by us today).
For example, scripture repeatedly reports that “Solomon made” this-or-that for the temple. But all of those things that are made were “made” by the various craftsmen and artisans UNDER THE OVERSIGHT OF Solomon — and it is false to conclude that because these things were not fashioned by his own hands we should conclude that the dual attribution for these things suggests an artistic license on the part of the writer. And the same sort-of thing could be shown MANY times over in scripture. If a Secret Service Agent flashed his badge and said The President wants you to do ‘x’, you would NOT be lying (or taking artistic license with historical facts) if you subsequently said to someone “the President has asked me to do ‘x'” even though you never talked to/spoke with/met the President. You would simply be speaking as people have always done, recognizing the AUTHORITY that one is under and recognizing that in that capacity as an agent of that authority it is perfectly legitimate (i.e. accurate) to attribute the actions of the one under authority to the authority itself. If a messenger OF the King says “the King says…” one later reporting on that event could correctly report that incident as EITHER “the King said…” or “the messenger said”.
Also, in spite of clear Biblical evidence to the contrary, you blindly repeat the unbiblical man-made tradition that claims that the unnamed “other disciple whom Jesus loved” was John. One should not be presenting an idea AS IF IT WERE BIBLICAL if they cannot cite a single verse that would justify teaching that idea. But here you do just that.
The fact is that those who promote this erroneous tradition of men use circular reasoning to sell the idea that John is referred to in passages that never mention him but that rather talk about the anonymous author of the fourth gospel. Defenders of this tradition can choose to ignore the facts stated in the plain text of scripture if they prefer to quote the words of men who quote other men who quote other men but one thing that neither they nor their non-Bible sources cannot do is cite even a single verse that would justify this idea. No one ever has — not those who originated this unbiblical idea and not those who repeat their error unto this day.
The plain text of scriptures proves WHOEVER this author was he could not have been the Apostle John, so those who love the truth will reject the John tradition because it does not hold up to Biblical scrutiny.
The Bible says what it says. So no matter how many men one can find parroting the ideas of men found in non-Bible sources the fact is the Biblical evidence proves that John was not the “other disciple whom Jesus loved” (the anonymous author of the fourth gospel).
“It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man”.
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July 25, 2008 at 5:25 pm
BK,
I don’t mind being challenged. I actually enjoy it to be honest with you. But please don’t start off a response like you did, at least on my blog. It’s patronizing, and it’s annoying. Just state your disagreement, and your reasons, and hope for a productive conversation to ensue. Being told how ignorant I am isn’t productive.
As for John’s recounting of who baptized the disciples, I don’t think we’re saying two different things. My explanation also involves the concept of authority. I wrote, “For John, since Jesus’ disciples were baptizing on His behalf, it was entirely legitimate to say Jesus was baptizing….”
My point was not that there is no explanation. I provided one. My point was that if one of the two passages in John appeared in a different Gospel, critics would cite it as a contradiction. They cannot do so since both appear in the same book, however. Furthermore, this phenomenon shows us that the Gospel writers were not always being technical like we often require of historical reporting today (granted some exceptions), and skeptics need to read the Bible according to the literary conventions of their day, not our day.
As for your comparison to Solomon, there is a vast difference between the two. No one would read “Solomon made the temple” and think that Solomon himself was involved in the construction. Our background knowledge, and the context would make it clear that Solomon was involved in commissioning the building, but not doing the building. In the case of what John said about Jesus, however, nothing in the context would suggest that Jesus Himself was not the one doing the actual baptizing. If John had not later clarified his statement, everyone would justifiably conclude that Jesus was doing the dunking.
As for who wrote the Gospel of John, that is a separate issue. The purpose of my post was not to argue for John the Apostle as the author (it was clearly tangental to my point), so to fault me for not doing so is uncharitable–dare I say childish.
What I find interesting is that you spent four paragraphs talking about the authorship of John’s gospel, and yet did not give one shred of evidence in favor of your many assertions and bold claims about the ignorance of those who hold to the traditional view, as to why John the Apostle was not the author, or any evidence as to who might have been.
While I shouldn’t even bother, here is the internal evidence suggesting that John the Apostle is the author of the gospel that came to bear his name:
1. The author identifies himself as the one whom Jesus loved (John 21:20-24). Whoever he is, he was obviously one of the 12 apostles because he was at the Last Supper (John 13:21-25), which was only attended by the Twelve.
2. Since he was the one reclining against Jesus’ breast, he must be in the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. That inner circle is always identified as Peter, James, and John. Since Peter is named in the Gospel of John, and James was already martyred by the time this book was written, it must have been John who was leaning up against Jesus’ breast, and who wrote the gospel.
3. John is never mentioned by name in the Gospel of John. Considering the fact that he was in the inner circle, that is quite strange that he is not mentioned…unless, of course, he is spoken of by a different name: “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
Jason
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July 29, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I agree with Jason. The authors of the NT took liberties with the historical record in order to tell their truths. The historicity of the resurrection, the virgin birth and the like are not important. What matters are the moral and historical truths surrounding Jesus, not the historical accuracy.
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July 29, 2008 at 4:13 pm
BK, you are correct that the Gospel of John was not written by John. One commentator once observed that the only thing we know for certain about the authorship of the gospels is that they were not written by the persons whose names they bear.
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July 29, 2008 at 4:17 pm
John is never mentioned by name in the Gospel of John. Considering the fact that he was in the inner circle, that is quite strange that he is not mentioned…unless, of course, he is spoken of by a different name: “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
That’s a good point. Some believe that the use of this term is a hint of a homosexual relationship between the two. See this site for example:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jegay.htm
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August 1, 2008 at 12:15 am
Arthur,
We are not in agreement. There is a big difference between taking the liberty with minutiae for literary purposes (a practice common to historians of the day), and thinking the apostles invented history to convey spiritual truths.
As for who authored the Gospels, it is true that they were written anonymously; i.e. no titles were originally attached to them (as was the case with many ancient works, such as Tacitus’ Annals). But that is not to say there is no good reason to think the traditional ascriptions are wrong. Such skepticism is unwarranted, driven more by ideological commitments than the actual evidence. Consider the following:
1. The traditional ascriptions are unlikely to have been invented, particularly for Mark and Luke. Neither of them were apostles. Luke was an obscure companion of Paul, and a Gentile to boot. As for Mark, not only was he not well-known, but he had negative testimony concerning him in Acts. These are not the names you would expect the church to ascribe these authoritative works if they were inventing the authors, rather than recording early, authoritative tradition.
2. No extant manuscript lacks its canonical title, or attributes the work to another as we would expect for an anonymous work, or if authorial attributions were late fabrications.
3. No church father records competing authorial traditions, which we would expect if the titles were not added very early on, or if there was not an authoritative stream of tradition ascribing authorship to the four evangelists. It is too far fetched to suggest the Gospels circulated anonymously for 60 years before someone finally attached the current names to them, and that this person was able to get everyone across the Empire to accept those names, and add them to their copies of Gospel manuscripts.
4. There is early extra-biblical testimony concerning the authors of the canonical gospels. In about AD 125 Papias affirmed that Mark wrote the gospel that bears his name based on Peter’s eyewitness testimony, and affirmed Matthean authorship. In about AD 160 Justin Martyr, in Dialogue with Trypho 106.3, referred to a passage in Mark as the “memoir of Peter.” In AD 180 Irenaeus writes in Against Heresies 3.3.4:
“Matthew published his own Gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter’s preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his Gospel while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.”
5. As for the Gospel of John in particular, as I noted in my previous response, the author presents himself as one of the 12, and as being in the inner circle of apostles. Furthermore, John, as prominent as he is in the other gospels, is never even mentioned in the Gospel of John. This makes sense if the author is John, the beloved disciple. The internal evidence is pretty clear that either John wrote it, or someone pretending to be John wrote it (pseudononymous). The latter is unlikely because pseudononymous works were rather rare in the first century, and we know John was written in the late first century. Furthermore, given the fact that the author clearly intended to portray himself as John, if John did not write it, why is there no record of him repudiating this gospel as a forgery, given the fact that he would have still been alive when it was written and began circulating?
As for the idea that Jesus and John were lovers, this is ludicrous. The “evidence” garnered at the link you cited is extremely weak. Even Martti Nissinen (Finnish OT scholar), who wrote a book defending homosexuality from Scripture, admits that the picture of the beloved disciple and Jesus in the Gospel of John is no example of homoeroticism: “Clearly . . . the favorite disciple shows special status. . . . Nevertheless, the homoerotic or pederastic dimension of their relationship could be argued only in a strained way from very limited material. . . . The custom of a student resting against his teacher’s chest manifests cultural conventions rather than homoeroticism. . . . Even where the teacher and the student are of different sexes, an erotic relationship is hardly at stake.” (Homoeroticism in the Biblical World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 122)
See Robert Gagnon’s article on this subject for a thoroughgoing refutation of this idea: http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/HomosexBelovedDisciple.pdf
Jason
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August 6, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Good blogging Jason! I think you’re on the money. Many of the so-called contradictions in Scripture are quite easily explained and understood after a little study and careful reading. Most folks don’t understand what a contradiction actually is and I think you make a good observation that the Bible is too-often held to improper standards set by modern literary and historiography. There is a great difference between something falling short of modern standards and something being true/false or contradictory.
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August 7, 2008 at 11:06 am
Chad,
You are right to say that too many people fail to understand what a contradiction is. One gospel writer reporting one angel at the tomb, and another gospel writer reporting two angels at the tomb, for example, is not a contradiction. It is a difference, and a difference that is easily explained.
Critics are being overly critical, and disingenuous in the process. One principle of criticism is that it should be charitable; i.e. give him/it the benefit of the doubt. The text should be interpreted in the best possible light, not the worst. Only when it is interpreted in the best possible light, and found to be contradictory, should one claim a genuine contradiction exists.
Jason
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