Contradictions Among the Synoptics?

Historians and biographers may at times have a favorable climate

in which to do their work. They may have access to reliable information, they may be meticulous in
preserving it, and they may be people of outstanding integrity. But the proof is in the pudding. Does
what they write stand up to careful scrutiny by others in the know? Does it create a coherent narrative
internally and correspond externally to other accurate information? Does the ideological spin that
guides their process of selection and narration overly skew their stories so they cannot be trusted,
however well-meaning their intentions were? Do they just flat out contradict other historical sources?
These are the kinds of questions that must be addressed in order to move us beyond the general
considerations of chapter 1. In this chapter we will focus specifically on the charge of blatant
contradictions.

Issues Arising from Redaction Criticism One can compile massive lists, of course, of picayune differences
among Matthew, Mark, and Luke that would have bothered no one in the ancient world. As we saw in
chapter 1, the freedom to rewrite ones sources in ones own words proved pervasive in antiquity and
was even expected of an author who was creating a work that was truly his or her own. To speak of
apparent contradictions or seeming discrepancies that would have caused even a moments concern in
the ancient Mediterranean world, we have to find two statements that genuinely cannot be
simultaneously true. Even then, space prohibits us from examining every candidate for a real error or
contradiction that has ever been suggested. We must look at the most commonly suggested ones and
those that impinge on historical matters. There are numerous theological distinctives among the Gospel
writers that in no way reflect on their skills as historians. Matthew emphasizes Jesus as the Son of David,
Mark stresses that he is the Messiah and Son of God, and Luke highlights his true humanity and
compassion for outcasts.[ 162] These are complementary facets of Christs character, and hardly
contradictions. Countless similar examples could be given.[ 163] Our interest is in issues that could
reflect poorly on the Gospel writersability to depict the events they narrate with the levels of accuracy
expected in their world. If a pattern of reasonable solutions to the most blatant or striking examples of
supposed errors begins to appear, we may decide to give the authors the benefit of the doubt in the
remaining instances (an approach sometimes called a hermeneutic of consent).[ 164] If, on the other
hand, problems repeatedly seem intractable, then it may be appropriate to develop a hermeneutic of
suspicion[ 165] and place the burden of proof on the person who would defend the texts reliability at
any point. Alleged contradictions can appear in two forms. There may be places where one Gospel
seems impossible to square with another Gospel. Unless we can suggest a plausible solution, we have a
genuine problem. Perhaps one Gospels account can be vindicated but only at the expense of the other,
or vice versa. In rare instances tension may be perceived between a Gospel passage and some historical
statement elsewhere in the New Testament. Whichever situation obtains, we could then have an error
in Scripture. The second kind of contradiction involves dissonance between one of the Gospels and
some information from another ancient source outside the Bible. Here we have to assess the likelihood
of the other sources being wrong as well as analyzing the biblical account for credibility. Perhaps there
is a genuine contradiction, while it is not the Bible that has erred but the outside source. All of these
possibilities have to be taken into consideration. We spoke toward the end of chapter 1 about the
debates over harmonization and redaction criticism. Many liberal scholars reject the attempt to
harmonize two seemingly discrepant accounts as intrinsically inappropriate,[ 166] even though this is
exactly what classical historians do on a regular basis wherever there are multiple accounts or pieces of
data impinging on events from antiquity.[ 167] Critics may point to extreme examples of harmonizations
that most conservatives themselves reject.[ 168] Others claim not to reject the task intrinsically but
seem to assess every attempt by more conservative scholars to do so as artificialor forced,although
curiously they rarely give any reasons for those assessments.[ 169] So the scholar who would defend a
certain harmonization is rendered powerless to respond, not knowing the reasons the critic is
unconvinced. Some critics resort to this approach so often that it begins to appear like a substitute for
actually giving any cogent reasons for their views that could facilitate genuine conversation.[ 170] In
other words, one begins to suspect they have no good reasons for their viewpoint but have discovered
they can effectively dismiss othersarguments in this fashion, at least among readers already
sympathetic to their perspectives! On the other hand, many conservatives have been overly suspicious
of redaction criticism. Because it was birthed in German, liberal, higher-critical circles and because many
of its most well-known uses have considerably impugned the accuracy of Scripture,[ 171] a handful of
evangelicals would throw the baby out with the bathwater.[ 172] Careful students of the Gospels,
however, have recognized differences in theological emphases from one Gospel to the next ever since
the second century.[ 173] If modern redaction critics have often overemphasized the diversity among
the Gospels, that does not change the fact that there is diversity, including theological diversity, which
must be taken into account.[ 174] In fact, it is often possible to harmonize two divergent accounts so
that there are no necessary contradictions between them but still be puzzled as to why the divergence
exists. In many cases, as we will see, redaction criticism provides the answer. The unique way one or
both writers narrate their accounts serves to highlight one of their consistent theological distinctives.
Contrary to many on both ends of the theological spectrum, redaction criticism and harmonization need
not be mutually exclusive methods but can work hand in hand to give the best and fullest explanation of
various Gospel parallels, as we will see in several examples below. Almost thirty years ago, in my first
published book, I included a chapter that illustrated what at that time seemed to me to be a
representative cross-section of the most famous apparent contradictions among the Synoptic Gospels,
which I arranged topically according to the kinds of problems that were raised.[ 175] Issues involving
discrepancies with noncanonical literature were scattered elsewhere in the book. In my revised edition,
twenty years later, I thoroughly updated my discussions but did not change my selection of
examples.[ 176] Here I am choosing primarily to proceed chronologically through the life of Christ,
according to the main divisions of a standard synopsis of the four Gospels, lumping all the different kinds
of problems together. This will avoid needless repetition and also enable us to determine if clusters of
problems tend to be concentrated in certain areas of Christs ministry. Many of the passages treated will
be the same as before, but occasionally my preferred solutions have changed, and often the scholarly
support for my positions has grown so I cite different and more recent studies. Space prevents us from
treating as many problems as in my earlier book, but we will address the hardest ones and allude to
several others more briefly. The ones I allude to briefly I will place at the end of the subsection in which I
discuss more fully their closest analogues. The Infancy Narratives Genealogies Right at the outset of
Matthews Gospel, we encounter a complicated and puzzling cluster of questions surrounding the
genealogies of Jesus. Matthew starts with Abraham and moves forward selectively when compared with
the corresponding Old Testament genealogies (Matt 1: 217). Luke begins with Jesus and goes backward
all the way to Adam, who is then called the son of God (Luke 3: 2338). Language of begetting(or
being the father or son of someone) could often refer to being an ancestor or descendant, so gaps in
genealogies prove no problem.[ 177] Matthew, as the most Jewish of the Synoptics, addressing the most
Jewish-Christian audience, understandably stresses Jesus as Son ofarranges his genealogy in three
groups of fourteen (sometimes counting inclusively and sometimes exclusively), with David as the
fourteenth name, almost certainly because of the numerical value of the consonants in Davids name,
which added up to fourteen. Gematria, a Hebrew practice of totaling the numbers to which the letters
of a word corresponded (because Hebrew did not have separate symbols for numerals), was a common
device among the rabbis, used in this case to highlight the role of David in Jesuss genealogy.[ 178] There
are also variant spellings in Greek transliteration of some of the Hebrew names and some puzzling
textual variants here and there. But the only really difficult issue is the completely different list of names
in the two genealogies in between David and Jesus. Matthews version, going through Solomon and the
kings who succeeded him, would appear to be the legal or royal line of descent,[ 179] even though from
the deportation to Babylon onward, with the exception of Zerubbabel, the relevant men did not actually
reign in Israel. But we know absolutely nothing about the people on Lukes list during this time period
Heli, Matthat, Levi, Melchi, Jannai, and so on (Luke 3: 2324). From the earliest days in church history,
two main suggestions have been offered. One is that Mary was also of Davidic descent, given that Jews
tended to marry within tribal lineage, so that Heli was Josephs father-in-law.[ 180] After all, the Greek
merely reads, Joseph, of Heli, of Matthat, of Levi, and so forth. Referring to Joseph, Jesuss adoptive
father, would still carry more weight in a patriarchal world, even if the lineage biologically passed
through Mary. The second option is that levirate marriages at one or more points in Josephs biological
ancestry accounted for the divergence.[ 181] This was the practice whereby a man died without children
so his widow remarried one of his brothers in hopes of raising up an heir for her first husband (Deut 25:
56). This could lead the royal line, which would follow other rules for the nearest male kin, to diverge
from the biological/ inheritance line. In my earlier writings, I leaned in the direction of the latter
solution; but the more I reflect on the issue, the more I am inclined today to adopt the former. The
Palestinian Talmud refers to the father of Mary as Eli (j. Sanh. 23c and j. Hag. 77d), while apocryphal
Christian traditions call him Joachim (Protev. Jas.). But Joachim is a Hebrew variation of Eliakim (with Joa
and Eli both coming from names for God), from which Heli could have been derived.[ 182] At any rate
we know that ancient Israelites kept written records and oral traditions about their ancestries in
meticulous detail,[ 183] so it is not difficult to imagine Jesuss genealogies being preserved. It is hard to
envision Luke, or the tradition he inherited, just making up names no one had ever heard of, especially
when the Old Testament already gave a list of names to adopt (as Matthew did) down through at least
the mid-fifth century BC. For a similar example of how diverse names may have evolved from one
original, see Mark 8: 10 and Matthew 15: 39. Matthews Magadan may well be a variant form of
Magdala, a well-known town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Magdala comes from the
Aramaic migdal nunya, meaning fish tower.This could easily have been shortened to dal nunya and
then Grecized to Dalmanutha.[ 184] On the other hand, one or both names may just have referred to
sites along the shore near one another. Archeologists have recently discovered a biblical-era town right
next door to Magdala, which could be an excellent candidate for Dalmanutha.[ 185]