Chapter Eight

A word in your shell like …

• Is there evidence that the original stories and teachings of Jesus were altered before the NT writers received them?

A common objection to the idea that the NT is reliable evidence is that fact that it comes from an age where the majority of people were illiterate, and that therefore the original transmission of the story of Jesus, before the writing of gospels, relied to a large extent on being passed on by word of mouth, and upon the uncertainties of human memory. This means, some claim, that the gospels cannot be trusted as reliable sources, since the story of Jesus would inevitably have been altered beyond recognition by the time Matthew, Mark and Luke and John came to write it down.

People often compare this to the party game of ‘Chinese Whispers’. In the US the game is called ‘Telephone’. Incidentally, why are the whispers Chinese? Would the game be different if they were Italian?  In the game, the first player is given a piece of paper with a message written on it. They then whisper what is written on the paper to the second player, making sure that the third player cannot hear. Then the second player reports what the first said to the third, similarly making sure that the fourth player does not hear what they say; and so it continues. The game finishes when the final player reports what he or she has heard, and then the original message on the piece of paper is read out, usually with a satisfying comic effect, since, even if none of the players has cheated and deliberately made stuff up, the two versions can be very different.

Some people say the story of Jesus was originally told in the same way. One person told it to another, who told it to another, and so on. Some people cheated and made stuff up. Eventually the story became so changed that, by the time the gospels were written down, it bore no resemblance to the original; and so, we can’t trust the gospels to tell us the story of Jesus, QED, PDQ.

For example, biblical scholar and well-known sceptic of traditional Christianity, Bart Ehrman states:

What do you suppose happened to the stories over the years, as they were told and retold, not as disinterested news stories reported by eye witnesses but as propaganda meant to convert people to faith, told by people who had themselves heard them fifth - or sixth - or nineteenth hand? Did you or your kids ever play the telephone game at a birthday party? (Ehrman, ‘Jesus int.’ 146-147)

I should explain that supporters of this ‘Chinese Whispers’ theory do not accept the traditional view of how the gospels were written. If the traditional view is correct, or even close to being correct, the Chinese Whispers theory doesn’t make much sense. According to the theory’s supporters, Matthew the tax collector, one of the twelve disciples, is not the man behind the gospel of Matthew; the author of Mark was not Mark the interpreter of Peter; Luke’s gospel was not written by Luke the companion of Paul, and the ‘beloved disciple’ is not the man behind John’s gospel. They maintain that the apostles did not play the leading role in the early church, or act as the guardians of the stories about Jesus, contrary to the traditional view; or if they did, then they did a very poor job of preserving the message. They maintain that the stories and teachings of Jesus were spread in a haphazard way, and that the gospels were written by persons unknown who never met Jesus or any of the apostles, who received the information about Jesus in the way described in the quote above. Oh yes, and the Acts of the Apostles was not written by Luke either, but by someone who never met St Paul who for some unknown reason decided to just make it all up. The early church, so they say, then made up the traditional story of how the gospels and Acts were written in order to make their views about Jesus, i.e. the ones found the NT books, seem more credible; although quite how they came to hold those views in the first place is left unexplained. Okay, I’m generalising. In particular, just to make it clear, I am not saying that Bart Ehrman holds this precise view. I believe, though, that this a fair description of a view held by many. I have heard and read variations on it enough times.

What supporters of the Chinese Whispers theory are trying to do here, in effect, is to come up with a ‘scientific’ model to explain how the NT was first written and then, after that, preserved; or not preserved, as the case may be. The mechanism which explains the motions of the planets around the sun in ellipses is Newton’s Law of Gravitation; the mechanism which explains evolution, plausibly, is natural selection; the mechanism which explains the writing and preservation of the NT in this ‘scientific’ model is Chinese Whispers. The situation in the early church, however, didn’t remotely resemble the game of Chinese Whispers. The game depends critically on the players not being able to hear anyone except the previous player. If the players do not whisper quietly enough, the Chinese Whispers effect is washed out, and the game is ruined.

In the quote above, Ehrman claims that the people telling the story of Jesus were not eye witnesses of the events they describe (Ehrman, 146). Seriously? Surely some of them must have been. What on earth does Ehrman ‘suppose happened to’ the apostles and the many other eyewitnesses that must have seen and heard Jesus? Does he think that they rode off into the sunset and took no further part in proceedings? I don’t think he does think that, but the Chinese Whispers model ignores the role of the eyewitnesses. The chance that the eyewitnesses simply disappeared, or stopped talking altogether, are zero; but the Chinese Whispers theory requires it to be so.

During the period leading up the writing of the gospels, eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus life were still alive. As well as some of the apostles and other disciples of Jesus there were many others, as indeed St Peter points out in Acts (2:22). It is a mistake to imagine that there were almost no old people in the first century just because the average lifetime was much lower then than it is in developed countries now. That’s not how averages work. Remember that the average tells us nothing about the individual and the individual nothing about the average. Sorry, I’ve slipped back into maths teacher mode. You’ll have to bear with me. There were plenty of old people around in the first century, just proportionately fewer than there are today.

The majority of the apostles did not live long lives, but some of them did. A person who was twenty at the time of Jesus ministry would have been between forty and fifty whilst Paul was writing most of his letters in the AD50s. These preserve important traditions about Jesus which are clearly much earlier that the letters themselves. If you take the time of the writing of Mark’s gospel to be about AD65, such a person would still have been significantly younger than that I am now, and I don’t even qualify for a free bus pass!

If they lived until ninety, they would have made it into the next century. Then there are disciples of the apostles to consider. If you were a protégé of Paul of Peter and twenty years old in AD50, Timothy or Titus or Phoebe perhaps, then at the turn of the century you would still be a callow youth of a mere seventy years. The hearers of Peter and Paul would be much more numerous than their close disciples. There were plenty of people around to sabotage the Chinese Whispers game.

In the letter to the Galatians, which even the most sceptical of scholars accept as genuine, Paul says, ^‘Then after three years [after his conversion] I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But of the other apostles I saw no one except James, the Lord’s brother’ (Gal 1:18-19). What did Paul, Peter and James talk about? As C.H. Dodd put it, ‘we may presume that they did not spend all that time the discussing the weather’. Paul already knew about the story and teaching of Jesus, but his two weeks with Peter and James will have confirmed what he already knew and no doubt taught him many other details. In the churches Paul founded, such as the ones in Galatia to whom the letter is addressed, he was the one that taught about Jesus. He also visited and wrote letters churches founded by others, most notably the churches in Rome itself. He does not quote the gospels in his letters, since they were written later, but his teaching closely resembles that of Jesus in the gospels, as does that of letter of James. In Galatians, Paul says that, at a later date, he met with Peter, James and John and others, once again at Jerusalem, to confirm that they were in agreement with what he was doing and saying. Peter went to Antioch later and met Paul there, where they had a bit of a contretemps, but more on that later (Gal 2:1-14). Here is clear evidence that the apostles were considered the authority for teaching about Jesus in the early church, and that the chain of transmission of the stories was very short. Christians did not receive the stories from Paul or Peter 19^th hand. Is there any evidence that the stories of Jesus were spread in the way that Ehrman describes above? None, as far as I can see. Certainly, there isn’t direct written evidence as there is for the importance of the role of eyewitnesses.

Galatians also confirms the centrality of the Jerusalem church in the early period, the place where the most important events of Jesus life took place, and where many eyewitnesses were based. No doubt there were informal conversations and rumours no doubt circulated, but there is no reason to think that these were the principal way in which the stories spread.

This is a really serious problem for the Chinese Whispers theory. The game simply doesn’t work if player one goes around talking to the other players about the original message. The chances that the original eye witnesses were highly valued by the early church, and their words carefully listened to are somewhere between very high and certain. The idea that they were simply ignored just isn’t plausible (Blomberg, p53). We have direct evidence that they were, in fact, highly valued, and not just from Galatians.

A more representative model would be a group of twelve players, passing the message on to second group of twelve, who are allowed to talk to each other, who then pass the message on to third group of twelve, who are also allowed to talk to each other, and so on. The first twelve can then visit the fourth group of twelve, to find out how they are getting on, check how accurately they have preserved the message, and correct any mistakes. This isn’t a very accurate model of the early apostolic church either - the traditional one described earlier is a much better one - but it’s enough to illustrate that the Chinese Whispers model is a complete non-starter. It’s not just simplistic, it’s just wrong.

As a matter of fact, the Chinese whispers theory can be directly tested. You can’t directly check the stories the gospels tell about Jesus, but there is information in the gospels that can be directly checked through other ancient documents, through archaeology, and indeed geography: the names of places, towns and cities and also small villages; bodies of water, local routes, people’s names, the names of local officials and rulers, the layout of cities and buildings, local flora, unusual local customs and so on. The gospels contain accurate and detailed information about all these matters (Williams, p52-86). According to the Chinese Whispers theory, this is impossible. Even if this information had been correct when the stories were originally told, according to Chinese whispers, it would have become hopelessly corrupted by the time it reached the gospel writers. Since much of this local knowledge, this would be especially so when the stories were told in places far away from the place where the events happened. However, this information is correct, and Chinese whispers cannot account for that fact.

 

The Oral Tradition Model

The ‘oral tradition’ model of how the story of Jesus was passed on is a vast improvement on Chinese Whispers model, although it still has limitations.

Oral tradition is the way that preliterate and semi-literate societies preserve and pass down their culture from one generation to the next though the spoken word, without relying on a writing system. Oral traditions can take various forms, such as folktales, ballads, chants, prose, and poetry which can be ‘performed’ in both formal and informal settings. Oral traditions also exist in advanced societies. The singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ at the cutting of the birthday cake is an example in ours. People are not taught the song at school, neither do they read it in a book. No organisation exists to promote the singing of Happy Birthday. It’s an oral tradition which is passed down through the generations. Everyone learns the words and the tune by listening to it being performed and trying it for themselves, gingerly to begin with, and then with confidence once they know it. Although the song has been sung for 120 years, not one single word of it has been altered over that time. Satirical versions of it, sung by horrid little boys, do not threaten the integrity of the tradition.

The transmission of the story of Jesus in the early church before the gospels were written does not really constitute an oral tradition as that term would be usually understood, since it took place over less than a lifetime, albeit a rather long lifetime. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently similar to an oral tradition to make it worthwhile to note how oral traditions work/worked in societies where most people are/were illiterate. In particular, these show that a tradition that relies on ‘being passed on by word of mouth and upon the uncertainties of human memory’ can be extremely reliable, accurately preserving proverbs, stories, riddles, poetry, parables, historical accounts of important figures in the history of a community, and so on, over very long periods of time.

The New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey published an important study in 1991 based on 30 years of observations of Middle Eastern village life which is discussed by Richard Bauckham (Bauckham, 252-263). Anthropologists have extensively studied oral traditions all over the world, but Bailey applied his study to understanding the way in which the gospels were written. He identifies three types of oral tradition: informal uncontrolled, informal controlled and formal controlled. Bailey calls the first type ‘rumour transmission’. He gives, as an example, the story of three people killed in Beirut, by a random shell, whilst waiting in a bread line in front of a bakery, which turned quickly into the news that 300 people had been massacred in cold blood. There were many examples of such rumour transmission. I experienced the same thing, albeit much less dramatically, in a well known seaside town where I was the parish priest. The information that someone had mild cold, by the time it reached me, would often have been transformed into the news that, sadly, they had passed on. Rumours of deaths were often exaggerated, and I found it was sensible to investigate them before contacting the undertakers. ‘This kind of transmission is what modern western people often envisage when they assume that oral tradition must be unreliable’ (Bauckham, 253).

In contrast to ‘rumour transmission’, in a formal, controlled tradition, there are clearly defined teachers, and clearly defined students. The In 1961 Swedish scholar Birger Gerhardson conducted a major study of teaching methods used by Jewish rabbis around the time of Jesus, and he argued that early Christianity must have adopted the same methods and practices. Jesus was a rabbi, albeit a highly unusual one. ‘The disciples of rabbis were expected to memorise their masters’ teaching, and importance was attached to preserving the exact words. Mnemonic techniques and other controls were used to minimise deviation from the version learned.’ An example from our own culture of a formal controlled tradition would be the following:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November,

All the rest have thirty-one,

Save February alone, which has twenty-eight days clear,

And twenty-nine in each leap year.

That poem is hundreds of years old. It was taught to me by my teacher, Mr Lewis, at primary school. It exists in slightly different forms, for example September and November are sometimes interchanged, but if I met a fellow pupil of Mr Lewis that I have not seen after more than 50 years, I am confident that they could also recite the poem; and every word would be the same. Thanks, Mr Lewis!

As an example of informal oral tradition, Bailey describes a type of village meeting called a haflat samar. Stories are told, and poems performed.  If in a poem or proverb, a speaker gets a single word wrong, the congregation will correct him. Some flexibility is allowed in the telling of stories, but if the storyteller attempts to change the essence of the story, that will ‘trigger the community rejection mechanism’.

The situation in the early church was not precisely like any of the examples given by Bailey. For a start, the ancient Roman world was certainly not a preliterate society, and the transmission of the Jesus story before the gospels clearly did involve the written as well as the spoken word (Luke 1:1). The stories were not passed down from one generation to another: the gospels were completed within the lifetime of the apostles and well within the lifetime of their disciples as we have noted.

If the traditional view of how Mark and Matthew were produced is correct, and if we take Luke and John at their word about how their gospels were written, then we need to account for this too. The beloved disciple, the man behind John’s gospel, was no doubt influenced by stories told by others over the years, his own reflections and experiences, and those of the communities of which he was a part; but it is at root, according to its author, the testimony of one person, not a tradition. ‘The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe’ (John 19:35). The others did not receive their information through a long chain of transmission; the chain was perhaps two or three people long, definitely not 19 people long! Furthermore, they were using multiple sources, some oral, some written.  Further-furthermore, their gospels were chosen after they were written by the early apostolic church as representing the authentic apostolic tradition. Notwithstanding all of that however, oral transmission of the stories was clearly a very important part of the process, so the comparison with oral tradition is a useful one.

If you compare the gospels, especially the three synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke, but by no means excluding John, you can see that indeed there is flexibility in the way the stories are told, whilst the essence of the story kept consistent, so in this respect at least, they are not unlike the haflat samar. The take away from Bailey’s study is that the key to a stable, reliable tradition, oral or written, and the key to excluding ‘rumour transmission’ is control. That control can be formal or informal. In the early church, according to the NT, the control was exercised ultimately by the apostles, the original eye witnesses, and by the teachers they appointed in the churches that they founded (1 Cor 12:27-30, Acts 6:1-6, Acts 15:22-35; Acts 16:4). You would not expect the communities they started to be places where the story was altered. Rather you would expect them have acted to preserve the story through their ‘community rejection mechanism’.

 

The Titanic Effect

Some might point out that, irrespective of the credibility or otherwise of the Chinese Whispers theory, the NT story ultimately relies on eye witness testimony, and that eye witness testimony, especially if it is passed on by word of mouth, or a lengthy period of time has elapsed, is not always reliable. So how much can we rely on eye witness testimony?

Ancient historians considered eye witness testimony to be very important. Richard Bauckham writes:

The gospels, though in some ways a very distinctive form of historiography, share broadly the attitude to eyewitness testimony that was common amongst historians in the Graeco-Roman period. These historians valued above all reports of first-hand experience of the event they recounted. Best of all was for the historian to have been himself a participant in the events. Failing that they sought informants who could speak from first-hand knowledge and whom they could interview. This at least was best practice, represented and theorised by such generally admired historians as Thucydides and Polybius … We should not suppose that the historian relied uncritically on testimony. Polybius for example described the historians task as: ‘to believe those worthy of belief and to be a good critic of those reports that reach him’ (Bauckham, 479-480).

Eyewitness testimony and memory has been extensively studied, and its strengths and limitations identified (Bauckham, 310-357). You will be unsurprised to learn that studies show that eye witness memories can be inaccurate, especially in details, and that they can also be false, albeit that false memories tend to be jumbled up combinations of true memories. Memories can also be remarkably accurate even over very long periods of time; but why are some memories more reliable than others? Research helps us to identify which memories are likely to be the most reliable. People are most like to remember events that are unusual, surprising, events that are significant to them, and events that they frequently recall, for example by telling the story of them to others. These findings are probably what you would expect, but is it useful to have common sense confirmed by scientific research. Bauckham summarises:

The eye witnesses who remembered the events of the history of Jesus were remembering inherently very memorable events, unusual events which would have impressed themselves upon the memory, events of key significance for those who remembered them, land mark or life changing events in many cases, and their memories would have been reinforced and stabilised by frequent rehearsal beginning soon after the event … We may conclude that the memories of eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus score highly by the criteria for likely reliability that have been established by the psychological study of recollective memory. (Bauckham, p346)

This can be illustrated by what you might call the Titanic effect. Eye witness account of events can vary, especially in details. In fact, if a jury hears two different witnesses at a trial who give accounts that are a little too similar, they might suspect collusion! Eyewitness accounts of the sinking of the Titanic disagree in details (Shea, ‘Discrepancies in the Gospels’). Mostly the accounts are just different, not contradictory, mentioning some things and not others. The only way in which the accounts could be exactly the same would be if the witnesses had spoken to each other about their experiences. Independent accounts will always be different. There are also contradictions and discrepancies naturally. However, there was one thing everybody agreed about: the Titanic sank! There’s a reason the famous 1958 film version of the story is called ‘A Night to Remember’. Nobody forgot that part. If you have several eyewitness accounts, the true sequence of events can be confidently deduced by comparing what they say, in spite of any variations or contradictions that they might have.

There were many different eyewitnesses to the history of Jesus who shared and compared their stories increasing the reliability of people’s memories. So …

• Is there evidence that the original stories and teachings of Jesus were altered before the NT writers received them?

There is no good reason to think that the NT writers could not have, in principle at least, obtained and received accurate and reliable information about the life and teaching of Jesus, either directly from eyewitnesses or from oral and written ‘traditions’ which originated with eye witnesses.

Some might read that comment and think it somewhat lacking in ambition! Surely, we want positive reasons for supposing that they did in fact receive accurate and reliable information, not merely that they could have. Indeed, we do; and we’ll come to that. But we first needed to challenge the oft made claim that the gospels and letters of the NT cannot possibly contain reliable information about Jesus. They can. We shall now proceed to show that there is good reason to believe that they do.

• Is there evidence that the NT writers allowed the stories and teaching of Jesus they received to be altered by others

This question is easier to answer, since we have clear written evidence. There were attempts to change the story but these were firmly resisted by the apostles in their letters and, it’s safe to assume, even more firmly in person. See for example: 1 Cor 11:2; 1 Tim 1:3-7; 2 Thess 2:1-2; Jude esp. 3-4; 2 Peter 1:12-16; 2 Tim 4:1-5; Col 2:8, 18-19, 2 Tim 2 2; OK you get the idea!

Of particular interest is the forged letter mentioned by Paul in 2 Thessalonians. There will be plenty more on that sort of thing when we come to talk about the so called ‘alternative gospels’ in chapter eleven, but clearly, faking letters from apostles was something that had been going on for some time by the time they came along. Paul writes the final part of the letter with his own hand so that the Thessalonians can tell from his writing that it is genuinely from him. You don’t get the impression that Paul approved of any changes being made to his teaching.

And then there is Jude. This letter is the source of the phrase, ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’. The phrase is not inviting additions or alterations to be made to ‘the faith’. When someone says something particularly blunt, which can be quite refreshing, people sometimes like to ironically reply, ‘Oh, don’t hold back; tell us what you really think’. This would certainly apply to Jude, brother of James. Read and enjoy!

The answer to the question then is that, according to the evidence:

The NT writers vigorously opposed any attempt to change the story.

This implies that the NT writers considered the story they told to be worth fighting for. This in turn implies that they considered it to be the authentic story of Jesus and his teaching. There must be a reason why they thought that.

Nevertheless, detractors of the NT will often claim that the NT writers themselves altered, embroidered, or simply outright invented their stories. They often then either assert, or assume, that it is up to the supporters of the NT to show that they did not do so, passing the ball into our court. We noted in the last chapter that, whilst historians do not, of course, take ancient documents at face value, they do tend to accept what their authors say as authentic, unless there is a reason for doing otherwise. So where does the burden of proof lie: with the detractors, or the supporters of the NT?  Whatever the theoretical niceties of that particular discussion might be, in practice, the burden of proof always lies with the one who is trying to change minds, which I guess in this case is me!  So, is there anything we can we do to show that the NT writers acted in good faith, and genuinely tried to tell the truth as they understood it, and did not just make it all up?

So, we come to our next questions.

• Is there evidence that the NT writers deliberately altered the stories and teachings of Jesus that they received?
• Is there evidence that the NT writers made up the stories and teachings of Jesus that they wrote down?

 

Did Paul just make it up?

Let’s start with St Paul, since his letters are the earliest of the NT writings. We can see, for example, from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians how his teachings about Jesus were based on ‘traditions’ which he had received himself. He did not invent the traditions, neither does he expect the Corinthian Christians to deviate from, or add to them. Here are two passages which both illustrate the point. The first teaching explains how the Eucharist, the main type of religious service for Christians, was started by Jesus. This service is also called Mass, the Lord’s Supper, and Holy Communion.

Now I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in all things, and hold firm the traditions, even as I delivered them to you …  For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ’Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me.’ In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying, ’This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:2, 23-27)

This account of the Eucharist is very similar to the one in Luke’s gospel (Luke 22: 19-22). Either Paul got this ‘tradition’ from Luke or Luke from Paul or they both got it from the same source. Either way the tradition is treated with great care. Paul also appears to refer to a quote from the Gospel of Luke as Scripture (I Tim 5:18 c.f. Luke 10:7). This would seem to confirm that Paul and Luke knew each other well.

The second passage is about the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection.

Now I declare to you, brothers, the Good News which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold firmly the word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, but some have also fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to the child born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also. (1 Cor 15:1-8)

In the same passage Paul emphasises that his teaching based on these traditions, is the same as that of the apostles: ‘Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. (1 Cor 15:11)

These may well be examples of formal controlled oral traditions which people memorised word for word.  The second quote confirms, once again, the importance of direct eye witness testimony in the early church. This was respected and authoritative; there is no reason to think that anyone thought it was a good idea to rely on 19^th hand accounts.

• Is there evidence that the NT writers tried to pass off their own ideas, or those of others, as teachings of Jesus?

Again in 1 Corinthians, we see how Paul distinguishes carefully between his words and those of Jesus. In the letter he writes answers to various questions asked by the Corinthains. Should you should marry if you are single, or remarry if you are a widow? The answer is that, in Paul’s opinion, you are better off like him, single, but there’s nothing wrong with getting married. Should you divorce your husband or wife if they are not a Christian? No, says Saint Paul, and that’s not his opinion, but the command of the Lord (1 Cor 7).

Metzger writes:

[Paul’s] letters, which date from the time when many of the gospel traditions were taking shape, abound in pithy sentences and spiritual insights that could easily have been transferred to Jesus and presented as oracles of the Lord. If it be asked how many times this has happened, the answer must be not once! (Metzger, p105).

 

How did Matthew, Mark and Luke treat their sources of information?

Most scholars believe that the gospels of Matthew and Luke use Mark’s gospel as one of their sources, although the situation is complicated and not all scholars agree (Metzger, 96-101; Morris, 57-70; Marshall, 57-59). If this theory is correct, then this is evidence that Matthew and Luke used written as well as oral sources. Also, if this theory is correct, then we have direct written evidence of how Matthew and Luke treated their sources. There are plenty of examples we could pick on. The healing of Jairus’ daughter will do as well as any as far as making comparisons are concerned; but I have chosen this particular story because, as we shall see, it enables us to kill two, or possibly more, birds with one stone. If you like, try comparing Mark’s version of the story Mark 5:21-43 with Matt 9:18-26 and Luke 8:40-56. Firstly, take a look at the surrounding verses. This is always a good idea. Context always matters! The gospels tell the stories of Jesus in a somewhat different order, and here is an example of that. Remember what Papias said about Mark: the stories are accurate but not necessarily in chronological order. Luke edits down the story somewhat and adds two explanatory additions in verses 50 and 53. Also in verse 50, Luke softens Mark’s characteristically blunt portrayal of Jesus in verse 36. Luke and Matthew do this often.

Matthew, on the other hand, drastically shortens the story, and this leads to what some would call a ‘contradiction’ between the accounts (Ehrman, ‘Jesus int.’ 41). Horror of horrors!

In the Luke/Mark version when Jairus approaches Jesus he says, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Please come and lay your hands on her, that she may be made healthy, and live.’ In the Matthew version, he says, ‘My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live’. And there it is: the contradiction! That’s how Matthew abbreviated the story. In the Mark/Luke version the moral is clear. Jairus has enough faith to believe that Jesus has the power to heal his daughter, but when she dies the crowd tell him to give up hope. But Jesus says to Jairus, ‘Don’t be afraid, only believe.’ A little faith leads to a greater faith which leads to the greater healing. In Matthew, this lesson is not included. Jairus (who is not named) has the greater faith from the start. If you read the whole of Matthew chapter 9, though, you will see that his lesson is also about faith. Faith leads to the forgiveness of sins. Faith makes the blind see – but there is more than one kind of blindness. By faith the voiceless speak and are heard, but not everybody is listening! Matthew uses this story to teach a different, complimentary lesson about faith. We see that the gospel writers, abbreviate, paraphrase, omit details, reorder events, and tell the story in a way that brings out their varying perspectives, and the different morals that they want to draw from the stories. They do not change the essence of the story. We have direct evidence for how they did this, when Luke and Matthew use Mark as a source. There is no reason to think they treated their other sources, oral or written, differently.

Actually, I think we can draw another lesson about faith from the Luke/Mark version, which is relevant to this book. Is faith believing without evidence? Firstly, the Christian faith does not primarily mean believing things. Jesus did not ask Jairus to recite a creed. Faith primarily means having belief, faith, that it to say trust, in Christ. Of course, Jairus did believe things. He believed in the existence of God; he believed in the Hebrew Bible, that is the Old Testament, as holy scripture, and the other things a typical Jew and leader of the synagogue, would believe. He would not have come to Jesus if he did not believe those things, but that sort of belief is not the subject of this story. Jairus’ faith is in Jesus himself. Secondly, Jairus had plenty of evidence that Jesus could heal his daughter. He knew about Jesus’s other healings; so, his initial request was faith with evidence. Yet having made that step of faith with evidence, an encounter with Jesus led him to make that greater leap of faith - a leap into the light.

But hang on a minute. Didn’t I just say that Matthew contradicted Mark and Luke? Isn’t that a problem? Read on, my friend.

Summary

We ask questions such as:

• Is there evidence that the original stories and teachings of Jesus were altered before the NT writers received them?

Some people claim that the original stories and teachings of Jesus were not handed down as ‘traditions’ directly from the apostles or other eyewitnesses or even by the disciples of the apostles. They claim that the stories and teachings were handed on, orally, by a haphazard and uncontrolled method, involving long chains of transmission. And so, they claim, we cannot trust what the gospels and other NT books say because they are based on information which Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the others received through this extremely unreliable method. However, as modern studies show, oral traditions are by no means necessarily unreliable if they are controlled. Besides, the way in which the stories of Jesus were passed on is not really an oral tradition, even if it resembles an oral tradition in some ways. All of the written evidence we actually possess shows that the ‘traditions’ were handed down in a carefully controlled way. The control was exercised directly by the apostles and by the disciples of the apostles from whom the traditions originally came. These traditions were carefully guarded by those who received them. Even St Paul, who had every right to teach on his own authority, treated these ‘traditions’ with the utmost respect.

We have clear evidence that the gospel writers used multiple written sources as well as oral traditions to compose their gospels. We see that the gospel writers, abbreviate, paraphrase, omit details, reorder events, and tell the story in a way that brings out their varying perspectives, and the different morals that they want to draw from the stories. They do not change the essence of the story. We have direct evidence for how they did this, when Luke and Matthew use Mark as a source. There is no reason to think they treated their other sources, oral or written, differently.

 

 

Works Cited

Bauckham, R. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. 2^nd ed., Wm.B Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2017

Blomberg, Craig. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2^nd ed., Apollos. 2007

Ehrman, Bart D, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them.) HarperOne, 2009.

Metzger, Bruce M. The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content. 3^rd ed., Abingdon Press 2003

Shea, Mark. ‘Discrepancies in the Gospels.’ Catholic Exchange, 30^th August 2024, https://catholicexchange.com/discrepancies-in-the-gospels/  

Williams, Peter J. Can we Trust the Gospels? Crossway, 2018.