James Tracy from AnAtheist.net has responded to my article on The Resurrection Account. In it, he makes it clear that his position is not simply that the gospels are full of contradictions, but that historically, he believes they represent a manufactured narrative for religious purposes that grew out of the early Pauline tradition, particularly, his references to Old Testament prophecy. We have also been discussing this idea in comments over on AnAtheist in the articles Paul on the Crucifixion and Did Paul Know Jesus’ Disciples?.
Before moving on to our specific disagreements, I’m going to cover some basic philosophical differences related to our criteria for contradictions and our opposing biases.
Contradictions
When determining whether something is a contradiction, my criteria is as follows:
- Both passages must explicitly contradict
- Where ambiguity allows a non-contradicting interpretation, prefer it.
For example, (1) if I say the cat is a dog, I have explicitly contradicted myself. This is a contradiction. (2) If I say “Bob is a cat” and “Bob is a dog”, I am being ambiguous. I may be saying one entity named “Bob” is both a cat and a dog, which would be a contradiction as before. Or, I might be referring to two separate entities. Without an explicit basis to determine the meaning, I would assume the author probably knew what he was talking about and meant two different entities.
I do not know exactly what criteria James is using, but his criteria is clearly broader than mine. For example, he finds an implicit contradiction between Matthew and the other gospels (soldiers guarding the tomb) and accepts a contradicting interpretation in an ambiguous case (Luke and John on the last words of Christ).
Bias
Also, it is fair to point out, especially when discussing something as uncertain as history, that personal bias can become an important factor. As such, reasonable to point out that as a Christian, my worldview biases me to view the gospels as historic and true. However, an Atheist is similarly biased by his worldview to view religious accounts in purely naturalistic terms and suspect the authenticity of any historic material that reports supernatural events.
The Apostle Paul did teach a Historic Christ
A key part of James’s case is his argument that Paul does not present a historical Christ. Rather, James suggests, Paul may have believed in a spiritual narrative played out in heaven rather than on earth. James bases this claim on the premise that Paul’s epistles are not explicit. They focus on the spiritual implications of Christ, but do not explicitly mention an earthly history.
This premise is false. While Paul’s emphasis is clearly spiritual, he also presents Jesus as a historic, earthly figure. First, Paul parallels Christ’s death and resurrection with the earthly death and future resurrection of the saints (1 Cor. 15). Second, Paul repeatedly speaks of Jesus as taking on flesh or becoming a man (Rom. 1:1, 5:12-15, 8:3; 1 Cor. 15:21; Eph. 2:15; Col. 1:20-22; 1 Timothy 3:16).
Paul and the Gospel Accounts
I brought this up in commenting on Paul on the Crucifixion and this is probably why James adds the parenthetical comment “at least not as portrayed later in the gospels”, adding another way in which James can justify the interpretation of the gospels as spiritual allegory or prophetic extrapolation.
Due to Paul’s lack of biographical material on Christ, the position that the gospels portray a different, historic Christ than the one Paul was familiar with is a more plausible position, but still not very well supported. Indirectly, Paul confirms a great deal about the Life of Christ by affirming His fulfillment of OT Prophecy. Also, having established that Paul believed in a historic Christ and that that historic Christ fulfilled a great deal of Old Testament prophecy, Paul clearly taught the historic nature of Christ’s death (by crucifixion), burial, and resurrection on the third day, all events the gospels record. This does not entirely discredit James’s premise, but it does narrow the gap between what Paul clearly accepted regarding the historic Christ and what the gospels record.
The Gospels and the Historic Christ
Regarding the gospels themselves, there is a lot we could cover, but it seems to me there are two primary issues here:
Self-testimony
First, the text of the gospels does not support James’s premise explicitly. In fact, if anything, they explicitly deny an allegorical interpretation. They also do not present an extrapolation from prophecy to history, but rather, the other way around. The most explicit case is Luke’s opening declaration:
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)
we also have the genealogies of Matthew and Luke which present Jesus not only as a historic person, but someone clearly connected to other historical figures. We also have statements such as that in John 1:14: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”.
Therefore, the gospels present themselves as historic, not allegorical.
Textual Analysis
Second, and probably the most important issue, is textual analysis. I view the gospels as presenting a unifiable, consistent account, as one would expect from eyewitness accounts. This is not the creation of a new gospel, but a reasonable attempt to harmonize eyewitness accounts. Variance certainly exists, but it is reconcilable with the other accounts, generally revealing unique details.
On the other hand, James sees the gospels as plagued by numerous contradictions. If they exist, such a scale of contradictions would at least indicate sloppy work and lend reasonable credit to the premise of distancing authorship from eyewitnesses, as James attempts to do. Furthermore, once the premise of more distant and erroneous authorship is established, the re-understood documents require a new historical context. If they were not written by eyewitnesses and the authors did not particularly care about consistency and accuracy, their purpose also reasonably must deviate from history. As such, James conclusion, although lacking external historical support, follows rather logically from the conclusion of sloppy and contradictory accounts.
But are the gospels as sloppy and contradictory as James presents? Clearly, I dispute that premise. As noted in my introduction, I contest many of James’s “contradictions” as being unjustified, implied contradictions or assuming contradictions in reasonably ambiguous cases. Therefore, this really is the crux of the issue: do the gospels discredit themselves through contradictions, supporting a distorted historic or non-historic view of them? I would conclude not and challenge James to provide either 3 contradictions consistent with my criteria or with a counter-criteria he may wish to provide and justify.
Always a fascinating topic. I do continue to appreciate your calm, clear, and organized way of approaching discussions such as this.
I am not sure why you think that I see the gospels as plagued by contradictions. I don’t even think that I used the word ‘contradiction’ in any of my Resurrection week posts. Here is what I would consider a contradiction: Matthew says that there were tomb soldiers. Luke says there were no tomb soldiers. Now, you can debate to what extent the absence of tomb soldiers is an implicit declaration that there were none – but for all intents and purposes this is at the very least an inconsistency if not a contradiction.
What I am interested in is what these textual variations mean so far as our historical understanding of the texts. What I am disputing is your methodology for understanding these variations. Your approach is typical of any apologist. You combine all of the variations and smooth them out until you get one internally consistent account that is different from all four individual accounts. You could potentially be very successful at doing this exercise but I would still contend that doing so is misguided.
My basic position – and this is the position of many mainstream biblical scholars – is that the gospels reveal a literary dependence on Mark. That means that Matthew is not just independently reporting a slightly different perspective on these events but rather that Matthew is deliberately and consciously altering (or adding to or deleting from) Mark’s narrative. In trying to understand why, my conclusion is that Matthew (and the others) are not treating Mark as a historical source but an historical fiction the details of which can be changed depending on the desired message.
The point here is that an allegory can present itself as historical and still not be historical.
Your post covers much more ground than this, of course, so I may re-visit some of these topics in my blog based on the responses you provide here. I am especially interested in whether or not Paul taught an historical Christ so I appreciate the references.
By: James on May 1, 2009
at 20:50
Thanks for your response. I appreciate your prespective, even if we disagree.
Whether you used the term or not, your argument depends heavily on the premise that variance in the gospel accounts isnot harmonizable (ie not consistent -> contradictory). This provides a rational basis for rejecting them as eyewitness accounts, which opens the door for a different theory of their origins. Therefore, it seems to me that this is the core of our disagreement, not a mere squabble of the “extent of implied declarations”, as you assert. True eyewitness accounts generally provide different details. If they were exactly identical, one would suspect the accounts were contrived to agree (which is the basis of your argument that there is really only one original account, Mark). If they are not exactly identical, one could not necessarily conclude that one witness must be telling the truth and the others are simply making stuff up. Therefore, the fact that the gospel accounts provide different details does not justify the conclusion that they are inconsistent or contradicting accounts discrediting the eyewitness premise.
As this relates to what the textual variations mean, it again becomes the focus. If my premise is correct, the gospels represent eyewitness accounts. Therefore, interpreting the variations should have as a primary goal understanding a single historic narrative. Apologists do not make up a special approach for the gospels that seeks to discover harmony where one would not otherwise expect it. Apologists accept the premise of historicity and therefore seek to harmonize the accounts as one would in trying to understand any sequence of events described by various witnesses. If a harmonization is determined to be impossible or improbable, that premise is discredited, lending credit to an alternate view, such as yours.
Regarding the accusation of my “apologist” motives, I clearly admitted a Christian bias in this post. This biases me towards a historic interpretation. However, as I pointed out, you are also biased towards a non-historic interpretation, which affirms your belief in a purely natural world, in which God in any form, Jesus Christ or otherwise, has not intervened because He does not exist.
I haven’t read any surveys of mainstream Bible Scholars, but my impression is a bit different than what you seem to project about their consensus. My impression is that while Biblical scholars tend to agree that the gospels reveal some literary dependence on Mark. That does not mean, as you seem to imply, that (1) the gospels primarily represent copies of Mark and therefore (2) Mark is the only real attempt at a historical account or none of the gospels should be understood historically. I suspect most Biblical scholars would not go as far as you do. For example, Dr. Craig Blomberg in “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel is cited as follows (pg. 33):
Strobel: “Why…would Matthew–purported to be an eyewitness to Jesus–incorporate part of a gospel written by Mark…? If Matthew’s gospel was really written by an eyewitness, you would think he would have relied on his own observations.”
Blomberg: “It only makes sense if Mark was indeed basing his account on the recollections of the eyewitness Peter…Peter was among the inner circle of Jesus and was privy to seeing and hearing things that other disciples didn’t. So it would make sense for Matthew, even though he was an eyewitness, to rely on Peter’s version of events as transmitted through Mark.”
Blomberg clearly accepts that Matthew used Mark as a source, but does not accept as necessary the implication that Matthew was not an eyewitness or the author of Matthew lacked other eyewitness accounts or that Matthew was “not treating Mark as a historical source but an historical fiction”. It does imply that Matthew knew when he was reporting different details and events, but what that implies is not certain. As the shortest gospel, Mark, if it is a historical account, clearly skips over a lot of details. Matthew could easily have intentionally added more or different but consistent details based on his own eyewitness experience.
While allegory may present itself as history, that does not mean the gospels are. Again, the primary reason to suppose the gospels might be allegorical is the premise that they are not historical based on the perceived contradictions in the accounts. I am not contesting that the gospels could conceivable be allegorical. What I am contesting is whether that is the most likely case given the evidence. So far, the key argument in favor of an allegorical understanding is the contradiction argument.
By: arthenor on May 4, 2009
at 19:17
Response dutifully noted. Give me some time (boy would I like to have more of that!)…
By: James on May 11, 2009
at 01:16
I know what you mean. Take what time you need.
By: arthenor on May 11, 2009
at 15:43
[...] Light. and the historicity of the Bible, which I have discussed with particular emphasis on the historicity of the gospels. The Bible is not a book which asks for irrational trust and condemns those who ask for proof. [...]
By: On Merit and Rational Faith « Arthenor’s Ramblings on June 18, 2010
at 04:30