Through The Bible

Through The Bible

Session #38 – Difficult Passages in the Gospels

February 4^th, 2004

Remember that there are different types of writing in the Gospels – miracle stories, poetry, parables, prophetic and apocalyptic sayings, proverbs, puns, hyperbole, etc.

Interpreting the different forms requires a search for what the author wanted the hearer/reader to understand from the text.
Also, we need to seek the accepted norms for those different types of texts.
If we miss or ignore the above principles, we miss what the text is saying. For example, ignoring the type of writing and interpreting a text anyway we want to would be like trying to understand a basketball game using football rules as a basis. Confusion will only follow.[1]

Four Gospels and attempts to harmonize

As early as the second century AD, there has been an attempt to harmonize the Gospels into a single comprehensive account – Tatian in his Diatessaron.
A harmonization of the Gospels is different than a synopsis. A synopsis places parallel accounts side by side in columns. A harmonization seeks to arrange the material in a historical order, thus weaving together different Gospels.

Problems in harmonization and laying out a synopsis.

· The exact order of events cannot always be determined.

· In putting events parallel (synopsis), there are variations in events and sayings.

Matthew 3:17 ⁷ And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

Mark 1:11 ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Luke 3:22 ²² and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Right after Jesus was baptized, a voice from heaven said the words above.

Notice the slight differences. Which one is right?
The differences here are minor for most people. But, if you believe that many of the quotations in the New Testament are tape-recorded quotations, then only one of them can be right.

Augustine, one of the greatest minds of the Church, offers some guidance for the above passages, but also other questions in the Gospels.

1. Augustine said, “the heavenly voice gave utterance to only one of these sentences.”[2] Augustine does not try and resolve the issue as to which version is right. He affirms that one of them must be the direct quotation.

2. Augustine said despite the difference, each account conveys the same meaning. “If you ask which of these different modes represents what was actually expressed by the voice, you may fix on whichever you will, provided only that you understand that those of the writers who have not produced the self-same form of speech have still reproduced the identical sense intended to be conveyed.”[3]

3. Augustine also points out that when an evangelist does change the wording of the voice from heaven, he does so in order to help the reader understand the meaning of those words. Augustine says, “From this it becomes sufficiently apparent, that whichever of the evangelists may have preserved for us the words as they were literally uttered by the heavenly voice, the others have varied the terms only with the object of setting forth the same sense more familiarly…”[4]

Remember in all of this that Jesus spoke in Aramaic or Hebrew and the Gospels were written in Greek. The Gospel writers were not interested in tape-recorder quotations.

Matthew 8:5-13 ⁵ When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him ⁶ and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress." ⁷ And he said to him, "I will come and cure him." ⁸ The centurion answered, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹ For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and the slave does it." ¹⁰ When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, "Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. ¹¹ I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, ¹² while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." ¹³ And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; let it be done for you according to your faith." And the servant was healed in that hour.

Luke 7:1-10 ¹After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. ² A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. ³ When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. ⁴ When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy of having you do this for him, ⁵ for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us." ⁶ And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; ⁷ therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. ⁸ For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and the slave does it." ⁹ When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." ¹⁰ When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

Who spoke to Jesus? The centurion as Matthew records or the elders of the Jews as Luke 7:3 and 6 claim?

Possible solutions:

These are two separate, but similar accounts. Jesus often repeats similar teachings and miracles but these two accounts seem too similar.
Consider this solution from Robert H. Stein…

Imagine a conversation between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Because neither of them speaks the other’s language fluently enough to effectively converse, they use interpreters.

(Account A)

Bush asks in English through the Interpreter, “How are you?”

Interpreter asks Putin in Russian, “How are you?”

Putin replies in Russian to interpreter, “Fine.”

Interpreter replies to Bush in English, “Fine.”

(Account B)

Another way this conversation could be described is that President Bush asked President Putin how he was and Putin said he was fine.

Both descriptions are correct. Newspapers tend to describe things like Account B describes them.

Is it possible that Matthew excludes reference to the Jewish elders because he’s following a similar format whereas Luke includes them?

If Stein’s solution is right, then both Matthew and Luke are accurate.

Mark 15:25 ²⁵ It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him.

John 19:14-15 ¹⁴ Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, "Here is your King!" ¹⁵ They cried out, "Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but the emperor."

Mark states Jesus was crucified the third hour of the day (remember their day began at our 6:00am). John tells us Jesus was crucified the sixth hour. So, when was he crucified?

Possible solutions to this…

Augustine tried explain this apparent conflict as follows. The 3^rd hour in Mark 15:25 is not the actual time when Jesus is physically crucified, but the hour when the Jews cried out that he should be crucified. According to Augustine, the third hour is when the Jews say, “Crucify him!” (Mark 15:13-14). Then it was the sixth hour when the Romans actually nail him to the cross. Most would not embrace Augustine’s solution here.
Some focus on the Greek word for ‘hour’ (w[ra, pronounced hora). In this solution, the word for hour (w[ra) means ‘watch.’ Supposedly the third watch began at noon.
Related to the above option, some have said Mark is referring the 3^rd hour of Hebrew time (time measured from dawn to dark) and John is referring to the sixth hour of Roman time (time measured from midnight on).
Some have attempted to solve this issue by saying the text is corrupt – meaning that someone has copied things down wrong or in some other way changed things. But, the best and majority of manuscripts have 3^rd hour in Mark and the sixth hour in John.
Perhaps the best solution is to consider the view toward time in the 1^st century AD. We are very precise in our reference to time. We can pinpoint things down to the second. Such exactness was not possible in the 1^st century.

The day was divided into four periods: (a) 6-9am; (b) 9-12pm; (c) 12-3pm; (d) 3-6pm.
In the New Testament, most time references are to the 3^rd, 6^th, or 9^th hour. And references close to both were rounded off to the nearest one. An event occurring at the 3^rd hour (the 9am-12pm period) for one writer could be close enough to the 6^th hour (12pm-3pm) for another.

[1] Robert H. Stein, Difficult Passages in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1990), p. 12. I follow Stein’s work in much of this lesson.

[2] Augustine, De Consensu Evangelistarum, in The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, volume 6 (New York: Scribners, 1903), I.vii.10.

[4] John Calvin, A Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, ed., David W. and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), Introduction.