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I occasionally get an email from someone who says that the disciples must have really seen Jesus raised from the dead because “they would not have lied about it.” I’m always struck my how that seems to be the only option: Jesus was raised or the disciples “lied.”
Relatedly (though not obviously so), my friend the evangelical apologist Mike Licona has claimed (in a public event we were both participating in) that when the author of Matthew changed a saying of Jesus from what he found in his source, Mark — thereby making Jesus say just the opposite of what he said in Mark — it was not an “error,” because Matthew did it on purpose and knew what he was doing.
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Mike’s logic was that Matthew was treating the account the way historians in antiquity often did, editing it for his own purposes in a way that created a discrepancy. (FWIW: Mike thinks Mark accurately reports what Jesus actually said).
[In case you’re interested in checking it out, it’s in the passage where Jesus sends his disciples out two-by-two in Mark 6:7-13. He tells them not to take anything “except a staff” – no bread bag, money or extra tunic. But take a staff. Matthew changes it: Jesus explicitly tells the disciples not to take a staff (10:13)]
My view is that both of these claims (the disciples must have been lying! Matthew’s report of what Jesus said – though the opposite of what he did say – is not an error!) are problematic. OK, more than problematic. They are serious misunderstandings of how language works.
Different words usually (not always) mean different things, and if we don’t make clear differentiations between words then we miscommunicate and confuse.
With that in mind: even though not widely recognized, the following five words mean different things. And if people use them interchangeably (as even scholars often do!), they necessarily miscommunicate what they are trying to say
See if you can come up with clear differentiations among these terms (again: their meanings significantly overlap, but they are not identical).
- Error
- Mistake
- Falsehood
- Deceit
- Lie
In a subsequent post I’ll tell you what I think are the differences and explain why we shouldn’t confuse them if we want to communicate accurately. That will in turn explain why the disciples were not necessarily lying and why Matthew contains an error even if it doesn’t contain a mistake.
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If the Gospel authors saw the stories as flexible tools for conveying what they saw as truth then I can see them altering the stories without it being either error or deceit. But it certainly can create a contradiction. And it shows that historicity was not the priority with those authors, and the Gospels must be interpreted accordingly.
My attempt at differentiating these terms:
Error – something I think, say, or do that is wrong
Mistake – something wrong I think, say, or do that is regretted, or at least recognized (by me or someone else)
Falsehood – something wrong that I say for others to hear (I may believe it to be correct)
Deceit – some action, statement, or omission that I hope deceives others
Lie – something that I know to be false that I say to deceive others
They definitely overlap. And I’m not fully satisfied that I’ve got the differences right.
You have to respect Mike Licona for standing up to Lydia McGrew, although I find most of his arguments unpersuasive. I think a modern addition to your list would be -at the risk of being crude- BS as defined by Harry G. Frankfurt in his 1986 essay.
OK, being Greek but always committed in honing or testing my English skills, I thought I should take on the challenge – without using any dictionaries or ChatGPT; just my gut feeling based on what I’ve been experiencing learning English all these years.
Error: something technically not right; something objectively not correct or valid that makes it impossible to proceed.
Mistake: something not right, but done due to a misjudgement or weakness or ignorance.
Falsehood (ok, that’s tough offhand): an objectively wrong state of understanding.
Deceit: a deliberate attempt to fool someone by convincing her that something is the way you present it, though you either not present it accurately or you have already distorted it in advance. There’s a dark motive behind the misrepresentation or distortion.
Lie: an intentional distortion of truth either for good or bad reasons.
Hello Dr. Ehrman,
Thank you so much for what you do. You are a true teacher and philanthropist because of what you do. Thank you for your commitment to truth and sharing your knowledge. You (among other scholars) have provided us [informed, but not formally educated] laypeople access to information that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
Faith is a personal thing, and understanding history and literature will only make us stronger, even if that growth is painful. All one can do is be as enlightened as possible, and to have the broadest perspective possible.
And thank you so much for taking your time to respond to as many of these comments as you practically can. You definitely don’t have to, and it shows that you truly care.
I’m curious, I thought I saw a black dog in the background of one of your podcasts, what’s their name?
Nina! The most friendly and joyful creature on the planet. Golden doodle (but 7/8 poodle!); red mother, brown father, litter of eight black puppies. Go figure!
Awe, sweet girl! Dogs add so much meaning to life! Ours is adopted from India, he’s a south asian village dog (pariah dog) they are street dogs. He was rescued after being found mortally wounded, and then got distemper…He’s now the sweetest man in the whole world!
The notion that the gospels contain many falsehoods but no errors, mistakes, lies, or deciets is quite compelling. The authors likely meant exactly what they said. That doesn’t mean that they had the same standards as to truth in history that we have today. The authors were trying to ake a point. Are there any particular errors in the gospels (or writings of Paul) that you would point to as categorical errors that they make?
I’m not sure what you mean by “categorical” errors?
Dave Chappelle performed a sketch explaining why Trump resonated with blue-collar whites. He argued they saw Trump as the first elite insider willing to step out and tell ordinary people what was really happening. Chappelle reenacted moments from the Trump–Clinton debate (sometimes verbatim) and closed with an over-the-top joke about Trump “rolling up his Illuminati membership card and snorting a line of cocaine off the podium.” Chapelle wasn’t “lying/deceiving/mistaken.” His audience had/has living memory of the debate.
Yet his sketch would still be valuable for future historians. A transcript alone can’t capture public mood/perception. Chappelle’s retelling, though exaggerated, communicates a cultural truth: how people understood Trump in that moment.
Likewise, when considering Gospel accounts, the historical Jesus likely sent his disciples out with nothing, reflecting the Levitical principle that leaders should rely on the community rather than accumulate property (also echoed in Plato’s Republic). Matthew, though later, preserves this historical detail.
Mark, however, seems to emphasize Jesus as the divine shepherd promised in Ezekiel, replacing failed leaders and tending His flock. His inclusion of the “staff” is symbolic, highlighting the disciples’ role as shepherd-rulers sent to gather Israel’s lost sheep. Mark isn’t distorting history; he’s conveying the theological meaning behind the mission.
I think I can come up with good distinctions between at least the last two, and I will attempt the other ones. I would say that deceit is a lie, but a lie isn’t always deceit. A lie can be told to either protect somebody or be used for surprising someone, just to name a few examples. Deceit, in my view, is always malicious. Okay, I’m stumped on the other three. I’ll have to read your next post to see the line you draw between them. I would say that a mistake would be something like Mark getting wrong who was high priest when David and his men went to the temple and ate the bread, but that also seems like an error to me.
If you know all the facts but are still absolutely convinced of Biblical inerrancy, the Mike Licona approach is probably the only possible one. I’m so glad I let inerrancy go a very long time ago. Conservative Orthodox and Catholic theologians have their own “uncrossable line” biases