Your work often highlights the contradictions among the Gospel accounts as evidence that the traditions developed and changed over time, and I find this analysis very illuminating. At the same time, I sometimes wonder whether our modern reaction to “contradiction” reflects a specifically Western intellectual expectation.

In several Asian philosophical traditions, apparent contradictions are not always viewed as problems to be resolved. Instead, they may be seen as different perspectives pointing toward a deeper truth that cannot be captured by a single formulation.

When I read highly intellectual writings from various Asian religious traditions—religions that, like Christianity, contain claims that might appear quite extraordinary from a strictly rational perspective—I sometimes find myself reflecting on this issue as well.

I suspect you might respond that this is not really a historical question but something outside the scope of historical inquiry. Still, I wonder whether the presence of differing or even conflicting accounts in the Gospels might also be understood, at least partly, as the natural result of communities preserving multiple ways of expressing the significance of Jesus.

Do historians of early Christianity ever consider such a possibility, or would this comparison be considered too culturally anachronistic?