Loading...In response to the question of why the authors of the New Testament sometimes contradict themselves, I’ve so far discussed two phenomena: (1) sometimes (as with Paul) an author changes his mind about something over time, and (2) sometimes an author (as with John) incorporates a number of earlier sources in his or her writing when these sources are sometimes at odds with one another, thereby creating discrepancies, or “literary seams” as I called them in my previous post. Now I deal with a third and final thing (there may be more explanations, but these are the ones I’ve thought most about). In my view, authors – not just NT authors, but authors in general (and whatever we can say about the writers of the NT, at least we can say they were authors!) – often simply are careless and don’t notice mistakes.
This is not only true of authors, it’s true of readers. Very often, when I point out internal discrepancies, for example, in the Gospel of John or in the Book of Acts, I have someone ask me, incredulously – “How could an author *do* that? Surely he would have noticed!” Most often, when someone asks me that, what they’re really saying is that the discrepancy can’t be there, because the author was no idiot and would not have left it there. The implication, then, is that I’m the idiot (!) because I think there’s a discrepancy that can’t be one because they author would never have allowed such a thing. (And often the implication is “besides, he was inspired by God so there must not be a mistake there….).
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Hi Bart,
I have been taught that John the Baptist was a prophet that announced the coming the Jesus. Reading the bible, I couldn’t appreciate an explicit reference in this regards, like John saying: “hey, everybody, this is Jesus, the messiah!”. However, obviously, that’s what is implicit by the way Jesus’ baptism is presented to us and by the way John approaches him. Since your posts are in regards to discrepancies, could you comment on the passages of the NT Gospels where John tells two of his disciples to ask Jesus if he is really the one or if he should wait for someone else (like Luke 7:18-20).
Thanks a lot.
Yes, John’s question in Luke does seem to stand at odds with his recognition of Jesus in John 1.
Christian apologetics has long since driven me NUTS! How is it so, for instance, that when asked if he was the Prophet Elijah John said he was not, whereas Jesus said that he, John, was in fact the prophet, Elijah? In response to this question I’ve run into a few apologists who insist that John simply did not know who he, himself, was.
Regarding Luke 7:18-20, while practicing Christianity, and quite staunchly, that was one of the passages of Scripture I simply skipped over, or abandoned to “faith” over “sound reasoning”. The question remains, however, did John not also know who Jesus was; and if not, then what was the point of the baptism narrative?
PS: My comment was regarding the synoptic Gospels, not John.
Thanks.
Good series of posts. I agree that often I have missed discrepancies unless they were identified for me by Thomas Paine or Spong, or you. Still, I grew up expecting more of the Bible, much more.
Maybe part of the problem, too, was that ancient authors had to write in longhand, presumably with quill pens that they had to keep dipping in ink, on paper that was poor quality by our standards? Creating more distractions in the the writing process than we experience. (I actually read a statement by a professional writer, a prolific author of short stories, that he didn’t write anything for a year or so because he’d lost his computer in Hurricane Katrina!)
Then, too, there’s the possibility you mentioned a while back, that there may have been different versions of these books in circulation – authors having new ideas and (informally) “releasing updated editions.” They may have made mistakes in periodically copying and revising their own works – always remembering that they were dealing with longhand.
But about most modern readers not catching errors in the Bible – isn’t that partly due to its archaic writing style?
I think usually modern readers don’t catch these things because they aren’t alerted to their possible existence and are not reading all that closely.
What are the current thoughts about the sources used by the author of the Gospel of John? Were they oral traditions or written? Is there any way to tell the difference?
I better devote an entire post to that one!
I don’t know how it worked back in the day when the proof/autograph was written, but I suppose a correction to the text (after the author reread it) might not have been that simple. I would guess that changing a typo in a single word might not have been that bad, but changing a sentence or paragraph would have been more difficult. If the author didn’t think it was too serious, they might have just left it alone even though they noticed it? A codex might have been not that bad (rewriting a single leaf on both sides?).
Are there any references from around the first century that authors produced updated/corrected/second editions? I suppose cost/time might have been factors and that copies of the first edition might have been floating around in all sorts of places.
Yes, we do have references to multiple editions of texts by authors; and yes, it was much more complicated than in the days of word processors!
Its clear that because we do not have any of the sources for John, we are forced to look hard into the text to find these “literary seams” that point to the different uses of sources. Can the same method be used in the case of Mark of which no source material survives either? What do we know about Mark’s sources and how they were used?
Yes, the same can be done with Mark. It’s tricky. It involves removing Markan distinctive features and seeing what is left. My friend Joel Marcus wrote his two volume commentary on Mark for hte Anchor Bible (the best commentary on Mark in a generation) on this principle.
Is there a book/blog/website that discusses theories regarding Mark’s sources in a reasonable length? I am curious on what literary seams and possible discrepancies can have been detected in the text (Even better, is there a chance that you could address this in a post yourself?)
I”d suggest the commentary on Mark by Joel Marcus in the Anchor Bible commentary series, vol. 1, pp. 57-62.
This is an interesting topic. If in modern times, where the vast majority of the members of a Christian community are not only literate but have one (or more) copies of their scriptures in their home, but yet seem totally unaware of these sorts of contradictions, should we be terribly surprised that in an ancient community –where most of its members were illiterate and where the community might have owned only a single copy of a single Gospel– that these contradictions might have gone unnoticed as well?
Here’s a related question. The discussion here has dealt with the NT. But, of course, such contradictions appear in the Hebrew Scriptures as well, most notably in the Petateuch (e.g. the two creation stories; Mt Horeb vs. Mt Sanai; the textual labyrinth of the flood story).
Now, as with the gospels, the standard understanding is that the text of the Pentateuch is woven together from multiple sources. However the documents underlying the Pentateuch are held to represent long-established sources from diverse cultural, religious and geographic communities in a way that is not really the same for the sources underlying the Gospels.
Do you think it is reasonable to assume that the editors/redactors of the final versions of the Pentateuch might have felt pressure from these communities to preserve the original wording of their sources –and any resultant contradictions– as they compiled their “final” composite documents? That is, even if the _did_ notice such contradictions they might have been less likely to “correct” them because, in the first place, they were dealing with readers who knew –and had vested interests in– each original source text; and in the second they were, after all, dealing with sacred, divinely-inspired wording which they might have been reluctant to tinker with.
I doubt if they did; they seem to use the materials very freely and independently. And it’s hard to know whether their own communities were committed to these sources in their pre-edited forms, or if the authors simply got ahold of them.
” What is most striking , of course , and most common , are not discrepancies within a certain author , but discrepancies between authors …..” . This was repeatedly handled in my Catholic schooling of many years ago by resorting to the ” automobile accident ” analogy : when different witnesses are questioned about a car crash they all saw , their accounts may differ as to details ( how fast car A was moving , did he signal , etc. ) but that in no way casts any doubt as to whether the accident itself occurred . Thus while Gospel authors might differ in detail , their account of central important events ( e.g. the Resurrection ) is in no way impugned . While these central events must , by their miraculous nature , be taken on faith , the burden on the intellect is restricted to the events themselves and not the accounts . I just can’t imagine my younger smart aleck self being able to swallow strict inerrancy . I would have been far too much of a little wise ass show off not to have pricked a balloon or two . Did you ever do that ?
Yup. all the time. More than that — I used to believe it!
I’ll suggest a number #4 in the way of reasons for discrepancies: authors are sometimes too close to their text.
I’ve had a few bits and pieces published over the years including translations I have done. Occasionally a proof reader has pointed out to me a complete howler which made me ask myself, ‘how the ever did I not notice that?’ (I had re-read the darn thing myself at least a dozen times). And there’s the rub. I had re-read it a *dozen* times (or more). You kind of anaesthetise yourself to it all after a while.
I guess the authors of the gospels spent many years going over and re-writing stuff as they spoke to others in their community who added to (or detracted from) the story. They will have got to the point where all their cutting and pasting overwhelmed their bigger sense of their work. Whenever I read the NT (rarely) this is the sense I get.
Most of the stuff I wrote was published over a decade ago and I rarely re-read it now. When I do I cringe at the style. How could I have written that way? At the time I felt it was just dandy. Now? Oh if only I could ‘unpublish’ it and make those changes I so much want to make.
Heck, if I re-read this tomorrow I’ll wish I hadn’t bothered 🙂
When I tried to access this site a few minutes ago (Monday morning), I saw an error message when I clicked on “Enter.” The only way I could get in was by going to “History,” to the Public Forum page I’d accessed yesterday. Once there, I was able to navigate within the site, as usual. Is this a problem everyone has been experiencing?
It’s cleared up now, I think. Too much traffic on the site; we’re working on the problems!
Last month I posted that I have been talking with 2 evangelical christians for some time,one of them agreed to read Misquoting Jesus,if I read a book of his choice.He chose Misrepresenting Jesus Debunking Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus by Edward D Andrews,this was no surprise.He hasn’t finished it yet so I haven’t received it,but any help debunking the debunking would be greatly appreciated.
I haven’t read it. 🙂 But any specific issues you want me to address once you take a look let me know. So far as I know there were no factual errors in the book (I mean *my* book!).
Looked at that newly-posted Video in its entirety, and loved it! I hope you’ll continue this feature. And for anyone here who didn’t look at the lecture portion, I hope you’ll repeat that priceless “variant” of the story of the woman taken in adultery. ROTFLOL!
But after viewing it, I found I couldn’t get to a page where I could leave a Comment. And there have been problems with the website ever since. Hope they’ll be cleared up soon!
The lecture made me think of a couple questions I’ve been meaning to ask.
First…I know you gave that lecture in 2007. At that time, you were saying the Gospel of Judas was an important find. I’ve been puzzled as to why you didn’t mention it, along with other “interesting” Apocryphal Gospels, in your new textbook. Do you and other scholars no longer consider it important? Or has it been shown not to be authentic, after all?
The other question…I keep wondering about that “born again” line being proof that the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus didn’t really take place, because the wording only made sense in Greek. It seems to me that if a preacher told a hoped-for follower he needed to be “born again,” regardless of whether it was a familiar idiom, the person wouldn’t think it meant he had to get back in his mother’s womb. After a moment’s reflection, he’d take it to mean that he’d have to feel – and be – so changed by this turning point in his life that he’d *think of* his real “life” having begun only then. Isn’t that at least possible enough to cast doubt on the significance of the “Greek vs. Aramaic” issue?
Yes, I still think it is the most important textual discovery since the Nag Hammadi library, for understanding early Christainity. But the books at Nag Hammadi are far more important.
I think your understanding of what someone would naturally take “be born again” to mean has been determined by your own understanding of what it probably means. But whether that’s right or not, my point has been that Nicodemus *does* understand it to mean “a second time,” and Jesus has to *correct* that misunderstanding. It makes sense if “a second time” doesn’t really mean a second time, but means “from above,” as Jesus explains. And that double intendre works in Greek but not Aramaic…..
I think all things are made very clear in your Book Jesus interrupted. The facts are well laid out big and small. Thanks Barth.