I want to have a discussion with you about something that's kind of it's a thorny issue
it's something that really gets some evangelicals and some skeptics kind of tied up in knots you
know and that is how the evangelistic gospel authors redact or alter some details evangelicals
a number of them not all of them but those many of them will have some some problems with that to say
they change some details how could they do that and skeptics they want to just say oh they change
the details you can't believe anything that they say you know it's hi I want to talk to with you
about this I honestly yeah I don't see why this is a problem but I you know there's an example
I give years a years ago let let's the years ago when my family lived in Virginia Beach my wife and
I had we we were members of this group of other people in ministry it wasn't a different group
called The Dream Team that David Emery wood and Nabeel Qureshi and and Bruce Frazier and others
who were involved wasn't that group this was a group in which a number of us who were involved
in full-time ministry were involved and it's like we got together just to recharge our batteries in
two we became really good friends dear friends that remain and most of those relationships to
this day some of her best friends and so there was several couples son have four or five of his
couples and we you know we noticed that there was a pattern and the difference the way guys
told stories and girls told stories and somehow I don't know who came up with it but it was in that
group that we yeah well that's the girl version of the story this is the guy version and once I
came to understand it's like whoa all right this is work by gender but no no I mean I I know this
is my wife and I know a guy that he tells the old story all the time I got to say come on get
to the bottom line please you're killing me you know why'd I do that but I tried to put
any footnotes that's why those books you give us the girl version in your books so so I I guess
maybe because I understood the difference between stereotypically the way a guy tells a story first
of the way the girl tells a story that I had no problems when I came to the Gospels and I saw
some of these differences but some people really get hung up on those but let's talk about the
differences you know when we look at the synoptic problem and we most of us large majority mark and
priority mark is the first gospel and Matthew and Luke use mark as their primary source and
supplement mark you'd say that's the majority position right easily 95% of scholars when you say
print on New Testament scholars let's say probably at least 90 percent at least 90 okay maybe but
even if you go with matthean priority you're still there is so much similarities that all the
arguments still apply you have an interdependence of sources that are used between Matthew Mark and
Luke yeah we see so many things John says that the world itself couldn't contain the books that
would be written so why do Matthew Mark and Luke overlap so much when you know they could have so
many other stories yeah yeah so all right so let's just assume mark in priority if a person
wants to assume Matthew a priority they can do that and just but the same thing is there you've
got Luke using Matthew got mark using Matthew and we can see how they change their primary source
give us an example well an easy an obvious one is kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God oh I
mean I mean mark always speaks of kingdom of God Matthew in I think there's just three passages for
examples something like that where he keeps kingdom of God everywhere else it's kingdom
of heaven and what do you think was originally it's a no-brainer that I mean these are the same
incidents well Jesus may have been talking about Kingdom of Heaven maybe Matthew knew that but you
know Matthew I think is using mark and Mark has an audience that wouldn't have any idea what kingdom
of heaven was so you know it makes sense marques kingdom of God and Jesus could have spoken of it
that way too probably did speak of it that way more I mean John which may be independent the
couple of times John has it his kingdom of God so you know maybe a kingdom of God this was the more
common usage of Jesus but what's what's the point I mean unless it's unless you're expecting it to
be verbatim then I don't see the problem with that ya know when I when I first became a Christian I
was converted out of atheism I knew nothing about the Gospels and so first time through
I'm reading Matthew get to the end of it very satisfied Jesus gets crucified he rises again
then I read mark he gets crucified and rises again again I'm like how often is this going to happen
I didn't know but but and yet he was reading Homer at age 12 yes you know Christians you're
smarter than so anyway no but I'm Christian now but so eventually though I mean I remember before
I went off to to Bible College and this was a fairly conservative you know Assemblies of God
Bible College Pentecostal so before I went off there it was like you know I knew that there were
differences among the Gospels and I wanted to know that the Bible so well that if somebody quoted to
me a verse I could not only tell them okay well this particular idea appears in Luke 21 mark 13
in Matthew 24 Jesus eschatological discourse but I could tell them which one based on the variations
I'm not sure I'm that good but but that's what I wanted to be able to do because I knew that
there were variations you know anybody who tells the same story you know I mean if you tell the
story of Goldilocks or if you tell a historical story yeah you know you're not bound to tell it
with the same wording every time as long as the substance is there and and you can leave
out details you can include details that you know from somewhere else like if you're talking about
Winston Churchill you know it's you don't have just one source you have other sources for that
so anyway that didn't bother me I think they do change some things like the Centurion at the cross
yeah right mm-hmm truly this was the son of God is that mark that's mark and Matthew and Matthew
well the Matthew it's the Centurion and those are with him okay and Luke surely this was a righteous
man yeah right what's going on there well Luke wants to emphasize Jesus innocence you've got
that emphasized several times a number of times I mean it's in all the Gospels but you've got it
emphasized more in in luke's gospel especially Luke 23 but then also toward the end of Acts
look second volume you have that emphasized with Paul and it's a it's a major part of
Luke's apologetic now historians back then could right now of course today we don't like apologist
right but no but back then you know you'd had apologetic historians who wrote for apologetic
purposes but just because you have a purpose doesn't mean you're not going to draw on real
facts so Luke is doing apologetic historiography he's making a case for for particular reasons and
yet I don't see a problem with him doing that because if he's the son of God that logically
entails he's also righteous yeah at least from a Jewish perspective and the Christian perspective
so you know Luke is just narrowing it down if he's the son of God okay here's here's what Luke wants
to emphasize yeah you know we do see these these changes they're minor changes most and if you're
saying well what what was actually said what were the words uttered from the Centurions mouth do you
think we know if you if you had to guess or would you say no it was something along those lines some
who knows it was we get it we get a gist of what was said you know some of the people mocking Jesus
at the cross we're saying oh he says he's the son of God at least in in Matthew you have that you
know so if they were saying that the Centurion probably overheard that and and then if Jesus
is vindicated he's like whoa you're really but he was was vindicated at that point right that
came three days later well the resurrection yeah but the Centurion has an insight to see
I think something that the other people didn't see of course I'm following mark and theology
here but gotcha i I believe mark was inspiring so my Christian bias there maybe but I happened
to think my Christian bias is correct since I think Jesus is Lord you do a lot of historical
verification certain things so we do see we do see minor changes we see moderate changes we see
big changes like how the New Testament authors sometimes use the Old Testament I mean I think
about Matthew 27 I think it's verses 9 and 10 where Judas throws the thirty pieces of silver
into the temple sanctuary and Matthew says this was to fulfill what was spoken of by Jeremiah the
Prophet and it's directly quoting zechariah zechariah a similar passage in Jeremiah the
only thing similar is it talks about Potter but I mean that's it because the number of pieces
of silver I think it's 17 pieces of 17 shekels or something like that not 30 and it's for a
total I mean it's a totally different reason I mean it's unbelievers one word matthew bars one
word the word field from Jeremiah puts it in the Zechariah text paraphrases it and then states it
in a man attributes the whole thing to Jeremiah and states it in a manner that has nothing at all
to do with Jeremiah or Zechariah and then he says scriptures fulfilled now mark mark of course opens
with the quotation from Isaiah which includes Malachi Jordan Exodus Ben composite citation Matt
Matthew and Luke clean that up a bit but you know what Matthew was doing here we might not like it
today we might even look at it today and say it's kind of deceitful if someone like a pastor on a
sunny morning sermon did it but as Sean Adams and Seth yo Horne have shown in their book composite
citations in antiquity this was a literary device that was common issues by greco-roman Jewish and
early Christian writers this was a compositional device of that day so they do they do take
differences all right one more thing in that we have to we have to close this video we'll do one
more though okay because I want to get to John so what do you say to the person who says wow
they take these kind of liberties that were you're talking about here how can we trust anything well
when you look at ancient biographies you see kind of the range of what kind of liberties they take
and how much they take and you deal with this in crystal biography yes yeah so when when you make
the comparisons I mean I think we can we can kind of pinpoint what kind of things we can expect that
they'll need to take liberties on and what kind of things we would not expect them to take liberties
on I would not expect them to make up events in the life of Jesus I would not expect them
to make up new teachings that were contrary to the teachings of Jesus I mean if they're
reporting a teaching of Jesus they may change the wording nobody had tape recorders anyway so you
know paraphrase was actually standard practice in fact you're supposed to paraphrase more than the
Gospels absolutely did theirs is unique what they did almost copy and paste then yeah I mean some it
was so close you know an elite-level they could have been accused of plagiarism but I think on
a popular level it wouldn't have been considered that but still it was they're so close but they do
change the wording and what weakens what we can expect though is it if you've got a teaching of
Jesus Jesus preaching about the kingdom of God Jesus or parables I mean it doesn't have to be
verbatim from one gospel to another it's not but you're going to have the same the same basic story
there's a couple cases where where it looks like it's been changed very much or it's a Jesus used
a similar storyline more than once which i think is probably the case like in the - and tell I mean
there's enough differences between you know the wind but there is edit or a boutique in Luke's
version right editorial fatigue because yeah well we don't have to get into that now it seems to
me that Luke is familiar either with Matthews version and there's some cross-pollination of
some details there you know that is going on we have cross-pollination in the anointing of Jesus
feet I do think there were two I think there were two anointing say you don't yeah I think I don't
think bracket bracket Luke's yeah well no that's that's the one I think is different Oh in Luke 7
yeah yeah the sinful woman there is not yeah it seems different to get to him so and you think
John maybe of cross pollinated than - yeah I mean I think John has a good reason because
rather than saying well she did both the head and the feet you think that John whoa if you're
in the prone position the way people reclined you know against some left over he may as well use it
but anyway but no I think John is emphasizing the feet because next chapter Jesus is gonna
wash his disciples feet and so Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus actually provide a model
of that that you know she she she never thought they'd scare his feet and he and then he does
that turns around does that for his disciples interesting for us well thanks so much I hope
that's helpful I look forward to I want to talk with you about John so that'll be our next video
you