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- When we look at the words of Scripture,
they are the words that were written or recited
by human beings, by prophets and apostles,
but they're also the exact words
that God wanted recited or written.
In fact, if you look in the book of Hebrews,
it will cite the same passage from Psalm 95,
and one time it will say, well, David said this,
and then another time it will say,
the Holy Spirit said this, right?
Both true, dual authorship, concurrent authorship.
And as the words of God, God is a truth-teller.
It's impossible for Him to lie.
He is one who tells complete truth.
So in everything that the Scriptures seek to affirm,
they are completely truthful.
At the same time we acknowledge this,
we acknowledge that if you were to put
side by side Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
you would find these surface level incongruities that
to the superficial reader say, well, what's going on here?
Is this two people here, was there one person here?
Did this happen this way?
Did this this happen this way?
And I would argue that these are the same kind
of surface-level incongruities that
we would expect in any historical retelling
of an incident by different eyewitnesses.
Every kind of eyewitness account is going
to have summarizing, partial reporting.
It's going to have paraphrasing.
It's going to have rearranging
of the material chronologically,
and that's exactly what we find
in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In the first generation after the New Testament,
there was a gentleman named Papias.
And Papias, one of the things that he said,
he tells us that the Gospel of Mark
was Mark writing down what Peter preached.
And so the gospel of Mark,
Mark was not a follower of Jesus
during his earthly ministry, but he followed Peter,
and Papias tells us, he accurately wrote down everything
that Peter said, but not in chronological order.
This is significant.
The earliest generation after the Gospels
recognized the gospels are not intended
to be presented in chronological order.
So, if we as modern readers just assume,
well, these are in chronological order,
and then we find things in different order,
Oh, this is a mistake, what's going on?
We're asking something that
the inspired authors never intended to give us.
So, for example, maybe you look at the temptation narrative
in Luke 4 versus the temptation narrative in Matthew 4.
Same three temptations offered, but in Matthew 4,
the last temptation is on a high mountain.
Luke, the final temptation is on the pinnacle of the temple.
If we could fly back through a time machine
and have raw video footage, which one was it?
I don't know,
but I know in choosing those two different presentations,
there's probably an emphasis that Luke is trying to make
and that Matthew's trying to make.
In Matthew's gospel,
it's striking how many times mountains are a motif,
Jesus's the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5-7.
The gospel ends with Jesus being on a high mountain
and saying, "Go make disciples of all nations,"
and so, possibly tracking with that motif,
we have this final temptation on the mountain,
Matthew lining that up with this mountain motif he uses,
or, if you read Luke and Acts, it's possibly
fitting in with some emphasis that Luke has
on what is the relevance of the temple,
in light of the New Covenant fulfillment
that's taken place in Jesus,
that he makes the temple temptation the final one.
Again, the point is neither Gospel is claiming
chronological specificity for the reporting,
and so, we as modern readers,
shouldn't ask and demand something of the text
that the inspired author is not intending to give.
An example I've given to my students in the past
is a historical example from my own life.
A while back, my wife's mini-van gave out
in the Walgreen's parking lot, so the battery died.
So, I got a call, I drove over my Corolla,
and gave the keys to my wife,
and she took the three kids and her.
They went home and I stayed with the mini-van
while the battery repair guy came and changed the battery.
Now, in talking about that the next day,
I could say, I could write an email and say,
"My wife's mini-van broke in the parking lot,"
or in talking to someone, I could just say,
"Yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't make the meeting,
"my car broke down yesterday."
Or to someone else you say,
"Why was your wife driving your Corolla?"
"Oh, her car broke down."
So, someone looking at this hundreds of years later
could say, well, this, you know,
clearly, someone is being deceptive.
Does his wife have a mini-van or does his wife have a car?
Or is it his car 'cause one time he said it was his car,
one time he said it was her car,
another time he said it was her mini-van.
Now, we realize, in colloquial English usage,
a car can describe any vehicle that a family would drive,
broadly referring to a mini-van,
an SUV, a Sedan, or whatever.
We also recognize that in terms
of the marriage, the family that I have,
what's mine is hers, what's hers is mine.
In fact, my name is on the title of the mini-van.
So, technically it is my mini-van,
but she drives it all the time,
so is it her mini-van or is it my mini-van?
So, these are the kinds of things where,
when you actually look into the details of it,
it makes good sense and there's no deception.
It's just a partial reporting or there's a different
emphasis in the way that something is being retold.
And really, we find the very same thing in the Gospels.
For example, the genealogy of Matthew
versus the genealogy in Luke.
So, if you look in Matthew 1 and you look at Luke 3,
you can sort of line the names up,
especially beginning with Joseph
and going back the generations right after that,
you can write them down
and you'll see there are differences.
Why is this?
Well, this is something that was discussed
by many Christians in the earliest years,
and Eusebius, a famous church historian,
who wrote in the early 300s,
he talks about various different views,
and then he seems to favor the views
of a gentleman named Julius Africanus.
Julius Africanus was born in 160 AD roughly,
and Julius Africanus cites testimony even earlier of people
who've gone to the land of Israel,
or the Holy Land, and have had conversations,
had actual interviews with the physical descendants
of Jesus's half brothers and sisters.
So, these are, you know, the gospels speak
of Jesus's half brothers and sisters,
and people actually talked
to their children and their grandchildren,
and according to Julius Africanus,
the reason for the discrepancy is because
in the lineage of Joseph, there was a Levirate marriage,
and if you read the Old Testament,
it seems somewhat of a strange regulation to us,
but if a brother died,
the other brother would marry the widow, but the offspring
would be considered the offspring of his brother,
so there's a legal lineage,
and then there's a biological lineage,
and Julius Africanus tells us that the reason
for the discrepancies in these genealogies
is that one of them follows the legal lineage
and one of them follows the biological lineage.
So, we notice in this discussion,
number one, it's the kind of thing that
we would expect from the complexity of life.
Life is complex in modern and ancient times,
and we're not surprised that on the surface level,
we have these discrepancies which further study clarifies.
Secondly, we don't find ancient Christians just saying,
oh, well, you know, don't ask about it, who knows, you know,
but there's an actual, well, here are three possibilities,
and each of the possibilities submits itself
to the reliability and authority of Scripture,
and so, we need to follow that example, I think,
when we're looking at these discrepancies.
What I would encourage a modern reader to do
who has questions is just to be honest and real about it,
and say, hey, these are the things
that I'm trying to figure out.
Pray about it, study the text carefully,
ask questions of a trusted source,
you know, the faculty here at Southern Seminary,
we're eager to be a resource to people,
if people, sometimes I get random emails
and questions from people about stuff,
and I can direct them places, but I would just say,
don't be afraid to ask honest questions,
and to seek help in answering those if you need it,
and remember that God is a loving heavenly Father,
who is not trying to trick you or hide things from you,
but who hears when you call to Him,
and has given us a reliable and trustworthy Word,
a reliable and trustworthy account
of how He's revealed Himself in history
preeminently in the sending of His Son
to live a perfect life and to die for us.
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- [Narrator] Thanks for watching Honest Answers.
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And don't forget to subscribe to find out
the answer to next Wednesday's question.
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