Contents:

Part 1: The Journey Begins

Part 2: A Passover Detour

Part 3: A Return to the Road

Part 4: Curves and Bumps

Part 5: Stop and Go Traffic

Part 6: Checking the Map

Part 7: Arriving at the Destination

Ehrman’s Argument

Chapter two of Jesus, Interrupted is titled “A World of Contradictions” and its here that Ehrman—apparently hoping that no one conscious of either the history and circumstances of the transmission of the biblical text or textual criticism as a general practice—will land. In fact the opening sentence of the chapter is itself a worthwhile topic for debate,

When students are first introduced to the historical, as opposed to a devotional, study of the Bible, one of the first things they are forced to grapple with is that the biblical text, whether Old Testament or New Testament, is chock full of discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable. [1]

This is a claim worthy of investigation as it is true as there are discrepancies in the biblical text from presentation to presentation. However the matter of being “irreconcilable” is simply a matter of what one is willing to consider. 

Ehrman continues,

Some of these discrepancies are simple details where one book contradicts what another says about a minor point—the number of soldiers in an army, the year a certain king began his reign, the details of an apostle’s itinerary. In some cases seemingly trivial points of difference can actually have an enormous significance for the interpretation of a book or the reconstruction of the history of ancient Israel or the life of the historical Jesus.[2]

Let’s keep in mind that the biblical texts were written, not with our focus on specific details, but in accordance to the literary styles and practices of the ancient Near East. That means that you will encounter various features of the text that are perfectly acceptable within that context and are consistent with other historical sources of a similar time period with regard to manner of presentation in accordance to their literary genre. 

Ehrman, in his 2012 book Did Jesus Exist?, makes such a point that the biblical documents are, first and foremost, historical sources that, “were written according to the rhetorical conventions of their historical period.”[3] Ehrman goes so far as to say that ignoring that specific fact can lead one to misunderstand the text.[4]

And that fact, most conscientious believers already have running in their mind: that the Bible is, first and foremost a historical text, relating history to us, but that is the reason why there is a devotional element to it, because we recognize that it is the recounting of God’s acts in time. 

That’s also not to say that every Christian reads the Bible the same way or operates on the same interpretational framework. Indeed it is the push-pull of the exegesis/eisegesis problem: is one deriving their theology (or historical context) FROM the text or IMPOSING it upon the text? 

This can even go towards the critic, such as Ehrman, is he actually seeing things which are irreconcilable or has he decided that they are, and chooses not to even consider such possibilities?

“Not All”…

One of the important admissions that Ehrman makes early on is that not all discrepancies are necessarily contradictions, that differences can simply be about where the authors decide to put their focus.[5] 

However, when one does spot something that appears to be a contradiction, say with the ordering of events, we have to ask other questions.

One example that he points to, regarding the differences between Mark and John, is that they appear to place Jesus’ cleansing of the temple at different times or, more specifically, at different places in their gospels, with Mark placing the event in the week leading up to Jesus’ death, while it appears early—at least text-wise—in John’s gospel. About this, he writes,

Strictly speaking this difference is not a contradiction…maybe Jesus cleansed the Temple twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of his ministry.[6] 

Ehrman notes that such a proposed resolution as this raises a number of subsequent questions and that in order to make the two fit together requires serious work that could do serious violence to the text.[7]

However, I would like to suggest that the simplest solution, which respects both writers, is to recognize that Mark has written a more-or-less chronological narrative while John’s is more thematic, built around vignettes wherein certain significant “signs” that demonstrate Jesus’ identity are emphasized. There’s nothing in John’s gospel that requires anyone to assume that the temple cleansing occurred early in Jesus’ ministry—or even twice for that matter—when considered in the context of that gospel because its focus is not upon a chronology of events, rather chronological ordering is simply being assumed.[8]

This means, in that context of “historical criticism”, one has to look at sources individually, uncover how they’re presenting their material then see how it may interact with other sources. 

Ehrman doesn’t seem to bother to mention that factor in his historical calculus. Rather, he decides to focus on the differences, period, demonstrated by the fact that he writes,

Pick a story in the Gospels—for example, Jesus’ birth, the healing of Jairus’s daughter, the crucifixion, the resurrection—most any story will do. Read the account in one Gospel, listing carefully everything that happens in sequence; then read the same story in another Gospel, again taking careful notes. Finally, compare your notes. Sometimes the differences are slight, but sometimes they matter a lot—even if at first glance they seem rather unimportant. [9]

That’s not to say that differences aren’t important. As one writer may include information that another chooses to omit when narrating the same event. But it’s not merely facts, but how a writer chooses to present the event to his audience. 

A Personal Example 

Several years ago, my family and I were in a terrible car accident. While we didn’t experience any serious physical injuries, the shock of the accident exerted a great deal of emotional trauma on us. 

To this day, my sons will not discuss the event and are easily upset by it, my wife will only speak of it in passing, but I have no difficulty speaking about it in detail, in fact the more I speak about it the better that I feel. 

But in recounting the accident, I will often catch myself omitting or adding elements depending upon who I am speaking to. I will vary my vocabulary, though I will often use the exact same words. I can make it either emotionally charged or dryly fact-filled. 

Now, if I were to give a presentation of this experience to an audience and ask them to write a summary of what I said, how they chose to narrate my words might overlap with my vocabulary, but their presentation might not. Some might be better listeners than others and render a very precise version of what they heard while others might just give a sketched outline of the event. 

Now, suppose I took the crowd and made smaller groups and told them to take their individual versions and craft them into a unified narrative. The exercise would result in its own varied output. To compare those would undoubtedly result in a discovery of a number of discrepancies or even outright contradictions because of choices made at various levels by the narrators.

The question is, do those fundamentally undermine the experience that was described to and produced by those groups?

This is what we will need to examine next.

Notes

  1. Bart Ehrman. Jesus, Interrupted:Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them). Harper-Collins Publishing. 2009. p. 19
  2. Ibid.
  3. —. Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Harper-Collins Publishing. 2012. p. 98 (ePub)
  4. Ibid.
  5. —(2009), p. 22
  6. Ibid.
  7. Ibid.
  8. We often consider that the gospels were written as we read them, straight through from start to finish, rather than recognizing that is not the way that such documents were written. Often the specific stories would be written out individually and, at a later date, collated and edited into a single document.
  9. Ehrman (2009), p. 22-3