Contents:

Part 1: The Journey Begins

Part 2: A Passover Detour

Part 3: A Return to the Road

Part 4: Curves and Bumps in the Road

Part 5: Stop and Go Traffic

Part 6: Checking the Map

Part 7: Arriving at the Destination

The Harmonious Chord

The first step in harmonizing is to strike a chord to make sure that all of the performers are in tune. 

When it comes to harmonizing the gospels—or any other number of distinct texts found in the Bible, and seeking to bring discordant elements together, the cord that must be struck is the cord of context. 

The biblical texts were not written in a vacuum nor did they drop out of heaven in a leather-bound volume with gold-trimmed edges, but were produced within a historical context and reflects a particular background, understanding, and methodology. 

As Michael Heiser has stated,

The biblical text was produced by people living in the ancient Near East and around the Mediterranean between the second millennium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to tap into that context.[1]

The biblical authors were not moderns, they didn’t approach matters in the way that we approach them and to deal with their presentations in good faith means that we need to have at least a working knowledge of not just how they perceived the world, from a metaphysical perspective, but also how the world around them was, culturally as the biblical authors were not from middle America.

Something else we must keep in mind is the fact that the biblical texts—presented to us, bound together into a single volume—was not how they were originally experienced as works. In fact, there’s reason to believe that the gospels often represent the narration of the gospel story into particular circumstances, in particular communities of believers, especially the Synoptic gospels, and so some differences in presentation may reflect concerns or interpretive applications of those various communities.[2] The “problem” comes when we read “across” them, that is we read them in parallel.

It’s there where the distinction emerges. And with the distinction, largely because there is no explanation for the distinctive elements, that speculation begins to arise about the relationships between the gospels.[3]

However, rather than engaging in such rampant speculation, speculation that is often a conclusion in search of evidence to support it, perhaps the best path of approach is to simply accept the presentation as it is, and attempt to situate them into the historical context that they portray.

Such an approach will avoid relational speculation and theological implications, matters that are outside of immediate historical concerns.

Learning to Sing

I remember when I was taking choir in school—not as a choice—that when learning to sing in harmony that there was a recognition that not all parts of the song (the background context) would necessarily be sung by the singers (the narrators). However, there would be particular elements of the song where all of the voices would come together into a whole.

History is much like that song: it’s filled with voices that, when heard in isolation from one another, can sound like an entirely different song. Moreover, if they are brought together without concern for the background melody, they can sound discordant, confusing, and even contradictory. However, when the proper chord is found, the melody played, and the voices are synchronized via harmonization, you can have a stunning choral performance.

This is what we have in the gospels of Mark and John: voices isolated from one another that must be brought into harmony in order to appreciate the song. This is not to say that the individual voices are somehow inadequate in their own right, or that they are diminished by the absence of the other voices. Rather, it’s to say that, while they each have their own sound, or even their own point-of-view, the overall picture being painted is not diminished by the contributors, as Rick Melick has noted,

The Gospel documents are applications of the events and perspectives to a particular cultural and ideological group. The separate Gospels enable various people of the world to identify with the story of Jesus. The unity of accounts produced confidence that the story was true.[4]

Ehrman questions this unity—and any subsequent truthfulness therein—in his insistence that there cannot be a reconciliation of differences without inflicting irreparable damage to the individual narratives themselves.[5] In fact, much of his argument presented in Jesus, Interrupted seems to imply that the audience just assume that everything that is necessary to understand the goings on described in the narrative is present in the text, when the case is just the opposite, as he, himself, has demonstrated elsewhere.[6]

Erhman’s insistence for the discordance between John and Mark comes down to the fact that it’s only in the Gospel of John that there is an identification found of Jesus as, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (Jn 1:30, ESV),” and that statement alone provides the disconnect between the two.[7]

However, digging into the text, as well as the background context, John’s declaration becomes even more substantial with Jesus’ death occurring, not on Passover-proper (14 Nisan), but on the first day of the festival of Unleavened Bread (15 Nisan) the day before not just a normal Sabbath, but a “high Sabbath” (Jn 19:31), in that,

…[He] died as paschal lambs (chaggigot) were dying, but especially, he hung dying as portions of bullocks, one ram, and unblemished paschal lambs were consumed in the flames of the burnt offering of Passover (Nm 28:19) and as a sin offering for the atonement of the people’s sins (Nm 28:22). Moreover [he] was separated in quarantine, prepared for death, and executed under the watchful eyes of the chief priests like the paschal lamb (Mt 26:57; Mk 15:31; Lk 23:33-55; Jn 19:18:12-14) something that could not have happened on the 14th.[8] (emphasis and links added)

So, while John’s narrative is indeed weighed with theological implications, simple facts on the ground reality of Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread, make that weight even greater and more significant.

Intent vs Ignorance

Throughout this work, I’ve struggled with the urge to argue whether or not there has been intentionally misleading on the part of Bart Ehrman or if he’s simply ignorant of the subject of which he is arguing.

Moreover, this is not to say that I am an expert in these matters, rather I have not allowed by ignorance to color my approach to the text. As I noted in my discussion with Ben, the Amateur Exegete, a few years ago, my practice in dealing with matters related to the Bible has generally been one of careful processing: withholding judgement until there is sufficient evidence upon which to draw a conclusion.

That general principle is essentially distilled down to a simple rubric: differences absent context are not contradictions. This extends over a number of matters, even those related to textual-critical matters, but especially when discussing matters of historical import. One thing seems to be evident in Ehrman’s argumentation though: his mind is made up, and he doesn’t want to be confused by the facts.

But the reason why I ping-pong between the poles of intent and ignorance with regard to Ehrman is that he claims to be interested in understanding the author, writing,

To understand what each author is trying to say, we have to look at the details of each account—and by no means treat one account as if it were saying the same thing as another account. … If we want to understand what [one author in particular is saying in contrast to another], we cannot reconcile the discrepancy, or we miss [the] point.[9] 

Here, again, I agree, we ought to seek to understand the individual authors as individuals first, but also there needs to be a recognition that no single narrative could possibly capture all of the nuance of such a dynamic person as Jesus. The subtle variations in the narrative presentations give us a fuller picture of the Son of Man as he inhabited the world, and to attempt to hammer out the distinctive into a single, flat narrative can cause us to miss what is being said.

Also, we need to recognize that the narrators are concerned with certain matters, not feeling any necessity to explain certain elements in their presentations, just as we will freely self-edit our retellings of our experiences depending upon the audience that we’re presenting to, recognizing that there is s shared context that doesn’t require explanation. This is because they lived in particular cultures and wrote according to the rules of their cultures and didn’t feel the need to explain every nuance.[10]

We can see this tendency to leave matters unexplained and to assume that the reader will have the necessary context into which the narrations of Mark and John must be understood against without having to make unnecessary assumptions or posit unsubstantiated or unwarranted elements into. 

Conclusion 

Throughout this study one point has been emphasized: the festival of Passover is key to understanding and subsequently reconciling the disecrepancies between Mark and John. 

It comes down to understanding that Passover was part of a larger observance, and that there were elements that were spread across that observance, which carried even greater theological emphasis strikes. Passover and the subsequent Festival of Unleavened Bread are the chord that brings John and Mark into harmony, allowing the individual presentations to give us the perspectives that we need to see the picture in full color and exquisite detail. 

For Ehrman to insist that there is no means of reconciliation of the presentations requires the reader to ignore both the necessary backgrounds and the common elements between them. 

Therefore, contrary to Ehrman’s claim that these are irreconcilable, we find that they are completely reconcilable, though recognizing that there are different elements and variations in presentation. In fact it’s only when we ignore or attempt to decontextualize clear signposts in the individual author’s narrative journey that such dichotomies seem to appear.

So, what Ehrman argues as a “textbook case” in support of his assertion, when handled carefully and consistently, is quickly revealed to be an instance of either misunderstanding or making stuff up. And such should make one wonder if such considerations can resolve any more of the discrepancies that he highlights in that chapter.

I’ll let you decide.

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Notes

  1. Michael S. Heiser. The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms. Lexham Press. 2017. Loc. 214 (Kindle)
  2. See the discussion in Carl R. Holladay A Critical Introduction to the New Testament (Abingdon, 2005) p. 83-94 
  3. Mark Goodacre. The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze. T & T Clark Publishing. 2001. p.16-18
  4. Rick Melick. “Why There Are Four Gospels”. HCSB Harmony of the Gospels. Holman Bible Publishers. 2007. p. 118. (Epub)
  5. Bart Ehrman. Jesus, Interrupted:Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them). Harper-Collins Publishing. 2009. p. 22
  6. In his 2012 book Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman spends several pages of the third chapter (118-124, ePub) discussing the background linguistic context and subtle cues that an original language reader would normally pick up on, but are obscured by our English translation.
  7. Ehrman, p. 28
  8. Joseph M. Stallings. Rediscovering Passover: A Complete Guide for Christians. Resource Publications. 1994. p. 172 
  9. Ehrman, p. 29, empahsis original
  10. E. Randolph Richards and Richard James. Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World. InterVarsity Press. 2020. p. 19-23 (Scribd)