Differences Among the Gospels . . . Old News!
Sometimes scholars talk as if recognition of the differences among the gospels is a recent discovery. They can think they've discovered some new secret that has the power to undermine Christian confidence in Scripture. But, in fact, this is not a secret at all. Differences among the gospels have been recognized for as long as Christians have been reading these documents synoptically, well back into the second century A.D.
Sometime around 180 A.D. Ireneaus wrote his treatise Against Heresies, Here Irenaeus not only referred to the four New Testament gospels as authoritative, but also attested to their distinctiveness. In a rather lengthy passage, he used the four living creatures in Revelation 4:5-11 -- lion, ox, human, eagle -- as symbols for the gospels, noting how the symbols capture unique qualities of each gospel:
It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. . . . For the cherubim, too, were four-faced, and their faces were images of the dispensation of the Son of God. For, [as the Scripture] says, "The first living creature was like a lion," symbolizing His effectual working, His leadership, and royal power; the second [living creature] was like a calf, signifying [His] sacrificial and sacerdotal order; but "the third had, as it were, the face as of a man,"-an evident description of His advent as a human being; "the fourth was like a flying eagle," pointing out the gift of the Spirit hovering with His wings over the Church. And therefore the Gospels are in accord with these things, among which Christ Jesus is seated. For that according to John relates His original, effectual, and glorious generation from the Father, thus declaring, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Also, "all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made." For this reason, too, is that Gospel full of all confidence, for such is His person. But that according to Luke, taking up [His] priestly character, commenced with Zacharias the priest offering sacrifice to God. For now was made ready the fatted calf, about to be immolated for the finding again of the younger son. Matthew, again, relates His generation as a man, saying, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham; " and also, "The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise." This, then, is the Gospel of His humanity; for which reason it is, too, that [the character of] a humble and meek man is kept up through the whole Gospel. Mark, on the other hand, commences with [a reference to] the prophetical spirit coming down from on high to men, saying, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet,"-pointing to the winged aspect of the Gospel; and on this account he made a compendious and cursory narrative, for such is the prophetical character. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.11.8)
Irenaeus exemplifies the fact that Christians have recognized from the earliest times that the four biblical gospels are distinctive. Rather than disguising this fact with a single harmony, as attempted by Tatian with his Diatessaron, they celebrated the differences as part of God's revelation.
Letting the Gospels Be Messy
It's also worth noting that the second-century Christians didn't "clean up" the four gospels. It's true that some of the scribes did harmonize divergent texts, so there would be fewer differences among the gospels. But, by and large, the church kept the original texts intact, even though this meant preserving some of the very elements that could be labeled as "contradictions." This fact suggests two implications.
First, it confirms the judgment that people in the Hellenistic world didn't expect historical or biographical works to get every word exactly right. Second-century believers could accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as authoritative accounts of Jesus's life, even though there are acknowledged variations among them.
Second, the fact that the church did not prefer a single harmonized gospel, but instead kept the four distinct ones, suggests that the early Christians did indeed seek to preserve accurately the written accounts of Jesus's life, even though they were aware of the differences among these accounts. To put it differently, there was no conspiracy in the early church to clean up the gospels. The truth needed to be protected and preserved, even if it was messy.
I'm aware that what I've just said flows upstream in some rivers of biblical scholarship. It's not uncommon to hear scholars argue that the gospels are primarily theological documents, and therefore were not meant to be historically accurate in the first place. Theology and history, it seems, are incompatible. In the next chapter I'll take up this issue. If it turns out that the motivations of the evangelists were more theological than academic, if they were promoting a religious agenda more than writing history for antiquarian reasons, does this discount the reliability of the gospels?
