Synoptic Discrepancies & Contradictions

 The gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke — in order of written composition — have a similar narrative. However, there are many discrepancies and apparent “factual” contradictions between them.

 This is where I will review them, as always, briefly.

 The discrepancies arise out of what scholars call the “synoptic problem.” Raymond Brown, one of the three principal editors of the Jerome Biblical Commentary, identifies 80% of Mark’s text as reproduced in Matthew, only 65% in Luke. The remainder is attributed by a variety of scholars to sayings and stories not common between them. The theory is that they came from some text(s) that have not survived.

 As to the “factual” contradictions, please note the quotes; no one knows the actual facts in most of these cases). I will tackle set sets today.

 First, we have the genealogies, which are not really of Jesus, but of Joseph.

  Matthew, working forward in time from Abraham, claims Joseph was a descendant of David through Solomon. Luke, working backward from Joseph to Adam (!), makes the Davidic claim through King David’s son Nathan. After that, they differ completely, even claiming different fathers for Joseph.

 Neither genealogy neither alludes to the virgin birth by Mary, through the non-sexual power of the Holy Spirit. If Mary was a virgin, then the ancestors of Joseph tell us nothing about Jesus; Luke does say that Jesus “the son, as was thought, of Joseph” (Lk 3:23).

 Some have argued that Luke’s version is matrilineal; if so, why name Joseph and omit Mary? Moreover, as the Gentile Luke may not have known, the ancient rabbinical judgment was that inheritance, including lineage as a Jew, comes from the (Jewish) mother. 

 Secondly, the Nativity of Jesus is replete with apparent factual problems between Matthew and Luke (Mark says nothing about the birth of Jesus). To wit:

• Annunciation and Pregnancy: Luke has the angel Gabriel’s the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, then pregnant with the boy who would become John the Baptist; Matthew is silent.
  
  
• Date: Matthew says during the reign of Herod; Luke says during the census of Quirinius, governor of Syria, in 6-7 AD, or 10 years after Herod died, in 4 BC (which suggests, humorously, that Jesus was born “before Christ”).

• Magi (Eastern astrologers, magoi ) — not “kings”: Matthew, has them give Jesus gold, frankincense, and myrhh; Luke doesn’t report them at all.
  

• Place, circumstances: Matthew has a house in Bethlehem, where Joseph and Mary lived; Luke has a stable in the same city, as they came from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. 

• Flight to Egypt: Matthew has Herod order the killing of all male children under two years old in and around Bethlehem (“slaughter of the innocents”). Joseph is warned by an angel, so they flee. Traditions in Coptic Christianity state that the Holy family lived in the village of Abu Serghis, where a church stands on the place the family allegedly had its home.
   
• Temple and Nazareth: Luke has Jesus presented at the Temple eight days after birth (but no fleeing); Matthew gives his parents no time for such rituals. Both agree that the family returned to Nazareth.
  

 That’s just the birth of Jesus. We will need another entry to cover the rest.

Luke, the Gentile gospel

 Whereas Matthew identifies with Jewish thought, Luke (Ancient Greek: Λουκᾶς, Loukâs; Hebrew: לוקאס, Lūqās; Aramaic: /ܠܘܩܐ לוקא, Lūqā') is decidedly Greek. At the very least, Luke was a Gentile non-Palestinian writing to an audience of his peers.

 Luke is the second most literary gospel, starting with the artifice of addressing his works to one Theophilus (or “God lover,” from theo = God; philos = love).

 The gospel text is traditionally divided into 8 “chapters,” as follows: Introduction and Dedication (1:1–4); Infancy (1:5–2:52); Preparation for the Public Ministry (3:1–4:13); Ministry in Galilee (4:14–9:50); Journey to Jerusalem: Luke’s Travel Narrative (9:51–19:27); Teaching Ministry in Jerusalem (19:28–21:38); Passion (22:1–23:56); Resurrection (24:1–53).

 Of these, the most distinctive are the Infancy stories. These include John the Baptist’s conception, indicating kinship to Jesus; Mary’s visit to Elizabeth; the annunciation by the Angel Gabriel and Mary’s Magnificat (or Canticle of Acceptance of Motherhood of the Messiah); the canticle of the Baptist’s father, Zechariah; the birth (with shepherds, full orchestration, but no magi), Temple presentation, and Jesus’ boyhood episode with the rabbis in the Temple — all of which Mary “his mother kept all these things in her heart” (2:51).

 How did a Gentile author — one who makes obvious mistakes concerning Jewish customs and rituals — get so much inside information about Jesus’ early years that the actual apostles, who witnessed his ministry as an adult, knew very little about?

 Part of the answer must go back to the four distinguishing marks of Luke, apart from being the only Gentile author of the NT, is that he was 

• a scientist (Paul in Colossians 4:14 relays the greetings of “Luke the beloved physician”);
• a writer in the tradition of Greek historiography going back to Thucydides, the 4th century BC historian who wrote the classic story of the Peloponnesian War;
• a witness of the missionary work of Paul of Tarsus, which led him to author the first church history, the NT’s Acts of the Apostles;
• a visitor with Paul to Ephesus, where he recounted with incredible accuracy an anti-Pauline riot in that city (Acts 19), precisely at the time that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was in exile there with the apostle John.

 This is not to say that Luke is flawless as a historian. Although, clearly, he was the first Christian to dabble in the history of the faith, from Jesus through the apostles, with concepts in mind that were remarkably timeless.

 Notably, his works, which scholars often refer to as the two-volume Luke-Acts (27.5% of the NT), center not only on the person of Jesus, his preaching, his death, and his resurrection. They touch extensively upon the early Church itself — or what one might call Jesus’ preaching in action by people who knew him or were his contemporaries.

 This explains the widespread veneration by the Catholic Church, which regards him as Saint Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, physicians, bachelors, surgeons, students and butchers. Meanwhile, Eastern Orthodoxy has spread a post-apostolic tradition that Luke painted icons of Mary (in Ephesus?) and Jesus. 

 The Luke as artist tradition has support from the Saint Thomas Christians of India, who claim to still have one of the icons of Mary Theotokos (or “God-bearer,“ from the Greek Θεός = God; and τόκος = childbirth, parturition; offspring) that St. Luke painted, and which the doubting apostle brought to India.

Matthew's Hebrew gospel

 Of the four canonical gospels, only Matthew is strongly believed to have been written originally in Jesus’ own language, Aramaic. Unfortunately, the original is lost; we only have a Greek translation that strongly points to an Aramaic original.

 It is one of the synoptic gospels, derived from Mark and oral traditions that scholars call “Q” (probably from the first letter of the German word Quelle, meaning “source”).

 Matthew’s story is commonly read as divided into the following “chapters”: Infancy Narrative (1:1–2:23), Proclamation of the Kingdom (3:1–7:29), Ministry and Mission in Galilee (8:1–11:1),  Opposition from Israel (11:2–13:53),  Jesus, the Kingdom, and the Church (13:54–18:35), Ministry in Judea and Jerusalem (19:1–25:46), Passion and Resurrection (26:1–28:20).

 Matthew is the “Hebrew” gospel not only because of its probable original language, but because of the text’s focus on Jewish thought. This is particularly notable in its emphasis on Jesus’ sayings on the Mosaic Law, righteousness and Jewish piety.

 In particular, the Beatitudes (or blessings) spoken by Jesus in Matthew refer to the poor as πτωχός (ptōkhós). Among Jews who spoke common Koine Greek, this word, which literally means “one who crouches and cringes,” was usually applied to the very pious who approached God with great humility. 

 In Matthew 5:3, it is translated as “poor in spirit” because it is understood to mean pious believers who fully recognize that they have nothing spiritually to offer God. The original word is thought to be the Hebrew word עָנָו (anav).

 Finally, Matthew was traditionally identified (principally by Church fathers Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria) as Luke’s tax collector Levi (Hebrew name), a Galilean who converts and reappears as the apostle Matthew (Greek name). In later commentaries scholars point out, however, that it seems odd that a first-hand witness would have relied so heavily on Mark and Q.

 The extant text is almost certainly post-A.D. 70, meaning after the revolt that led to Roman legionaries, under Emperor Vespasian's son Titus, to storm and level Jerusalem, and notably destroy the great Temple. This is confirmed within the text by Mt 22:7, which refers to the destruction of Jerusalem.

 The year 70 was the beginning of the dispersal of Jews from the original Promised Land to the Mediterranean, and later Europe and elsewhere. Rabbinical Judaism developed its current, largely Talmudic form — derived from the Pharisee school, to which Jesus may have belonged — abandoning the free-for-all competition of sects such as the Saducees. Post-70 rabbinical Judaism adopted a hard line against those who claimed Jesus was the Messiah.

Mark

  The gospel according to Mark is the earliest written text accepted into the New Testament that tells the good news of Jesus the Messiah. It is also the shortest and the one with the least “editorializing”.

 In Mark, there’s only the bare story of one Yeshua from Nazareth, Galilee, who is a rabbi (teacher), a healer, exorcist, and a miracle worker. He preaches about the coming of a new era and a new “kingdom” of God and the need to prepare for it.

 The mystery of the Messiah or Savior is shrowded in Jesus’ self-identification as “the Son of Man” (in Hebrew בן–אדם or ben-'adam). This was later used to insist on Jesus’ humanity. As to the divinity, Jesus leaves that up in the air, although there are hints, such as at his baptism by John the Baptist, when a voice from heaven says “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

 Also interesting are the two endings of the gospel. In one, the empty tomb is found: end of story. In the other, the risen Jesus appears to the disciples and commissions them to spread the news of his teaching and rising from the dead.

 There is also the issue of Mark’s identity. The Acts of the Apostles identifies a John Mark,  an assistant accompanying Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journeys. According to Eusebius of Cesarea, a bishop who was present at Nicea and was the author of the first post-NT history of Christianity, Historia Ecclesiastica, St. Peter met John Mark in Rome.

 St. Mark the Evangelist is also credited with founding, in 49AD, the Church of Alexandria, Egypt, one of the original Apostolic Sees of Christianity, along with Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Today, the Coptic, Orthodox, and Coptic Catholic Church all claim to be direct heirs of Mark’s original church community.

 This is the traditional story. Some scholars dispute it, but they offer no credible alternative.

 In terms of the NT, the Gospel of Mark, as the first text, is widely understood to be the basis for Matthew and Luke, along with a collection of other materials scholars call Q.

Gospels, the good news

 Aside from the structure of the New Testament, I particularly focus on the gospels. This is because they are the documents that are closest to the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. 

 The word gospel comes from the Old English godspel, literally “good spell,” from god “good” and spel “story, message.” It's a translation of Latin bona adnuntiatio, itself a translation of Greek euangelion “reward for bringing good news.”

 The good news in the four NT narratives known as gospels follow the story of Jesus, with particular emphasis on his public life as known to the apostles. We don't have the original writings and there is some debate as to authorship.

 We do know that nowhere in the text is there a mention of the authors. The titles ascribing the gospels to four evangelists — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — were added around the 2nd century of our era, long after the putative authors would have been dead. 

 Keep in mind that the notion of authorship was very loose in biblical times. No one actually meant that Moses took up a quill and wrote Genesis, for example. A book “of Moses” means merely a work inspired by or originally told by Moses or one of his followers.

 The four canonical — or accepted into the NT — gospels were probably written between AD 66 and 110. Mark probably dates from about 66 to 70 AD, Matthew and Luke from around 85 to 90 AD, and John from about 90 to 110 AD. By written, scholars mean when the actual texts were set down by a quill to papyrus, not when the story was first told by a presumed witness.

 Of the four, Matthew and John were unquestionably witnesses of the ministry and passion of Jesus — they were apostles by any account. Mark may have been a more distant witness, but he was later an assistant of Peter’s in Rome. Luke was a follower of Paul, who was not a witness at all.

 Presumably, Matthew and John told the stories to their communities and scribes eventually wrote down what was passed by word of mouth. Mark learned his story similarly from Peter. Luke, however, was the only literate Greek author —he was reputedly a doctor — and his material, which is distinct in its infancy narratives, may have come from his contact with Mary in Ephesus, as Luke traveled there with Paul.

 Matthew, Mark and Luke are called synoptic gospels because they present a summary, or synopsis, of the outline of Jesus life. John is distinct, being the more theological and the more open to proclaim Jesus divine.

 Finally, why were they good stories? Because in an era dominated by an all-powerful emperor-god and his Mafia-like extortion of his empire, they told the story of a humble and marginal person from a far-away province who, alas, rose from the dead after being executed. 

 It was the stunning event that was the first thing people learned about Jesus: he rose!