Gospels Part 037

What explains these differences?   

In the mid-1800s, scholars saw similarities between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and theorized that they all must have been taking material from an earlier common source. Scholars called this theoretical earlier source Q, taken from the German word quelle, meaning “source.” However, in all the decades since this theory gained ground, scholars never found any hard evidence of an earlier gospel. No manuscripts or anyone referring to it or quoting from it, or anything along those lines have been found. Their idea to account for the similarities between Matthew, Mark and Luke was strictly theoretical.   

More recent scholars have come to realize there may be a better explanation for the similarities and sometimes exact overlap between Matthew, Mark and Luke. The better explanation is memorization. Memorization was the common way to learn back in that day, especially in the Jewish culture of Jesus and the apostles. It’s reasonable to conclude that there was an earlier source, yet it wasn’t written. Most likely this earlier source consisted of one or more memorized oral sources.  

People then didn’t have their own copies or scrolls of the “Bible” of their day. Remember, they only had what we would call the books of the Old Testament. Paper was quite rare, and parchment, which was made from the thin skin of calves, goats or sheep, was quite costly. This meant that it was far too expensive for the average person to own a copy of any book of the Bible, much less the entire set of scrolls. The way people learned their Bible was to go to the local synagogue to study the biblical scrolls there for hours on end.   

That was what “going to school” entailed for a Jewish boy or girl of that day. It consisted of going to the synagogue to study and memorize Scripture under the direction of a rabbi or teacher. Jesus and the apostles would have done this. All the Jewish boys of the day would have done this, and we see hints of this as we go through the Gospels themselves. It was also common for the followers—disciples—of a rabbi to memorize their master’s teachings.    

Was there an earlier source that Matthew, Mark and Luke used for their Gospels? Yes, the many close similarities indicate that there almost certainly was. But it doesn’t appear there was a specific written source, for which no evidence has ever been found. Most likely all three of these writers were drawing on memorized stories, or a memorized collection of stories, about the life and ministry of Jesus the Messiah.   

It’s likely that these stories were being told over and over by the apostles to the members of the early Church. They would probably ask Peter or John or Matthew, “Tell us again about the feeding of the 5,000,” or “Tell us again about that time Jesus walked on the water on the Sea of Galilee,” or “Tell us again about how Jesus healed the blind man.”   

In the introduction to his Gospel, we can notice how Luke tells us where he got the information he used in compiling his account of Jesus Christ’s life since he was not a personal eyewitness. 

"Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write an accurate account for you . . ." (Luke 1:1-3, New Living Translation).

Luke tells us that eyewitness reports were circulating from the early disciples, and some of these were then written down. Though these things were not preserved apart from those that were recorded in the four Gospels. John, who was a personal eyewitness, also tells us that "there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25).

In summary, it appears that these circulating oral stories became the basis of the accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And this logically explains why we see many similarities between those three Gospels, as well as some of the differences. It’s probably because these were oral stories passed along over several decades, 30 years, and not material that was written down from the beginning.    

One evidence of this is in the way Matthew, Mark and Luke quote Jesus. In each Gospel they are apparently quoting Jesus' word for word, but each has Jesus saying slightly different things. The meaning is the same, but the wording is slightly different between the three accounts. If they were working from a written source, the wording should be identical—but it’s not. This again points to the fact that they were drawing from multiple oral accounts when compiling their Gospels.    

There’s another factor that easily accounts for some of these differences. What language were the Gospels originally written in? They were written in Greek. What language did Jesus and the apostles speak? The Gospels records that He was speaking in both Aramaic and Hebrew (closely related languages). If you have ever tried to translate from one language to another, you know that word-for-word translations are difficult and at times impossible. If three different people tried to translate this Daily Dose into another language, we would end up with three slightly or maybe considerably different translations.   

This is also part of what is going on in the Gospels where Jesus’ words are different from one Gospel account to another. He originally spoke in Hebrew or Aramaic, but the Gospels are written in Greek. It is natural for translations to be a little different going from one language to the other. Additionally, this accounts for some of the differences in the way the Gospels record Jesus Christ’s words on various occasions. The words can be slightly different again depending on which Bible version is used to translate the Greek into English (or whatever language you use).     

With this background, it’s easy to explain why there are some differences between the Gospels. We’ll go into this a little deeper in the next lesson.    

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