Exploring the Gospels 5: Dating the Gospels, How We Got Them, and Reasons for Differences

We've covered several aspects of the Gospels so far, and today we'll cover some other more technical issues, more scholarly academic type issues, questions that come up relating to the Gospels here. Let's begin by discussing briefly what the Gospels are. And by that, I mean if you think about it, our Bibles have different categories or scholars call it genres of content, different types of books of writing there. To give you an example, how do our Bibles start? They start with five books that are called what? The Law. The five books of Moses there, which do contain a lot of the laws that God gave to ancient Israel, the Torah, as it's called. There are books that are obviously history books, like 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, for instance. There are books of prophecy, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, the 12 minor prophets, and so on. There are books of poetry, poetic books, like Song of Solomon, for instance.

The Psalms are books of poetry meant to be sung. There are books of wisdom, like Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. There are books that are letters, personal letters to individuals, like Titus, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Philemon, and then letters that are written to broader audiences, like Church congregations, to the Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and so on. So there are all these different types of categories or genres of material that are found in the Bible. And the Gospels are in a category of their own, a somewhat unique category because they are somewhat history. They contain history there. They are somewhat personal memoirs of some of the authors of that, but they are basically talking about the good news. That is what the word gospel means, good news or good message. And they do contain the good news about the coming, about the ministry, and about the death and the resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. But those titles of gospel or good news are a little bit, not necessarily misleading, but they don't really cover the whole picture. Because what we're really looking at here is the testimony of these men to the events that took place during the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. And the four books of the Gospels do bear witness to those events. They weren't the only witnesses because we know there were 12 apostles who were chosen specifically to be witnesses.

Let's notice this over in Acts 1 and verses 21 and 22. And for the context here, this is where the apostles are going to choose someone to replace Judas, who has committed suicide after betraying Jesus. And Peter says here, Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when he was taken up from us, one of these other men must become a witness with us of his resurrection. And then, continuing with the story, which we won't read, Matthias is chosen to replace Judas. But the point I want to draw here is that one of the responsibilities of these men was to be witnesses. That's the job of the 12 apostles. They were to be witnesses of these events. And indeed, they were. They went about teaching about the life and the death and the resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And it was important that there not be one, not two, not three, not four, but 12 apostles who were there designated as witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus. And these men were the official witnesses, you might say, because, in fact, there were many others who saw Jesus alive again after he had died and been resurrected. In one case, Paul writes, there were over 500 people who saw him alive after his resurrection at one time. So it was important that there be ample testimony of the resurrection of Jesus, because, well, just think about it. Obviously, most people would not easily believe that someone had risen from the dead. So if there's just one or two witnesses of that, are you going to believe those people? Probably not, because people just don't spontaneously come to life again from the dead. So that is why it was important that there be multiple witnesses of this fact. And again, in one case, more than 500 at once who saw Jesus alive after his death. And, of course, the idea of witnesses is central to the biblical legal system. You might write down in your notes here Deuteronomy 19 and verse 15. And it was very important that from a legal standpoint that there be at least two or three witnesses to an event. As we're told here, one witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits by the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established. So one witness was not enough to establish truth.

So with the gospels, Jesus, or actually God, gives us more than double the legally required number two. He doesn't give us two. He gives us four witnesses there in the gospels. And those witnesses put their witness, their message into writing there for us. Have you ever wondered or asked the question, why didn't Jesus write his own gospel? Why did he leave it to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to write this down about 30 years later? Well, actually we find the answer to that over in John 5 and verse 31. And Jesus himself says here, if I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. And I want to draw a distinction here. He's not seeing that he's lying in the sense that his witness is not true. His point and the meaning here is that it is not legally valid. It's not legally valid, which is the way some other translations put it here. What Jesus is saying here is that a person can stand up in a court of law and make any claim that he wants to, but that does not of itself establish whether or not it's true. You have to have independent witnesses. There had to be independent witnesses of what Jesus said and what he did and what he taught. He had to have independent witnesses of his death and his resurrection. And again, there are about 500 people who saw him after his resurrection on that one occasion. So there were plenty of witnesses that God provided that these things were true. So this, in a nutshell, is why we have four different Gospels. God is consistent. Two witnesses would have been all that is legal required, but God gives us far more than that, twice the number in written form. Now let's move on to address another question here. And that is, when were the Gospels written? When were the Gospels written? I have a question here to make you think. Actually, a couple of questions. Let's start with the first one. How often does Paul quote the Old Testament, the books of the Old Testament, in his writings to support what he is saying, to support what he is teaching? How many times does Paul quote the Old Testament? And I don't expect you to know it off the top of your heads, but we're familiar with it. Paul quotes the Old Testament literally dozens of times, maybe up into the hundreds. I actually didn't count them all up. I seem to recall off the top of my head it's about 200 times that he quotes from the Old Testament, on average, of far more than one per chapter there to support his teachings.

But here's the key question. How many times does he quote from the Gospels to support his teaching?

How many times? Anybody know the answer to that?

It's a simple answer. One. One time. One time that Paul quotes the Gospels to support his message here. And we find that over in 1 Timothy 5 and verse 18. And here he actually quotes part of Deuteronomy, quotes Deuteronomy 25 and verse 4, and from Luke 10 and verse 7. And what he says is, For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. That's the part from Deuteronomy. And then he quotes from Luke 10 and verse 7, The laborer is worthy of his wages. The laborer is worthy of his wages. That is the only quote we find in the Gospels in all of Paul's letters. The only one. So why does Paul not quote from the Gospels here?

Does he not believe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Does he not like them? Is he jealous of them? Does he not want to give them any credit there? What's going on? What's the answer to that?

Well, a lot of times when you examine issues like that, the simplest answer is the one that is most often true. And the very simple answer is, the Gospels had not been written yet.

The Gospels had not been written yet when Paul wrote his letters. Paul wrote his letters beginning about 50 AD to around the time of his death and probably the year 66 or 67 AD.

In that window there, a little less than 20 years, 15 to 20 years there.

1 Timothy, which we just quoted from, where he quotes from Luke 10 and verse 7, was written around AD 65 near the end of Paul's ministry. And there he includes this one quote from Luke here. So for most of Paul's ministry, most of the time that he is writing his letters over that span roughly 15 to 20 years there, it appears the Gospels simply had not been written yet. Because, think about it, from Paul's standpoint, what is one of the biggest issues that Paul is facing? He's being attacked. Being attacked for his teaching. What is the basis for your teaching here? And he quotes the Old Testament continually throughout all of his writings.

People attack him for misrepresenting what Jesus Christ taught. Well, the simplest thing for him to do to defend himself would be to quote from the Gospels and say, hey, I'm just teaching exactly what Jesus taught. You can read it right here in Matthew's Gospel or John's Gospel, but he doesn't do that. He doesn't do that because he doesn't have it. He doesn't have it because it's not written yet.

Let's think about a little bit about the chronology of Paul's life and what is going on with him and the writers of the Gospels during this period here that we're talking about. So consider this. He writes 1 Timothy here just a few years before his death here, and he quotes from the Gospel of Luke. Now, who is Luke and what is his relationship to the Apostle Paul? Well, Luke is Paul's traveling companion. They're close. They're very close. They travel a lot together, as we see reflected in the book of Acts here. Luke, I think you can make a very good argument that Luke is kind of functioning as Paul's personal physician during that time that they're traveling together because Paul has this this unstated, undescribed health issues, challenges that he's dealing with probably from the hints we see in his letters, probably something affecting his eyesight there. So he does have issues, and possibly Luke, who is a physician, is traveling with Paul as his personal physician there. But there's only this one quote from Luke that shows up near the end of Paul's life during the Gospels. So the logical conclusion is that Luke's Gospel, and by extension the others, were not written before the late 50s to early 60s, assuming that it takes them several years to be copied and distributed. And I should point out here I'm talking about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and not John. John is another issue that we'll talk about separately here. Also consider the timing of the book of Acts. The book of Acts ends abruptly probably the year A.D. 63. Luke wrote the book of Acts, but if you read the first few verses of the book of Acts, he also makes it clear that he wrote the book of Acts after he had written the book of Luke, describing the... it's a two-volume set. The first volume describes the life, the ministry, the teachings, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then the book of Acts carries on the story from there. So Luke, we know from Paul's writings, is with Paul in the city of Rome when Paul is under house arrest there when the book of Acts ends. Again, probably the year A.D. 63. And this is not described in the book of Acts, but Paul is released for a period of several years after the book of Acts ends, and he's free for several years before he is imprisoned again during the reign of Emperor Nero. And then Paul is executed there in the year probably 66 or 67 A.D. So if the book of Acts is written and ends in A.D. 63, then Luke had to be written some time before that, before A.D. 63. Probably, again, late 50s at the earliest early 60s there. That's what most scholars who believe and study emphasis on believe the Bible would conclude that that would have been the timing of that. I would certainly agree with that. Let's consider also the context of this because Paul is under house arrest in Rome for about two years, sometime the period A.D. 59 to 62. And again, that's when the book of Acts ends, 62-63, right around that time frame. And before that, what had happened with Paul? Well, he had been imprisoned at the city of Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Israel for about two years under Felix and Festus, the Roman officials there. And what is Luke's role during this time? Well, again, Luke is Paul's traveling companion. So if they're not traveling because because Paul is in the dungeon and in prison there at Caesarea Maritima for that two years, and then Paul travels to Rome and he gets shipwrecked and you know the story there, and then he's under house arrest for about another two years in Rome, what is Paul doing?

What is Paul doing during that time? Well, my guess is that he is probably beginning work on the two books of the Bible that he'll write, the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Haxedir. In the first case, while Paul is in prison there at Caesarea Maritima, Caesarea Maritima is about 50 to 60 miles from Jerusalem as the crow flies there. So my guess is that, Luke, during that time Paul is in prison, there is probably down in Jerusalem or traveling other areas around the Holy Land there and interviewing the eyewitnesses, because Luke was not an eyewitness of the accounts of Christ's ministry. Luke wasn't called for a couple of decades after that. And it's obvious from the content of Luke's Gospel, as we'll see when we get into that, that he probably personally interviews Mary, Jesus's mother, because there's very detailed information there in Luke's Gospel about the details of an angel appearing to Mary and things like that, that no one else would have known. He describes what Mary is thinking at different points in the story there. How would he know that had not Mary told him? So I think part of the time, while Paul is imprisoned, Luke is traveling and interviewing the people that he will use as sources there in his Gospel there. So I think that is taking place certainly during the early part of Paul's being imprisoned there, that Luke is traveling nearby while Paul isn't going anywhere and is interviewing witnesses to compile the book of Acts here.

And then at some point, probably again, while Paul is then later imprisoned in Rome for about two years, I think that's likely when he starts compiling the book of Acts as volume two of his two volumes set. So considering those things, I think you can make a very close case for when the books of Luke and Acts would have been written. So what's the earliest date that we can conclude that the Gospels were written? And here again, I'm talking about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John as a different story. John, to comment briefly on that, nearly everyone, most reputable scholars, believe John wrote in the late 80s, early to mid 90s AD, because of his emphasis on refuting Gnostic beliefs. Gnosticism is a movement that shows up in Paul's epistles, 50s to 60s AD, and it is growing and spreading and infiltrating the church more and more as the first century progresses there, to where the point when John writes his Gospel of John, probably in the late 80s AD, and then later in his epistles and finally the book of Revelation, Gnosticism is a very powerful influence affecting and influencing and infecting the early church there. So this is why many scholars would place John's writings there in the 80s, early 90s AD, and I would agree with that as well. But also based on the quotation from Luke that we read earlier in 1st Timothy and AD 63-65, then most likely Matthew, Mark, and Luke are writing their Gospels sometime in that period there, probably in the range from the late 50s to the early 60s AD. So that would have been the earliest that the Gospels would have been written, and I've given you the evidence for that. The Gospels' Incidentally, they don't say, you know, I, Matthew, sat down in the 15th year of Emperor Tiberius in the city of Capernaum and started writing my Gospels. None of them do that, so we just have to put it together based on the clues that we are given. They're in the Gospels themselves and in the book of Acts and Paul's epistles and so on. So that would be the range for the earliest that the Gospels would have been written. So about a generation after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. So let's look at it on the other end. What would have been the latest that the Gospels would have been written? Many biblical scholars, probably most, would argue that the Gospels were written in the 70s or 80s AD or even later. Some will propose on up that they weren't really written by eyewitnesses at all but were written later in the second century, you know, 150s, 160s, 170s, and weren't written from where they purport to be written but were written in Alexandria, Egypt, or in Rome, or Antioch, or Asia Minor, or somewhere else.

These are the really fringe scholars who try to do away with anything about the accuracy and truthfulness of the Gospels here. But let's ask another question here to make you think about what might be the latest date that the Gospels would be written. And another question to make you think here, what major historical event took place in Judea after Christ's death and resurrection that forever changed that part of the world?

Something very dramatic and it changed that part of the world forever.

It's not recorded in the Gospels, not recorded in the Bible, not mentioned there, but what would that have been? What would have been the latest date? It would have been the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.

Because the Gospels... well, I mention that because the destruction... I mean, just think today. If, God forbid, if Washington, DC, and New York City, and Chicago, and Denver, and Houston, and LA, and Seattle, and San Francisco were all totally destroyed in warfare, if any of us were writing about that, writing about the events that happened in our nation, obviously you would mention that had something like that happened, because it was totally devastating to the Jewish nation and the Jewish people there, to have their capital city raised, destroyed, to have their temple destroyed, burned. Most of the people either killed, or shipped off as slaves to parts of the Roman Empire here. So, but we see that nowhere mentioned in the New Testament, nowhere mentioned in the Gospels. This is also probably another evidence that John's Gospel was written much later, written a generation after these events had taken place, because it has somewhat faded from memory by this time here. But think about it, Matthew 24, Christ talks about Jerusalem being laid waste, talks about the temple being destroyed, and so on.

And had those events been fulfilled in the war in 70 AD, don't you think Matthew, Mark, or Luke would have mentioned that? And Christ says, do you see these buildings here, and not one stone will be left atop another? Don't you think Matthew, Mark, or Luke would have said, logically would have said, and this came to pass when Titus destroyed Jerusalem, as we know from history. Certainly they would have used that as proof of Christ's authenticity as a prophet, had those events happened by then, but none of them mentioned it. So obviously they finished their Gospels before the year 70 AD. Otherwise it would have been so logical and so supportive of their argument to mention those things. So the latest date we could have for the writing of the Gospels would have been AD 70, with the destruction of Jerusalem there. So they had to have been written there sometime before 70 AD. Now I should mention here too that many critical scholars of the Bible believe that Jesus was not truly a prophet, so therefore they used that same fact as evidence that the Gospels were written after the destruction of Rome, because their approach, and they do the same thing with the book of Daniel, they say these men couldn't really have been prophets, so therefore they were written after the fact, but written to pretend that they were being written before the fact. For instance, with Daniel's writings there, scholars, well, you know, Daniel lived in the 500s BC, and he prophesied of the rise and fall of the Persian Empire, prophesied of the rise and fall of Alexander the Great and the Greek Empire, he prophesied the rise of the Roman Empire long before these events actually happened. So those scholars who are critical of the Bible say, well, Daniel didn't really write in the 500s BC, he wrote in the 100s or 200s BC after these events had happened, but he was pretending that he was writing in the 500s BC here. And people do take the same approach to Christ, Olivet prophecy in Matthew 24, when he prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem there, to say that no, he really wasn't a prophet, he just, you know, the writers just made it seem like he was a prophet and say these things beforehand. So when you see things like that, you understand the writers really don't believe the Bible. I mean, they may believe parts of it, but they don't really believe it is fully inspired in the sense that we would believe that. So let's ask another question. So let's ask another question here. So back to the dating and writing of the Gospels, if they weren't written until the early 60s AD, why did they wait so long?

Why did they wait about a generation from Christ's crucifixion 3031 AD, his ministry 2728 to 31 there? Why did they wait about a generation later to the late 50s, early 60s there?

Well, there are several reasons. Again, they don't tell us why. I'm just giving you, I'm just trying to help us all approach this logically, just from the internal evidence that we see here in the biblical writings. Why did they wait so long? Well, one aspect is they may have felt they should not write the story down. And this may sound a little bit odd, but put yourself in their place because they had their Bible. What was their Bible? Their Bible was the books of the Old Testament there. And when they needed an authority to back up what they said, what did they quote? They quoted from the books of the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament here, Moses, the prophets, and so on, the Psalms. Today, if we need an authority for what we believe, we'll quote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Paul, and others. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Paul, who did they quote? They quoted Moses. They quoted the prophets. They quoted David and others. That was their Bible. That was their authority. So for them, the idea that they might be writing books of the Bible that would go alongside Moses and the prophets was just totally unthinkable to them. That thought would have never remotely crossed their minds that they would be writing scripture. That would be like one of us sitting down today and thinking, hey, I think I'll write another book of the Bible. Hopefully that would never even remotely cross our minds. Something like that. And it simply never would have crossed their minds as well. Because to them, that was an idea that would probably have been bordering on blasphemy to think that they were going to sit down and write another book of the Bible. What are the books of the New Testament that we have today? Well, with the exception of Revelation, which is clearly stated up front, this is a direct revelation and message from God through Jesus Christ to the Apostle John. None of the authors of the New Testament seem to really have an inkling that they're writing new books of the Bible. They don't. What are most of the books of the New Testament? Most of them are Paul's letters. They're letters he wrote to congregations. They're letters he wrote to individuals like Timothy and Titus and Philemon and so on there. The Gospels, as we've talked about, are kind of the memoirs, the recollections of people of the life and the ministry and the teaching and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. That is why what we have is mostly letters, memoirs, and instructions to churches, as Paul wrote there. I don't think it ever crossed their minds they were writing inspired scripture like the books of Moses, like the Psalms of David, like the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and so on. So this is why I say that they may have felt they should not write the story down. It never occurred to them they would be writing books that we would be reading as Holy Scripture 2,000 years later. It just didn't cross their minds. Now again, that's exclusive of the canonization process, which is another holy sure I may get into in a couple of sermons at some point here. Eventually, well, let's just not even get off on that subject right now. That'll take us another hour. Another reason why they may not have written the story down is that plenty of witnesses were still alive during that first generation.

So why should they write them down? There were the 12 apostles, there were various other eyewitnesses. Again, there were the 500 people who had seen Jesus after he was resurrected. And with all of these witnesses still walking around and sitting there in services on the Sabbath here, they were alive. You could go up to them and talk to them directly about these events. So why write them down? Plenty of witnesses there. You don't need to write it down. But as time passed, conditions started to change. The apostles scattered to the Four Winds. Some of them were killed.

And the other eyewitnesses who were there began to die off as well. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John realized they're not getting it younger. They're getting up on up in years. And they don't know how much time they may have left. And at some point, they decided they better start writing these things down. And so they did. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John are scattered and living in different places. So they weren't able to sit down, you know, all 12 apostles and get together and collaborate on a combined work that was the collective memory of all of them. They're scattered. They're in different areas here. So what we have in the Gospel then are their individual recollections for different sets of the memories and the testimonies of the life and the teachings and the death and the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. That's what we have in the four Gospels here. So again, conditions changed. Another factor as to why they probably didn't write these things down earlier is that initially they thought Jesus would return soon. That he would return imminently within their lifetimes. And we see that reflected in Paul's writings that he clearly believed this when he wrote of Christ's return. And in 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 15 and 17, he refers to we who are alive and remain when Christ returns. We, he's including himself in it. He thinks that he is going to be one of those who is alive and remain when Jesus Christ returns. So he clearly thought that that is going to take place in his lifetime. And if Paul thought this, no doubt many other members of the church and the apostles probably thought it as well. But at some point it does become evident to them that Jesus Christ returned is somewhere off beyond their lifetimes. And they might not live to see that happen. And so they conclude that they'd better start writing this down. They realize they'd better record what they know, what they saw, so that future generations will have an eyewitness account of that. And there was also factoring in with this. I didn't include this as a separate point, but there's also the factor of increasing persecution that we see reflected in the book of Acts where church members start to be martyred. They start to be scattered, driven out of Jerusalem there. First, early persecution comes from the Jewish religious leadership itself there. And then later from the Roman Empire. And they realize that they may be martyred and may not be around that long, which of course does happen with the original apostles there. So they figure they had better write it down, lest this information be lost. So when these men finish writing their Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, what would happen? What did happen? Well, we don't know. It's not stated. But we can conjecture based on what we know about the transmission of ancient documents from that period. Logically, what would have happened? Logically, what would have happened is it's as soon as Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John finished their Gospel and handed that record, that scroll, probably written on a scroll. Incidentally, the books of Matthew, Luke, and John, they have about the same number of words that would fit on a kind of standard-sized scroll at that time.

Mark, for whatever reason, has about half a scroll's worth. Why? I don't know. But one thing scholars have noticed is Matthew, Luke, and John's Gospels are about the same number of words that fit on an average-sized scroll of that day. So that's probably the length that they wrote to there. So when they would have finished that scroll and handed it off to someone else, no doubt that document began to be copied multiple times at that point. There were no printing presses then that wouldn't come along until 15 centuries later there. There were no photocopiers. There were no word processors, no computers with spell checkers and grammar checkers and all of that. Everything is copied by hand, meticulously, one at a time. So to make new copies of a document of that time, typically involved one of two methods that were common in that day. One was for one person simply to take that scroll of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John and to sit down with a new fresh scroll and just start copying it. And that would take weeks or maybe months to do that. Also quite expensive because it took, in the case of a scroll, the hides of about a dozen sheep or goats that had to be prepared and smoothed and softened and so on for copying there. So one person could just sit down and start copying the scroll that way. Another, a little more mass production, you might say, was for a person to take that scroll. Let's just say we're going to make copies of the Gospel of Matthew. And all of you are trained scribes. You know how to read and write. So you've all got your little desk and a scroll and I sit up here and I just start reading from Matthew 1.1 and read through. And each of you start copying what I'm reading. So that's how scrolls or documents would have been mass copied in that day. Just to go into a room where there'd be four or five or a dozen or more scribes and to read it. And the scribes would fiercely copy away here from what I'm dictating here. And again, all of the copies are made by hand. And because the Gospels this early on aren't considered Scripture yet, there were very meticulous processes for copying Scripture, for making copies of the Old Testament. And it involved meticulously checking those to make they counted the number of words and so on to make sure no words had been left out. Anything like that. I don't have time to go into all the details of that process, but what they were doing is making copies to send out to the different churches in Egypt, in Asia Minor, around the area of Galilee and Judea and elsewhere, Rome and so on. So they didn't see themselves as making copies of the Bible. They were making copies of the Memoirs of the apostles there. And their purpose wasn't to make copies of the Bible, copies of Scripture, but simply to make as many copies as possible to distribute throughout the churches scattered around the Roman world. Their purpose was not to make sure every copy was identical, word for word.

You've probably heard, if you've studied anything about critics of the Gospels or the Bible, that there are differences in different manuscripts of the Gospels, or even that there are mistakes in the Gospels. There's one famous Bible critic who says—let's see, how's the way he phrases it—there are more mistakes in the Gospels, and there are verses in the Gospels, or more mistakes in the Gospels, and there are copies of the Gospels. What he's trying to convey by that is you can't trust the Bible. You can't believe it because there's just a chunk full of mistakes. Everywhere you look, there's a mistake. But it doesn't take a scholar to realize that when your hand-copying books, scrolls, as I just mentioned, or mass copying them with a group of scribes through dictation, that there are naturally going to be some differences that will take place in those manuscripts. For instance, if I'm up here dictating to you and you're making a copy of the Gospel of Matthew, and I say, and Jesus came and dwelt in Capernaum, and you're thinking, okay, how do I spell Capernaum? Does the A come before the U or the U before the A?

Or I mentioned Caesarea Philippi. Does Philippi have two Ls and one P or two P's and one I? So you don't have time to stop and spellcheck yourself in that process. So the vast majority of mistakes in the manuscripts of the Gospels are things like that. They're simply spelling differences or differences in somebody's name. The Barnabas, did somebody transpose the R and the N? B-A-N-R of us, or B-A-R-N. Just little spelling errors like that. They may leave out a word. They may leave out some letters or something like that. And something like 98-90 percent of the differences in the manuscripts in the Gospels are things like that. Just simply differences in spelling there.

Another example, C of Galilee. Does it have two E's or two L's or two O both? This kind of thing.

These are just natural mistakes that get introduced in the copying process there. Again, they didn't have photocopiers. They didn't have means of making perfect copies. That was not their purpose. They weren't copying Scripture. They are making copies of these memoirs to send out to as many churches as possible. And you know yourself. You've ever sat down and tried to write or copy or even type out something while copying out of a book or a letter or manuscript of some sort. You know how easy it is for you to make mistakes there simply while you're copying it. And this is how a lot of these differences and mistakes are introduced. You'll see some of this in the marginal notes of your Bibles there. Some other ways. This might happen again to use the analogy of all of you trying to copy what I'm saying there.

What are they writing with? They're writing with quill pens or a metal stylus. And then they have to stop every so often and dip it in the ink well and start going. Well, if I'm dictating to you and you have to stop and refill your ink and so on, you may miss a word or two that I've said. So some words might be left out of your manuscript. Or maybe you're working on it, you're a scribe working on it at midnight and you're tired and you skip from one line to the next line and miss that line. Well, your manuscript then gets copied again by a dozen other people and they include the same error there. So this is why a lot of these mistakes may show up in different ancient copies of the books there. So these are the kinds of mistakes and differences that scholars find in the early copies of the books of the Bible.

And every copy, again, that is made of that will have a mistake in it. This is why scholars can say things like there are more mistakes than there are verses in the Bibles. Technically, it's accurate, but it is grossly misleading because it undermines people's faith in the Bible when really it's not a... technically it is a mistake or an error, but it is not a real difference. It's not a difference in the meaning there or what really happened there. And the number of... or the percentage of significant differences is very small, only about one and a hundredth part or one and a thousandth part, depending on which scholar you read. And they really affect virtually no significant meaning of the biblical text there. Okay, let's move on and talk about another aspect here. And that is, how did we get the Gospels? How were they transmitted? How did they come from the pen of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John to what we have today? If you read just about any book on the Gospels, they'll tell you that Mark is assumed to be the first of the Gospels. And the reason for that is about 90, 90 some odd percent of the Gospel of Mark is repeated in Matthew or Luke or both there. And therefore, scholars think Matthew and Luke, when they're writing their Gospels, have a copy of Mark before them. And they're copying from Mark and putting it in their Gospel there. But there are a couple of problems with that because, first of all, if Matthew and Luke did have Mark's Gospel there and they're copying from that, then there should not be variations in their accounts.

There shouldn't be differences if they're copying directly from Mark. Why would Matthew and Luke record it a little bit differently in some of the details? And they do. Another problem is if Matthew is an eyewitness of the events because he is one of the 12 apostles. Matthew and John are part of the 12. Mark and Luke are not. Mark and Luke are relying on the accounts of others. Luke tells how he went and interviewed eyewitnesses of those in the first few verses of Luke. Mark's Gospel is apparently, most scholars believe, and early church writers say that Mark got his information from Peter. It's sometimes called Peter's Gospel, that Peter dictated or gave the material and Mark wrote it down based on Peter's testimony or recollection of these events. And I don't have any reason to doubt that. So if Matthew is an eyewitness, why would he even need Mark's Gospel to copy from? That doesn't make sense. Another thing, and you can see this when you go home, and look at your copy of the Harmony of the Gospels. What you'll see is that even though Mark is much shorter than Matthew and Luke, overall when it comes to describing a particular incident, nearly every time Mark's account is longer and more detailed. Which means what? Which means that Matthew and Luke are leaving out some of the detail. Why would they do that? That's totally illogical.

So therefore, although the scholarly view is that Mark was the first one written, I don't buy that. I just simply don't believe it. I think those three factors that I mentioned argue very strongly against that.

There. So again, that argument to me just makes no sense. It seems like if Matthew and Luke are copying from Mark, if anything, their accounts are going to be longer because they're going to include more details, not fewer details there. Okay, scholars refer to Matthew, Mark, and Luke as what's called the synoptic gospels, meaning to see with one eye. Sin, s-y-n, means with, optic, referring to seeing with one eye. In other words, they have the same viewpoint there, and yet there are differences in their accounts. Again, that are hard to explain if Matthew and Luke are copying from Mark there. But there are very clear similarities at the same time. Sometimes word for similarities there. And this is why again some scholars believe that Matthew and Luke are copying directly out of Mark's gospel. To give you a little historical background in biblical studies, back in the 1800s, I think it was, scholars noticed these similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And they decided that they all have to be taking material from an earlier source, from an earlier gospel. How many of you have heard of the gospel cue, or the term cue, in biblical studies? Okay, well, what is cue? That is what this theory is referring to, that there was an earlier source from which Matthew, Mark, and Luke took part of their material.

And the source is called cue from the first letter of the German word quell, which means source there. And these are German scholars. That's why it's referring to the German word quell, meaning source. Now, I should point out there is absolutely zero evidence for an earlier source for this. There are no manuscripts, no text, no nothing, no early manuscripts that quote from an earlier source. There's absolutely nothing. This is strictly a theoretical source, their explanation, scholars' explanation, to account for why we see so many similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Lately, there's another theory which I think is correct. I think it is a better explanation for this. For the similarities, often word for word between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And that better explanation, I've talked about this a little bit previously, is memorization. Memorization, because that was a common way to learn at that day. We've talked earlier about how Jewish schoolboys and schoolgirls would go to their local synagogue school during the week and would memorize large portions, huge portions of Scripture. The boys memorized the entire five books of Moses there by age 12. The girls would memorize their portions of Scripture and so on. So memorization was very common. People would memorize their genealogies then. So memorization was the common way to learn in those days when people did not have physical books to read and learn from, particularly in the Jewish culture. So some scholars believe, and I agree with this, that the earlier source for Matthew, Mark, and Luke was not a written source, but was a memorized oral source that was orally transmitted, verbally transmitted there. And again, I won't go into all the background about memorization. We've covered that in the sermon about Rimmaz there. So I'm convinced a number of scholars are convinced there was an earlier source for Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But it was not a written source, but memorized sayings, memorized stories, or a memorized collection of sayings and stories about the life and ministry of Jesus the Messiah. And most likely, these are stories that were being told again and again by the apostles to the members of the early church who would go up to Matthew or John and say, tell us again about the feeding of the 5,000 there. Or tell us again about the time that Jesus walked on the water, or how he put the mud on the blind man's eyes and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam and so on. So I think this is how many of these stories were were transmitted orally. It was also very common, and this ties in with the rabbi and disciple relationship, it was very common for disciples of a rabbi to memorize their rabbi's teachings.

Because that is their whole point of following the rabbi. They want to memorize the rabbi's teachings then. So at the end of the day, a rabbi's disciples would sit down at the end of the day or the beginning of the next day, and they would recite in their mind what the rabbi had said that day. And they were much better at memorizing then because to be blunt, they don't have all the distractions that we have today. You know, TV and radio and cell phones and computers and all of that. Their mental capacity for memorizing was far, far better than it is today.

And disciples would want to fully immerse themselves in the teaching of their rabbi, and memorizing was the most efficient way of doing that. So who are Matthew and John? They are disciples of Jesus. They are disciples of the rabbi. They would have wanted to memorize their rabbi's teachings. And I think this is why we see such extensive quotation of Jesus' teachings in Matthew and John in particular compared to Luke and Mark there. And over time, there probably came to be a collection of these memorized sayings and teachings of Jesus that became what we might call an oral gospel or a verbal gospel that would become the basic framework of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And this is probably why we have so many similarities between those three books as well as some of the slight differences between the two of them. It's probably because these were oral traditions that were gathered and passed down over roughly a generation there. And not written down until about 30 years later there. And one evidence of this is in the way that Matthew, Mark, and Luke quote Jesus.

They seem to be quoting Jesus' word for word. As we talked about last time, there weren't quotation marks then in the text that just didn't come along until many centuries later there. So it seems like they're quoting Jesus' word for word, but they have Jesus saying slightly different things. The meaning is the same, but the wording differs a little bit here and there. If they are working from a written source, you wouldn't have that.

You wouldn't have it written down and everything would match up word for word. But it's not, so that's an indication they are working from an oral source that's been transmitted down there. It's probably another reason that easily accounts for some of these differences between Matthew, Mark, and Luke when they're quoting Jesus or the differences, the details are a little bit different. And that's because what language were the Gospels written in? They're written in Greek.

What language was Jesus and the people he was interacting with? What language were they speaking in? It wasn't Greek. It was either Hebrew or Aramaic, depending on the circumstances, depending on which scholar you talk to. Generally, I'm leaning more toward the view that their everyday language was Aramaic, which we know to be true. But there are some scholars whose opinions I highly respect think that when Jesus teaches in a synagogue setting or in an official teaching setting, that he's speaking in Hebrew, that that's the way it was commonly done at that time there.

So we're going from Hebrew or Aramaic, translating into Greek for the manuscripts that we have, and then that is translated further into English. So this is why there would be differences in the wording between the different Gospel writers there. Let's see how we're doing on time. I think we're okay. What about some of the occasions when the Gospel writers record events in a different order?

For instance, Matthew will say it happened in the order of A and B and C, and Luke will say it happened in the order of A and C and B. Why do we have that in some cases there? And it does happen, and some people have been out of shape about that, and critics have a heyday with that and say, see, this proves you can't really trust the Bible. Well, I guess it depends really on how we view the matter of biblical inspiration. Some people believe the Bible writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write everything down word for word under the inspiration of God's Spirit.

In other words, that the Holy Spirit essentially dictated every word to the writers, and the writers are essentially taking dictation from the Holy Spirit. But if you read through the Bible, the New Testament, the Gospels, you realize that just doesn't work. Because, again, to use the example I just mentioned, when Matthew, Mark, and Luke are clearly describing Jesus at the same event, but they record his words differently. They're not taking dictation from the Holy Spirit, obviously, there.

They use different words. The sense is the same, the meaning is the same, but the words are slightly different. And the simple answer is, they're not directly quoting. They are giving indirect quotations to the best of their memory, or to the best of the memory of the eyewitnesses that they've been talking to there. And then there are other examples, like I mentioned, where the writers of the Gospels will put events in different order. And this, again, is something Bible critics will bring up.

And sometimes church members can be caught flat-footed with that, because they really haven't thought it through. But these things really don't pose a problem when we understand the reason why God the Father and Jesus Christ did this the way that they did.

Let's consider what it means to bear testimony to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Let's consider the matter of evidence. Let's say we're going to be jurors in a trial here.

And it'll be your job as a juror to determine whether the witnesses are telling the truth, or whether they're lying there. And let's say we have a case before us where a man is accused of robbing and murdering somebody when he robbed a convenience store. And four different witnesses come in, witnesses who were there supposedly, who saw supposedly these events here. And they all take the stand, and they all give identical word-for-word testimony as to what happened. I mean, word-for-word. I mean, even the tiniest details are identical. Even their grammatical mistakes are identical. And if you're a member of the jury, you hear this same identical testimony.

If you're a thinking person, you're going to realize something's fishy going on here. It's obvious that these witnesses have all been coached by the prosecution.

And there's collusion between the four witnesses here. And it comes out on cross-examination. They've been coached by the prosecution. They've all memorized the same story here, even down to the same grammatical mistakes that they make. So what do you have in a case like that? Isn't four independent witnesses? You just have one witness and three others who are copying that. And the witnesses, therefore, are not credible or believable. But let's say it's a little different scenario. We have four witnesses who come in to testify of this guy who robs a convenience store. And the first witness is at the counter checking out. When the robber bursts in through the door, he shouts at the cashier. He fires a shot from his pistol into the ceiling and then shoots the cashier dead. And then he grabs a shot on the cash register and runs out the door. That's witness one's testimony. And then witness two comes up and he says he was standing nearby when the defendant comes in, shoots the cashier, grabs the money, and fires a shot at another customer, and then runs out the door. Well, there are differences in the order of the events there.

The next witness comes in. She's part way down one of the aisles in the 7-11.

According to her, the defendant was already in the store and started arguing with the cashier, shot him twice, and then walked out the door. Again, differences in the account there. Differences in the order and what happened. Differences in the details. And then the last witness is outside gassing up his car at the gas pumps outside. He hears several gunshots take place inside the store. He hears yelling and shouting and so on. And then sees a man walk out the door and points his gun at him. And then the man gets in a getaway car and drives away. So again, the details are different. The order of events are different.

And so on. So you have four witnesses and all of their testimony differs in the details.

But the significant part of the story is the same. The bottom line is they all knew that the man shot the cashier, shot him dead, stole the money, and left. And that's the key point.

They're telling what they remember. And any lawyer will tell you this. They're telling what they remember, even though they remember it in different ways. Different facts, different circumstances stood out to the different witnesses. And that's what they described. They're on the stand. It doesn't mean they're lying. It doesn't mean they're misrepresenting, not telling the truth. It simply means they remember it in different ways. And that is what we see with the Gospel writers as well. The important thing is their stories all match up.

Don't match up in every detail in the timing, the circumstances somewhat there. But the key facts are identical. The key facts are the same. And that does show they are truly independent witnesses there. And that is the whole point for the law that we read earlier. There had to be two or three witnesses to establish something as legal fact here. And that again is a reason why Jesus did not write his own Gospel. That's a reason there are 12 different eyewitnesses, the 12 apostles there. And that's a reason why we have four different Gospel accounts, all written by different people. Two who are eyewitnesses and two who hear the story from other eyewitnesses who were there. They are all independent witnesses of these events. Or they give us the testimony of others who were independent witnesses to these events. Relating to this, why would God through his Spirit inspire four different accounts that are absolutely identical? Well, that's really no different than having just one account there. So again, it's important that we have different witnesses there, and that they be independent witnesses. And that's why we have four different Gospels and not one.

To give another example of that, we have four witnesses in the Gospels who are all in agreement on the key events. And they differ only in significant detail. And they don't really contradict. It's just most often a case of one Gospel writer will mention some details the other Gospel writers leave out. Is that a contradiction? No, it just means that one includes the details, the others didn't, because those details weren't significant to that writer there.

We'll get into this more probably next time, but the four Gospel writers organize their material differently. And this is definitely why we see some of the differences there. For instance, Matthew structures his Gospel around five collections of Jesus Christ's sayings.

And this was actually a very Jewish way of doing things. In that day, it ties back with disciples memorizing their master's teachings there. And I think Matthew was probably very good at that. That's why he has these five collections of Jesus's sayings. One of them very obvious at Sermon on the Mount. Matthew devotes three chapters to that. Matthew 5, 6, and 7. None of the other Gospel writers do that. Matthew has the Olivet prophecy in great detail. It's Matthew 24 and 25. Luke and Mark give abbreviated versions of that. Matthew has collections of parables and sayings that the other Gospel writers don't include. So that's how Matthew organized his Gospel. We'll go through and demonstrate that probably next time. Mark seems to have organized his Gospel chronologically. That's why the harmony of the Gospels is organized around the events in which Mark lists his. Luke organized his Gospel geographically, which would probably never cross our minds to do, but it clearly does. We'll demonstrate that in the future as well. And John's Gospel is totally different from those. Totally different. The best metaphor I've seen for John's Gospel is like it's looking out across a snow-covered field, and you see three parallel sets of tracks crossing the field. And then there's this other set of tracks that goes like this. And occasionally it'll cross the other three sets of tracks, but most of the time it's way off on one side or the other. That's John. John seems to have copies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospel there when he's writing his, and he deliberately includes material that they did not cover. So they're all writing in different styles. They structure their material in different ways. They organize it in different ways for different audiences there. And because of their four different approaches to that, we have a fuller and more rich picture of Jesus Christ. So I go through this in a fair amount of detail here to show that differences don't necessarily mean errors there. Skeptics and critics have been arguing the Bible has all kinds of errors for centuries, and yet the vast majority of these have been logically addressed there and answered there. But what we have in the Gospels are not contradictory accounts but complementary accounts here. I want to show one example of that in closing, and this is one of the few things where all four gospel writers include the same thing, but they all express it differently. And that is the sign that is above Jesus' head when he's crucified here. Notice the details. Each one includes something slightly different. Matthew says the sign said, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews. Mark says, just the king of the Jews. Luke says the sign said, this is the king of the Jews. And John said Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. So at first glance it might appear that none of the biblical authors copied the sign out correctly here because they all recorded slightly differently here. But when we read each of the gospel accounts, each one adds a little bit different information. For instance, John tells us that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tells the men what to write on the sign.

Luke tells us that the inscription was written in three different languages, written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin. So that may account why there are differences there because they're written in different languages. Obviously, if you've dealt with any foreign languages, you know what I'm talking about. A lot of times it won't translate exactly word for word. So the variation that we see in this little example here logically would have to do with three different languages being used, as well as the different point of view of each of the gospel writers. Each of them is stressing slightly different aspects of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

So if we just went through and added all of this up, added up the different details, the sign probably said, at least in one of the languages, this is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.

None of these accounts contradict the other accounts. They simply complement each of the accounts by giving us a few more details that the other gospel writers didn't include. So we'll see more examples of this as we go through the gospel. So we will conclude the sermon here and have an opening or closing hymn. And then if you have any questions, I'll stay up here for a few minutes and we can answer those questions.