Survey of the Synoptic Gospels

Trinity and the Biblical Basis of the Doctrine

And tonight we're going to be doing our survey of the Synoptic Gospels. Now before we begin, I have a statement to make. I was told that last week's pop quiz was a little unfair, that one of the questions was improperly worded, or at least unfairly worded.

So I want to provide a response. I didn't write the test. But I also want to say this. For those of you who mentioned it to me, the question about the Trinity is not a trick question, but it was a question that could go either way, because yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is derived from the Bible.

The question, though, about is the doctrine of the Trinity of the Bible, as stated, God is one in essence, three in person, these three are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct. That statement is not in the Bible.

Those three statements are derived from the Bible. And so that's what I meant when I said the doctrine itself is not stated in the Bible. I wasn't saying the doctrine of the Trinity is not biblical. It certainly is biblical.

I have committed my life to Trinitarian Christianity. That is what I believe is true. And so I certainly would not deny that the Trinity is biblical. I spent this morning at Set Free. I'm doing a series on theology, and I spent my whole hour there this morning teaching the doctrine of the Trinity, defining it and defending it.

So just in case there was any confusion as to that question on last week's pop quiz, I wanted to clarify. All right, continuing. Tonight we are going to be looking at a survey of the synoptic gospels.

The Synoptic Gospels and the Synoptic Problem

And what that means is that we're going to be looking at Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That is what is called the synoptic gospels. Now the word synoptic means to be viewed together. The prefix syn typically means together and optic to see.

So the idea of synoptic means that they are viewed together. And it does not take much examination to realize that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very, very similar. If you have not read them all, I do hope that you have.

But if you've never read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I would encourage that you do so. And the next time that you are reading through the three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I want you to recognize some of their similarities.

For instance, their structure. They follow Jesus' ministry according to a general geographic sequence. They all begin in Galilee. They withdraw to the north, to Judea, Perea, and Jerusalem. And John's ministry or John's gospel is different.

And that is why we refer to John as the autopic gospel. And that's what we're going to focus on next week. The autopic gospel is John's gospel. And the structure of John is much different. Likewise, the content.

The first three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, tend to focus on the same events, the parables, the healings, and the interaction with demons. John does not recount many of those events at all. And the tone of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all similar.

They all convey a tone of intense action with Jesus constantly traveling, constantly performing miracles, constantly teaching. John is much more meditative, recounts fewer events, and longer discourses.

The longest discourses that we have of Christ outside of the Sermon on the Mount, which is three chapters of Matthew, but typically the longest discourses that we have of Jesus teaching are in the gospel of John.

John gives us much longer and broader examples of Jesus' teaching and prayers. So it's apparent that John is the outlier. He provides a distinct picture from the rest. And that's why he's called the autopic, which means viewed by itself.

So the synoptic means to be viewed together. Autopic means to be viewed by itself. And that's why we're going to spend all next week in John's Gospel. We're going to take a whole lesson. So next week is a survey of John's Gospel.

But tonight we're going to be surveying Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And we're going to look at four major headings. And these are in your syllabus, so if you have your syllabus, you'll see these headings.

One is the Synoptic Problem. Two is Authorship and Purpose. Three is Theological Insights. And four is Harmonization. That's the four-part outline for tonight's lesson. Now, if you did bring your book, which I said you don't have to bring this to class, but if you did bring your book, turn it to page 1106.

How many of you did the reading? Okay. I won't ask how many didn't, because your hands didn't go up if you didn't. Well, the reading for this week was important because it addressed the basis of what is known as the Synoptic Problem.

And that is where we're going to begin our lesson tonight, is with the Synoptic Problem. So on page 1107, actually I said 1106, actually 1107, we read this in our commentary. Why there are so many similarities, even to almost identical wording of relatively long passages, and yet also so many differences among the first three Gospels, is usually called the Synoptic Problem.

It is much more of a problem for those who deny inspiration than for conservative Christians. Many complex theories have been formulated, often involving theoretical lost documents that have left no trace in manuscript form.

Some of these ideas fit in with Luke 1 .1 and are at least possible from an Orthodox standpoint. However, some of these theories have reached the point where they assert that the first century church pieced together myths about Jesus Christ.

All right, that's all we're going to read from the book. I just wanted to remind you, if you did read it or point out if you haven't, that the book does address our first topic of the evening, and that is the topic of the Synoptic Problem.

The topic of the Synoptic Problem is basically this. The Gospels have certain places where they are absolutely the same, where it's almost as if you can imagine if you were a teacher and you had three young students in your class, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and those three students turned in a paper called the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke, and you were reading their paper, you would assume at certain points that one of them was looking over the shoulders of the other, because there are certain points where the wording is so similar and sometimes exact that you would say that they would have to be some either interdependence or collusion.

You know, again, if you were a teacher, if you all handed papers in to me, and I got a paper from Jackie and a paper from Cindy, and both of them had the exact same wording at the exact same points, I would assume one of two things.

Either Jackie and Cindy colluded with one another, and not very well because they didn't think to change the wording, or they copied both from the same source. If they both had the exact same wording, I would assume they either looked at one another's papers, or that they were both looking at the same third paper that I would not have, the third source.

So does that bring it sort of to a modern context of what we mean when we say the synoptic problem? And the reason why this is a problem, and why it's usually identified as the synoptic problem, is because unbelieving scholars, and I don't know a better way to say that.

Maybe I should try to be more genteel. More skeptical scholars use the synoptic problem as a way to say that these documents do not bear the evidence of inspiration, but rather the evidence of collusion, or the evidence of interdependence.

So they didn't come from God, they came from each other.

Yes? So basically what you're saying is the issue is that they're too much alike, and that's why believing,.

What did you call them, what was the nice word? I would say, yeah, I said, well, what did I say? Skeptics.

I said skeptical scholars. Skeptical scholars is because they're too much alike.

Yes, there's certain points that read word for word verbatim, and you would think that that would not be the case unless they were looking at one another, or they were looking at a similar original, a similar source.

So wouldn't somebody who is not a skeptic, somebody who is in Christ, would see that completely opposite, right, confirmation that it did happen? The confirmation of what? What are we confirming?

Three collaborating stories. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but even if you have three collaborating stories, why is it that they're using the exact same language in the exact same place? They're writing together.

The Holy Spirit, I don't know. Okay, we can make the argument that it's the Holy Spirit. You're saying they're writing together, though, so that they are writing together. So you would accept collusion.

And I'm not arguing, I'm just challenging.

And that's not necessarily what I'm saying. I mean, that's just the first thing that came to my mind. Yeah, yeah.

So here's where it becomes a real issue. The Gospels were not written right after Jesus died and was resurrected. The Gospels were written many years later. And so we have Jesus dying somewhere around the year 30, and the first Gospel being written somewhere in the mid to late 50s, or even into the 60s, right?

So how many years is that? At least 20 to 30 years between Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection and the Gospel writers writing their Gospels. And so what a skeptical, and remember, I am a believer, but I'm challenging you from the perspective of the skeptic because if all we ever do is listen to one another, we'll never learn.

And we'll never be challenged. So we listen and we evaluate the argument of the skeptic. And one of the things that the skeptics say is that what happened in the early church was there was a lot of Jesus stories that were being passed around.

There was a lot of verbal tradition that was going from church to church and from town to town, and there was no written manuscripts of anything Jesus had said, and so therefore there were these traditional stories that got passed down and that those were the things that got added into the Gospels, and that's where we see the similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke because they've all heard the same stories the same way.

And so the source doesn't necessarily need to be a written source, but the source could be a singular traditional tale where they have all told it the same way.

Yes, sir, you have your hand up. Do you think the skeptics should believe Matthew, Mark, and Luke in such a way that...

Not so much because the argument of collusion is not necessarily that they did it at the same time but that they are drawing from one another. So, for instance, the traditional skeptical or higher critical argument is that Mark wrote his Gospel first.

Matthew later wrote using Mark's Gospel as his primary source and that there was another source typically referred to as Q, which comes from Quell, which is a German word which means source. So Q just means the source document.

And so the argument is that there was another document that we no longer have. Q becomes the source of Luke along with Matthew and Mark. So that is why Luke has readings that are from Matthew and Luke has readings that are from Mark and Luke has readings that are independent of both Matthew and Mark.

And so where did those come from? Those came from Q, and that's the argument. I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm saying this is the... So it's still collusion, but it's not like the three of them got together in a dark room and wrote their Gospels.

Because here's the thing. Nobody believes that, and you know why nobody believes that? Because they're so different. See, the problem with the synoptic problem is they're so similar in some places and then they're absolutely different in other places.

And therefore the synoptic problem compounds itself because there's no way that all three of them got together in a room and said, okay, let's all get this together. Because had they done that, there were some places that they would have corrected, or at least in our minds they would have had to have corrected some things because we're going to look at some places tonight, later, where Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to be at odds with one another.

Now I don't believe they are, and I do believe ultimately, Miss Cindy, that it is the Holy Spirit who's guiding this process. But the point is there are some places where Matthew tells the story in a much different way than Mark and Luke.

And to the point where someone would say, if they were colluding with one another, why did this happen? If they were drawing from one another, why is this so different than that? Yes, but if they were trying to make it the same, then that wouldn't have happened.

If the argument of collusion is true, then you wouldn't see all the differences. So that's where we begin to challenge the skeptics and say, okay, yes, there are some places where it seems as if they're all drawing from the same, either verbal tradition or some kind of extra-biblical source, or maybe they are all being guided by the Spirit, and that's why they all say the exact same thing in the same way.

But there are places where there are divergences. Several stories, such as the story of the demoniac. In one gospel it says there was one, in another gospel there was two. You would think if they were in a dark room somewhere making their story straight, somebody would have said, hey, we need to make this story straight.

We need to solve this issue. But they didn't do that.

Yeah, exactly, that's another good example. One doesn't mention the cult.

One only mentions the donkey. And we're going to talk about why that is in a moment. When we get to the idea of harmonization, we're going to talk about why certain gospel writers focus on certain aspects to the exclusion of other things.

Matthew particularly does something called telescoping, which is where you take a story and you tell only the parts that matter. For instance, today I got up and I went to set free and I preached a lesson on the doctrine of the Trinity and then my son and I went to lunch at Bono's.

Is that true? Yes, it is true. Well, there's also another part I didn't say. My brother Bobby went to lunch with us too. But I didn't mention that because it wasn't important. No offense. No, but you understand, nothing I said was untrue.

I simply telescoped the story to focus on the part that mattered to me. My son was there. It's still perspective. It goes back to what you said. Yes. Yes. Well, it wasn't the focus of the writer who's making that point.

That's the key. The ones that I'm going to show you later I think they'll really surprise you because there are some places where you go, wow, I can't believe you didn't mention that. But the way that I just explained it helps you understand how storytelling works.

Sometimes storytelling is dependent on the person telling the story what the focus is. Yes, and God does use the personality of the writers. This is huge. When we get to Paul, you're going to find out that Paul's writings not only are different than John's writings, but they're also different than Paul's writings.

Paul's early writings are much different than his later writings. His use of grammar and syntax changes over time. Well, it just changed. Use of language. Use of certain words that we don't find in early Pauline literature comes into play in later Pauline literature.

And Paul was the best at creating words. He made up words. Theopneustos is a word that is not found outside of the Bible. It's only made up. It's only used by Paul. We know what it means because it's a contraction of two different words, theos and pneumos, but no one else ever used it.

It's a specific Pauline word. Sir, you had your hand. I'm sorry. That's true, and I would argue it's not in Mark either. I believe the latter part of Mark that you're referring to is not part of Mark's original, but that's a conversation for another time, but I am going to mention that later when we get to Mark's gospel.

But in that regard, if it is part of the original Mark, which it could be, I just don't think it is, if that is part of the original Mark, you're right. It does make certain points that no other gospel writer makes.

It talks about the picking up of the serpent. It talks about speaking in other tongues. It makes certain statements that are not mentioned being baptized. He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

That's in Mark 16, 16. So we have certain things that are said in Mark's gospel that aren't said in any of the other gospels in regard to the Great Commission. So you are right. I think that Mark's gospel ends at chapter 16, verse 8.

I think the latter part was a later scribal edition, and that gets into the concept of textual criticism. Just know this. When we talk about textual criticism, that's going down a road that would take us longer than I have time to explain right now.

But it is an important thing. But when we come to the synoptics, again, there are times when it says the same thing. There are times when it says different things. I remember years ago, I was teaching on Lord's Day morning, Resurrection Sunday.

It was Easter. People call it Easter Sunday. Resurrection Sunday morning, I was teaching a Sunday school class, and we had guests come in. And because I don't have a mind of let's just do a fun lesson, I always do lessons that tend to be not fun and sometimes rather difficult.

And so on Easter Sunday morning, I decided to do a survey of the four gospels and the resurrection narrative from all four gospels. And so we read all four resurrection narratives. We wrote. We had it on the board.

I had all four, and this one has two angels, and this one has one angel, and this one doesn't mention the gardener. This one mentions the gardener. I went through all of it. 45 minutes, not long, but I did the best I could in 45 minutes.

As we were leaving, one of the guests came up, and he said, he just like stunned. He said, I didn't know that. I didn't know there were four different resurrection narratives. And I said, I don't know how you could not know that.

You ever read your Bible? I didn't say it that way. But in my mind, I'm thinking, how do you not know this? Because if we've read it, we should have picked up on these things, and we should know these things.

Now, again, I didn't say that in that way. I said, oh, I'm glad it was helpful to you. But in my mind, I'm thinking, how do you not know? This is all part of what a survey does. Because if we were doing the Gospel of Matthew verse by verse, we would be down in the weeds.

But right now, we're up on top of the tower looking out, and we're saying, oh, this part over here and this part over here, how do they fit together? That's the value of the survey and being able to do this.

And when we read the Gospel side by side, many questions require deeper study. And so there are two basic theories. One is common source theory. The other is interdependence theory, if you want to write those down.

Common source theory is that all three synoptics are dependent upon a common source. Interdependence theory is that two of the Gospel writers used the other Gospel writer as their primary source. It's that all three Gospels are dependent upon a common source, whether it's oral tradition or a written document that we no longer have.

Common source theory basically says there was a source that all three of them drew from, and that's why we have the similarities. From the perspective of, for our purposes, I would say it could be. I think that it is certainly not beyond reason to say that the Holy Spirit was working in this.

But I'm going to give you my explanation, and I think maybe when I say less mystical, I don't mean that we shouldn't be supernaturalists and we shouldn't think in the supernatural way, but I do think there is a simpler way of looking at it.

And when I say simpler, Cindy, you're going to throw something at me. I'm not denying the work of the Holy Spirit, but please don't think that. But I am going to say that I think that the Holy Spirit used a process.

So I would fall more on the interdependence theory, which is the second one. The interdependence theory is that the Gospel writers did, in fact, draw from one another. And I'll explain my reasoning. Brother, you had your hand up before I go into it.

I just wanted to know the second one again. Yeah, interdependence theory is that two of the Gospel writers specifically drew from at least one other. And here's my reasoning. Everybody turn in your Bible to Luke chapter 1.

Didn't bring your Bible? That's okay. Don't worry about it. If you don't have it, I'll read it to you. Luke chapter 1. By the way, Luke, when we finally get to Luke tonight, Luke is my favorite Gospel.

It's the book that I first preached verse by verse all the way through when I first started preaching. And it was what I wrote my doctoral dissertation on. So I spent more time with Dr. Luke than I have with anyone else in Scripture, probably even the Apostle Paul.

So Dr. Luke says this in his opening. Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

So what does Luke tell us? One, he tells us that other people have written about this. Inasmuch as others have taken to compile a narrative, which tells us, number one, there's narratives that are already written and he knows of them.

And he says, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers who have delivered them to us, which tells us that there is an oral tradition that is happening, and that there is a certain understanding among Christians.

Because remember, the church existed for 30 years without a Bible, without a New Testament, and yet they were still proclaiming Christ. So there is an oral tradition that's happening. There is a reality of things that are happening in the early church that we can't discount and say, well, nobody talked about Jesus until somebody wrote a gospel.

No, we can't think that way, right? And so Luke tells us from the outset that he is seeking to write an orderly account for this person, Theophilus. We don't know who Theophilus is, but the word means lover of God.

Theophilos is the word, philos is love, theos is God. So Theophilus could mean a person named Theophilus, or it could mean, for the church, those who love God. So Theophilus can be referencing the brethren, right?

And so when he says, I'm writing to you, excellent Theophilus, and when he says excellent it kind of makes me think it probably is an individual, because probably a person of nobility, probably someone who has some position, and he's writing this for his, and it's the same person he writes Acts to as well.

But remember that Acts is written by Luke and it's to Theophilus, same beginning. So both of these books are given to the same audience. And he makes the point, other people have written about it, and I'm compiling this, which means all of the information he's getting is not coming from him.

He's getting information from other people. He is a historian. In fact, I would say Luke is a historian of the highest rank, and we're going to talk about that when we look at Luke in a few minutes. Luke is a historian of the highest rank.

His gospel is the longest book in the New Testament, and it's the most thoroughly historic book in the New Testament. So, that being said, am I denying that the Holy Spirit oversaw what Luke was doing and that the Holy Spirit was inspiring what was being written?

No, I believe that with all my heart and soul. But Luke tells us there was a process here. Luke tells us there was a way that he did it, and part of the way that he did it was that he was actually bringing this compilation together based on eyewitnesses, based on people who had seen it.

Luke was not an eyewitness. Luke is a Gentile, most likely. Luke is an associate of the apostle Paul, so some of this he's getting from Paul. But Paul wasn't an eyewitness to Jesus, at least that we know of, right?

Paul doesn't come on the scene until after Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, but he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. So Paul is a person who saw Jesus, but not in the ministry. So Luke gives us an insight into how his gospel is put together.

So we know one thing. Of the synoptic gospels, it's very likely Luke is last, because he's talked about other writers. And my assumption is that's Matthew and Mark.

And he has stuff in his writings that aren't in the other ones, correct?

Yes, he has a lot, because his is long. It's much longer than Luke and different than Matthew, as far as his content is different. So Luke comes along, and we see he's saying, essentially, I'm third in line.

We know John comes later. When we do the survey of John, we'll find out John writes after Luke. So the question becomes, who is first man at bat? Was it Mark, or was it Matthew? And honestly, I could go either way.

In your notes, I put that Mark came first, but I would be just as happy to say Matthew came first. I think the traditional ordering of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tells us something about the historical understanding of who came first, that Matthew was the first gospel.

Plus, Matthew serves as a bridge between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Matthew has more references to Jesus as the king of the Jews and fulfilling the prophecy that the Jewish people were given.

There's more of that in Matthew than any of the other gospels. And so Matthew, I think, is my pick for the primary. So we would say Matthean primacy or supremacy. You have Matthew first. And then the big question, though, and this is where the scholars would come at me, and they would say, well, why is Mark so much shorter and so much denser in certain places?

If Mark is drawing from Matthew, why is there so many differences? And I don't have a good answer for that. The argument among most scholars is Mark came first. I tend to believe Matthew came first. And I've given you my reasons as to why.

But ultimately, the thing that we need to remember is this. The process through which the gospels came into being was so complex that there is no one theory, however detailed the theory, that can really provide a complete explanation for everything that happened.

As believers in the Holy Spirit and believers in the inspiration of Scripture, we know that ultimately what was written and what was given was by God's Spirit, superintended by God's Spirit. But what we do not believe in, remember this, this is key.

And by the way, if you've never read this, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy explains what we mean when we say the Bible is inerrant. That was a document that was put together by several scholars back in the 70s, Dr. R .C. Sproul, Dr. Norman Geisler, Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, and several others got together and they had a conference on what do we mean when we say the Bible is inerrant.

Because just like we were just talking about, there's a passage in Mark I would say isn't supposed to be there. How can I say that and say the Bible's inerrant, right? So the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy deals with things like textual variation, deals with things like the historicity of the text, and deals with things like authorship.

None of the gospels say who wrote them. The closest one we have is John, right? Because at the end of John it mentions the person who said these things or have written to you. But none of the other, Matthew doesn't say it was written by Matthew.

You say, well my Bible does, it says according to Matthew. No, it doesn't say it in the text. It doesn't say it in, Mark doesn't say Mark wrote it. Luke doesn't, these are the traditional authors ascribed to them.

In the first century, goes back as early as the first century, that this traditional authorship was ascribed to them. But there is a certain level of trust that we're saying this is what God meant for us to have.

And these are the things that God meant for us to have in this way. And so, again, there is no complete explanation except to say this. Where the synoptic gospels say the exact same thing in the exact same way.

There is nothing that violates the doctrine of inspiration to say that they were all either using a same verbal or source of some kind. Or that they were, that they had seen one another's writings. There's nothing against inspiration that would, there's nothing that would deny inspiration by that.

And I'll give you an example if you think about it this way. When we look at the writings of Paul, and we look at the writings of Peter, and we see the writings of these men. And when Peter references Paul's writings as being scripture, and we know that he does.

He says that they're those who have misused the scriptures, or misused Paul's writing as they do all the other scriptures. So Peter puts Paul's writing in the category of scripture. That means Peter has read Paul's writings.

Right? And therefore, we can see within the writings of Peter some connections to what Paul has written. For instance, Paul wrote in Romans 13 about submission to governing authorities. And there's a very similar statement in 1 Peter about submission to governing authorities.

Is there a chance that Paul and Peter were up one night when they were in Antioch together? And they were talking about the persecutions that they were dealing with? Was there a chance that those two men had a conversation about how the church should respond to the government?

I mean, I'm asking. Certainly. Right? And is there a chance that they both understood the importance of telling the church how to behave under governing authority? And you say, well now you're saying the Holy Spirit's not involved.

No, I'm saying the Holy Spirit's involved in all this. I'm not denying the persistent input of the Holy Spirit of God. But remember what the Holy Spirit of God does in inspiration. The language that is often used but often misunderstood.

The Holy Spirit superintends the writing of scripture. He does not create a first century fax machine where Paul sits down at his desk and he goes, and he looks down and the book of Ephesians is finished.

That's not how it happened. They weren't first century fax machines receiving a message. It's not how it worked. Paul writes with a specific Pauline style. That's much different than the style of Peter.

And John's gospel, very simple Greek. Hebrews, very high, difficult Greek. Much higher and more difficult than John's use of the language. I believe Hebrews was written by Luke, by the way. We'll talk about that when we get to Hebrews.

I believe Hebrews is a sermon preached by Paul and written down by Luke. Because the language is Pauline but the writing is Lukean. So that's how we know. What does Peter tell us? That no one should think that the scripture came by someone's own interpretation.

But holy men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So as Luke is compiling his gospel, he's being carried along by the Holy Spirit. As he's writing, he's being carried along. He's being kept in the truth, kept from error.

Now some people might want to argue, and they say, well I just don't like the idea that Luke may have seen Matthew's gospel. Okay, if you don't like the idea, that's fine. I just don't have a problem with it.

Huh? I don't have a problem with the fact that Luke may have seen Matthew and Mark. Because I do think they predated Luke's gospel. Now I don't know who came first, as I already said. But I think that that alleviates the issue of the problem when people start claiming collusion.

It's not collusion. It's not the same as we're trying to get in a room and secretly not let anybody know. Luke says it in his first chapter, first verse. I gathered information to do this. I researched.

I did this. So it's not a secret. All right, somebody had their hand up. Yes, Mark.

I'll testify. We don't lay out a set of teachings that we go by. But you will find in a month's time, the teachers who come in there, they'll collaborate in some way. There's nothing we've done on our part.

Sure.

It just happens. And I want to highlight, too, that if it's possible for the Holy Spirit to help me on my walk daily, of course it's going to be inspiration for the writers as well. Because he works in my life every day.

Sure. We would say, though, that the inspiration... This is an important distinction. The inspiration of the text is the text. Not the person. The writing is what is inspired.

What? Thank you so much. The only difference is it's the same inspiration, just written by a different person. Is that one still recording?

Yeah. All right, well, I'm going to reset this, because I don't know what has happened. It froze. Maybe what I was saying was so bad, God didn't want anybody else to hear it. I want to say this. I hope that nothing I've said in the first few minutes during this issue of the synoptic problem, I hope this isn't causing consternation for you.

I'm just trying to remind you that when the secular scholars, when the skeptical scholars come against the Scripture, and they're bringing all these arguments, a lot of times, just like the commentary said, it's only a problem if you don't believe the Bible.

If you believe the Bible is true, and you believe it's from God, then there's answers to all of these questions. Whether or not... And it is possible, and I want to make sure I say this. It is possible that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were absolutely independent of one another, never saw each other, never saw what each other wrote, and they all wrote the exact same thing because they were under the inspiration of the Spirit.

I don't deny that that's possible. I just don't think it's necessary. That's all I'm saying. I don't think that that is necessary because of what Luke says. I searched it. I researched it. So based on what he says, I think it's possible that he saw Mark and Matthew.

That's all I'm saying. So with that being said, the synoptic problem for me is not the problem that I think that a lot of people try to make it out to be because what they're basically trying to argue is that these things aren't true because of collusion.

And I'm saying it's not collusion. I don't think it's collusion. Interdependence and collusion are not the same thing. I'll give you a quick quote to finish up this part. The synoptic problem is not a bigger problem as some try to make it out to be.