Synoptics Section 305

Synoptic Gospel Comparison and the Need for Parallel Study

We will be beginning the Passion Narrative, so we'll be in Mark, I'm sorry, Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22. How's that? Last week, what we did was sort of did a review of, it's a shame I did it a week early, given how many folks we have here today, but we did a review of some of the key principles that must be kept in mind when looking at the Gospels in parallel.

I mentioned last week that I think what we've been doing for many years now, for about a year we stepped out of this. We didn't really step out of it, we did John. John's not a synoptic Gospel, but we did the material that found the Gospel of John between chapters 13 and 17, basically.

Maybe it was all the way back to 12, now that I think about it. Anyway, we worked through that section of John, and it took us that long, mainly because I'm gone so often, I suppose. We're back to the synoptic study, and we're entering into the most difficult area of synoptic studies.

I mentioned last week that one of the main reasons we need to do this level of difficult study, it'd be a whole lot easier just to read Matthew, and not worry about what Mark says, or what Luke says, and not read them in parallel.

But we live in a day where there is a tremendous amount of attack upon the veracity of the text of Scripture. Those who launch those attacks basically say that if you would just read them in parallel, you would see where all the problems are, and you wouldn't be so naive and silly as to believe in the accuracy of the Scriptures.

You have people like Bart Ehrman and others that are pushing this, and this is very, very, very, very common to hear this kind of presentation. The only way to deal with that is to do what Christians have done for a long time.

Going back to Tatian's Diatessaron in the early centuries of the Christian era, Christians have put together books like this. They've put the Gospels in parallel. They've created a single Gospel drawing from each Gospel.

If God had wanted us to do that, I think he would have just given us one. But the issues of comparing Matthew, Mark, and Luke in particular are important issues, and they've been known to the Church for a very long time.

Why People Lose Confidence in Scripture

Unfortunately, we have not done a very good job over the past number of generations in educating everyone who is going to be opening their Bible about what they're going to be encountering. And so, it is heartbreaking to me to see people.

I've dialogued with many a person who's either joined another religion or become an atheist or something and said, Why? I believe in Jesus and I sang in the choir and all the rest of that stuff. Then one day I found out that we don't know who wrote some of the books of the Old Testament.

If any of you have seen The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, that's in essence what you have in Paine's writings is very basic fundamental accusations against the Bible that have been answered for years and years and years and years, but they were enough to be his form of argumentation.

I remember meeting with a man once a number of years ago who had come out of Mormonism. And I've often said, you come out of a group like that, you should never, ever, ever be put into a position of Christian leadership for many years.

There needs to be a period of growth and maturing and grounding. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, this person was put in a position of being an expert on Mormonism and going around to churches and lecturing on Mormonism and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, he ran into Paine's Age of Reason and became an atheist almost overnight. And I met with him and it's like, so you thought we knew every author involved in 2 Chronicles? Why did you think that? Well, that's just, no one had ever said anything about these things.

And sadly, you probably could go to a lot of churches where no one ever would say anything about the difficulties that we're going to be trying to work through and doing what we did last week and looking at principles.

And one of the things I didn't mention last week, I just want to mention it really quickly. It's very interesting. I could probably derive all the basic principles I mentioned last week of compression or telescoping and looking at the author's intention, at the author's audience and all that kind of stuff that we talked about last week and what you need to know to compare Matthew, Mark and Luke especially.

You probably could have derived almost all of that by just looking at some places where you have one author that gives parallel accounts. One author tells the same story in multiple places. Now, what's the first thing?

I mean, unless you're going to assume that the author is stupid, okay, and just doesn't remember what he wrote a few hours earlier. If there are differences in the story told at one place and another place, what would be some of the reasons for that?

Let me just ask you. Where would you think we could look in the New Testament for some really good examples of where the same author tells the same story more than once? Exactly. Acts 9, Acts 22, you have Paul giving the story of his conversion.

Now, are they identical? No, they're not. If you've read them, then you know there are some very interesting differences between them. Now, part of it is due to the fact that Paul is in two different contexts when he tells a story.

The Acts 9 is Luke telling Paul's story. Acts 22 is Paul telling Paul's story. And so you have different contexts, different situation, different purpose for relating the story. In one, Luke is explaining why Paul is now going to become the central figure in the rest of his narrative, who has not even been there up until this point in the story.

So why is this man all of a sudden so important? But in Acts 22, you already know who Paul is. And Paul is now telling his own story to someone else. And so you have different contexts. A number of years have passed between the two.

And yet, there are differences between the stories. In fact, the first serious allegation of biblical contradiction that was ever thrown at me was from that story. If any of you have read my book, Letters to a Mormon Elder, or my other book, Scripture Alone, that deals with this, when I dealt with topics of alleged biblical contradictions, this is one I've included in both books where I've dealt with that particular issue.

Because it was one of the very first things that Mormon missionaries threw at me. In fact, they have a little Mormon missionary handbook. I don't know if any of you have ever seen the Mormon missionary handbook.

And there's a little section in there on evidences of the corruption of the Bible. And missionaries are just taught to throw this kind of thing out at you. So, it wasn't that they had discovered these things.

It was that this came from the material that they were given. And the primary contradiction, allegedly, had to do with, in one of the stories, it says they heard the voice of the person speaking with Paul.

Saul, at that point. And the other says they did not hear the voice. And so, they said, see? Clearly. You know, 8th Article of Faith, the Mormon Church says we believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly.

Which they basically interpret to mean as far as it has been transmitted correctly and hasn't been altered by scribes, and so on and so forth. And so they'll throw that out as an alleged contradiction.

So, there's an excellent example. And if you're wondering, well, how do you resolve that alleged contradiction? Well, it doesn't exist in most modern translations of that text. Because when you look rather carefully at it, the voice was speaking to him in a language that people traveling with him did not understand.

And the issue is they did not understand versus not. They heard something, they just didn't understand what was being said when you look closely at the original language. But anyway, there is an example.

But you also have another interesting example. I wasn't going to look at this. But let me see if I can give you the reference here real quick. Well, I'm going to have to get my glasses out, aren't I? Yeah, I probably am.

This is terrible. In the Ascension stories, chapter, here we go, Luke chapter 24, I believe. I'm not sure this is going to give me what I'm looking for. But in the Ascension narrative, where is that found in Luke 24?

Because I'm straight toward the end. It's one of the last portions of the, I guess it is in here someplace. Find notes in your thing here. I'm sorry? Okay, that doesn't give any information on the textual variant.

There's a textual variant in Luke 24. And it would take me too long to pull it up right now. But it was just interesting. I was thinking about, I forget what I was listening to on the ride yesterday that caused me to think about it.

But there's a textual variant in regards to Luke chapter 24 and the Ascension of Jesus. Go to... And people will present that as evidence that, well, see, yeah, there it is. There are some manuscripts, as I recall, that do not have the Ascension in Luke.

And the thought crossed my mind, and I don't know why I'd never really thought of this before. But there's a rather extensive discussion of this in and who wrote both Luke and Acts. But what is interesting to remember is in the history of the transmission of the text, Luke and Acts, while they were clearly written together, were split up.

And Luke was put with the other four Gospels. And we have a number of manuscripts that have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in them. But Acts, we almost need to feel sorry for that poor book. Because it sort of got orphaned.

And no one really knew what to do with it. You didn't put it in with the Pauline Epistles. And so it just sort of had its own existence. Not nearly as popular. Though, clearly, as about the only book of history in the New Testament, it was important along those lines.

But it has a different textual history to it. Because it got split up from the book that it was originally written with. And that one was put in with the Gospels. And so it's funny that I've actually had conversations with people.

And I've talked about the stuff in Luke. And even in my own mind, because we split stuff up into books and we split stuff up into chapters and verses. And as you all know, I hope, chapters and verses are a rather modern thing.

The verses were first inserted in the New Testament in 1551. So, even in my own mind, Acts is over there. And I didn't even think about the fact that, well, you know, you've got the same author talking about the same thing.

So why wouldn't he just give a small account here? Because he's going to be giving a longer account later on. And so you can find some issues like that. Where you've got Luke and you've got Acts. You can find some of these things in Paul's writings.

There are parallel passages in Ephesians and Colossians. The point being that when we look at one author, we can see illustrated the things I was talking about last week as to how we need to be fair in looking at these parallel texts and allowing the authors to be their authors.

In fact, I was listening to something this week about something that had gone on. Oh, yeah. The stuff going on in St. Louis. Remember a couple days after the Michael Brown shooting there was another shooting.

Well, a videotape of the actual shooting has been released. And as I was listening as you would read the official version and then watch the videotape and then listen to eyewitnesses it was fascinating to compare what they said and how they perceived things.

It's often done in various classes where you'll set up a, you know, you'll have three or four people come in, they'll do something, they'll run out of the room. And then you start, you have everybody get out a piece of paper, write down what you just saw right now.

And then you compare these eyewitness accounts. It's fascinating to see what certain people see. Ladies tend to see details that men don't see. Men see bigger pictures that the women don't see. Some people are focused upon detail stuff.

Some people are focused upon big story stuff. Some people recognize clothing. Guys never recognize clothing. You know, hair color, hairstyle. The lady's like, no it wasn't. It was this long and it had that much curl in it.

And, you know, especially if it was a lady involved and then the ladies go off and have arguments about she should never have worn those shoes with that dress and the guy's going, what? This kind of thing happens all the time.

But it was fascinating to have read the accounts and then you get to watch the video and go, I now see this guy saw those details but didn't see that and that changes everything and those people saw that but didn't see this.

So it's fascinating to see how that works and all of this to remind us that if we go into this study with the idea that these are AP reporters, well, again, when I was a kid we talked about a reporter that was someone who was supposedly just wanting to give the facts and nobody views a reporter that way anymore.

I'm not sure the reporters view the reporters that way anymore. But if you go into this study thinking that Matthew, Mark and Luke were independent journalists that they don't have a purpose, they're not trying to communicate a message, etc., etc., you're going to be really confused and really disappointed.

The other side, that's imbalance over here, but the imbalance on the other side is, well, if they're trying to communicate a message and we can't trust anything they say, the truth is in between the two, obviously.

You need to recognize that the author has an intention and that's going to determine what he does and does not include. He has a limitation of space as well. I've noted that before. But it does not follow these lines.

And this is certainly illustrated over and over again in our lives. I mean, I'll come back from a trip and I'll get on the dividing line and I will talk about what happened on the trip. But, if I'm having dinner with my family at one of our favorite Mexican places and there's plenty of chips and salsa there, they're going to get a significantly fuller story than I give on the dividing line.

Now, the scary thing is, people say, that means you were lying. I wasn't. I didn't have any chips and salsa on the dividing line so you really think you can get as much detail out of me if you don't have chips and salsa?

I mean, ask George. He's the chips and salsa man and the music minister. He's amazing. A multi-talented guy. You can squat the piano and sing with the piano. It's an amazing thing. But, what was I saying?

I don't know. But, just a number of times this past week, I was just struck with stuff I was observing that was illustrating if we were just being fair with these texts, then these are things we would do.

But, unfortunately in the vast majority of the situations we will find ourselves in, the intention is not to be fair with these texts. There is a overarching purpose involved in the accusations that are being made.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke on the Arrest Plot

Let's dive into it and we'll be making application over and over and over again. I suppose we will have to touch on those things in the future as well. Matthew 26, 1 -5 when Jesus had finished all these things he said to his disciples, in two days the Passover is coming and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified and the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest who was called Caiaphas and took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by self and kill him.

But, they said not during the feast lest there be a tumult among the people. Mark gives a shorter version of this. It was now two days for the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by self and kill him.

They said not during the feast lest there be a tumult of the people. Luke gives about the same story very briefly and he notes, and they feared the people. So, Matthew records for us that Jesus once again announces to the disciples with clarity what is coming.

The Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified and the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest who was also called Caiaphas. So, he gives a fair amount of information.

Why might he do that? Well, once again, Matthew is primarily focused upon scripture fulfillment, speaking to the Jews, demonstrating that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ. So, he gives a fair amount of information including the chronology.

Now, it's important for us to keep a couple things in mind. The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread was not just one day. There was a particular day upon which the feast began, but it was a week-long celebration.

And, generally, we think of Passover as this one-day thing. But, it was not. And, if we don't keep that in mind, we'll end up with having one of the confusions that we will undoubtedly address again in the future.

And, that is the timing of the crucifixion. Two things to keep in mind. I won't go over these now because we have to go over them more later, but just so you sort of have them in your mind. A few principles.

A. In Jewish reckoning of time, first of all, you have Jewish reckoning of time in regards to days. Any portion of a day is considered a full day. So, they didn't talk about two-and-a-half days or one-and-a-quarter days or something along those lines.

Any portion of a day was considered a full day. Secondly, unlike the Romans, the Jews did time from basically based upon the sun. So, you didn't start the day at midnight because you wouldn't know where the sun was.

You start the day at 6am basically, sunrise for part of the year anyhow. The closer you are to the equator, the easier that is, I suppose. So, the timing, especially in the issue of third hour, sixth hour, ninth hour, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, will be different than John.

John uses Roman timing. Matthew, Mark, and Luke use Jewish timing. And so, there's a six-hour difference between them. So, people say, oh, he says it's the third hour. He says it's the ninth hour. They can't even get their hours straight.

They're talking to different audiences. John being written at a later point in time, most probably after the destruction of the temple and the nation utilizes the time that would have been familiar to his readers and that would be Roman time and hence there's a difference between them.

Once again, based upon the audience they're writing to. But, again, people will look at that and go, see? See? Contradiction. Contradiction. No. See? See? Ignorance. Ignorance. That's really what's going on there.

So, portion of a day counted as a full day. The time issue, and I'm going to wake up my Greek brother here. He says, uh-oh. In Greek, how do you say Thursday? Uh-huh. Now, see, you say thee, I say paraskire, but do you know what paraskire means?

Yes, I know. Yes. Preparation. Now, why is this relevant? Well, the reason I ask, brothers, is because in modern even to this point today, in modern Greek, the very name, Friday, is paraskire which means preparation day.

Preparation for what? Preparation for the Sabbath. It comes from the New Testament. And as a result, one of the big issues that people have if they just knew the language, if my brother here was reading the chronology of the crucifixion of Jesus and he encounters paraskire, it's not even going to be an issue.

It's just going to be natural like us reading Friday. But for us, the New Testament, the English translations will say preparation day and we're like, but it's actually the day of the week. And so, people will go, well Jesus couldn't have been crucified on Friday because it has to be three days and three nights and Friday afternoon is only one evening and two nights and one day and so that doesn't work and so it has to have been Wednesday and they come up with all this complicated stuff all because they ignore any part of a day is a full day and paraskire happens to be the name of the day and so it's said it happened on Friday and it's right there and yet people will develop this whole big, huge complicated thing and the cults will use this as well as, you know they'll come to your door and they love to have these little things that are their hooks you know, they need to get something to hook you with and basically what they want to do is they want to ask you a question they figure you're not really going to have an answer to because you never even thought about it before and once they've got you then it's like, well, you know the church you're going to right now never told you about that, I wonder what else they didn't tell you about and so they'll do that they'll utilize that kind of argumentation at some point we're probably going to have to spend just an entire thing we did it before, some of you maybe four of you maybe great keeper of the notes, I'm sure could tell me the exact day that was a few notebooks ago, wow that was that long ago in the archives, ok and you don't carry the archives.

I mean you could carry the archives. I mean you could just by the way digital archives are much easier to carry than the I'm sorry, you're old school. Ok, alright yes ma 'am, only knock once there's a big old X on my house, especially for the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons they don't come back not because they were mistreated, it's just like well I remember one of my favorite recollections was when Rich lived next door and I lived next door to Rich and my office was in the front room of Rich's house this was before he got married and so my office was his front room and we did not plan this out.

We weren't thinking this through correctly but my library was in there on these you know those super cheap metal shelves yeah, it was ugly but anyways, that's all we could afford and so I had my entire Jehovah's Witness library on this big old shelf and unfortunately if you stood just outside the front door and looked in it would be the main shelf you could see from the front door and we're talking all their books their bound volumes of the Watchtower and Wake magazines back in the 1950s I mean a pretty decent Watchtower library and so one day I'm sitting there and someone knocks on the door and lo and behold it's the Witnesses so I open the door and I'm standing there talking with them and we're talking about probably Armageddon at some point that seems to be their favorite topic and eventually trying to get it over to the subject of the Trinity or something like that and all of a sudden I see that there's two of them and the one that's talking to me is sort of looking at me but the other one recognizes what's in there and of course they freak out because Witnesses are not allowed to talk to apostates.

So if you're a former Witness, which I'm not but if you're a former Witness they're not supposed to be talking to you and so this person's like what, what, what? So I start explaining it man, they were out of there so fast it's like no way I remember talking to two Jehovah's Witness ladies who were absolutely convinced that I was a former Witness by a name of oh, what was that guy's name?

Oh, Chuck Love. What a name straight out of the 1960's. I think Chuck Love they were convinced and I knew who Chuck Love was, I'd never met him but I knew that he was a former Witness in the Valley somewhere, I'd never met him but they were absolutely convinced.

I got out my driver's license and showed it to them and that can be fake. They marched out the door, they were absolutely convinced. So there are those who they're interesting but how did I get on with all that?

I don't know. Oh yes the background issues they will utilize those things. Secondly please note as well from this text people will say how could the disciples have reacted the way they did to the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus if Jesus had been so clear in speaking to them right here he says the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.

Jesus' Death as Foreknown and Purposeful

Matthew chapter 16. Peter get behind me. Why? Because Peter is saying may it be far from you Lord that it's necessary to go to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be betrayed in the hands of men and he'll be beaten and he'll be crucified and rise again the third day.

And Peter is like no no no and that was ten chapters before this. Matthew has made it very very very plain that the crucifixion was not something that Jesus kept hidden from the notice of the disciples.

Very very plain. So were they just that dull? Were their memories that short? How can we explain this? Because it causes some people a problem again I'm thinking primarily of my Muslim friends. I'm getting ready to go on another trip.

And you know you go down to South Africa and you debate in mosques in South Africa. And the conversations after the debate in the mosque in South Africa are rather interesting because you're dealing with folks who've only heard portions of the story.

And one of the things that very frequently comes up is how how can we trust the Bible when it's so obvious I mean the disciples. The disciples did not expect Jesus to be crucified they ran away etc etc and yet Jesus had told them.

I mean how do you explain all this kind of stuff. And so obviously as I look at these things I think about well how do you respond to something like that. And what we learn from it. What's fairly obvious I think to me we learn from it.

What were these men expecting even after the crucifixion and resurrection even after Jesus has ministered to them. And he's opened up the scriptures. And he's opened up their minds in Luke chapter 24 to understand the scriptures.

Even after all of that what's going on in the last few minutes. As well as time for us to sort of take over you know time to establish the kingdom. They've got such a strong tradition of what the Messiah is to be that they keep interpreting everything that Jesus says in light of that tradition.

And it takes so long. It takes the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. And even when the Spirit comes and you've got Pentecost and you've got preaching and everything else. And Peter's been preaching it's still quite some time until he's on the roof at Simon's house.

And we're sort of wondering why he's on the roof. Well it's probably cooler up there. First of all because of air conditioning. But secondly Simon was a tanner. I bet you Peter was going. I'm doing pretty good staying as a tanner because tanners are touching dead bodies all the time.

And therefore from the Jewish perspective it would be very unclean. And so Peter was probably thinking he was being very liberal. But he's up on the roof. Probably because it doesn't smell real good in Simon the Tanner's house.

Simon the Tanner probably doesn't smell that good. And what does God have to do three times. He has to give him a vision and command him. Peter rise and eat. It takes that amount of effort to break through.

And still Peter relapses. Where does he relapse. Galatians chapter 2. The men come from James looked like Peter had gotten the idea he was having table fellowship with the Gentiles. It's cool people come from James.

What happens. He withdraws. Table fellowship starts trying to do the Jewish thing again. Tradition is a powerful powerful powerful thing. And given what they expected the Messiah to be and how they did not have a fully biblical understanding of who the Messiah was to be we can see why even in light of the clarity of what Jesus says they just can't believe that.

That's a possibility. The Messiah is going to be a conqueror. The Messiah is going to bring peace to Israel. The Messiah is going to overthrow the Romans. The Messiah is going to give us a preeminent role amongst the nations of the earth etc. etc.

And when Jesus says this is what the Messiah will do. It is amazing how people you can speak with the greatest clarity you can muster. And then you talk to somebody after they've listened to you speak.

And you have no idea how they heard you say what you said. Believe me. I speak enough in enough places that I'll meet with somebody after somebody will come up to me and ask me a question. They'll shake my hand, love what you had to say.

And then in the conversation afterwards I'm like who were you listening to? Did you have an iPod on. Or listen to somebody other than me. Because I have no earthly idea how you came up with that conclusion.

But unfortunately that happens a lot. And it happens with the disciples as well. So it is as the section 305 says Jesus' death is premeditated. That is Jesus knows that it's coming. And it is purposeful.

He knows, he says it is necessary for the son of man to go to Jerusalem. This is not something that sneaks up on him, this is something that he knows is coming. Unfortunately we have run completely out of time.

We'll try to pick things up a little bit faster in the future. But don't hold your breath let's close. Father we thank you for this time, the freedom you've given to us to open your word and to study it help us to be good students of your word to remember that we might proclaim it to others that others might know the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is in his name that we pray, amen.