Be Taught By Dr. James White

The Synoptic Problem and the Synoptic Gospels

We have what is commonly referred to in scholarly literature as the synoptic problem. Now, what is synoptic Gospels? Sun Apteo, to see together, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic Gospels.

And when you read them in parallel with one another, I forgot to bring my synoptic Gospel tonight to show you a printed version of this, but you can purchase them all over the place. Sometimes they're called Harmony of the Gospels, something along those lines.

But when you study them in parallel columns, you place the same stories next to each other, you begin to see issues like this. You don't necessarily see this if you just read through Mark, then you just read through Matthew, you just read through Luke.

You don't notice differences in verbs or things like that, but they're there. And so I remember that night pulling out my Greek New Testament. I don't know what the professor talked about the rest of the evening, to be perfectly honest with you.

I'm looking at the translation, and I'm checking the verb tenses, and I was troubled. I was troubled by what I was seeing because I knew that already doing what we were doing, I could find myself standing outside the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, and a sharp LDS apologist could come along, and there you'd have someone saying, well, how can we trust the transmission of the Bible in light of this?

Greek Synopses, Scribal Harmonization, and the Sermon on the Mount

So how do we? This is not the only place, like I said. There are many places that you can turn to. In fact, it's interesting to me, when you look at a Greek, what's called a Greek synopsis, the best-known one is Synopsis Quator Eurangeliorum.

You can get them on eBay for a fairly decent price, and almost every single time, you have an incident where you have either Matthew and Mark telling a story, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It's pretty rare that you have—I mean, you do have times where all three will do it.

There are some times, I guess, when it's just Luke and Mark, I suppose, but normally it's Matthew and Mark. But you have these situations where the synoptic Gospels are telling the same story. If there is any difference between them, there will almost always be, at the bottom of the page, some scribe someplace that didn't like that and didn't like that there was a difference.

And so there is an attempt at harmonization in some manuscript someplace. One of the real obvious ones is when Matthew and Luke both record the Sermon on the Mount. Well, Luke's version is much shorter than Matthew's.

And so in almost every one of the verses in Luke, you'll find some scribe someplace that's expanding. Now, is that purposeful, or is it just because the scribe knew what it was in Matthew and mentally was making it fit?

Those are some of the questions. But what it tells us is we're not the first people to look at this. You go back to the early church, and you will find in the writings of Origen or Augustine or Chrysostom or many of these others, you will find that they likewise struggled with the same issues that we struggle with today.

Why Christians Should Address Gospel Differences Publicly

Well, that we should be. I really think, look, I understand how some people would say, just, you know, this is uncomfortable. Let's not talk about it. I think that is so dangerous today. And I'll tell you why it's dangerous.

Because of this. It's dangerous because of this. Anybody you're talking to these days has one of these. They're probably ready to have it implanted. That's how our society is. And that means we're all connected, and that means the critics and enemies of the faith know about this stuff, and they're putting it out there.

And if we don't address it within the context of faith, then we find ourselves having to address it within the context of unbelief, without preparation, and that's not good.