In 2008, author John Kloppenborg released the full text of a
“reconstruction” of the
Naturally, it had to be “different”. Nobody was going to be interested in a book affirming the existing gospel accounts in every respect.
The Reconstructionists Reconstruct
The “reconstruction” (labeled ‘Q’) was cobbled together largely from noting similarities between text common to Matthew and Luke and an apocryphal document called the Gospel of Thomas. An entirely unwarranted leap shortly followed: the assumption that both Matthew and Luke drew on their hypothetical reconstruction, along with the gospel of Mark, to create their own gospels. (They take Mark to be the earliest of the gospels because in their view it is most primitive.) Q provoked some of the extremist critics to advance the thesis that early Christian communities did not see Jesus as Messiah but only a teacher of wisdom. For them, say the critics, Jesus was not divine, but fully human. The book appeared and disappeared without making many fans among orthodox believers.
While the ability of modern text critics 2,000 years downstream to objectively reconstruct anything remotely like the text of a first century hypothetical document is highly questionable, there is some credible evidence that other accounts of the life of Christ existed and perhaps circulated before any of the gospel canon. According to Frank Viola’s chronology of the New Testament, Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead and ascended to the Father’s right hand in or around AD30. Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote the biographies of our Lord that became the synoptic gospels within three years of one another in the late sixth and early seventh decades of the first century, approximately thirty years after those pivotal historic events took place.
In between, many other pens were scribbling out their own accounts, creating some sort of standing knowledge base from which all three synoptic writers drew.
The Standing Knowledge Base
The existence of a standing knowledge base known to the gospel writers is a theory we’ve hit on before. It actually has a fair bit to commend it. Where I would differ from the critics, of course, is in calling such a document or documents “gospels” in the sense we refer to the three recognized synoptics or John. That, and I would never consider drawing conclusions from a selectively pared-down version of the present text about what the earliest congregations of Christians believed about the deity of the Lord Jesus prior to Paul’s epistles. As for “reconstructing” such a gospel, we haven’t remotely enough material to work with, nor is there any evidence that any such material was inspired by God beyond that which we find quoted by Matthew, Mark or Luke.
I have worked with, written and edited text for almost forty years now, most of it on word processors. I like to use the document comparison function in Word to demonstrate that the various synoptic accounts contain lengthy strings of text-in-common, far too long and far too frequent to occur by mere coincidence. The evidence is glaringly obvious even in English. There is no way to convincingly account for these phrases- and sentences-in-common apart from common-source documents, or perhaps direct divine dictation (which I consider unlikely and unnecessary).
Just going from personal experience, the chances that different witnesses could produce identical, lengthy quotations three decades after the events in question without a divine memory aid are sub zero. I don’t for a moment doubt the Holy Spirit shepherded all three synoptic writers through the process of producing their gospels, ensuring their inerrancy even down to the level of appropriate word choice. However, I see no evidence that he extinguished, smothered or even unduly influenced the distinct intent, individual personalities or writing quirks of the writers as he did so.
Internal Evidence for Q-Type Sources
It’s not hugely important, but I tend to think some now-lost Q-type source (absolutely NOT the Kloppenborg reconstruction) is almost surely the narrative precursor to the synoptics. The urgency for authoritative biographies of the Lord Jesus was limited while thousands of eyewitnesses in Judea and Galilee remained among the living, but with each passing year it increased. It seems wildly improbable that nobody personally present during the years of the Lord’s ministry would have put pen to paper until the late fifties. In fact, Luke implies the opposite, writing “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.” The words “many”, “eyewitnesses” and “narratives” imply written sources other than Mark, who may or may not have personally witnessed the ministry of Christ. So then, there existed a Q-type source, and probably more than one. These narratives need not have been inspired themselves, as they were only a starting point for the various writers, who edited them in accordance with their own purposes and supplemented their testimony with that of other witnesses. Nevertheless, the influence of these original narratives remains.
Bring on the Document Comparison
You can see that influence below in a passage about the
death of John the Baptist common to Matthew and Mark. Red underlined text is Matthew, red strikethrough text is Mark, and wherever you
see black text, the two gospels are identical, at least in the ESV. The Westcott & Hort Greek
New Testament, based on the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, has
even more points of agreement since it contains no variant English word or
punctuation choices attributable to the translation process.
[Unless you are reading on your cellphone, a double click should pop up a larger, clearer version of the jpg.]
As you can see above, one quotation attributed to Herod has seventeen straight English words in common. If that’s two men’s memories thirty years after the fact, I’m truly impressed. Matthew’s insertion of three words punctuates another seventeen-word identical string. The chances of this level of commonality occurring by accident at all, let alone repeatedly, are negligible. Any high school English teacher reading two such essays would call one or both gospel writers on the carpet for plagiarism.
Vive la Différence
That established, I’m more interested in the differences than the commonalities. Two writers have undertaken to tell a story based on something they’ve read, in some measure copied, and in Matthew’s case at least, heavily amended to correspond with his personal experience. In Mark’s case, perhaps it was amended to include the testimony of Peter. Let’s consider a few of these differences:
1/ Herod’s Fears
Matthew says Herod “feared the people”. They held John to be a prophet, and Herod did not want to get on their wrong side. Mark says Herod “feared John”, knowing he was a righteous and holy man. Both could be true simultaneously, and both surely are, but having multiple accounts enables the Holy Spirit to document both motives without cluttering either death account with unnecessary background detail.
2/ Herod’s Birthday
Both writers say it was Herod’s birthday, but only Mark goes on to add that Herod was a man among other impressively accomplished men invited to his celebration: nobles, military commanders, the leading men of Galilee. This helps explain why “because of his oaths and his guests”, Herod followed through on his promise to execute John when he didn’t really want to. If you’ve ever been an insecure male trying to impress other men, you’ll know the pressure he was under. Politically speaking, he could not afford to look weak.
3/ The Guilt of Herodias
Mark records the actual conversation between Herodias and her daughter that engineered John’s demise, and emphasizes the hatred of Herodias for John in greater detail than Matthew, who may not have been aware she was the driving force behind Herod’s imprisonment of John. Was one of Mark’s sources Joanna, the wife of Herod’s household manager, who is twice mentioned by Luke? Joanna was uniquely positioned to listen in on and report a private exchange between mother and child. There are other ways the plot against John might have been overheard or reported, but none so plausible.
4/ The Lord’s Reaction
Mark’s narrative ends with John’s burial, then jumps back to the disciples who, at the time, had been sent to preach the kingdom of heaven to the Jews. But Matthew notes that John’s disciples went and told Jesus what had happened. He also records the Lord’s response: “He withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.” That’s a subtle insight into the Lord’s character and emotions well worth having, and we only get it in Matthew.
Deliberate Change
Secular critics often carp that any difference between gospel accounts is a contradiction that makes the testimony of the authors highly suspect. Here’s where the knowledge that the synoptics drew on the same source material is useful, at least to the faith of believers: it tells us every change a gospel writer made to the original source he was using was deliberate. In editing the text, he was adding complementary information distinct to his authorial purpose, which self-evidently varies from one writer to another. He was also doing so at a time when living eyewitnesses were available to challenge any genuine contradiction, and for an audience that included any number of people familiar with the original accounts, yet who still accepted the validity of the newer, definitive versions of the Lord’s life story as they emerged.
In short, there are no oopsies in the gospels.
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