smith_c@gatech.edu (Spawn of a Jewish Carpenter) (12/15/89)
My priest once said to me that, when he was in seminary, one of his professors said to him, "If you try to harmonize the Gospels you'll never get the cream." The Gospels were written by four different communities of faith who were addressing the needs of their communities. These four different perspectives produced four different accounts. An interesting analogy comes to mind. I will try to reproduce something I read a long time ago as best my memory can muster (let he who has ears hear!). Ahem. A couple on a visit to the Holy Land stayed for a couple of days in the home of an archaeologist and his wife. While there, the archaeologist was busy with his diggings in old ruins. They discussed his work and many other things with them and especially with his wife. Later, after they had returned home, they learned to their astonishment that the wife of the archaeologist was none other than the famous murder mystery author, the late great Agatha Christie. Upon learning this, the couple sat down with their friends and tried to piece together the things she said and did. The things which they earlier would have dismissed as unimportant suddenly became extremely important. The husband and wife agreed that they basically agreed with each other on what she did and said. However, sometimes one would say, "She said this just after breakfast," whereas the other would say, "No, dear, she said that just before dinner." About what she said they were clear; about what she meant they sometimes disagreed. It simply meant that two different people were remembering the same things. Take the Lord's prayer. "For the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory are yours now and forever" is a second-century addition. [Let's call this phrase KPG for Kingdom/Power/Glory.] Did Jesus say it or didn't he? KPG is basically equivalent to our Amen. In other words, whenever Jews of that era prayed to God, they ended their prayer with KPG just as today modern Christians end their prayers to God with Amen. No doubt, some scribe saw Jesus pray the Our Father in the text and thought, Someone left out KPG. All people says KPG when praying to God, surely Jesus did also, I'll correct an obvious scribal error. Today, someone may have seen Jesus pray the Our Father in the text and thought, Someone left out the Amen. Everyone says Amen at the end of a prayer to God, some careless scribe left it out; I'll correct an obvious copyist error. Is this an inconsistency? Well, no. No doubt, the original scribe wrote down what he thought was important; the community of Matthew thought KPG was more important than did the community of Luke. Since the Letters of Paul were written before the Gospels were set down in written form, the second century wasn't too far removed from the original writings. Regarding the anointing of Jesus: The Community of John may have felt that penitence was an extremely important subject, hence, Mary is referred to as anointing the feet of Jesus and wiping it with her hair, which correlates with Luke's story of the penitent Galilean woman. As John's Gospel is sometimes referred to as a collection of sermons, it seems reasonable to presume that the sermonizers were attempting to make a point by combining two events. I've combined two events myself for the purpose of telling a story whose meaning would be lost or confused if I tried to tell the stories separately. Did I lie? I combined events for purposes of clarity. [Note: this is *not* the same thing as using composite characters.] To say that inconsistencies in the Bible somehow make the Bible less valid, or not inerrant, as the Word of God is to miss the point. The Bible isn't a history book; it's a textbook of faith. The Gospels must be understood as theological discourses; if you attempt to understand them as history instead of theology told from an historical perspective you'll never understand the Gospels. It's like taking the I Have a Dream speech of Martin Luther King in which he refers to the red hills of Georgia, instead of the sandy plains, and saying, since there's an error in his speech, therefore what is said cannot be entirely true; with that approach, you'll never understand Martin Luther King or his message. Nowadays, people refer to the red hills of North Georgia, although before King no one noticed they were red before. This is amusing but hardly adds or detracts from the true meaning of his speech. One Gospel says Mary anointed the feet of Jesus; another says a woman anointed his head (surely the more common practice); pointing out these minor discrepancies as so important that they belie the message of the Gospels is to miss the point that Jesus was anointed for his coming Passion and Death, which is what the authors were trying to say theologically. That the event occurred is not questioned; how it occurred, in what particular way, is remembered by different people in different ways. The Gospels do say that Mary had a *large* amount of ointment (nard). If she's like me, if you have too much oil, you redistribute the excess amount elsewhere. Perhaps person A saw her anoint his head; person B, coming in a moment later, saw her anoint his feet. Both reported the same event, seconds apart, perhaps from different places in the room. The same can be said for Jesus on the Cross. Mark says he gave a loud cry and gave up the ghost. Other accounts say he cried, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, and died. Let's say the men (who were less brave than the women or simply more likely to be treated roughly than the women) were standing on the hillside far away. Jesus cries aloud to His Father, but they can't make out the words because they're too far away, and only record a scream or loud cry. The women, standing near the Cross of Jesus, heard His last words more clearly and recorded them accordingly. It could also be that Jesus cried aloud in Aramaic (his birth language) and some witnesses spoke Aramaic whereas others spoke only Greek so that his final cry sounded either like gibberish or a indistinguishable loud cry. I'm going on at some length here but the whole point is that very different stories can be told from different perspectives yet still be accurate renditions of the same event. That the stories differ in the details doesn't mean that the story from one or the other perspective is untrue. When Jesus told certain stories, it's entirely possible that some listeners, who spoke only Greek, listened to an immediate translation, while still being able to say, I heard him say it. That Jesus explained his parables in greater detail to his disciples in the privacy and quiet of his home or other secluded place away from the noisy crowds isn't in the least surprising. Nowadays, politicians give speeches, then get on talk shows explaining what they mean in greater detail and in conversational style. I've asked my priest what he meant in a sermon and he's explained it using different language, a different approach. Talking to crowds is always different from private conversation. Relaying an event as told from the perspective of someone in the crowd is bound to be vastly different from the same event told from the perspective of someone intimately involved with the speaker. Read some biographies of famous persons by the people who knew them and you'll see what I mean. One last example. My priest often prefaces accounts of events in his life with the phrase, "When I was Roman Catholic priest...." and goes on with the story. He says this when it's important to the story to understand that at that time he was a Roman Catholic priest and not an Episcopal priest as he is now. Other times he omits the phrase when it isn't important to the story. Is he technically in error when he tells a story about the days when he was a Roman Catholic priest without being specific? People in the congregation will assume that he's telling an event in his life that happened when he was an Episcopal priest. Someone later might write down, "Father John, an Episcopal priest, went to a hospital one day and...." Naturally, everyone assumes this person was an Episcopal priest. Later, he baptizes the baby of a Roman Catholic woman. Someone might misinterpret this event as a new wave of ecumenism when nothing could be further from the case. Yet the story itself is not in error. He is an Episcopal priest and this event did in fact happen. Is this a good analogy? Interpretations of ecumenism do not detract from the story that he baptized a tiny premature baby who wasn't expected to survive but by some miracle did survive.