[soc.religion.christian] Inconsistences in scripture

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.