San Francisco Central Seventh-day Adventist Church
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In various places in the Gospels the writers report differently the words of Christ. They also give different accounts of certain matters, for example, the inscription on the cross. These variations have been seized upon by skeptics as proof that the Gospel writers are unreliable, even false, and thus certainly not inspired. A careful examination proves the opposite. Those who wrote the Gospels, along with the other followers of Christ, considered themselves witnesses of the events of our Lord’s life. They staked everything on the truthfulness of their witness.
Now in a court, today, if witnesses all testify precisely the same regarding an incident, the conclusion is, not that they are truthful, but that they are perjurers. Why? Because experience teaches us that no two people see an event exactly alike. One point impresses one witness; another point impresses another. Again, they may all have heard exactly the same words spoken in connection with the event, but each reports the words a little differently. One witness may even report certain parts of a conversation that the other witnesses do not report. But so long as there is no clear contradiction in the thought or meaning of the variant statements, the witnesses may be considered to have told the truth. Indeed, apparently contradictory statements may often prove to be not contradictory at all, but rather complementary.
It has been well remarked that only an honest man can afford to have a poor memory. Those who have a false story to foist on the public must keep rehearsing their story to make it hold together. The honest man may not retell his story each time in exactly the same language—almost certainly he will not—but there is an inner consistency and harmony to the story that is evident to all. What is more, such a story lives and sparkles before our eyes because the teller of it is reliving the spirit and feeling of the incident. But when a man tells and retells a story with phonograph-like sameness, the most charitable thing we can say regarding him is that he has become a boresome slave to a mere form of words, and does not present a living picture of what actually happened or what actually was said. And if we are not charitably minded, we may even become suspicious of his veracity, or at least sure of his senility.
All experience, and especially the experience of the courts through the long years, leads to the conclusion that truthful witnessing need not be—indeed, should not be—equated with carbon-copy identity of testimony of the different witnesses to an event, including their testimony as to what was said at the particular event.
Hence, the charge that the Gospel writers are unreliable because their reports differ, stands revealed as groundless. On the contrary, those writers provide the clearest proof that there was no collusion between them, that they independently reported what most particularly impressed their divinely illumined minds regarding the life of Christ. They wrote at different times and in different places their more or less different accounts. Yet there is no difficulty in discovering harmony and unity in what they wrote regarding incidents and events, including the words of our Lord and, for example, the inscription on the cross.
In the light of these facts the related charge that their variant reporting of Christ’s words proves the Gospel writers uninspired, seems pointless. What warrant does the skeptic have for assuming that if they were inspired they would give verbatim the words of our Lord? None whatever. Words are merely a vehicle for expressing thought, and unfortunately, human language is often inadequate to express fully a speaker’s thought. Might not the very fact that the Gospel writers stated our Lord’s words in variant forms provide in itself a proof of their inspired insight into the range and intent of His words? Incidentally, Christ spoke in Aramaic; the Gospels were written in Greek. And is it not true that different scholars may produce most faithful translations of a certain man’s writings and yet differ in the words used? Indeed, slavishly literal translations generally sacrifice something of the real thought or intent of the mind of the original writer.
We may here apply, with proper adaptation, the words of Scripture: “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” There is a life-giving spirit that breathes through the four Gospels, a spirit that might easily have been smothered or stifled had the writers conformed to the skeptics’ artificial standard of reporting—a slavishly identical form of words. God inspired His penmen thousands of years before carbon paper was invented.