Why did the Gospel of John Leave Out Simon Carrying the Cross? I Q&A I BBB 60.1

Join us for the edition of stump the theologian as Joel answers the question: Why did the Gospel of John Leave Out Simon Carrying the Cross? www.brainsandbibles.orgwww.thinklikechrist.org

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We have our first segment, whichis Stump the theologian.
So we have two questions today. All right, so first question for
the theologian. OK, who is your favorite Gospel

(00:22):
writer and why? So there's four Gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke. And John, there's only one
gospel. But they're 4 writers.
And there's the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Matthew.
According to Matthew, Gospel according to.
So that's a tough, that's a super tough question because.
Because each of them kind of have their own topic.
So it kind of goes back to if someone says, you know, what's

(00:45):
your favorite book of the Bible,my answers for the same for
everybody is the one you've reador studied the most recently or
the most. And I think that's kind of same
thing still with the, the four gospel perspectives there.
I really love John and I might have to just pick that one if I
had to pick one. Maybe that's it's, I mean, just

(01:08):
John is so simple and complex atthe same time.
It's very evangelistic. I really, I really love just the
simplicity that he has going through that.
But then Matthew has all the, you know, more the Jewish
references and things and you have all that, you know, the all
the discourse and stuff. The sermon on the Mount gives
them bigger versions of stuff like that that I really, really,
really like. And then you have, well, you

(01:31):
know, Luke, he's the historian and he, I mean, he writes
through the details, Theophilus guy.
And so it's like, you know, whata work, it's only it's and
that's only the first half of itbecause acts as the second-half.
And so it's like, that's a huge,wonderful work together.
So complete, so beautiful. And then Mark is just so
exciting, action-packed. It's all about who is Christ?

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Who is Christ, you know? If I was to pick one, I'd pick
Mark. You'd pick Mark.
Just in general it's the funnestread.
Jesus the superhero, right? Yeah, it's a, it's a quick
action pack. It's just.
It's just here. Look at all these awesome
things. You just.
Yeah. It's like the closest thing we
have to like the comic book version, you know, it's just
like he's the superhero. I love it.
But you would say John? If I had to pick one, I I think

(02:15):
I'd, I'd probably have to go forJohn.
And that is tough, but I think, I think I would, yeah.
Because OK. I was.
Struggling. Why in there?
OK, so following up with that, John 19 doesn't mention Simon
bearing the cross of Jesus like the other gospels.

(02:36):
Why is that? Well, you could ask that
question for a million things. You know, not all the gospel
perspectives has the same details.
It's kind of the part of the beauty of it.
I, I, I would just say this. There is a great joy in
harmonizing the gospels to put them all together to see how

(03:00):
they fit beautifully. And then you have more complete
details on certain subjects thatthen that's very rewarding.
And I would encourage you to do it.
However, I would say that more importantly actually, is to take
each gospel perspective in its own writing, understanding that
they wrote exactly what they did, not because they had

(03:22):
amnesia of other events and things, but because they're
actually trying to teach a very certain thing.
Why did you leave them out? You know, for John, he's already
writing a lot. If you think about even just the
work it takes to write such a huge manuscript like that,
there's no backspace and stuff on your handwriting, this thing,
and, you know, to leave out details like, well, how

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important of a detail was that? John just didn't think it was
that important of a detail, especially because he wrote
after everybody else. He basically skipped the whole
thing, just just for everybody who's not familiar exactly with
what John says, basically John 1516 but they cried out away

(04:06):
with him, away with him, crucifyhim, probably said to them,
shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we
have no king. But Caesar then delivered him to
them to be crucified. So they took Jesus and led him
away and he bearing his cross went out to a place called the
place of the Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha, where

(04:26):
they crucified him and two others with him, one on either
side and Jesus in the center. This is completely the base.
Skip that whole detail of actually carrying his cross out
there. I mean, they mentioned burying
his cross, but that's that's it.And, you know, it's like, I
think the other, the bigger question would be, why did the
other gospel writers include it?And you'd have to look at the

(04:48):
context and you have to analyze all that with him.
It's just, I don't think that he's, he's missing something for
his purpose. And you know, what did he write?
He wrote these things that you may believe, right?
It's a very evangelistic thing. I think his, his focus has just
been on Jesus and he just didn'tfind that detail to be necessary
to help someone to believe in Jesus.

(05:09):
And so, you know, that's just a simplistic way to look at it,
but it, it could be something else.
But I, I think it's more important to like, why do they,
why do they have what they did have is the better question.
And we do know that John was oneof the eyewitnesses there,
right? Like he was, he was there
watching Jesus be crucified. I guess we don't know if he
followed along with him, but we do know he was there when he was
being crucified because Jesus was talking to him from the

(05:31):
cross. And he's writing this as an
older man now? Yeah, he was a young boy when it
happened. He wouldn't.
Forget details of this so right.He right well.
Just because he yeah, wasn't relevant to the point he was
making or. Matthew, Mark and Luke were
already in circulation. He had read those works, sure.
And so, hey, if it's mentioned all those other times, I mean, I

(05:52):
mean, do I need to say it too? You know, I don't know.
So the bottom line? Bottom line is we don't know why
he omitted to it. Sure, sure.
No, other than it just wasn't relevant to the point he was
trying to make. Good.
Good question. Good question.
OK, Yep. All right, so did we stump the
theologian? You be the judge.

(06:14):
Maybe he doesn't know why he didnot know what John was thinking.
That's true. I'll give you that one.
So, but yeah, to the point, there are there are definitely
some omissions in some of the Gospels when you compare them to
each other, quite a few, they don't, they don't change the
story obviously, they just don'tgive all the details in each of
the Gospels, right, so.