148 - Jesus Contradicted with Michael Licona

Summary
In this episode of the Apologetics 315 podcast, hosts Brian Auden and Chad Gross engage with Dr. Michael Licona, a prominent New Testament scholar, to discuss his latest book, 'Jesus Contradicted.' The conversation delves into the historical reliability of the Gospels, addressing the differences in accounts and how they can be understood within the context of ancient biography. Dr. Licona shares insights from his extensive research, emphasizing the importance of compositional devices used by ancient biographers and how these techniques can illuminate our understanding of the Gospels. 

The discussion also explores various responses to Gospel differences, providing a nuanced perspective on the trustworthiness of biblical texts. They discuss the nature of inspiration and inerrancy, emphasizing that the differences in the Gospel accounts do not undermine the truth of Christianity. The dialogue highlights the importance of understanding the historical context and literary techniques employed in ancient writings, advocating for a more nuanced approach to biblical interpretation.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction of Michael Licona
01:44 Exploring Gospel Differences and Historical Reliability
08:43 Responses to Gospel Differences
13:26 Understanding the Genre of the Gospels
19:11 Compositional Devices in the Gospels
26:19 Exploring the Resurrection Accounts
30:08 Understanding Compositional Devices in Gospel Writing
34:55 The Nature of Inspiration and Inerrancy
43:35 Practical Approaches to Gospel Differences

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Apologetics three fifteen podcast with
your hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross. Join us for
conversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics, evangelism, and
the Christian worldview.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
How can we be expected to teach children to learn
how to read if they can't even fit inside the building?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. This is Brian Auten
and I'm Chad Gross, and today we're really excited to
have on the podcast again. Doctor Michael Lacona. He's a
distinguished New Testament scholar, apologist and author, and he's going
to be discussing his latest book, Jesus Contradicted Why the
Gospels tell the same story differently. So a little bit

(00:47):
about doctor Lacona. He's well known for his work on
the resurrection of Jesus, historical reliability of the New Testament,
and his nuanced approach to apologetics. His extensive research into
ancient biography has shaped a unique perspective on the Gospels,
exploring how gospel writers used common literary practices of their time,
like selective paraphrasing, to convey the life and teachings of Jesus.

(01:11):
In his book, Jesus contradicted. Doctor Lakona tackles questions about
why the Gospel accounts sometimes appear at odds and offers
a framework that respects both the historical context and biblical authority.
So his insights invite readers to understand these variations not
as errors, but as part of a genre, with his
own narrative techniques providing a fresh lens through which to

(01:34):
explore the New Testament. So, Chad, let's dive into doctor
Lacona's approach to reconciling gospel differences while froving the reliability
of scripture.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Let's do it. Let's get ready, switch me on.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, Michael Lacona, thanks for joining us for the interview.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Hey, thanks Brian. Great to be with you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yes, well, Chad and I have been talking about your
book and all the great content in there. We've really
enjoyed it, and it's a shortened version of some of
your more academic work. So, you know, I like audiobooks,
and I looked at the audiobook version of your Historical Approach.

(02:15):
It was like twenty hours long, and I thought, yeah,
let's wait for that popular version. But I've listened to
it and then I listened to their lecture version of it,
and I just thought, man, this has some great content.
So talk to us a little bit about your approach
to the gospels, what you're trying to answer in looking
at gospel differences, and maybe a thumbnail of the direction

(02:37):
you take.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, you know, I've debated bart Erman mostly on the resurrection.
We've debated seven times, five times have been on the resurrection,
two times on the reliability of the gospels, and almost
on every occasion. One of his main objections is that
the Gospels have differences and that this disqualifies them from
being historically reliable sources of Jesus. And Ermine is not

(03:02):
the only one to cite gospel differences. I mean many
many skeptics. Most skeptics are going to appeal to gospel differences.
And in fact, Gary haveermass the foremost authority in the
world on the resurrection of Jesus. He said that over
the years, although it's not the major objection against the
resurrection today, over the years it has been the major objection,

(03:24):
that is, gospel differences to the resurrection of Jesus. So
by the time I had been debating Ermine and he's
bringing these up starting in two thousand and eight, I
had already looked at with the resurrection of Jesus, had
done deep dives into this, and you know, came to
the firm conclusion that the historical evidence, the data strongly

(03:48):
suggests that Jesus rose from the dead, and if Jesus
rose from the dead, it's game, set match. Christianity is true, period,
And no matter what objection you want to come up with,
such as Genesis has it's a mythical account about creation,
or the flood account of Noah was borrowed from the

(04:10):
go gomesh Epic, or whatever the genocide text in the
Old Testament, or we don't know who wrote the Gospels,
whatever you want to bring up. If Jesus rose, Christianity
is still true. All right. So I was, you know,
you still have questions about things, but I was pretty
much at peace with this. The gospel differences didn't bother

(04:33):
me anymore, but they did bother a lot of others.
And so I decided that I would do a deep
dive into that. And so I spent eight years looking
very carefully at things. I read through the Gospels eight
or nine times in Greek, and made a catalog of
all the differences that I found in them. I read

(04:53):
began reading ancient biographies, and before I could get through
Plutarch's lives, which forty eight of the more than sixty
that he wrote have survived, Plutarch being considered the greatest
ancient biographer, I was finding whoa, you know, there are
numerous accounts that report the same events going on, and

(05:15):
like Caesar's assassination is mentioned in four of those lives,
the Catalinarian conspiracy is mentioned in seven of those lives.
So what if we examined these how the same author,
using the same sources report the same events. What do
we find? So anyway, I spent a lot of time
with that, and then thought, okay, I'm finding some compositional
devices that Plutarch used. And then I'm studying Theon and

(05:37):
Quintillion and Homogenes and people like that, these in the
compositional textbooks, and how they were training people and how
to write well. And they said that historians, that historians
are using these certain techniques, and that they're used in
every form of writing. Thought, well, if this is the
case of all ancient historians and biographers are using, what

(06:00):
about the Gospels? What if I went to that catalogue
of differences that I had put together and started examining
those and reading them in view of the compositional devices
that were part and parts of over writing ancient biography
would shed some light and WHOA was it an eye opener?
And it just you know. I remember sharing it with

(06:21):
Dan Wallace and he said, Mike, I don't still know.
I know one before this has had this idea to
look at the Gospels in this sense because it's so
self evident. And I said, I don't know either. I'm
not the sharpest tool in the shed, so you know,
it's a but it does seem self evident. And when
you read the differences in the Gospels and view of

(06:44):
the compositional devices that other ancient biographers did and that
are prescribed by the compositional textbook, a whole lot more
comes into focus. So I published the first book, Why
Are There Differences in the Gospels with the Oxford University
Press in twenty seventeen. That's a monograph, of course, and
it's kind of dense for people who have never looked

(07:07):
at this kind of stuff before. It's meant for grad students,
doctoral students, professors, you know, scholars things like that. But
then a number of people I've shared this they said,
and I'll just wrap it up with this, They said,
can you put the cookies on the lower shelf. But
we don't know how to share this with others, and
it's kind of heavy. So I started working on it,
and after about three years I came with this book

(07:28):
Jesus Contradicted that was just published by sound of an academic,
And this book is receiving a lot more attention. People
are are I'm getting so many positive comments from people
on how this has just revolutionized their their view of
the Gospels and solved a lot of the things that
had made them uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
One thing that maybe we can address is there might
be kind of two ways that people could respond. One
would be Aha, that makes sense, and now all my
sort of questions are sort of resolved. It makes sense now,
And the other side of the spectrum could be like, wait,

(08:11):
there's differences. Wait what about the trustworthiness of the text
and the inspiration of text? I thought that this was true,
and now you're telling me it's looking a little fuzzier here.
I don't Can you maybe explore the sort of responses
that people could have or the reactions they have when

(08:31):
we talk about this subject that they may or may
not be familiar with.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Sure, and people do respond in both those ways I
have found. So I find that there's, as I talk
in the book, there are three different ways that tip
people have different I find that they have responded. Number
one is there's the Ostridge approach, and the Ostridge approach
is where a person just says, I see these differences.
They trouble me. I don't have time to think about this,

(08:55):
I don't want to think about it, and they just
stick their head in the ground. Then there is the harmonizer,
the peacemaker. It's the harmonizer. Can't we all got just
get along? You know? You know we can harmonize all
these things, well, you can. You know. It's like people
who three people who are looking at a car accident,
they just they're all reporting the same things, but they're
reporting it from different angles and they're just saying a

(09:16):
little bit differently, and we can make all of this fit. Yeah,
it can be kind of difficult sometimes, but we can
make them off it. The third one is the cruel
interrogator that really takes harmonization efforts to an extreme. And
it's like subjecting the gospel text to hermoneutical waterboarding until

(09:37):
they tell the interrogator what he wants to hear. And
that's just not treating the text with respect. And I
thought that there's a better way. So what I would
suggest is, when people are faced with these differences, okay,
you can either insulate them. You can say, well, there

(09:58):
are potential answers to these, and I think this is fine.
There are potential answers to these, and we may not
have the answer now, but you know, one is certainly
certainly there where we can harmonize that, and I think
that can go too far. That's insulating a person. The
other one is to inoculate them, all right, and I
think inoculations better. It's like, okay, here are the differences.

(10:23):
They really exist, and yes, if you work really hard
with some of these, you may be able to harmonize them.
But come on, such harmonizations as are sometimes offered aren't
really reasonable. I was once talking to a wonderful Mormon
couple that I knew, and he had been a bishop

(10:46):
and a local ward at one point, and we became
friends and we talked very openly and honestly, and I
told him, you know, if Mormonism was true, I'd become
a Mormon. And he asked if i'd be willing to
talk to some Mormon missionaries. I said yes, and I did.
And at one point I pointed out how the Book
of Mormon talks about this great battle that took place

(11:08):
on the Hill Camorrow, which most Mormons think was just
outside of Palmyra, New York. And the Book of Mormon
says that there were hundreds of thousands of people. This
is a pretty big hill, not a mountain, but it's
a pretty big hill. And they said hundreds of thousands here,
and they died on this hill, and their bodies were

(11:28):
left to moldor and return to Mother Earth. In other words,
they weren't buried. And this battle took place right around
four hundred a d. So about sixteen hundred years ago.
And let's say I told him, I talked to an
archaeologist up in that area at the University of Rochester
at the time, and this guy told me that just

(11:52):
fourteen hundred years ago, even though Palmyra by Rochester is
you got humidity and up there, so it's not going
to preserve things as well as say in a desert
area like Egypt, but only sixteen hundred years ago. There'd
be plenty of skeletal remains. Although you would have had
wild animals carry off a lot of the corpses of

(12:14):
the individuals, you'd still have a lot of skeletal remains.
You'd have remains of weapons that would be near the surface.
And so I said to the Mormons, I said, not
my Mormon friends, I said, so where are the bones?
Where are they if this battle actually happened here, where
are the artifacts? And I remember the guy's wife said, well,

(12:34):
maybe God took them. Well, yeah, I mean I can't
say that he didn't. But it's like that really sounds
like an ad hoc answer to rescue your view. And
I think a lot of these harmonization efforts appear the
same way. So I'm looking for real, authentic answers that

(12:57):
seem the most reasonable way of accounting these differences. And
I think for the most part, for most of them,
not all of them, but for most of them, I
think these compositional devices do a really good job of
doing that.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Before we talk about the compositional devices, you had mentioned
that the Gospels belong to the genre of ancient biography
or Greco Roman biography. One of the kind of strange
things I've heard, and by the way, I'm in agreeance
with that. But one of the strange things I've heard
is that there are some who hold the view that
the Gospels kind of belong to their own genre, that

(13:32):
is independent of other genres. I think I'm characterizing that properly.
So can you just give us and the listeners, like
one or two reasons why we should think that the
Gospels are Greco Roman or ancient biography?

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Sure? Well, for one, they certainly focus on a single individual,
right Jesus, Yeah, and you're going to do that in
a biography. Another thing would be the length of it.
So the average ancient biography was between ten and twenty
five thousand words. You have the Gospel of Mark, which
is just over eleven thousand words as the shortest, and

(14:08):
the Gospel of Luke at right around nineteen thousand words
as the longest, so they all fit within that the
average length of an ancient biography you have the focus on.
So in ancient biographies, there's very little, if anything, about
the person's childhood. They talk about the family, you know,

(14:33):
what kind of family they came from, Like the family lineage,
and then there is a jump, a leap from that
into the inauguration of the person's public life, be it military,
government or like a philosopher, religious figure. So that's what
we have with Jesus. So if a person is wondering,

(14:54):
why don't we really have any stories about Jesus' childhood
in the Gospels other than the one in Luke where
he's twelve years old in the temple area. That's the
only thing we have. Other than that, we don't have
anything about his childhood. If you wonder about that, well,
that was common of ancient biography. And then another thing
is an ancient biography according to Plutarch, and this is

(15:17):
the most cited passage in Plutarch his Life of Alexander
the Great, in chapter one. He's talking about the objective
of ancient biography. And it's not like he invented it.
You know, this is what most This was a common practice,
and that is you're going to report what the person
said and did that illuminates their character, all right. So

(15:41):
that's what we find when you come to most ancient biographies.
And it's interesting when you read the Gospels in view
of that principle. It's like, Wow, some things come to
light that's clear that you never saw before. So it's
like in Mark chapter one, it begins by saying, as Isaiah,
the prophet said, the voice of one crying in the wilderness,

(16:02):
prepare the way of the Lord, makes straight his paths.
And it's like, you would think it's going to be
Jesus preparing the way for God, because Isaiah and Isaiah
it is the prophet preparing the way for God. But
in Mark it's talking about John the Baptists, preparing the
way for Jesus. So what does that say? From the
very beginning of the Gospel of whom Mark is going

(16:23):
to portray Jesus as being Mark Chapter two, Jesus heals
a paralytic and forgives him his sins, and the Jewish
leaders say, well, that's blasphemy. Why only God can forgive sins.
In chapter three, Jesus calms the wind and the waves,
which the Old Testament says is something God does. Chapter four,

(16:44):
he's expelling demons, casting out demons, and the Jewish leader said, well,
that's Satan casting out Satan, and Jesus says, no, Now
wait a minute, fellas, if you want to rob a
strong man, what do you do? You go into his house.
You have to bind the strong man first, and then
you can plunder his goods. And what he's saying by
that is the strong man is Satan, and by casting

(17:07):
out demons, he's showing that he has bound Satan and
now is plundering his kingdom of souls. Well, what human
bind Satan? And then you have chapter five Jesus raises
the dead, something that God does. Chapter six you have
Jesus walking on water, something that only God can do.
And then you have Jesus multiple times through out there

(17:29):
making claims that he can do certain things that God does.
So when you read, say the Gospels in view of
their ancient biographical genre, wow, some things come into view
that you just did not see previously. So there's multiple
reasons why thinking the Gospels are ancient biographies. There are

(17:49):
others too. I've just named four now that said, not
all biographies are the same. Some of them had different emphases,
and biography was a fluid genre that could introduced some
other genres in it. So, for example, the Life of
Julius Caesar by Plutarch also has a lot of qualities

(18:11):
that a history has, so it's kind of a hybrid
and Luke has that as well. It's a hybrid between
biography and history, but it's more biography because it's focused
on the life of a single individual. But you know,
certainly with the Gospels you have more of a theological
emphasis emphasis in it. So it's going to be different

(18:31):
in that way than Plutarch's Lives, but it still falls
under the category or the genre of biography. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
I thought one of the most helpful things from well,
there was a lot of helpful things in the book,
but one of the things you pointed out was the
error of reading having the same expectations for ancient biography
that we do for modern biography. And I thought that
was very eye opening and illuminating that we have to
read ancient biography on its own merits, and you know,

(18:59):
based on how they wrote in that time. And I
think that really is very, like I said, illuminating. You
had mentioned compositional devices, which is obviously like a key
feature of the book, and explaining these differences, and so
I was wondering if you could unpack what a compositional
device is and then maybe give us an example or two.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
So let's start with some the real basic ones first,
and I don't even know that you'd call these compositional devices.
They would just be means for paraphrasing, typical techniques for paraphrasing. Now,
paraphrasing today we get to kind of understanding. You just
maybe reword things a little bit differently, maybe use some

(19:39):
synonyms to replace a word. You had more radical kinds
of paraphrases and antiquity, so you would have addition, which
would fit in with today's paraphrase to an extent. But
addition would be like you would expand what was being
said to tease things out a little bit more. So

(20:02):
you're not changing the facts, but you're explaining it more
to Okay, Okay, So if someone said, suppose Chad, you said,
you're telling a friend or your wife. I don't know
if you're married, but you're telling your wife. Okay, so
you're telling your wife. Yeah. I interviewed this dude named

(20:24):
Mike this afternoon, and then later on Brian paraphrases you
by saying, uh, yeah, we interviewed Mike on his new
book on gospel differences. Well, they're both the telling the truth,
but Brian has expanded. He's added in order to clarify.
Then there's subtraction. So let's say Brian had said what

(20:47):
he said, but then later on you're talking to your
wife and you just said, we interviewed Mike today.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
Right, right, So you subtracted so real quick, if I
could interrupt. What I love about your example is that
Brian told the girl version and I told the guy version.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Wow. Wow, Sorry, I couldn't let that fast.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
I couldn't let that fast. Yeah, you know, I used
that in my lectures all the time, the guy versus
the girl version of the story. And anybody who's married
understands what I mean by that. And you know, you
see the women in the audience. They're taking their elbow
and their elbowing their husbands. Now, of course, it's a stereotype,

(21:30):
and there are many exceptions to it. Zondervan, the publisher
of the new book, they didn't want me to use that, really,
they said, a lot of our readers they would be
offended by that. I said, are you kidding? Doing this
for fifteen years using that example, and people always laughed, Well,
you're talking to an evangelical audience, and we want this

(21:52):
to go beyond in a bigger reach. Than evangelicals, so
they really wanted me to change it, so I just
put the abbreviated versus the expanded version right right. So
it's like that was the one thing I didn't want
to change because I always get laughs from that.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Well yeah, and it's also like intuitive and people immediately
for the most part get it, and.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
So yeah, I like it as well. Yeah, So other
means of paraphrasing, they would do things like changing a
statement to a question or a question to a command.
They would do things like create a brief dialogue. So
let's say that I gave a lecture for twenty minutes,
all right, What they would do is they'd break that

(22:34):
up as though I were having an interaction with one
or two or more people and have them ask questions
and I'd provide answers. So they change the scenario a
little bit, but they just you would paraphrase it by
creating a dialogue. So you could do these kinds of things,
and we find all this kind of stuff that's going
on throughout the Gospels on multiple multiple occasions and simple

(23:00):
pair of phrases. So just to give you an example,
you know, the parable of the sewer they sow the seeds.
Some goes on shallow grounds, some goes on rocky ground. Right,
there's thorns, there's rocks, all.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
That, and.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
At the end it's and some fall on really good ground,
and it yields fruit. Mark says thirtyfold, sixtyfold, one hundredfold. Well,
Matthew reverses the order of that in his paraphrase, and
he says one hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold. That's assuming as most
scholars believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark as their

(23:42):
primary source and supplemented it. So he reverses the order.
Luke he subtracts. So he says, and it yielded fruit
one hundredfold. So you know, you go to the parable
the vineyard and the wicked tenants. You have Mark say, okay,
at the end, the owner of the vineyard sent someone

(24:03):
to collect from the first fruits, and they beat him
up and throw it, threw him out, says Mark. And
then he sent a second and they treated him likewise terribly.
And he sent a third. He sent a third servant,
and they beat him up and killed him. Well, Matthew,
and oh, and then he sent many others. Okay, So

(24:26):
Matthew just tells it he sent three individuals, three servants
to collect and they mistreated him, and then he sent
more than he did the first time. So what Matthew
does is instead of going one, two, three, he just
clumped the three into a single visit. And Matthew abbreviates,

(24:47):
or I should say, simplifies and conflats like this on
numerous occasions. So now we're going to get into the
compositional devices, and that gets kind of interesting. That's the
most interesting stuff. So you've got literary spotlighting. That would
be you know, you've all been to a theatrical performance.

(25:08):
There's multiple actors on the stage, and then the lights
go out, a spotlight goat comes on and shines on
a single actor. Well, you know others are present on
the stage, but you only see the one because the
light is focused on that person. Literary spotlighting is when
an author knows that there are many people involved, several
people or more than one person involved, I should say,
but only mentions one. So you can have this like

(25:30):
and this is very common in Plutarch's lives. I think
you've got this on three occasions in the resurrection narratives.
So you have on Easter morning you have the women
come to the tomb, and in Matthew and Mark they
see one angel, and Luke and John they see two angels.
All right, so that can be easily accounted for, whereas

(25:51):
Matthew and Mark are only focused on the angel who's
announcing that Jesus is raised. And then Matthew, Mark and
Luke say that the women went and reported this to
the apostles, where as John says, Mary Magdalene went and
found Peter in the Beloved Disciple. Okay, so which is it?
Is it just Mary Magdalene or were there multiple one? Well,

(26:13):
John doesn't say only Mary Magdalene, but he only mentions
Mary Magdalen. But I think he's got the others in
mine because she says to Peter and the Bloved Disciple
they have taken the Lord and we we don't know
where they've laid him. And then what happens. You got
Peter and the Bloved Disciple get up in John and
they run to the tomb and find it. As Mary

(26:33):
has said, where is You've got Peter who gets up
in Luke and runs to the tomb and finds it
as a woman had said, is it just Peter or
is it Peter in the bloved Disciple. Well, Luke doesn't
say just Peter, but he only mentions Peter. That's in
twenty four, chapter twenty four, verse eleven, but twelve verses
later in verse twenty I'm sorry twenty four twenty four twelve.

(26:53):
But in twenty four to twenty four you've got Jesus
appearing to the man's disciples, and it says their eyes
were kept from recaging him, and so he says, hey,
you know why the long faces fellas well? Are you
the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know what's going
on here? And Jesus is playing with them? And he says, no,
what And well, Jesus, he was this prophet, we thought
he was a messiah, but just the other day he

(27:16):
was crucified. Some of our womenfolk went to the tomb
this morning, and they found angels there and said that
he had been raised from the dead. And then some
of our own plural some of our own went to
the tomb and found it. As a woman had said, well,
wait a bit, and Luke, just twelve verses earlier, you
only mentioned Peter. Yes, so well, Luke, we don't do

(27:37):
that today. Well, yes, you do. You do it commonly.
But even if you don't look, I'm not trying to
mislead you.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
You got to study my writings according to the laws
and the rules for writing and play in the first century,
rather than partying your ideas of modern precision upon my writings.
It's your responsibility to do this, not my responsibility, to
figure out the rules of writing in the twenty first
century and try to guess on that and write according

(28:05):
to those rules. So you have all these things there,
I'll give you one more example, because I don't want
to just keep monopolizing by talking here. I'd rather try along.
So one of my favorite examples is the Jesus cleansing
the temple and cursing the fig tree. Matthew again is

(28:26):
going to give us the guy version, so Mark gives
us the girl version. So Mark he has Jesus come
in on Palm Sunday. He walks into the temple and
it's late in the day, so he just looks around,
and then they leave and they go to Bethany up
on the Mount of Olives, and they spend the night there.
Monday morning he comes down. He's going into Jerusalem. Before
he gets there, he sees the fig tree. He's hungry,

(28:48):
no figs on it, so he curses it. Then he
goes into the temple. He sees some things he doesn't like,
so he cleanses the temple. Monday right, cleanses the temple,
then he leaves. They go back to Bethany. They spend
then there. Tuesday morning, they're returning to Jerusalem. They come
to the fake tree and Peter says, Lord, the tree
that you cursed yesterday has withered and died. That's Mark's version.

(29:10):
Now Matthew gives us the guy version. Matthew has Jesus
comeing on Palm Sunday, goes into the temple, and now
he's going to displace the temple cleansing from Monday in
Mark and transplant it in to Sunday and conflate it
with the first temple visit. So the two events, the

(29:31):
two visits, become one, and Jesus cleanses the temple on
Palm Sunday. Then they leave. They go to Bethany on
the Mount of Olives. They spend the night there. Monday,
they are returning to Jerusalem. They come to the fig tree.
No figs. Jesus curses it and Matthew says, immediately it
withers and dies. So here he takes two parts in

(29:51):
Mark curses it one day, sees it witherill the next day,
and he conflates the two and makes it one one experience,
one event, so we see. After doing this, he gives
us the guy version. He simplifies these accounts. So are
we getting an essentially faithful representation of what occurred? Yes?
Is it giving us a good accurate just to what occurred? Yes?

(30:12):
But is it exactly what we would have seen had
we been there?

Speaker 1 (30:16):
No? Yeah, you know, it reminds me that it's just
a message being conveyed. And to an analogy that comes
in my mind is that as I'm watching you on
the screen, because of my internet connection, the bandwidth might
go up or down. So at one minute your four
K resolution and another minute you're pretty grainy and there's

(30:37):
not a lot of detail, but the message is still
coming through. This is coming through. There's sometimes there's noise,
sometimes there's artifacts. Sometimes it's changed. Now let's say we
didn't hit record at the beginning, we could have the
same conversation again. You use completely different words but convey
the same idea and message. This communication. It's just the

(31:01):
nature of conveying the messages that there's going to be
differences every time it's communicated. There's going to be a
change of resolution depending on, you know, how detailed someone
wants to be or how clear they want to make
a portion. But there's always compromises based upon Oh I
don't have a lot of time, I'm going to say
this quick, or I've got plenty of time, let me elaborate.

(31:24):
I want to entertain people today, and let me add
some embellishments. So it's really a fascinating look at just
how we adapt messages based upon our audience, based upon
our own personality, but we're still conveying actual events.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Brian. You know, I
used to have a very wooden, stilted view of what
scripture was. So I remember my final semester in college.
I had one elective left, and I took Greek the
first semester Greek. I wanted to learn Greek. I was
a music major back then, but I wanted to learn Greek.

(32:04):
So I took first semester and you learn vocabulary, you
learn how to pronounce, and so one day I'm just
reading I forget Jesus was having a conversation with someone,
and I was reading it in Greek, and I thought
I started to read it to myself, and I thought, wow,
this is how Jesus actually sounded. I am uttering his

(32:26):
actual words here. How naive of me, because of course
Jesus was probably uttering those words in Aramaic, not in Greek.
I was reading the Greek translation. Now that's not that
that's bad or anything, but I'm not reading the actual
words of Jesus. I'm reading a translation of those words.
And then you go further and you say, well, you

(32:48):
look at Jesus' words, like in the Sermon on the Mount.
Compare Matthew with Luke. There are differences. You compare what
he says to his disciples when he missions them. In Matthew,
Mark and Luke there are differences. And Parberty says that
when he's feeding the five thousand in Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John there are differences. It can't be word for word.

(33:11):
These are not transcripts of what Jesus said, as though
transcripts in a legal deposition. These are recollections of what
Jesus said. I think they're accurate ones but as I
think you're right on, Brian, they are conveying the message

(33:31):
behind Jesus words. We shouldn't be looking at these as
though they are reporting Jesus' words like transcript after watching
a video.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah you know you said, you know, you debated bard
Airman many times, and anyone who's heard him give his spiel,
it's always like, well, how many angels were at the tomb?
It depends on which gospel you read, and you know it.
This is the book that you've written almost as a
response to that. But too bad we couldn't get that

(34:02):
back to bart Airman when he was in Moody and
his whole worldview collapsed when he had that brittle, same
brittle view of Well, if I can't trust that was
reported with one hundred percent accuracy, I guess maybe God
doesn't exist. You know, everything goes, you know, the whole,

(34:23):
the whole. He loses the whole farm based upon putting
everything on one pillar of inerrancy or a brittle form
of inerrancy or something, you know.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
One of the viewers on Amazon Brian said he wondered
if if bard Erman had had this book years ago,
if it would have made a difference right exactly. Yeah,
of course we can't know that, but it is an
interesting question because there are others out there right now
with similar struggles.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
So, Mike, I'm asking you maybe to speculate here a
little bit, and so if you're not comfortable, please let
me know. But you may and I might not be
phrasing this exactly how you said it, but essentially, if
I could go back in time, find a DeLorean, and
I could go back in time and I could watch
or listen to the Sermon on the Mount or perhaps

(35:14):
some of Jesus' most famous interactions with the Pharisees and
the Sadducees, or maybe listened to a parable that the
message would come through, as you and Brian have illustrated.
But I wouldn't hear it word for word most likely, well,
I mean I wouldn't hear it word for word. Do
you think that is why there has been among pockets

(35:36):
of people some pushback against your thesis, is because they
find that worrisome or threatening, or that it somehow undermines
the authority of scripture or what do you think there?

Speaker 2 (35:49):
I hope I'm said that clear enough. I don't know.
There's probably several reasons from the pockets different pockets. I
would think that some of them, yeah, they would struggle
with that. Others, I think the main detractors that I've
seen have said, well, that's fact changing and God wouldn't

(36:11):
do that. I say, well, you better be careful and
kind of look at what God did rather than trying
to guess what he would do. You know, if you
look at Mark chapter one, verse five, it says that
all of the region of Judea and every Jerusalem might
came out to see John the Baptist and were baptized
by him. Now are we really to think that everyone

(36:36):
in the region and everyone living in Jerusalem, including the
Sanhedrin and the high Priest, came out and were baptized
by John the Baptists. Well, of course not. Mark is
using hyperbolic language here, but in doing so he has
actually changed the facts. The facts would be that there

(36:57):
were many people coming out from the region and even
Jerusalem to see John a Baptist, and many of those
were being were being baptized by him. That's the fact
of what was happening. But Mark uses hyperbolic language to
say everyone, everyone who lived in Jerusalem and the entire
region came out to see John and were baptized by him. Well,

(37:19):
Mark changed the facts, but we know what he was doing.
And when it comes to these compositional devices, they could
have recognized that a lot of this was that, and
it wouldn't have bothered them at all. They may not
even have recognized some of those, like if they changed
a statement into a question or created a dialogue out

(37:40):
of it, but it really wouldn't have bothered them. So yeah,
I think they just have a wooden view of scripture.
And yeah, they might think that this impacts inspiration, but
you know, they should ask the question. This is something
I try to deal with in the book. What is inspiration?
How did it occur? What does it mean to say

(38:01):
the Bible is divinely inspired? What did that mean to them?

Speaker 1 (38:05):
What?

Speaker 4 (38:06):
You know?

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Can we how does this fit in with the differences
and some of the other phenomena that we find in scripture.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
So let's imagine I'm doing a Bible study and I
come across some of these a difference perhaps you know,
how many angels at the twomb or whatnot, And that's
the one that's coming to my mind.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
How do we.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Approach it in the sense of should I turn to
a compositional device? Two to explain that, should I go
for harmonization first? You know, how how do we kind
of practically apply this?

Speaker 2 (38:46):
I guess in a sense, I think different people are
going to prefer different ways. For me, I mean some
people have said I've heard some apologists say, well, we're
going to try and we're going to use harmonization first,
and if that doesn't work, then we think Mike's idea
of compositional devices should be the next step. And for me,

(39:08):
I'd say, well, look, if I don't mind some harmonization,
but if or really, since compositional devices were part and
parcel of writing ancient literature, why shouldn't that be the
go to? Why shouldn't if we know that paraphrasing and

(39:29):
compositional devices were used by all ancient writers, why shouldn't
we read the gospels and their differences in view of
these that might be the best way to do it.
In some cases you may prefer harmonization, But for me,
I think the go to, the default position is to
look for paraphrasing and compositional devices.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Well, and just as a follow up to that, because
I know Brian has a question. I think for me
too that and I'm not sure I'm articulating this as
well as I want to. But in a lot of cases,
these compositional devices what impressed me in reading the book
is that they're really clean in the way that they
describe the difference in a way that many times harmonization.

(40:15):
I mean, I know I've read harmonization books in the past,
like Big Book of Bible Difficulties, and in some cases
that's helpful, but then in other in other times I
kind of even leave the kind of the attempt to
reconcile the two passages with this feeling of.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
I mean, I guess.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
Maybe whereas my experience reading your book a lot of
times was like, Wow, that's that's so comprehensive in explaining
that difference, and there's just a lot of I think,
fruitful explanatory power with the compositional devices that I don't
see as often with the harmonizations.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah. There's a guy that out in California named Ricardo.
He's a school teacher, high school teacher, and he told
me that he went to a major Christian university I'm
not going to mention which one, and he did a
master's degree in Christian apologetics, a very good program too

(41:13):
out at this university. And he said, the one thing
that plagued him, really troubled him was Gospel differences. And
so he read the Big Book of Bible Difficulties. He
read the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Glease and Archer,
Big Book by Geisler and how and he read others,

(41:33):
and he said he found that a lot of times
their solutions made the problem even worse for him. And
so he said, for twenty years this plagued him and
prevented him from emotionally from having a vibrant Christian life.
And then one day he was listening to a podcast

(41:54):
by William Lane Craig where Craig mentioned my book, the
first book, Differences in the Gospel. It's the more academic version,
and he said he bought the book. He took a
day off from teaching, and he read it, the whole
book in a single day. Wow. And he said, he said,
I'm writing this with tears right now. You have restored

(42:16):
my faith in the Gospels. I wish that I had
had this book years ago. Please keep doing what you
are doing so and that you read that testimony in
the New Book.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
So yeah, it seems to me like if I come
to the scripture and I look at the Gospels, and
my preconceived idea is now everything is perfect, true, ac
inspired of God in errant, and then I come across
these things. I'm trying to filter everything I read through

(42:52):
that lens, and then I have to do like bend
over backwards to reconcile things and force it into what
I think it means to be without error, things like
that in order to preserve that doctrine. Whereas if I
approach the text of in such a way, starting with, hey,

(43:14):
this is communication, These are messages. What is the center
trying to say? How would the receivers have received it?
And what are the facts they're trying to convey? And
how are they conveying the facts? I don't see it
as fact changing. I see as facts is something separate
from the communication. That's the objective thing they're trying to communicate. Well,

(43:37):
how are they trying to communicate it. They can exaggerate facts,
it doesn't change them. The facts are never going to change,
So they can't change the facts. They can communicate the
facts in a way that embellishes or alters how someone
might think about it. But I think it just doesn't
make sense to me to start from the other way around.

(43:57):
It makes more sense of the text to just like
what you said in the book, you said, whatever sort
of idea we have about inerancy, it should based upon
what we see happening in the scripture. Maybe you could
talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
I'm like, yeah, that was a great point. Yeah. I
give two principles. What principal Number one is our view
of scripture should be consistent with what we observe in scripture.
And then the second principle is if we truly want
to have a high view of scripture, then we should
accept that as God has given it to us, instead
of trying to force it to fit a mold of

(44:33):
how we think He should have. And if we neglect
in doing this, we may think we have a high
view of scripture, when in reality, we have a high
view of our view of scripture. So a lot of
these differences, I don't consider those to be errors. Like
when Mark chapter one, verse five, when he changes it
to many people being baptized by John to everyone was

(44:57):
baptized by John, I don't consider that to be an
error because it's hyperbole. When you have these common compositional
devices that were part and parcel of writing, all ancient writing.
I don't consider that in an error. But even if
you do well, then that does lead to the question

(45:20):
of what is inspiration and what is an errancy? And
these are two as you know, these are two topics
that I tackle in chapters eleven and twelve in the book. Now,
when we talk about inspiration, what does that mean? So
you have the common verse that has appealed to is
tewod Timothy three sixteen. All scripture is Theanustas God breathed,

(45:44):
So what does that mean? That does sound like dictation,
doesn't it? But most people will say, well, it's not
divine dictation, but what is it? So I did a
word study and there's about twenty five hundred uses of
this word in antiquity. But if you limit because the
word can change and its meaning over the years, just
like it does in English. So you know, like English

(46:07):
words do I mean even right now there are some
who are trying to change the meaning of woman and
man right, so of course the Austas could have different
meanings in different context and change in meaning. Well, let
me give you an example on English. So apology. You know,

(46:28):
a couple hundred years ago in English that meant to
provide a defense, but today it's to say I'm sorry. Right,
it's really changed Morpheden, it's meaning rather than defending why
you did, you are expressing remorse for what you did.
That's what an apology is. So but that can be

(46:49):
in Greek as well well, and it does happen that way.
So what did it mean in the first couple of centuries?
So you've got uses of the term that may go
back into the second entry BC. And if you look
at just up through the beginning of the third century,
you've got from the time as far as we can
go back to about the year two hundred, you've got

(47:10):
eight to thirteen possible times in which theo ustas occurs
in the literature. And it could mean more, but I
mean it's also used in secular literature. I think at
the very minimum, it means that something has its ultimate origin,
or in some sense it derives from God. So streams
are said to be theod nustas ointment put on a

(47:33):
corpse is said to be a theod nustas ether, which
was an all encompassing substance that include air. I think
it was Vidius Valens and his anthologies said that that
is theo nustas. The sibiling Oracles say that all things
are theod Nustas. You've got the early Christian literature called
the Lives of Karpus, Papalis and Agathanese saying that not

(47:56):
only scripture, but the teachings of the Church are theod nustas.
So it does seem that that it doesn't necessarily require perfection.
And in fact, by the time you get to Origin
in the beginning of the third century, who mentions it
more than anyone else. He mentions thestas forty nine times.
He believes that it derives from God. But for him

(48:17):
that did not involve or prohibit discrepancies in the surface details,
because he acknowledged that where there were surface discrepancies in
the details of scripture. So the ancients, I don't think
that they would have imagined that in errant I'm sorry,
sustas got breathed required for something to be perfect, and

(48:41):
that in errancy would of necessity follow from it, as
many an Arrentists believe today.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
So Mike, kind of as we're starting to wind things down,
if you will, how would you counsel pastors to teach
or engage with gospel differences for their with their congregations.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Gosh, it will sound almost self promoting, which I don't
want it to. But I'd say, you know, read this
book because you know it explains a lot. There is
also a video course that I mean, they can do
it audible, but there's a video course that's available for it.
I think it's you have to get it directly from
zonovin sixty nine US dollars and it's got thirteen videos,

(49:28):
so you can have small group stuff. Small groups go
through it, and the book itself is just already set
up where it is friendly for small group usage. But
I would say, if you're going to tell your congregation
and talk on gospel differences, the main thing that I
would communicate to people is not very technical at all.

(49:52):
And it's something I said at the very beginning. Since
Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true, it's game,
set match, period And so even if in the worst
case scenario there are errors and contradictions in the gospels,
which we haven't said that there are or positive that
there are, but even if there are errors and contradictions

(50:15):
in the Gospels, it may impact how we view scripture,
but it doesn't change the fact that Christianity is true
because if Jesus rose, he did so in either the
year thirty or thirty three, and the first piece of
literature in our New Testament wasn't written until the late forties, right,
So there's at least fifteen years the twenty years or

(50:39):
maybe even longer before the first piece of literature in
the New Testament was written, and maybe even longer than
that for the first Gospel to be written. So even
if there are errors and contradictions, it couldn't negate the
truth of Christianity because Christianity was true before any of
them were even composed. So I think that is the
most important takeawayh.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
That's helpful, And you know, in your defense, you know,
in this case, I think it's justifiable to promote your
own book because you're really the only one who's written
on this to date. So who else you going to recommend?

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, there's a few others like Christopher Pelle, now the
foremost authority in the world on Plutarch, who has written
on this much shorter stuff regarding Plutarch, right, but he
even acknowledges that I've taken that further than he has
on Plutarch when it comes to Gospel. Now, he knows

(51:34):
far more about Plutarch than I do, so I don't
want to, you know, give any false impression here. He
know it's a whole lot more about Plutarch and Cicero
and all these others than I do. But he says,
he is acknowledged that I've taken this further with Plutarch
than he has, and I'm the only one at this
point that has also applied it to the Gospels. So yeah,
it is some groundbreaking stuff, yes, and I'm grateful you

(51:56):
did it well.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Mike Lakona, thank you so much for joining us. Link
to your book and other resources in the show notes.
We're just really glad to have another opportunity to speak
with you, and we just wish all the best for
this book and also in your further work.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Well. Thanks Brian and Chad. It's been delightful talking to
both of you and serious this has been great and
appreciate the work that both of you are doing, so
thank you for your work for the kingdom.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Thank you, thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the podcast.
If you have a question you'd like us to address,
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(52:48):
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(53:09):
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dot blogspot dot com. This has been Brian Aughten and
Chad Gross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast, and thanks
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