Do You Agree?

Several years ago, I was riding with three other people, on my way to church, and we witnessed a hit-and-run accident. Each of us made a note of the license plate number of the car that was at fault, we called for police, and called an ambulance for the victim, and ended up showing up late for church. The accident became embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute, and no one came to take our statements for several weeks. When they did come, they wound up with four different license plate numbers. The first three turned out to be completely fictitious—those numbers had never been issued by the state. The fourth turned out to be a vehicle that was reported stolen several hours before the accident. No wonder he didn’t stick around to talk to the police. The four license numbers were close to the same, but three of them were remembered incorrectly. Does this make us liars? No, of course not, none of us intentionally provided false information. For most intents and purposes, it didn’t really make any difference—after all, the vehicle in question was a stolen car, even the correct license plate number didn’t help track down the people that caused the accident. Sometimes details just aren’t important.
Some people have made a big deal about differences in the four gospels. If they were all accurate, shouldn’t they all say the same thing? On the other hand, if they all said the same thing, what would be the point of having four of them?
For the most part, the inconsistencies are minor: I’ve posted before about the different accounts of who went to the tomb on Sunday morning; there is also an account in Matthew 20:30 that says Jesus healed two blind men, and another account in Mark 10:46 that says Jesus healed a blind man; Mark says that Jesus prophesied that “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30) and that, in fact, the cock crew once after Peter’s first denial (Mark 14:68), and again after the third (Mark 14:72), Matthew says the rooster only crowed one time (Matthew 26:34, 74) (I’ve even known people to really stretch the point by comparing the prophecy in one gospel to the fulfillment in the other), Mark 15:27 says that Jesus was crucified with a thief on either side, Luke, being less sure of what the other two men were convicted of, simply refers to them as malefactors (Luke 23:33). Details. Does it really matter if Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with a group of other women? Does it really matter if Jesus healed one blind man or two? Does it really matter if the rooster crowed once or twice? I have to admit, I think Mark’s version of the story is more powerful: Here is Peter, caught up in the moment, and at his first denial, the rooster crows one time. At some level of Peter’s consciousness, that had to have registered as a red flag, but he was so concerned about the immediate situation, that he didn’t stop to think about what the significance of a rooster crowing might be. It happens every morning, doesn’t it? But there was that nagging thought that there was a particular significance to this particular rooster. After the third denial, the rooster crowed again, and for whatever reason, the people around him decided to drop the issue. With the pressure off of him, Peter realized what it meant, and even realized that if he had been paying attention, he could have stopped himself after the first denial.
What’s really interesting is that the minor differences in the accounts shows that these men wrote down the best of their recollections, or the best they knew of what they had learned from the actual witnesses; they didn’t sit down together and concoct a story—then the four gospels would all say exactly the same thing. Critics of the gospels point out that when Jesus appeared before Caiaphas, the High Priest, that, as bad as Caiaphas wanted to see Jesus put to death for something, he couldn’t get two witnesses to agree on anything (Mark 14:59). Now if this man, who wanted to convict Jesus, wouldn’t go to trial with witnesses that didn’t agree, how dare we, as Christians, expect people to believe gospels that don’t agree? Unfortunately, the Gospels only record one of the accusations made against Jesus, that, He said, if the temple be destroyed, He would build it again in three days; to people who didn’t understand what He was saying, that would have sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic than a criminal that needed to be put to death. I suspect that the real problem here is that they would have like to have had Him convicted of insurrection, but when one accused Him of saying that Jews shouldn’t pay tribute money, another witness spoke out and pointed out that He said, “Render to Caesar…” This is the sort of contradiction that Caiaphas was complaining about, not minor details that wouldn’t have made any difference. Jesus called that straining at a gnat.