Do the Gospels Contain Contradictions?

I recently attended a series of lectures at Oklahoma Baptist University given by Michael Licona.  Dr. Licona is associate professor in theology at Houston Baptist University and the president of Risen Jesus, Inc.  His primary areas of expertise are the resurrection of Jesus and the gospels as ancient biographies. The lectures I attended were on the subject of the gospels as ancient biographies and I thought I would briefly share his views.

I will start with his initial assertion that if the resurrection of Jesus happened, then Christianity is true.  No matter if there are contradictions or errors in the biblical text, if the resurrection is true, then Christianity is true.  To clarify, his stance is that the Bible is inerrant and there are no true contradictions in the gospel books. However, he stressed, even if there were, because the resurrection happened, then Christianity is true.

Although Dr. Licona became a Christian as a child, he began to have questions on the truth of Christianity during his graduate studies in religion.  This questioning and his research that followed allowed him to solidify his faith in Christ (see https://www.risenjesus.com/mike-licona).  He later became interested in the apparent discrepancies in the gospel texts and sought to resolve those.  After eight years of studying ancient biographies and the gospels, he wrote the book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography.

Though I cannot do justice to Dr. Licona’s work in this short blog, I will attempt a brief synopsis of his lectures.  I hope this will inspire you to delve deeper into his work and learn more about the gospels as ancient biographies.

It is essential to first determine the genre of the biblical books before attempting to do any proper exegesis or interpretation of the text; therefore, it is important to know that the gospel books are classified as ancient biographies, specifically Greco-Roman biographies.  Ancient biographies:

1. Focus on the main character;
2. Begin with the ancestry of the main character and quickly move to his/her public life;
3. Do not include childhood information as it was considered irrelevant to the character of the subject;
4. Were brief and usually contained 10,000 to 25,000 words; and
5. Illuminated the character of the subject.

Ancient biographers were taught to use certain literary devises in their writing.  Some of those devises are:

1. Paraphrasing – using different words to convey meaning;
2. Narratives – storytelling;
3. Invented dialog – using fictional conversations to convey meaning;
4. Character spotlighting – focusing on one specific character, many times leaving out other characters who were present;
5. Varying details – changing or deleting details in order to better convey meaning;
6. Transferral – switching dialog from one character to another;
7. Compression – shortening the time frame of the story; and
8. Conflation – combining multiple stories into a single story.

These Greco-Roman literary devises were considered to be the standard when writing any biography in the time period in which the gospels were written.  If modern biographers wrote using these methods, their work might be considered biographical fiction. However, ancient biographers were taught to write this way to enhance the meaning of their work.  It was not considered untruthful to take poetic license with the events in this manner for an ancient biographer.

For instance, the story of the women at the tomb is told in all four gospels.  Matthew 28 says Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb. Mark 16 tells us that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb.  Luke 23 shakes it up a bit and states simply that the women who came with Jesus from Galilee went to the tomb, but then in Chapter 24, names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women as the ones who told the disciples about the empty tomb.  Finally, John 20 only names Mary Magdalene, but she subsequently states that “we” do not know where they have laid him.  

Are these four different stories?  Are the gospel writers mistaken? Are these contradictions?  The answer is “no” to all three questions. We know from Dr. Licona that ancient biographers varied the details when they told their stories and we can see that in these passages.  What we can clearly determine from all four accounts is the main thrust of the story:  instead of finding the body of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and some other women discovered an empty tomb where Jesus was laid after his crucifiction.  

When we read the gospels through the lens of their genre as an ancient biography, we understand that we cannot hold first century authors to 21st century standards.  Apparent “contradictions” like how many women went to the tomb simply become varying aspects of a particular author’s storytelling. Interestingly, Dr. Licona notes that the gospel writers vary the details much less than other first century biographers.  The most important aspects of the story are kept in tact which are, foremost, the empty tomb, and secondarily its discovery by women. If there is no empty tomb, there is no resurrection. All four gospels preserve this pivotal fact.

Additional reading:

https://www.risenjesus.com (See the “Books” tab for other great books by Dr. Licona.)

Licona, Michael R., Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography. New York.  Oxford University Press. 2017.  [ISBN 978-0190264260]