ALL INSPIRATIONS ARE EQUAL - BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
April 15th 2001
The next issue, Number 59, will appear on May 15th 2001.
Having read the Synoptic Gospels many times, I think that they cannot be the inspired word of God - supposing for a moment that such a being exists. God, if any, would have made a better job of it.
Reading these gospels as one would read anything else - with the eye unclouded by the cataract of faith - suggests that the claim that they are inspired is mere superstition.
These three gospels are attributed to Mark, Matthew and Luke, in that chronological order of publication, dating from various years during the last four decades of the first century CE. In the New English Bible, Mark runs to nineteen pages, Matthew to twenty-nine and Luke to forty-two.
Presumably the writers did not know that, later, they would be thought to be writing under divine guidance. Luke certainly did not think that his predecessors had written under such inspiration for he wrote, in his introductory paragraph (New English Bible) ......
- "Many writers have undertaken to draw up an account of the events that have happened amongst us following the traditions handed down to us ....... and so I, as one who has gone over the whole course of these events in detail, have decided to write a connected narrative for you so as to give you authentic knowledge about the matters of which you have been informed."
In that brief paragraph, Luke discounts the testimonies of Mark and Matthew and other person or persons unknown!
For a start, Mary (Luke 1, 26-35 - the source of this and of other references is Gideons New Testament, GNT) or was it Joseph (Matthew 1, 18-25), was told authoritatively about the Virgin Conception (referred to loosely by almost everyone as the Virgin Birth) . Mark reports nothing of the kind.
So, if we believe, Luke, the inspiration has apparently not worked well in the case of Mark and Matthew. (Scholars need to invent a new category - Intermittent Inspiration perhaps). When you come to think of it, the mere fact of three different, but all supposedly inspired, gospels does, in itself, undermine the authenticity of any two of them. On the divine inspiration theory, there should be one account of the life and work of Jesus - one account, coherent, accurate and sufficient. Perhaps God might as well have left it to Luke to be His Inspired Spokesman. Luke seems to have thought so!
Considering that Luke's is by far the longest gospel of the three, it might be expected that it would include all the supposedly inspired contents of the preceding gospels as well as additional material. Not so! Luke does not merely add but wisely, he discards some of the silly bits to be found in the other two.
For example, in the final section of Mark (16,18 GNT) we are assured that, given sufficient faith, it is possible to handle snakes and to drink poison in perfect safety. There are graves for all to see (in Dixie - where else?) of misguided people who have taken this nonsense at its face value; rattlesnakes and battery acid do not, it appears know about Mark's Gospel.
Also, in Matthew chapter six we find the extraordinary instructions, reportedly in the words of Jesus, to the effect that you should be completely secretive about good things you may do (doing alms) and that you should not pray in church. Christians of all denominations ignore (quite reasonably) the second of these requirements - but these godly people are rarely prepared to admit that their public praying is contrary to the scripture. As for secretive good-doing ..... Luke has no truck with that either. On the contrary, Luke (and Luke alone among the three) recounts the tale of the widow's mite (Luke 21, 1-4) - the whole point of which is that, by her public sacrifice, she sets a good example. Had she given in secret (heeding Matthew 6) there would be no story about it and no moral to be drawn from it.
(In passing, if you adopt the Biblical practice of making a point by way of a story rather than by simply making it explicitly then you risk being misunderstood. The widow's mite tale can be read as her drawing her poverty to the attention of the rich people present in the hope that they will do, as Jesus taught, and give their money to people like her - the poor. What can be taken as a 'good example' tale can be taken as a 'spratt to catch a mackerel' tale. The widow was perhaps no fool - but I digress).
Not all of Luke's amendments of the preceding gospels are felicitous. Mark, wisely, makes no mention of the ancestry of Jesus. We must credit the writer with the sense to see that it is the teachings of Jesus that are important - not his family tree. Matthew could not resist recording the supposed male lineage of Jesus right back to Abraham (Matthew 1, 1-17). Luke (3, 23-38) could not resist the chance to show that he knows better and reports a totally different family tree from that which Matthew was supposedly inspired to report.
But Luke was not as smart as he claimed to be in his opening profession of authenticity; he trips up, as did Matthew before him, on the conflicting demands of the family tree and the Virgin Birth legend. To quote Luke (3,23) ..... "When Jesus began his work he was about thirty years old, the son, as was supposed, of Joseph ....."
There are two logically conflicting possibilities here. One is that Joseph really was the father of Jesus - "as was supposed"- in which case the virgin birth tale is false. The other is that the virgin birth story is true and that Joseph had only a belated walk-on part in the fathering of Jesus. In this latter case, the genealogy of Joseph has no relevance to the identity of Jesus. So much for Luke's self-awarded authority ........ and so I, as one who has gone over the whole course of these events in detail, have decided to write a connected narrative for you so as to give you authentic knowledge about the matters of which you have been informed." Already, in first two or three of his twenty-four chapters, the author of "a connected narrative for you so as to give you authentic knowledge" has already fudged the plot. .. What do they say about pride preceding a fall?
(Perhaps Luke would have been on surer ground had he given us the genealogy of Mary - the undoubted mother of Jesus. Such a genealogy would presumably have been of the female line back to Eve . Up with feminism! - perhaps, when God is inspiring some more gospels, She might work on that idea. Again I digress).
There is very important passage in Luke which has no mention in either of the others - the story of the young Jesus and his parents going to Jerusalem for the Passover (Luke 2, 41-50). Boy Jesus gives them the slip and confers with learned persons about important matters and when Mary and Joseph catch up with him she scolds him gently for causing them anxiety. He brushes her off - giving them an earful about "his Father's business". They do not understand this extraordinary reaction. They have possibly forgotten, and possibly never knew or believed, the story of the Holy Spirit impregnating Mary; they knew and accepted that Jesus was conceived, by them, out of wedlock and that Joseph had 'made an honest woman of her' .......... which is more than many of his ghastly ancestors would have done! Implicitly Luke denies, in the story of Jesus at twelve years of age, what he has written about the virgin conception in an earlier chapter. "Connected narrative"! ......"authentic knowledge" ....
There are two particularly notable passages in Luke that are significantly different from what is written by Mark and Matthew on the same subjects.
The story of the recruitment of the fishermen is told very briefly in Mark and Matthew: Jesus happens to meet the fishermen and invites them to follow him; they do so and that's that. (Mark 1, 16-20: Matthew 4, 18-22: Luke 5, 1-11). Perhaps Luke realises that this simple Mark/Matthew version makes the fishermen look like fools who are instantly won over by a plausible stranger ..... so he writes a different story; Jesus (after a stint of preaching that the fishermen had the chance to hear) converses with them; they tell him of their futile night's fishing - yielding nothing. Jesus advises them, as any reasonable person might, to try again. They do so and catch a lot of fish. They are duly impressed and the moment has come for Jesus to recruit them and, not entirely without justification, they follow him.
(In passing, one might say that it would have been more reasonable of the fishermen to have invited Jesus to become a partner in their fishing business but, once again, I digress).
Mark and Matthew concur in reporting the last words of Jesus as "My God why hast thou forsaken me?" These words are a very human reaction to the appalling death which the poor man is enduring (Mark 15, 34-37: Matthew 27 46-50). Luke has none of this. He reports the last words as being the altogether nobler and indeed saintly cry ......"Forgive them Father; they know not what they do" and finally, "Father, in thy hands I commend my spirit". (Luke 23 33-46).
Considering the foregoing - and much else that could have been written in the same vein - it is proper to emphasise two bits of basic logic as applied to the comparison of the three gospels. One is that if there are two divergent accounts of the same thing then it cannot be that both are right; either might be right, both might be wrong. It is also logically necessary to suppose that when there are several accounts of the same general subject - the life and work of Jesus for example - then omissions and additions are suspect. Do the additions (in Luke compared with the other two) reveal slack reporting by Mark and Matthew or are they simply extras made up by the writer of the longest gospel - Luke. Either way, authenticity is deeply compromised. This is a problem if the divine inspiration view is taken; it is not a problem if all three gospels are accepted as the productions of unaided fallible human writers.
Interestingly, the extra material added by Luke is mostly favourable to our impression of Jesus. Luke, according to Paul, was a doctor. Reading the three Synoptic Gospels suggests that he was a spin doctor and that his grand opening claim ..... to have "gone over the whole course of these events in detail ..... have decided to write a connected narrative for you so as to give you authentic knowledge about the matters of which you have been informed" ..... is evidently questionable.
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