Book Review of The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel Part 8: My explanation of the Linguistic, Literacy, Cultural, and Geographic Problems Which Indicate the Gospels Were Not Written by the Apostles

(Book Review)

See Part 1 General Comments

Part 2: An Overview of Lee Strobel’s Argument that the Gospels are Based on Eyewitness Evidence

Part 3: Even if the Gospels Were Based on Eyewitnesses Evidence, That Would Not, Ipso Facto, Mean That They Were 100% Reliable

Part 4: Even if Lee Strobel Were Able to Prove that the Church Tradition about the Gospels Was Correct, Most of the Gospel Stories Still Would Not Be Based on Eyewitness Testimony

Part 5: Why the Church Tradition on the Apostolic Authorship of the Gospels is Incorrect

Part 6: The Gospels Do Not Contain Any Internal Evidence that they were Written by the Apostles.

Part 7:  The Problems with Church Tradition Concerning the Apostolic Authorship of the Gospels

The Linguistic and Literacy Problems

          The big problem with arguing for the traditional authorship of the Gospels is that the Gospels are written in a highly educated Greek.  It is unlikely that this could have been written by the disciples, because they (like Jesus) spoke Aramaic, not Greek.  And, like most people in the first century, they would almost certainly have been unable to read or write.

            In the ancient world, only a very privileged few were able to read and write, and the disciples would not have been among this privileged few. 

            If you require extra persuasion on this, in his book Forged Bart Ehrman spends considerable time running the numbers of literacy in the ancient world, and explaining why there is almost zero chance the fisherman in Galilee would have been able to read and write. 

            But if simple common sense didn’t tell us this already, then the books of Acts tells us explicitly that Peter and John were illiterate.  Acts 4:13 “The members of the Council were amazed to see how bold Peter and John were and to learn that they were ordinary men of no education.”  The Greek word used here for “no education” specifically means illiterate.

            Matthew is questionable.  As Bart Ehrman points out, it’s possible that Matthew, as a tax collector would have had some education if he was high up the ladder.  But if he was just a low-level tax collector, he probably wouldn’t have been educated.

            But though Matthew may be questionable, John was certainly not educated enough to write the highly stylistic Greek Gospel that appears under his name.

            In addition, some of the double entendres in the Gospel only work in Greek, and could not have originated in Aramaic.  Bart Ehrman gives the example of Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus.  The confusion over the words “born again” between Jesus and Nicodemus come from the fact that these words have two different meanings in Greek, but this would not have been true in Aramaic.

[The section from Bart Ehrman is as follows: In the Gospel of John, chapter 3, Jesus has a famous conversation with Nicodemus in which he says, “You must be born again.”  The Greek word translated “again” actually has two meanings: it can mean not only “a second time” but also “from above.”  Whenever it is used elsewhere in the John, it means “from above” (John 19:11, 23).  That is what Jesus appears to mean in John 3 when he speaks with Nicodemus: a person must be born from above in order to have eternal life in heaven above.  Nicodemus misunderstands, though, and thinks Jesus intends the other meaning of the word, that he has to be born a second time.  “How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb?” he asks, out of some frustration.  Jesus corrects him: he’s not talking about a second physical birth, but a heavenly birth, from above.

            This conversation with Nicodemus is predicated on the circumstance that a certain Greek word has two meanings (a double entendre).  Absent the double entendre, the conversation makes little sense.  The problem is this: Jesus and this Jewish leader in Jerusalem would not have been speaking Greek, but Aramaic.  But the Aramaic word for “from above” does not also mean “second time.”  This is a double entendre that works only in Greek.  So it looks as though this conversation could not have happened—at least not as it is described in the Gospel of John. (From Jesus, Interrupted p. 154-155).]

            Also, in the Gospel of John, the following exchange is recorded between Peter and Jesus:

            After they had eaten, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these others do?”

            “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “you know that I love you.”

            Jesus said to him, “Take care of my lambs.”  A second time Jesus said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

            “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “you know that I love you.”

            Jesus said to him, “Take care of my sheep.”  A third time Jesus said, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

            Peter became sad because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” and so he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you!

            Jesus said to him.  “Take care of my sheep…..”

John 21: 15-17 Today’s English Version

            Now, in the English translation, some of the nuances of the original Greek are lost, but I suspect many of us who grew up in Sunday School have had the original Greek meaning expounded to us at one point or another.  (In my case, I had the significance of the original Greek explained to me twice in my upbringing—once it was the subject of a sermon our pastor preached in church, and once it was a lesson my 8th Grade Bible teacher taught.)

            In the Greek, Jesus is using the word “agape” for love—what is often translated as a deep kind of love.  Peter is using the word “philio” which supposedly means a brotherly kind of love.  Jesus asks Peter twice using the word “agape” and then in the final question switches to “philio”.  The significance (as it’s usually explained) is that by the third time Jesus was willing to meet Peter on his own level, and accept whatever kind of love Peter was willing to give.

            Where this becomes problematic for Lee Strobel and other Christian conservatives is that Jesus and Peter would have been speaking Aramaic, not Greek.  And the distinction between philio and agape would only work in the Greek—there is no equivalent distinction in Aramaic.

            (Lee Strobel, by the way, never once mentions these linguistic difficulties in his book.  This is one of many issues where he’s blatantly assuming the reader is ignorant of any Biblical scholarship, so he feels free to just ignore the issue completely.  But it’s worth noting that the linguistic difficulties he’s ignoring would undermine not only his argument that the Gospels are written by the apostles, but also his other argument that the Gospels are carefully preserved oral traditions going back to the original sayings of Jesus.)

Cultural and Geographic Problems

          In addition to the fact that the Gospels are written in an educated style of Greek, and Jesus and his followers were illiterate Aramaic speaking fisherman, there are other indications which make scholars think that the Gospels were probably written by educated Greek-speaking Gentiles in other parts of the Roman Empire, and not people who lived near Jesus or Palestine.  The Gospels make a number of mistakes when describing geography in Palestine, and they also make mistakes when describing ancient Jewish customs  

 I'd be lying if I said that the geography of Palestine was my area of expertise, but it is my understanding that for serious scholars this has been one of the reasons they doubt the Gospel writers could have been eyewitnesses.  Bart Ehrman says this in Jesus, Interrupted.   
Lee Strobel and his buddies are aware of  these geographic problems, because they deal with several of them in a defensive way.  The geographical mistakes in the Gospels, and the apologists defense for them, pop up in both Lee Strobel's conversations with Craig Blomberg and John McRay. They have some very innovative way of explaining away apparent geographical mistakes.

There's also plenty of information on the web listing the geographical mistakes in the Gospels: see here.  And here.

There also appears to be a number of cultural mistakes about the first century Jewish community that indicates the authors were Gentiles from elsewhere in the Roman Empire.  Again, I'm not an expert myself.  However Bart Ehrman says one of the passages frequently cited is Mark 7, in which the Gospeller claims all Jews had to wash their hands before eating, which was a tradition they acquired from their elders.  In fact, no such tradition was followed by the majority of Jews, only by some of the more strict sects, and the Gospeller should have known something this basic if he had actually lived in Palestine.  [For more commentary on that chapter see here  and here].
Robin Lane Fox mentions the same incident, and says the whole story about Pharisees going all the way down from Jerusalem to Galilee to inspect the hand-washing of Jesus's disciples seems suspect to begin with.
There is also the problem of the Sanhedrin meeting during Jesus's trial.  According to the rules of the Sanhedrin, they were forbidden from meeting during the three days of the Passover, and from meeting at night.  In the trial of Jesus as recorded by the Gospels, they did both.  This is often cited as a further example of the Gospellers being ignorant of the customs.  [For more commentary on the inaccuracies in the Sanhedrin trail see here and here.]
Dale Martin in his Yale Lectures mentions in passing some of what appear to be anachronism in the Gospel of John in which the heated 2nd Century debate between Jews and Christians is projected back into Jesus's lifetime--the blind man whom Jesus healed being expelled from the Jewish synagogue is cited as an anachronism.
The Gospel of John also is unable to distinguish between the different Jewish groups in 1st Century Palestine, referring to all the different sects of Judaism simply as "the Jews".  
(To quote from an old paper I wrote back in my Calvin days Whereas the other gospels distinguish between which groups sought the death of Jesus (the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, et cetera), John makes no distinction, referring to Jesus’ enemies as simply “The Jews”. )

Next: The Synoptic Problem and the Q Hypothesis