Book Review of The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel Part 10: My explanation of the Problem of the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospels of John

(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:  Problems with Church Tradition Concerning the Apostolic Authorship of the Gospels

Part 8: Linguistic, Literacy, Cultural, and Geographic Problems Which Indicate the Gospels Were Not Written by the Apostles

Part 9: My explanation of the Synoptic Problem and the Q Hypothesis

          With the Gospel of John, there is no synoptic problem—none of the other Gospels are copying from John, and although occasionally some of the stories are similar, the wording is always different.  John is a completely independent source. 

            But the problem is that it’s too different from the Synoptics. There are so many differences between John and the Synoptics that it’s problematic to claim that they’re both eyewitnesses to the same events.  If the Synoptics are based on eyewitness testimony, then John can not be a reliable eyewitness, and if John is eyewitness testimony, then the Synoptics are not reliable.

            For example, many of the most famous stories in the Synoptics are not in John.  None of Jesus’s parables are in John.  There’s no mention in John of Jesus going out into the desert.  Jesus performs many exorcisms in the Synoptics, no exorcisms are mentioned in John. 

            And, surprisingly, there’s no mention of the transfiguration in John.  Remember, John was one of the 3 disciples selected to go up on the mountain and see the transfiguration of Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus.  You would think that if someone saw the reincarnated spirits of Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus, this would have made a big enough of an impression on someone to include it in their eyewitness testimony, but there’s nothing in John.  (And ironically, according to Church tradition the Gospel of John would have been the only eyewitness to this.  The only Gospellers who wrote about it, Matthew, John-Mark, and Luke, weren’t even there, and the one person who was there didn’t even write about it!)

            Then there’s an equally great problem going the other way: all sorts of fantastic stories which are in John, but not in the Synoptics.

            For example, the Gospel of John is the only Gospel which contains the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  It’s hard to believe that if this really happened, the other 3 apostles simply forgot to put this into their account.  You would think someone being raised from the dead would be the kind of thing you’d remember. 

            According to the Gospel of John, the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead was not a private little affair that no one knew about—in John 12 many Jews are flocking to believe in Jesus because of the miracle of Lazarus, so much so that John reports that the chief priests plot to assassinate Lazarus to take away the proof that Jesus raised someone from the dead. 

            Did Matthew and Mark just forget about this?

            And what about Luke?  Although Luke is all 3rd hand information (at best) Luke’s introduction claims that the author was scrupulously researching all the documents available about Jesus.  It’s hard to believe that Luke missed this story if it really happened, and if it was as big a deal as the author of John claimed.

            Also, remember that none of the Gospel writers knew that their Gospel would later be bound up together in the Bible alongside the other Gospels.  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not originally bound up and sold as a package deal.  Each Gospel original existed completely independent of the others, and each Gospel writer at the time must have assumed that for their readers, this one Gospel was the only Gospel they might ever read.  So the authors of the Synoptic Gospels could not possibly have been thinking, “Oh, its okay.  We’ll leave these parts out, because people can read about them in John’s Gospel.”  (Plus the Synoptic Gospels were written first, so John’s Gospel wouldn’t even have existed at the time they were writing!)  If the Synoptic Gospels left something out, that’s an indication that they didn’t know it happened, or they didn’t believe it happened.

            And then besides the omissions, there are lots of explicit contradictions between John’s Gospel and the Synoptics.  For example, in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is crucified after the Passover meal, but in John’s Gospel Jesus is crucified before it.  In the Synoptic Gospels the trial of Jesus before Pilate takes place in public, but in John’s Gospel Jesus and Pilate have private conversations.
All four Gospels contradict each other on the resurrection.  Mark only writes of the empty tomb, so Matthew and Luke contradict each other on everything after the empty tomb (see part 9).  John has a separate account all together of story of the resurrection.  In the Synoptic Gospels, all three agree that Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb, and the angels told her Christ had risen.  In the Gospel of John, Mary simply sees an empty tomb, and cries because she believes Christ body has been stolen by his enemies, until she encounters someone who she believes was a gardener, and who turns out to be Christ.  

As with all the other subjects I'm touching on, I'm not really doing this justice.  Whole books are written on the differences between John and the Synoptics (something Lee Strobel and Craig Blomberg admit during their discussions).  But this chart at this website here is a very useful quick and dirty breakdown of the differences. 

            Okay, so the contradictions and the omissions are one problem.  The second problem is that John’s Gospel is the only Gospel where Jesus claims to be God.  In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus gives himself many titles (son of man, son of God, the Messiah), but nowhere in Matthew, Mark and Luke does Jesus ever make the claim to be an incarnation of God, nor does anyone else make that claim on his behalf.

            In John, all of a sudden, the narrator of the Gospel and Jesus himself are both making the claim that Jesus is God descended into human form.

            That…that seems a bit of a major detail for Matthew, Mark and Luke to forget to write about, doesn’t it?  According to John’s Gospel, Jesus is walking around claiming to be God incarnate, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke just forget to write it down?  (And again remember, they couldn’t have assumed that their readers would just learn it from John.  The Bible didn’t exist yet, and John’s Gospel hadn’t even been written yet when they were writing.  If Matthew, Mark and Luke weren’t telling their readers that Jesus was really God incarnate, they must not have believed it was important for their readers to know this.)

How Does Lee Strobel Get Around the Problem of the Different Stories between John and the Synoptic Gospels?

          From page 28-29:

            “For many years the assumption was that John knew everything Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote, and he saw no need to repeat it, so he consciously chose to supplement them. More recently it has been assumed that John is largely independent of the other three gospels, which could account for not only the different choice of material but also the different perspectives on Jesus.” (Craig Blomberg, as quoted by Lee Strobel, p. 28-29)

           

            Arrgh!  This is so typical of how this whole book is written!  He gives two arguments at once.  The first one he knows is nonsense, so as soon as he’s done giving that one, he alludes to a second argument, which he then doesn’t even develop!!! He just claims to have it in his back pocket in case you don’t believe his first explanation.  So, now, I’m going to spend all my time and energy debunking the first argument, and Lee Strobel is still going to have some mystery second argument that he can cling to.

            Okay, well let’s go through the motions anyway: Why does it make absolutely no sense to assume that “John knew everything Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote, and he saw no need to repeat it, so he consciously chose to supplement them”

            Well, first of all, there’s no evidence or proof for this supposition.  Like so many of the arguments in Lee Strobel’s book, it’s just an assumption, bereft of any evidence, that is used to retrospectively explain away a difficulty. 

            Secondly, you would have to ask why.  Was there a papyrus shortage going on or something?  Was John limited to a certain amount of words?  Given how hotly disputed these stories were in the first and second century (the intense debating between Jews and Christians) why wouldn’t John have wanted to just add his eyewitness support to reinforce the stories that were already appearing in the Synoptics.  Especially some of the more fantastical stories (the transfiguration, for example, or the story in Matthew that all the dead rose out of their graves after Jesus was crucified).

            Thirdly, this assumption, even if you granted it, would only explain the omissions in one direction.  It might explain why John didn’t write about the big stories in the Synoptics, but it wouldn’t explain why the Synoptic writers omitted the big stories from the Gospel of John.  (Again, I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s important to remember they could have had no way of knowing that John would supplement whatever stories they left out.)

            Fourthly, it’s not even entirely consistent as an explanation, because then how to explain the stories the stories that John does repeat (for example, Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem)? 

            Fifthly, if you assume that John knew about the Synoptics, then it would make it much, much harder to explain the all the explicit contradictions between John’s Gospel and the Synoptics.

How Does Lee Strobel Get Around the Problem that in The Synoptic Gospels Jesus Never Explicitly Claims to be God, But in the Gospel of John Jesus Claims to Be God?

          I’ll quote here from Lee Strobel’s interview with Craig Blomberg.

            First, they acknowledge the problem briefly.  From page 28: “There also seems to be a very different linguistic style [between John and the Synoptic Gospels]. In John Jesus uses different terminology, he speaks in long sermons, and there seems to be a higher Christology—that is, more direct and more blatant claims that Jesus is one with the Father; God himself; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Resurrection and the Life.”

            Then from page 29:

            “John makes very explicit claims of Jesus being God, which some attribute to the fact that he wrote later than the others and began embellishing things,” I said.  “Can you find this theme in the synoptics.”

            “Yes I can,” he [Craig Blomberg] said. “It’s more implicit, but you find it there.  Think of the story of Jesus walking on water, found in Matthew 14:22-33 and Mark 6:45-52. Most English translations hide the Greek by quoting Jesus as saying, “Fear not, it is I.”  Actually the Greek literally says, “Fear not, I am.”  These last two words are identical to what Jesus said in John 8:58, when he took upon himself the divine name “I AM,” which is the way God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3:14.  So Jesus is revealing himself as the one who has the same divine power over nature as Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament.”

            From page 30:

            “In addition, Jesus claims to forgive sins in the synoptics, and that’s something only God can do.  Jesus accepts prayer and worship. Jesus says, “Whoever acknowledges me, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” Final judgment is based on one’s reaction to—whom?  This mere human being?  No,that would be a very arrogant claim.  Final judgment is based on one’s reaction to Jesus as God.”

            (I should make clear that in the above excerpts, I’ve omitted a section in which Lee Strobel and Craig Blomberg discuss the significance of “The son of man” label, partly because I don’t think it adds anything.  But you get the idea.)

            What to make of this argument?

            Well…I’m not overly convinced, but I guess people can believe this argument if they want to. 

            In the Synoptic Gospels, apparently Matthew, Mark and Luke never got around to saying explicitly that Jesus was God because….it was implied if you read the Gospels closely?  Does that make sense?  But if Jesus was God, and they knew he was God, then why wouldn’t they just say it?

Update: I found another blogger who has some other information: The use of "I am" in Mark 6:50, he argues, is Jesus equating himself with god, whose name is "I Am that I Am" in Exodus 3:14 (p. 29). Amusingly, though, the Greek word Jesus uses for "I am" in Mark 6:50, eimi, is elsewhere used by men who Christians would certainly not consider to be making divine claims, such as Paul in Romans 1:14 and even a Roman centurion in Matthew 8:8-9! If those men could make "I am" statements without being found guilty of blasphemy, then maybe eimi was simply common language that wasn't seen as a claim of divinity in itself. In similar fashion, Blomberg contends that "son of man" was a divine title (p. 30), as an allusion to Daniel 7:13-14, yet he conveniently omits the use of the term in Psalm 144:3, Numbers 23:19, Job 25:6, and other passages where mortals are called sons of man.

Next: The Problems with Luke