Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography - Hardcover

Licona, Michael R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190264268 ISBN 13: 9780190264260

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2016

Synopsis

Anyone who reads the Gospels carefully will notice that there are differences in the manner in which they report the same events. These differences have led many conservative Christians to resort to harmonization efforts that are often quite strained, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Many people have concluded the Gospels are hopelessly contradictory and therefore historically unreliable as accounts of Jesus. The majority of New Testament scholars now hold that most if not all of the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography and that this genre permitted some flexibility in the way in which historical events were narrated. However, few scholars have undertaken a robust discussion of how this plays out in Gospel pericopes (self-contained passages).

Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? provides a fresh approach to the question by examining the works of Plutarch, a Greek essayist who lived in the first and second centuries CE. Michael R. Licona discovers three-dozen pericopes narrated two or more times in Plutarch's Lives, identifies differences between the accounts, and analyzes these differences in light of compositional devices identified by classical scholars as commonly employed by ancient authors. The book then applies the same approach to nineteen pericopes that are narrated in two or more Gospels, demonstrating that the major differences found there likely result from the same compositional devices employed by Plutarch.

Showing both the strained harmonizations and the hasty dismissals of the Gospels as reliable accounts to be misguided, Licona invites readers to approach them in light of their biographical genre and in that way to gain a clearer understanding of why they differ.

About this title

About the Author

Michael R. Licona is Associate Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University.

Review

"Criticism often progresses through comparison, as it does in this significant volume. Licona's experiment of exploring differences between the synoptics in the light of differences within Plutarch is suggestive in multiple respects, and students of the gospels will come away with much to ponder."
-Dale C. Allison, Jr., Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary

"Anyone who has looked at a synopsis of the Gospels will have wondered why the accounts of the same events in different Gospels vary. Michael Licona breaks new ground by arguing that the writers used the same compositional devices as the biographer Plutarch employed when he reworked the same material in more than one of his biographies. This is an illuminating fresh approach to understanding how the Gospel writers used their sources."
-Richard Bauckham, Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies, University of St. Andrews

"How worried should we be by the differences between the Gospels? Do they discredit the whole story? In an exemplary crossover of classical and New Testament studies, Michael Licona shows that the answer is 'not very worried at all': when we compare the techniques used in Greco-Roman literature, the striking feature is the Gospels' consistency rather than their differences. Troubled believers will find this book as important as classicists and New Testament scholars."
-Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek, Christ Church, Oxford

"Licona's book is the most important book I've ever read on the literary techniques of the Evangelists. There is no book that has this finesse based on the Gospel genre as a 'biography' and hence this study can be used with confidence in classes engaged in the Synoptic Gospels. His conclusions about how the Evangelists did what they did are reliable and yet give us one more clear glimpse in how to understand the nature of the Gospels."
- Scot McKnight, Professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary

"Professor Licona's new book is a monograph exploring some compositional techniques which the synoptic evangelists appear to have used. Clarificatory and thorough, it is an accomplished piece of work which it is a pleasure to commend."
-J I Packer, Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0190264268
• ISBN 13: 9780190264260
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336