Q. Last week I read in Luke 7:1–10 about Jesus healing the centurion’s sick servant. Then I read the parallel account in Matthew 8:5–13. In the Luke account, Jesus doesn’t talk directly to the centurion, but in the Matthew account, he does. What a difference! It’s so personal in the Matthew account when the centurion says to Jesus, “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.” It doesn’t have quite the same impact when his friends say this for him in Luke 7:6. And perhaps the elders misrepresented the heart of the centurion to Jesus by saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him” (Luke 7:4). Why the difference in the accounts?

Paradoxically, these minor differences of detail in the gospels actually indicate to us their authenticity. They show us that the gospel writers didn’t collude. They didn’t get together and say, “Okay, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.” Instead, what we see in the gospels is the normal human process of information gathering and reporting. The gospels were written a generation after the events they report, based on information that was transmitted orally in the meantime. As we might expect as a result, there are minor differences of detail. Nevertheless, the overall outlines of events are still the same. Even more importantly, the major theological themes are the same.

There would certainly be a problem if, for example, in one gospel Jesus agreed to heal the centurion’s servant, but in another gospel he told him, “How dare you even ask me to help you? You’re one of the Roman oppressors of my people! I’m not going to do anything to help you!” Instead, both accounts give evidence of what Peter later stated explicitly after his own similar encounter with a Roman centurion who had faith in the God of Israel: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.”

Both accounts also show that a miracle cannot be compelled. Roman soldiers had the right to order subject peoples to do work for them, for example, carrying a load for a mile, as in the famous example in the Sermon on the Mount (“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles”). So we would certainly also have a problem if in one account the centurion asked Jesus humbly and indirectly to help him (as in Matthew 8:6, where he just says, “Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly”), but in another account he ordered Jesus to heal his servant. A miracle is a gracious favor of God that meets faith in the recipient. It cannot be compelled, bought, or earned. As Peter said to Simon the magician, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!” In both Matthew and Luke’s accounts, we see the centurion not asserting his military power to order or compel the miracle, but humbly requesting Jesus’ help. He does that in Matthew’s account by saying he is unworthy, and in Luke’s account by not even appearing in person.

Both accounts also demonstrate the power of Jesus. In each case, Jesus does not have to touch or even speak to the servant. He heals him from a distance with a word. This is like what Elisha did for the Aramean general Naaman, who was actually disappointed with it at first. He said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy!” Naaman was expecting a great performance worthy of his status. His servants wisely persuaded him to accept God’s means of healing with humility. But once again we would have a problem if one gospel portrayed Jesus healing with quiet power through a word, but another gospel portrayed him calling out loudly and waving his hands, as a powerful military official might have felt he deserved.

So not only are the major outlines of the event the same in both gospels, perhaps even more importantly, the themes relating to the nature of the kingdom of God are the same. Even so, we might still have a problem with the minor differences in detail. Isn’t the Bible the word of God? Wouldn’t God know what actually happened and inspire the biblical writers to get all the details straight?

I would say in response that the Bible is the only divinely inspired book we have, and so if we want to know what a divinely inspired book is like, we need to look at the Bible. And when we do, we discover that not only did God use existing human languages and literary forms to give us his word (rather than sending something down to us in a heavenly language and heavenly literature that we would have to decode), God also used, as I said earlier, the normal human process of information gathering and reporting. To me that speaks of God’s love for us, God’s affirmation of us, in working together with us humans, despite our finiteness and limitations, to create the Bible.

Q. The author of Hebrews, speaking of the ark of the covenant, says, “in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant.” However, when they brought the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem and finally to the temple, in 1 Kings 8:9 we read, “There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses put there.” Everything regarding the tabernacle is so exacting (holy) that this difference seems curious.

If we read through the biblical narrative, we find that the statement that needs to be explained is the one in Hebrews rather than the one in 1 Kings. We read in Exodus, about the jar of manna, “As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept.” In other words, the jar was placed in front of the ark, not inside it. Similarly, we read in Numbers that God told Moses to put Aaron’s rod that budded “before the testimony, to be kept as a sign.” Once again, in front of the ark, not inside it.

So why does the author of Hebrews say that these things were “in” the ark? We have to be careful about how we understand prepositions in texts translated from other languages. It’s been observed that the last thing a person typically learns who is acquiring a new language is how that language uses prepositions. There are subtle differences in the use of the “same” prepositions between languages. The Greek preposition ἐν, which the author of Hebrews uses when speaking about the ark, can mean in, on, at, by, among, or with. For example, in Matthew 3:9, some versions translate it “do not say within yourselves,” while other versions translate it “do not say among yourselves.” 1 Corinthians 9:15, which also uses the preposition ἐν, translated very literally, says, “And I am not writing these things in order that it may be thus with me.” We need to see this range of meaning in that preposition, and understand its specific meaning from the context.

In the context of Hebrews 9:4, the rest of the biblical narrative enables us to understand that the writer is using it to mean that the things described were in and around the ark. That is consistent with the preposition’s range of meaning and with the details of the tabernacle as we learn them from the biblical narrative.

Q. Been doing an in depth study on the Bible. Came across a series of questions from Genesis. Genesis 10:5 says there are multiple clans with multiple languages, but Genesis 11:1 says the whole earth had 1 language. Could you clear this up?

Genesis 11 picks up the biblical narrative where Genesis 9 leaves off. Genesis 10 is an insertion, a genealogy, that describes the descendants of Noah’s sons before the narrative moves on from Noah and his family. So when Genesis 10 describes various languages, this means the languages that those descendants came to speak after the Tower of Babel episode, which follows the genealogy in the book but not in time.

Q, If the disciples were asleep during the Transfiguration (Luke 9:32), then who heard and recorded the conversation between Jesus, Moses and Elijah (Luke 9:31)? The same for Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46). There Jesus repeatedly found the disciples asleep, so who heard and recorded his prayers? Perhaps Jesus simply told them later on what had happened on both occasions, or the Holy Spirit inspired the gospel writers to know—but I would like to hear what you think!

I don’t think we need to posit that the Holy Spirit revealed these details supernaturally to the gospel writers after the fact. I think that one of the wonders of the Bible is that it was produced through the ordinary process of literary composition (just as it speaks through ordinary human language), and yet we recognize that God worked through that process to give us his word. Luke, for example, tells us at the beginning of his gospel that he carefully researched all of the materials in it. He was not dependent on divine revelation for the details.

So how do we explain the records in the gospels of conversations that Jesus had that took place while the disciples were asleep? I think that if we look at those records carefully, we will see that the disciples could have heard what Jesus was saying, or that Jesus would have had reason to tell them what he had been saying, even if the gospels don’t say that specifically.

The gospels tell us that when Jesus went to Gethsemane with his disciples, he left the main group of them and brought Peter, James, and John with him to another part of the garden to pray. Luke tells us that he then went a short distance from them (a “stone’s throw,” about 50 feet) to pray by himself, but he asked them to be praying along with him.

The book of Hebrews indicates that Jesus prayed aloud, loud enough to be heard from that distance. Speaking of his sufferings, it says, “During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” The author of Hebrews acknowledges not being an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus but having learned about Jesus from those who had heard and seen him. But somehow this tradition about what happened in the garden was passed on down to followers of Jesus. If we connect the dots, we can conclude that from 50 feet away, the disciples could well have been able to hear the “loud cries” of Jesus as he prayed.

Jesus prayed longer and more fervently than these three disciples, so that when he returned to them he found them asleep, but that does not mean that they fell asleep the minute he left them and heard nothing the whole time Jesus was away. A further possibility is that the gospels are only giving us a brief summary of what Jesus said when he returned and found the disciples asleep, and that he may actually have told them what he had been praying. It would have been natural for him to do that. The gospels don’t record him doing that, but we can infer that this is a possibility from the fact that what he was praying became known. So one way or the other, I don’t think we need to posit divine revelation to the gospel writers of what Jesus was praying.

The case of the Transfiguration is similar. Luke relates how Jesus brought Peter, James, and John with him up onto a mountain. He then tells how Jesus’ appearance and clothing changed and became gloriously bright, and how Moses and Elijah appeared and spoke with Jesus “about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem” (that is, about his coming sufferings, death, and resurrection). Luke then notes that “Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.” I think we should understand this to mean that they had more than a momentary glimpse, because Luke records that Peter spoke about making shelters only “as the men were leaving Jesus.” So I think we should understand that these three disciples were able to observe the glory of Jesus and hear his conversation with Moses and Elijah for some time, long enough to know what they were talking about.

I hope these observations help answer your question. Thank you.

Q. Jesus said, referring to himself, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” But Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday. How was that the “third day”?

The answer has to do with how people in the biblical culture reckoned time. Today was considered the first day, tomorrow the second day, and the day after tomorrow the third day. The day before yesterday was considered the third day going in the other direction. There is a Hebrew idiom that means “it was not like that in the past” that says literally, “It was not like that yesterday, three days,” meaning, “It was not like that yesterday or the day before yesterday.”

We get one clear indication of this usage in the reply Jesus gave when he was told that Herod wanted to kill him. He said, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day.” This shows clearly that the “third day” is the day after tomorrow.

So the way people reckoned time, Friday would have been the first day, Saturday the second day, and Sunday the third day.

Q. I saw an interesting video about God telling Moses to write some additional commandments on stone tablets. The first version was given to Moses when the Israelites got to Mount Sinai. We call these the Ten Commandments, and they’re what’s etched on all the stone monuments we see. But Moses broke those tablets in anger. The Lord called him back up onto the mountain and told him what to chisel on some new stones. The Bible also calls these the “Ten Commandments.” But most of them are different. Why?

You’re absolutely right. I never noticed this until you asked about it, but there is a second version of the Ten Commandments that’s different from the first! (Moses repeats the first version word-for-word in Deuteronomy, but there’s a second, quite different version in Exodus.)

Here’s  the first list:
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make images and bow down and worship them.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

And here’s the second list:
1. Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land.
2. Do not make any idols (=#2 above).
3. Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
4. The first offspring of every womb belongs to me.
5. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
6. Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest (=#4 above).
7. Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.
8. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.
9. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
10. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Here’s what I think is going on. The first version of the Ten Commandments provides a prelude or overture to the whole body of law that God delivers to Moses at Mount Sinai. In Exodus, this body of law is described as the “Book of the Covenant.”

When God renews the covenant with Moses after the people have broken it and Moses has smashed the original tablets, God gives Moses a “new” set of Ten Commandments. These summarize the whole “Book of the Covenant” by citing specific laws drawn from all parts of it. So the new Ten Commandments are no longer an overture to the Book of the Covenant but a summary of it, offered through representative items. Here are links to the representative laws, scattered throughout the Book of the Covenant, that these “new” Ten Commandments are based on:

1. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods.
2. Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold.
3. Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
4. You must give me the firstborn of your sons, your cattle, and your sheep.
5. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
6. Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work.
7. Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops . . . celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year.
8. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast. The fat of my festival offerings must not be kept until morning.
9. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
10. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

(Note that the two laws that are also in the original Ten Commandments, about not making idols and not working on the seventh day, are quoted not from the Ten Commandments themselves, but from later laws within the Book of the Covenant that repeat their admonitions.)

There’s really nothing that mysterious happening here, once you understand the principle behind each version of the Ten Commandments. As I’ve just said, the first version is an overture to the Book of the Covenant, while the second version is an overview of the Book of the Covenant, consisting of a selection of representative laws.

But it is interesting to observe that it was this second version of the Ten Commandments that was actually placed within the ark of the covenant, carried around through the desert, and finally safeguarded within the tabernacle and the temple. Nevertheless, the first version was preserved through the telling of the story of the encounter with God at Mount Sinai (as we see, for example, when Moses re-tells that story in Deuteronomy).

So we can consider that both versions are actually the heritage of God’s covenant people and that  we can continue legitimately to make use of the first version. That’s a good thing, because it expresses foundational moral principles that transcend time, place, and culture. It would be a bit strange if we had replicas of the Ten Commandments in our homes or churches that said, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk”!

Q. The Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and was in a home of some sort when the wise men visited Him. Jesus was soon afterwards taken to Egypt to flee from Herod and then brought to the city of Nazareth where he stayed.

The Gospel of Luke claims that Augustus Caesar took a worldwide census, and so Joseph and Mary left their original place of Nazareth and went to Bethlehem. Jesus was born in a manger, not a home, and afterwards was taken to Jerusalem. There is no mention of Egypt. And then he was taken back to Nazareth.

How can both stories be right? Matthew insinuates that Joseph and Mary had never lived in Nazareth before. Luke calls it “their own city.” Also, did such a census from Caesar ever occur as Luke describes?

It actually is possible to reconcile the accounts that Matthew and Luke give of Jesus’ birth, though once I have sketched out how that can be done, I will then explain why I think we should still find the differences between them the most significant thing, because they point to each author’s purposes in telling the story of Jesus.

You might be familiar with an English translation of Matthew that begins the story of his birth something like this: “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.'” This sounds very much as if the birth of Jesus is nearly contemporaneous with the wise men’s visit, and so we are surprised when they find him in a “house,” since according to Luke (and the traditional Christmas “manger scene” or crèche) he should be in a manger.

But Matthew actually uses a particular Greek construction to begin his account (the “genitive absolute”). It specifies what one subject was doing or had done before a different subject and their situation is introduced. We might translate more literally, “Jesus having been born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came from the east.” (In light of this, many English translations read, “After Jesus was born . . .”)

So the birth of Jesus is not so much a contemporaneous event as a background event, a “given” for the narrative that follows. When we pay attention to the fact that the wise men first saw the star two years earlier, it’s less surprising that Jesus is no longer in the manger. For that matter, there’s no reason for him to be in Bethlehem any more, either. The census is actually long over and Mary and Joseph could even have returned to Nazareth. (Matthew says simply that the star went ahead of the wise men and led them to “the place where the child was.” He doesn’t identify that place.) They would still have been within the jurisdiction of Herod the Great even in Nazareth, however, and would have had to take Jesus to Egypt for his safety.

I say they could have gone there because Matthew seems to suggest that Joseph’s plan after Herod died was to come to Judea, and that he only went up to Galilee and settled in Nazareth instead when he learned that Herod’s son had succeeded him as the ruler of Judea. So it’s also possible that Joseph and Mary stayed somewhere in Judea for two years after Jesus was born.

Much of this is a matter of “filling in the blanks” to try to reconcile the accounts, and I think its chief value is to show that they are not inherently contradictory. But as I said earlier, I think it’s much more fruitful to ask why there are differences, as these point to Matthew and Luke’s purposes in writing and thus to the “take homes” they each have for their original audiences, and for us.

Matthew was an observant Jew who was writing for an audience of Jews who had come to believe in Jesus as their Messiah. But at the time he was writing, his community was locked in a contest with groups led by the Pharisees over what the future of Judaism would be after the destruction of the temple in the first Jewish-Roman War of AD 66-70. So Matthew wants to portray Jesus not only as the Son of David (and heir to the Messianic promises) but as a “new Moses,” whose teachings should be followed rather than the strict literal reading of the law that the Pharisees are promoting.

So even if Joseph and Mary were living in Nazareth before the census, Matthew doesn’t mention this because he wants to highlight that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to fulfill Micah’s prophecy that the Messiah would be born there. Matthew describes Herod’s slaughter of the baby boys and the flight into Egypt to show how Jesus recapitulates events in the life of Moses: escaping from a murderous ruler and coming up out of Egypt. Matthew mentions Nazareth only at the end because he can then point out that Jesus being called a “Nazarene” is another in the chain of Scriptures that Jesus fulfilled.

Luke, on the other hand, is a Greek, and a Gentile, writing for his fellow Greeks and Gentiles. He wants to reassure them that the good news of Jesus is for them, too, not just for Jews (or for those who will convert to Judaism, or become culturally Jewish). There have been tensions about this question within the community of Jesus’ followers and Luke’s readers aren’t so sure any more that they are welcome. So he is interested in presenting things like the message of the angels to the shepherds that the birth of Jesus is “wonderful, joyous news for all people” and Simeon’s prayer in the temple in which he says that Jesus will be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” as well as “for glory to your people Israel.” (However, Matthew’s report of the visit of the wise men shows that he, too, understood that while Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews, he was also the Messiah for Gentiles as well.)

I hope this is helpful. As for whether the so-called “census of Quirinius” actually happened, or happened around the time Luke says, there’s a good discussion here.

Q. How do you resolve a certain resurrection discrepancy? Did Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James find angels at the tomb, who told them that Jesus was alive and that they should go tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee?  Or did Mary Magdalene go by herself (as John indicates), find nothing, and go tell the disciples someone had stolen the dead body? The accounts seem to be contradicting each other.

I would answer your question along the same lines as I answered an earlier one in this post:

Why are the details of some episodes in different gospels irreconcilable?

The person who asked that earlier question wanted to know about the episodes in the gospels in which a woman pours perfume on Jesus, Jesus walks on water, and Judas betrays him in the garden.  There seem to be discrepancies in detail between the different accounts of these episodes, and as you observe, the same thing can be said about the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection.  But as I write in my other post:

I don’t personally see irreconcilable details such as these as diminishing the truth or authority of the Bible in any way.  Rather, as many have observed, these differences actually show that the gospel writers weren’t all trying deliberately to tell the same story as the others.  This should give us even greater confidence in the independence and authenticity of their reports.  If some minor details differ, the main points are always confirmed.  And so we can be confident, based on multiple independent reports, that Jesus did walk on the water–the gospel writers agree about this miracle that testified to who he was.  Judas did betray Jesus by bringing the soldiers to the garden.  And a woman did anoint Jesus with perfume, and he acknowledged this as an appropriate, if extravagant, act of worship.

We may say similarly that we can be confident, based on multiple independent reports, that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb with some other women (thought John tells the story through her eyes alone), found it empty, and had an encounter with someone (an angel, a man in a white robe or men in “gleaming clothes,” or Jesus himself) that convinced them Jesus was alive.  The main line of the story is the same in each account.  (If one of the gospels said that the women found Jesus’ body in the tomb, then we’d really have a problem!)

Let me offer here the same conclusion as in my earlier post:

We only have problems with the differences in minor details if we embrace the idea that if the Bible is to be the word of God, it has to present only exactly what happened, without dispute or variation, down to the last detail every time.  That’s simply not the kind of Bible God has given us.  We should recognize that we have instead a Bible whose human character, including such variation in minor details, only helps it to be an even better authoritative witness to divine truth.