Reconciling Contradictions

The majority of discrepancies between gospel accounts can be attributed to the different viewpoints of eye-witness testimony. Witnesses of any event would naturally focus and report on different aspects of that event. No two recollections would be identical. And so it is with the gospel accounts of Jesus ministry. Two such discrepancies were recorded in today's reading.

First , we have three accounts of the healing of the demon-possessed man in the Gerasenes, also called the Gadarenes. Mark and Luke record one man, but Matthew records two. The simplest explanation I read for this, is that where there are two, there is always one! So if Matthew records two men, it is not contradictory for Mark and Luke to focus on one (who was perhaps more noteworthy for some reason), unless they stated that there was ONLY one. Since neither makes such an exclusive statement, it is easy to reconcile the fact that two men were there, but in two accounts, only one was considered important enough to mention. Perhaps he was the only one with whom Jesus had any dialog...

The second discrepancy regards Jairus' daughter. All three gospels record the encounter that Jairus had with Jesus, but each uses a slightly different word to describe his daughter's state of being. In one account she is "dying", in another is "on the brink of death" and in another, has "just died". Not knowing Greek, I have to take at face value the apologetic defense that the word used for "has just" can be translated to express either a present condition or an inevitable one. Given her condition when Jairus left the house, he may well have assumed that she had died by the time he reached Jesus. See below...

The Greek word, rendered “is even now dead,” does not of necessity mean, as our translation would express, that she had actually expired, but only that she was “dying” or about to die…. The passage [Matthew 9:18—EL] may be expressed thus: “My daughter was so sick that she must be dead by this time”.

Remember that Matthew knows the outcome of the story before his reader does. he knows that Jairus' daughter will be dead by the time Jesus arrives and that he will be resurrecting, not healing her. So it is possible that Matthew streamlines his account to get to the point. He does not include the anecdote about the messengers arriving with word of the girl's death. Instead, he inserts that knowledge on the front end of the story. Each of the gospel writers reported the truth, but did so within their own style and technique, and from their unique vantage points.

Tomorrow's reading: matt. 9:27-10:42; Mark 6:1-13