Discrepancies in the Gospels?

If you have been a Christian for any length of time, likely you’ve read all four Gospels. But you probably read one all the way through before moving on to the next. What would happen if you read the account of the same story from each Gospel?

If you do, you’ll quickly notice that there are a number of discrepancies between the accounts. This may be startling for those of us who have heard skeptics declare that the Bible is full of contradictions, but assumed they were wrong. As an example, let’s look at the record of Jesus’ death and resurrection in each Gospel. Here are some of the discrepancies:

• Matthew says both robbers reviled Jesus while on the cross (27:44), while Luke says one reviled Him but the other believed (23:39-40).

• Matthew says there was one angel at the tomb (28:2), but John says there were two (20:11-12).

• Mark says Mary went to the tomb after sunrise (16:2), but John says she went early while it was still dark (20:1).

• Mark says the women were afraid and said nothing after discovering the empty tomb (16:8); Matthew says they were afraid but also filled with joy and ran to tell the disciples (28:8); and John says Mary Magdalene ran to Peter the other disciple and exclaimed frantically that Jesus’ body had been removed (20:2).

• Matthew says the stone was rolled away after the women arrived at the tomb (28:2), but Mark says the stone had already been rolled away when they got there (16:4).

• Who were the women who went to the tomb?

• According to Matthew: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (28:1)
• According to Mark: Mary Magdalene, the mother of James, and Salome (16:1)
• According to Luke: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and others with them (24:10)
• According to John: Mary Magdalene (20:1)

There are more, but these are sufficient to make my point. We can’t ignore these discrepancies or pretend they’re not there. How should we respond, especially when challenged by skeptics? Does this mean that the Gospels cannot be trusted? Or worse, does this cast doubt on our belief that Jesus rose from the dead?

            What if I said that these discrepancies not only do not discredit the Gospels, but that they actually increase their credibility?

The key is the fact that the Gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts, and therefore, we should apply the same principles used by law enforcement to solve crimes. The various eyewitness accounts of a crime are expected to differ on minor details. People see things from different perspectives, and their memories are not always entirely clear when it comes to irrelevant or small observations. The most important consideration is whether the various testimonies agree on the major facts. If so, the accounts are considered more likely to be true, regardless of the minor differences. The reason is that if multiple accounts are too similar, this raises the suspicion that the witnesses conspired to match up their stories completely in order to hide something. Accounts that are genuinely what the eyewitnesses saw will usually agree on the important details but disagree on minor ones.

This, by the way, is one reason there are four Gospels rather than a single one containing all the information from each. If there were only a single account proclaiming Jesus’ death and resurrection, skeptics may consider the story to have less credibility because it wouldn’t be corroborated by other sources. Since there are four sources, it is harder to dismiss them as fabrications.

The discrepancies provide further evidence that the writers were indeed eyewitnesses and were writing honestly about what they observed. If the story had been a fabrication, certainly the writers would have done a better job matching up their stories before they were read by the public. The minor differences provide evidence that there were multiple eyewitnesses, and that they were reporting truthfully on what they observed.

Further, the discrepancies do not cast doubt on any major fact. Whether the empty tomb was first observed before or after dawn does not cast doubt on the fact that Jesus wasn’t in it! Indeed, if I had been there and realized the Son had risen, I doubt I would have been paying much attention to whether the sun had risen.

There are other arguments that could be made to defend the accuracy of the Gospels, such as the important difference between a discrepancy and a contradiction. There would be a contradiction if multiple accounts are entirely irreconcilable. For example, if Matthew said Jesus rose from the dead and Mark said Jesus remained dead, these would be impossible to reconcile. However, if Matthew says there was one angel at the tomb and John says there were two, we must keep in mind two points:

1. One angel doesn’t necessarily mean only one angel, and

2. There is agreement on the majority of the facts: there was at least one angel, the stone was rolled away, and the tomb was empty. No objective jury would observe this much consistency between the accounts of two witnesses and declare them untrustworthy because they differed on the number of angels.

            All of this means that we have no reason to be concerned or embarrassed by the discrepancies in the Gospels, nor do we need to pretend they’re not there. Rather, we can embrace them as one more confirmation that there is strong historical evidence for the truth of Christianity.

Note: the angle used here, that of comparing the evaluation of the credibility of the Gospels to examining witnesses to a crime, was inspired by the book Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace, which I highly recommend!