It is often objected that the Gospels contain variations, that every variation is a “contradiction,” and that such “contradictions” mean the Gospels are historically worthless.
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Did the Titanic pop its rivets or tear a hole in her side? Did she split in two at the surface as some witnesses said or did it happen just as she sank? What about the “mystery ship” that was nearby? Was Mr. Ismay a coward for getting in a lifeboat? Why did nearby ships not come to the rescue?
The list of curiosities and “discrepancies” in the record surrounding the Titanic is a much-loved pastime for disaster buffs.
But only a fool would conclude from this, even after 2,000 years, that there was no Titanic and that she did not strike an iceberg and sink on April 15, 1912. These are the main lines of the story on which everybody agrees.
In the same way, what impresses anybody who reads the New Testament without a set determination to look for loopholes is how the whole body of witnesses to the story of Christ all agree on the main lines of their story. Indeed, what is truly remarkable is that one does not even need the Gospels to reconstruct the essential events to which the community bears witness. It’s all there in the epistles long before the Gospels are written.
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The point is this: Paul is writing his Last Supper account in the early 50s. This means the memories of the community he is drawing on have been set in liturgical concrete very quickly after the events they commemorate (barely 20 years prior).
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If the witnesses to these events went on to lives of persecution, poverty, exile, wandering, opprobrium and martyrdom for their testimony, normal people would not object, “Well, the record is unclear if there were two shots or three at Dealey Plaza. And newspapers of the period clearly said Dewey won. So clearly JFK and Truman never existed.”
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Bottom line: The same standards we apply to any other testimony apply to the Gospels. If witnesses substantially agree that the Titanic sank or JFK was shot or that we landed on the moon or that Jesus existed, then discrepancies between them only serve to show that people are people, not that the whole thing never happened. (more)
