2010 National Conference on Christian Apologetics
Licona tackles
Gospel ‘differences’
By Edward Terry, The Layman, October 22, 2010
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Using a football helmet as a prop and footage of two hard-hitting NFL stars knocking around opponents, Southern Evangelical Seminary professor Mike Licona impressed on the audience the need for Christians to have protection from the frequent attacks they will face.
“It’s an all out season on evangelical Christians,” he said. “I want to give you some head protection against some of the most frequent objections.”
Rather than a $200 football helmet, however, he suggests an understanding of the arguments that non-believers use to tear down the Gospel.
His talk at the 2010 National Conference on Christian Apologetics, entitled “Are There Contradictions in the Gospels?,” focused on three main points: Related Articles
- Distinguishing between a contradiction and a difference. Using the example of differing accounts of who visited Jesus’ tomb the morning of His resurrection, Licona said “Much of what we find are differences not contradictions.” While the Gospel of John mentioned only one woman visiting Christ’s tomb that morning, the other Gospels mention others. Though John’s Gospel only mentions Mary, he said, it does not exclude the others.
- Recognizing the literary genre of the Gospels. Licona said the Gospels belong to the Greco-Roman Biography genre, which is known for reporting historic recollections. He also described the differing accounts of the Gospel as being male versions of a story versus female accounts, i.e., male versions of a story focus more big picture, while female versions are detail-oriented. Later he used the difference between a photograph and a portrait as an example. “John has taken some literary liberties here … he’s adapted it so he could bring down the point in a more clear manner to his audience,” Licona said, adding that readers get the same message but it’s cast in a different way. “In John we’re getting the gist of what Jesus was saying. We’re getting a portrait of Jesus.” He also pointed out other literary treatments, including minor chronology and time compression, for the differences that are often criticized.
- The differences in the peripherals do not challenge the historicity of an event. He cited examples of how some eye witnesses disputed whether The Titanic broke in half before sinking or went down intact. “No one concluded that The Titanic didn’t sink because the eye witnesses contradicted one another,” he said. “I believe that just about every difference in the New Testament can be reconciled either by a more sophisticated view of looking at the differences or by the genre of the Gospels, considering that. But even if we couldn’t reconcile them all, even if there were some definite contradictions in the New Testament, that would not render them historically unreliable.”
“I think as we look at these differences in the Gospels we have no reason to have our faith shaken, to think that the Gospels are unreliable,” Licona said. “We just need to have a more sophisticated understanding of what the Gospels were.”