The following text is part of chapter 2, page 46, of the book The Case for Chirst, A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (1998, Editora Zondervan) by Lee Strobel. Chapter 2 deals with controversial biblical issues such as the supposed contradictions in the narrative of the sypnotic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). In the excerpt bellow, we have Doctor Craig L. Blomberg, an important authority on the biographies of Jesus, author of several books, responding Lee Strobel’s questions about those gospel contradictions.

(Strobel’s book can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+case+for+for+christ&x=14&y=19

Coping with Contradictions

I began with a well-known story of a healing. “In Matthew it says a centurion himself came to ask Jesus to heal his servant,” I pointed out. “However, Luke says the centurion sent the elders to do this.

Now, that’s an obvious contradiction, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Blomberg replied. “Think about it this way: in our world today, we may hear a news report that says, ‘The president today announced that …’ when in fact the speech was written by a speechwriter and delivered by the press secretary – and with a little luck , the president might have glanced at it somewhere in between. Yet nobody accuses that broadcast of being in error.

“In a similar way, in the ancient world it was perfectly understood and accepted that actions were often attributed to people when in fact they occurred through their subordinates or emissaries – in this case through the elders of the Jewish people.”

“So you’re saying that Matthew and Luke can both be right at the same time?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he replied.

That seemed plausible, so I posed a second example. “What about Mark and Luke saying that Jesus sent the demons into the swine at Gerasa, while Matthew says it was in Gadara. People look at that and say this is an obvious contradiction that cannot be reconciled – it’s two different places. Case closed.”

“Well, don’t shut the case yet,” Blomberg chuckled.” Here’s one possible solution: one was a town; the other was a province.”

That seemed a little too glib for me. He appeared to be skimming over the real difficulties that are raised by this issue.

“It gets more complicated than that,” I said. “Geresa, the town, wasn’t anywhere near the Sea of Galilee, yet that’s where the demons, after going into the swine, supposedly took the herd over the cliff to their deaths.”

“Ok, good point,” he said. “But there have been ruins of a town that have been excavated at exactly the right point on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The English form of the town’s name often gets pronounced ‘Khersa,’ but a Hebrew word translated or transliterated into Greek, it could have come out sounding something very much like ‘Gerasa.’ So it may very well have been in Khersa – whose spelling in Greek was rendered as Gerasa – in the province of Gadara.”

“Well done” I conceded with a smile. “I’ll surrender on that one. But here’s a problem that’s not so easy: what about the discrepancies between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke? Skeptics often point to them as being hopelessly in conflict.”

“This is another case of multiple options,” he said.

“Such as?”

“The two most common have been that Matthew reflects Joseph’s lineage, because most of his opening chapter is told from Joseph’s perspective and Joseph, as the adoptive father, would have been the legal ancestor through whom Jesus’ royal lineage would have been traced. These are themes that are important for Matthew.

“Luke, then, would have traced the genealogy through Mary’s lineage. And since both are from the ancestry of David, once you get that far back the lines converge.

“A second option is that both genealogies reflect Joseph’s lineage in order to create the necessary legalities. But one is Joseph’s human lineage – the gospel of Luke – and the other is Joseph’s legal lineage, with the two diverging at the points where somebody in the line did not have a direct offspring. They had to raise up legal heirs through various Old Testament practices.

“The problem is made greater because some names are omitted, which was perfectly acceptable by standards of the ancient world. And there are textual variants – names, being translated from one language into another, often took on different spellings and were then easily confused for the name of a different individual.”

Blomberg had made his point: there are at least some rational explanations. Even if they might not be airtight, at least they provide a reasonable harmonization of the gospel accounts.