Reading the Gospels Together

Some Conclusion – Part 1

Now that we have reached the end of our study what are some conclusions that we might make? I want to begin with two conclusions that I would describe as limiting conclusion. Reading the gospels for what they say – taking them literally and seriously – leads me to these two limiting conclusions.

First, as we read the gospels together, it seems clear to me that any attempt to “harmonize” these four gospels is futile. By harmonizing I mean attempting to find a way to say that they are all saying the same things and that what may appear to be a contradictory statement somehow really isn’t. If we are going to be proclaimers of the Bible it is important that we are truthful about what the Bible says and we need to be truthful that these four gospel writers do not always agree with one another about “what really happened” and about theological issues. We might wish that the picture that emerges when we read the gospels together was not like it is. But honesty must prevail. Harmonizing the gospels is futile.

Secondly, we need to realize that the gospel writers and their stories do not lend themselves to finally being able to arrive at “what really happened” – we are simply not able to construct the “history of Jesus” or the “life of Jesus.” This is really a corollary of the first limiting conclusion above. We simply do not and cannot know the exact and detailed story of “what really happened.” This is not to say that the events of Jesus’ life that are reflected in all four gospel stories did not happen. This is not a fictitious story made up by these authors. They are all reflecting upon the same historical reality. But it is to say that the order of the events and even some of the content of the events have “slipped into the sands of time” and are lost forever. We might think that is a bad thing. Perhaps it is, but, again honesty in reading the gospels together leads us to no other conclusion. To lift up one example – Jesus cannot have died both on the day following the eating of Passover with his disciples (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) and on the Day of Preparation when the lambs were slaughtered in preparation for the Passover that evening (John) – a Passover Jesus never lived to see. The gospels as we have them simply do not lend themselves to arriving at “what really happened.”