Jesus, Contradicted

Michael Licona

5/5

"I loved it"

Review

The Gospels were written nearly 2,000 years before you and I were born. They have not changed. However, the objectives and conventions for writing biography have.

— Michael Licona

Without a doubt, Jesus, Contradicted is the most impactful book on Scripture I have read to date. In this book, Michael Licona makes a powerful case for re-analyzing the way we see the Gospels, and Scripture at large. I came into this book expecting one thing: a defense that the Gospels are “Greco-Roman biographies” and should be read as such. I’m so glad my expectations were wrong— Licona discusses so much more. Because Licona covers so much ground, his occasional lack of detail or refusal to give additional evidence was sometimes unsatisfying, but I concede Licona does an excellent job in the space he’s given.

Like many of us, Licona grew up exposed to evangelical America, with its fundamentalist ideas of Scripture. But as he continued to study Scripture, these ideas just… didn’t work. I can relate.

I was brought up in a theologically conservative Christian home. I was taught that the Bible is divinely inspired and without any error. I believed that all of the events in the Bible happened precisely as the Bible describes them. I believed that Jesus spoke the precise words as reported in the Bible. However, as I have studied Scripture over the years, I have come to understand that some of these beliefs cannot be true.

…Now I am by no means suggesting that Jesus’s message has been corrupted. I am saying that I was mistaken to think that when I read the Gospels, in Greek or in English, I am reading the precise words that Jesus spoke on that occasion. But this does not mean I am not reading the essence of what Jesus said on that occasion or another one.

— Michael Licona

In Jesus, Contradicted, Licona introduces us to “Greco-Roman biographies”— the most common type of historical biographies in Jesus’ time. He presents convincing evidence that the Gospels were written by people familiar with this genre and its literary techniques, which allowed a higher standard of error than we would accept today. Licona strongly argues that the Gospels use Greco-Roman techniques just like the other biographies of its time: techniques like conflating two events or people, simplifying events, or even changing an event’s time and place to create a more clear storyline.

Throughout the book, he gives adequate examples for all his propositions about Scripture, and willingly concedes when his arguments are weak or incomplete. I appreciated Licona’s sincerity— this is not a “scholarly” book; the end of each chapter presents questions for reflection, and we often see Licona’s personal opinions between evidence-backed statements. Even so, I found the book well-researched and full of insightful footnotes and references.

One can come up with a seemingly infinite number of ways to harmonize differing accounts, many of which have the strong appearance of trying to rescue a Bible in trouble. However, it is not the Bible that is in trouble. Instead, it is one’s present concept of the Bible that is being challenged.

— Michael Licona

If you consider yourself a literalistic interpreter or unlimited inerrantist, I suggest you come into this book with an open mind. Consider that our understanding of Scripture should align with what we see in Scripture. Let go of your assumptions of what the Bible should be, and allow it to speak for itself.

…many well-meaning followers of Jesus take a top-down approach. They begin with certain assumptions (e.g. how Word of God must be understood), form a model of what divinely inspired Scripture must look like, then read Scripture in view of that model. When this occurs, they appeal to mystery and resort to harmonization efforts that are sometimes so strained that it can be seen as subjecting Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to hermeneutical waterboarding until each yields to the harmonizer and tells him or her what they want to hear. This is not treating Scripture with reverence or to have a high view of it.

— Michael Licona

After you read Jesus, Contradicted, it’s unlikely you’ll see Scripture the same way, especially if you previously came to Scripture with a literalistic or traditional view of inerrancy. In his review of Jesus, Contradicted on defendinginerrancy.com, Southern Evangelical Seminary professor Douglas Potter writes:

In my estimation, Licona has written one of the most challenging books against traditional or full inerrancy (or for limited inerrancy).

— Douglas Potter

I have to agree. But despite the destruction Licona’s words perform, he offers inspiration and harmony throughout the book, encouraging believers to seek unity with one another beyond second-order doctrines like inerrancy. Licona’s push for unity is not something worth brushing aside— it stands out among a field of critical scholars, Christians included, who continually tear down ideas about Scripture.

I’ll end with a warning: holding Licona’s perspective of Scripture will place you outside the traditional Christian culture.

The evangelical scene at large— including lay people, pastors, colleagues in other theological disciplines, and even some in Biblical studies— still operates on the basis of the gospels’ being essentially verbal snapshots whose red-letter editions highlight the very words of Jesus. This difference in perspective regarding the gospels among evangelicals has led and will continue to lead to serious tension, since the standards of precision and criteria of reliability applying to snapshots do not necessarily apply to portraits and vice versa.

— Robert Guelich, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

I’ve left some additional notes from the book below. I’ve done my best to summarize related sections and bits of information, but truthfully this book covers a lot of ground— read it!

What Genre Are the Gospels?

Jews in Jesus’ time didn’t really write biographies; we only have ~4. But, we do have ~100 Greco-Roman biographies— a much more popular type of biography, for the time. About half of these were written by Plutarch, in a series we call Lives. Licona spent 8 years analyzing these Lives, and discovered many instances of same story being told in multiple Lives. From these Lives, other ancient biographies, and from ancient writing lessons, it can be reasonably said that the standard of “error” in historical biographies was much different back then than it is today.

Licona discusses several compositional techniques we see in ancient biographies and in the Gospels, like conflating two events/people, simplifying events for clarity, spotlighting a specific character when others were present, or even attributing an action to somebody else (Licona discusses many specific examples in his book). These techniques are not limited to Plutarch’s Lives. We also seem them used or suggested by Theon, Lucian, and Tacitus, among others. The ultimate goal was not historical accuracy, but rather telling a clear historical story.

Some biblical skeptics argue that it’s extremely unlikely that John and Matthew were literate enough to compose their Gospels. Licona agrees— and suggests it’s likely they used secretaries (think “scribe”) to compose their Gospels. We know Paul used a scribe (Romans 16:22). Even Cicero, a Roman known for his great writing, used a scribe. The evangelists’ secretaries, being learned writers and biographers, would have been taught Greco-Roman compositional techniques in writing lessons (we even have ancient textbooks to prove it).

…it would be absurd to suppose… that the NT evangelists could have learned to write Greek and cope with written source material at all while remaining outside the pervasive influence of these common steps toward literacy.

— Gerald Downing

Of course, one could throw out all this evidence and simply claim that the Gospels are of their own genre. Licona suggests that to answer this question, we simply read the Gospels— and there is plenty of evidence for the literary techniques we see common in other ancient biographies.

Conceding that the Gospels are Greco-Roman biographies, and victim to many of the techniques common to that genre, allows us to see the Gospels in a new light. Licona purports “these devices can easily account for more than 90 percent of all differences between the Gospels.”

Divine Inspiration

Christians have long claimed that the Bible is “inspired” by God (hence the term “divine inspiration”). Licona attempts to answer why and how this is true.

…one can use the same argument for the Qur’an and the Book of Mormon: “it claims divine inspiration. I believe it. And that settles it for me!” If you would not accept such an argument from a Muslim or a Mormon, why think another would or even should accept this type of argument from you?

— Michael Licona

I appreciated that Licona immediately tosses out the circular argument I commonly hear (see above). But in my opinion, Licona’s justification for divine inspiration is weak. He claims that Jesus’s resurrection can be historically defended, and gives a few arguments; I would say this defense should be outside the scope of the book. He did, in fact, write an entire book titled The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach which goes into more detail. That aside, if we assume that Jesus rose from the dead, then the New Testament can be said to do a commendable job of preserving Jesus’s words and acts. Jesus also considered the OT Scriptures to be divinely inspired— among other things, he quoted them when tempted or to make a point of himself fulfilling prophecy, and there’s John 10:35.

Some New Testament writings consider other NT writings as Scripture (1 Timothy 5:18, 2 Peter 3:15-16). At least some early christian leaders (Second Clement, Polycarp) considered at least some NT writings as Scripture. Jesus also commissions his disciples to pass along his teachings (e.g. Matthew 13:9-11, 28:18-20, and John 14:26). It can be said that the Gospels are the result of this passing on.

How?

Unfortunately, the Bible gives scant details of how divine inspiration works. There are multiple theories. The easiest to describe is “divine dictation”, which asserts that God essentially controlled the biblical authors to the point of practically writing the words himself. Most modern evangelicals don’t support this interpretation.

The most common interpretation of divine inspiration among modern evangelicals is known as “verbal plenary inspiration”. Verbal refers to the fact that “the very words of Scripture are divinely inspired”, and plenary means all of Scripture is inspired. In other words, verbal plenary inspiration is just a statement that divine inspiration applies to every word in the whole Bible— it’s not really a definition of inspiration. Licona seems to technically hold a “verbal plenary” perspective, but with some nuance.

Most modern interpretations make heavy use of 2 Timothy 3:16, which is somewhat ambiguous in the Greek, but may be calling all Scripture “theopneustos”, a Greek term we unfortunately have a hard time translating. Transliterated, it means “God-breathed”, but entire books (e.g., The Invention of the Inspired Text by John C. Poirier) have been written about what it really meant to Paul (or whoever wrote 2 Timothy). Some scholars would translate it as “life-giving”. Personally, I think there are persuasive arguments for both sides, and I agree with Licona’s summarization that “the term theopneustos in 2 Timothy 3:16 does not contribute as much to our discussion as we may have initially anticipated that it would.”

Licona agrees with scholars like William Lane Craig and B.B. Warfield who propose a definition I’ll naively call “divine preparation”. In this view, God, in his infinite knowledge, essentially planned out the biblical authors’ lives such that they would be fully prepared to write the perfect Gospel when the time came.

What we can say is the way God chose for inspiration includes imperfections, memory lapse, and the New Testament authors employing the normal hermeneutical conventions of their day, repurposing various Old Testament Scriptures by assigning them meanings that differ, sometimes even radically, from what their original authors intended… if Scripture is truly inspired by God, these phenomena did not take him by surprise… God still placed his approval on the final product… Scripture is as God intended it to be.

— Michael Licona

I think, among all the offered perspectives, divine preparation makes the most sense, and it retains the human-ness of Scripture. Like Licona, I have a hard time believing that God would divinely dictate things like Mark’s awkward Greek grammar (that Matthew/Luke attempt to improve), or Luke’s editorial fatigue, or Paul’s memory lapse in 1 Corinthians 1:16. But I also agree with Licona that ultimately, we can’t really know how divine inspiration works— these are just theories that attempt to make sense of what we’re given. The Bible doesn’t really say.

Inerrancy

For Licona, there are a plurality of definitions of “inerrancy”, but he mostly writes about the prevailing opinion as described in The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, one he calls “traditional inerrancy” (supported by the likes of Albert Mohler). Their argument goes something like this:

  1. God cannot err.
  2. The Bible is God’s Word.
  3. Therefore, the Bible cannot err.
The logic of traditional inerrancy.

While this logic seems reasonable on first look, we should be careful with how some of these terms are used. Specifically, Licona takes issue with statement 2, “The Bible is God’s Word.” When pushed, a modern evangelical would probably explain that by saying something like “the Bible is God’s speech in written form”, but this interpretation minimizes any humanity out of Scripture and suggests divine dictation.

…when we speak of the biblical writers using the very words God chose, we should not think of those words as being precisely the words God would have chosen had he written or directly dictated Scripture. Otherwise, God ends up improving his grammar and is guilty of occasional editorial fatigue and lapse of memory.

…

So Scripture should be thought of as the precise words God chose only insofar as he actualized the world in which the biblical writers would freely write what they did… the Word of God should be thought of in the broader sense of being God’s message or God’s teachings.

— Michael Licona

Augustine, a significant early church father, would probably align closely with traditional inerrancy. However, even Augustine is willing to admit the Gospels may not contain Jesus’s actual words, and the ultimate authority of Scripture comes from its meaning, not the literal words:

Furthermore, if by mentioning the Lord’s shoes John intended to show [the Lord’s] greatness and his own lowliness, then, whatever he said, whether it was about unloosing the strap of his shoes or carrying his shoes, the sense is preserved by any writer who mentions the shoes in his own words, thereby expressing the same idea of lowliness and not altering his subject’s thought. Therefore, this is a useful method, and one especially worthy to be remembered, that, when we speak of the agreement of the evangelists, there is no falsehood, not even if they said that the subject of a narrative said something which that person did not say, as long as they express the same thought as the one of them who does record the actual words. From this we learn the sound lesson that we ought to seek nothing other than what the person speaking meant. (emphasis mine)

— Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels

Licona’s “Flexible Inerrancy”

In contrast to “traditional inerrancy”, Licona uses the term “flexible inerrancy”: “the Bible is true, trustworthy, authoritative, and without error in all that it teaches.” Flexible inerrancy is not concerned with errors in the details (it even allows them, even in the autographs). This type of inerrancy can apply to our modern Bibles, instead of just the autographs (which we no longer have). Seeing inerrancy in this flexible way widens the acceptable range of errors. It allows us to read the Bible as it is, unhindered by presuppositions of what it should be.

God nowhere promises us an inerrant Bible. Since the Bible does not describe for us the process(es) of inspiration, we cannot be assured that inspiration did not allow for errors of detail.

To support his perspective, Licona predicts and responds to four counterarguments.

  1. “If we can’t trust the details, why should we trust the theological statements?”

    • It’s possible to make mistakes in the details and still be a trustworthy and reliable source.
    • This argument can easily be reversed to apply to our current Bible: if we can’t trust our current Bible in the details (because inerrancy only applies to the autographs, and ours could have errors), why should we trust it at all?

  2. “Traditional inerrancy holds a higher (and thus better) view of Scripture than flexible inerrancy.”

    • “Higher” in this context is subjective. If you’ve personally defined what a “high” view should be, then you’re no longer using the Bible as your authority. The most “high” view of Scripture should be what Scripture really says about itself.
    • One could claim that a “higher view of God” means he would save everyone. But a “higher view” isn’t based on what you prefer, it’s based on what Scripture really says.

  3. “Conceding errors in the details is a slippery slope.”

    • Everyone claims they’re at the top of the hill, but who can really say? Holding a traditional view of inerrancy has led many to apostasy.

    • When strained harmonizations failed to satisfy, their faith weakened, and the vitality of their Christian life evaporated. …It turns out that a traditional view of inerrancy has been a dangerous doctrine for some readers of the Bible.

  4. “Inerrant is not the best term to describe the Bible.”

    • This is fair criticism. Licona admits he prefers the terms “truthful”, “trustworthy”, and “infallible” over “inerrant” and that it may be time to ditch the word.

Biblical Problems

The “Synoptic Problem”

Matthew, Mark, and Luke share a lot of verbatim wording, despite all being written many years after the events they describe and all being translations of what was spoken (spoken in Aramaic, but written in Greek). We call these 3 Gospels the “synoptic Gospels”, and this phenomenon is called the “synoptic problem”— how did the Gospels come to look so similar (and why are they sometimes different)?

The prevailing scholarly opinion is known as “Markan priority”, which asserts that Mark wrote the very first Gospel. In my opinion, this discussion is not in the scope of this book (Licona discusses it, but I’m choosing to leave out that discussion here). The minority opinion of NT scholars is “Matthean priority” (Matthew first) and is essentially based on one argument: that the early church fathers believed Matthew was first. But ultimately, these are just theories. Scholars are even less sure whether Matthew or Luke was written second.

What about John, you ask? Most scholars recognize that John is quite different from the synoptic Gospels, and likely written last. John uses lots of “I am” statements, doesn’t contain parables (well, it kinda does), and contains many more explicitly public declarations of Jesus’s messiah status.

…Gospel scholars who have specialized in the study of John’s Gospel acknowledge that John has, in essence, restated Jesus’s teachings in his own words.

— Michael Licona

Licona concedes that it’s uncomfortable for many Christians to discuss “which Gospel came first” or whether certain Gospels use others as sources. For Licona, these discussions “do not challenge the divine inspiration of Scripture, [but] they do challenge some understandings of it.”

If we concede that later Gospels used earlier Gospels as sources, it helps resolve many unanswered Gospel questions. For example, read Matthew 8:14-23 to Luke 9:51-92. Notice they are describing two different events, in two different times, but seem eerily similar.

The first two men in Matthew and in Luke speak to Jesus using the same reasons and with virtually the same words. In both texts, Jesus responds with the same answers and with virtually the same words. Now which of the following do you think is more likely?

  1. Matthew and Luke are recalling two different events whereby the two men in each communicate the same messages to Jesus, who responds with the same answers. The words of each have been recalled independently by Matthew and Luke, decades later, and the words we are reading, though strikingly similar, may not have been the same in the original Aramaic before being translated into Greek.

  2. Matthew and Luke are recalling the same event.

— Michael Licona

Translations, Translations, Translations!

We can easily eliminate the possibility that the Gospels report Jesus’ precise words, because he almost certainly spoke in Aramaic, especially in certain circumstances (e.g. when speaking to Jewish leaders) but the Gospels are all written in Greek (with some exceptions).

Editorial Fatigue

Editorial fatigue, primarily championed by Mark Goodacre, essentially asserts that we see signs of editing in the later Gospels. The typical pattern goes like this:

  1. A later Gospel author begins to copy a story from an earlier Gospel.
  2. The later Gospel author makes a change early in the story.
  3. During the copying process, the later author accidentally copies the original version, leading to an inconsistency.

A good example is Jesus’s parable of the minas:

Memory Lapse

Then there is Paul’s memory lapse in 1 Corinthians 1:16 pertaining to whether he had baptized anyone outside the household of Stephanus. Surely, we are not to imagine the Holy Spirit asking Paul not to get ahead of him but instead to take a break while the Holy Spirit checked heaven’s records, only to find the relevant one missing! Yet such occurrences would be required if the biblical authors wrote as the Holy Spirit was dictating to them what to write. After all, Paul may not have recalled everyone he had baptized. But the Holy Spirit knew. These observations clearly reveal a human element in Scripture; an element that includes imperfections and, thus, rules out divine dictation.

Contradictions

The bottom line: Contradictions offer a challenge to the historical reliability of the Gospels and to some versions of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. However, the do not necessarily call into question the truth of the Christian faith.

— Michael Licona

E.g., did David (1 Samuel 17:50) or Elhanan (2 Samuel 21:19) kill Goliath?

Which Version of OT is Inspired?

The OT was originally written in Hebrew, but the Jews in Jesus’s time used a Greek translation we call the Septuagint (LXX). When the NT writers reference the OT, they usually quote the Greek Septuagint translation.

This is already a problem, because the Septuagint sometimes differs significantly from our Hebrew OT manuscripts. But there are even other times when the NT authors quote some unknown Greek translation (Mark 1:3, Matthew 3:3, Luke 3:4) that we don’t have. This leads to an important question: which version of the Old Testament is inspired— the original Hebrew, the Greek LXX, or this new, unknown NT translation?

Incorrect OT Attribution

Licona points out that Matthew 27:9-10 combines elements of Jeremiah and Zecheriah into one story, then attributes the entire quote to Jeremiah. Matthew pretty clearly pieces together drastically different OT stories to make a point about Judas. Licona even admits that “this use of the Old Testament makes me somewhat uncomfortable.” He then writes:

For, since we observe the Evangelists redacting Old Testament Scriptures on occasion, which they regarded as God’s Word, why should we think they regarded Jesus’s words and descriptions of his actions as being off-limits?

— Michael Licona

Criticism of Jesus, Contradicted

Ultimately, Licona can’t disprove hermeneutical “waterboarders” who wish to harmonize the Gospels completely. Many Christians are content harmonizing when it’s easy, and living with the mystery when it’s not. When you assume the Bible can’t contain historical errors, then ta-da! You won’t find any. For those Christians, Licona is an attack on the unity and authority of Scripture (which stands or falls as a whole, on any tiny error), and when you see it like that, it’s easy to understand why Licona is ostracized by so many fundamentalists.

I think, at the end of the day, you will read out of Scripture what you want from Scripture. If you’re open minded, Licona will help you come to a more full understanding of what Scripture is, but I suspect many readers are not.

Also, it’s somewhat ironic that despite Licona’s book-long crusade against biblical inerrancy, he still calls himself a “flexible inerrantist”. That word is a shibboleth if I’ve ever heard one.