The dissimilarity criterion strengthens the case for the historical reliability of the Gospels

Summary:

The fact that the Gospel texts report different versions of the same event is not enough for New Testament historians to reject them for being contradictory and historically erroneous. In fact, having different testimonies does not necessarily imply contradiction, but rather a complementarity of information that tells the same story from different angles.

The excessive accusations of contradictions that we often read on the Internet do not impress historians very much when it comes to the general reliability of the text. Think about it. It would be strange, after all, if the four accounts in the Gospels told exactly the same story down to the last detail. Police investigators know this very well: if the interviewed witnesses give exactly the same account on every point, there is an obvious suspicion of conspiracy. In fact, it would be highly suspicious to find four absolutely identical testimonies, with no secondary details omitted. On the contrary, the investigators expect the versions given by the individuals to be broadly consistent, because they are well aware that when people give truthful accounts, they often differ widely on secondary details. This does not call into question their overall reliability, butshows that everyone gives a different perspective of the same event.

Let's take the skeptics' favorite example: the discrepancy over which women discovered the empty tomb. Which ones are present? The list varies somewhat: according to Mark's Gospel, they are Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. The Gospel of Matthew reports only Mary of Magdala and "the other Mary", without mentioning Salome. Luke's Gospel simply speaks of a "group of women". Finally, John's Gospel mentions Mary Magdalene and the plausible presence of another group of women (cf. the use of "we" in John 20:2).

Here, the facts are reported in different but not contradictory ways. The historian can conclude from this that we have several independent historical sources which attest that a group of women did indeed discover Jesus' empty tomb three days after the crucifixion. But it would be absurd to conclude, as some skeptics do, that the discovery of the empty tomb is a fiction on the pretext that the accounts differ on secondary details. Indeed, if the evangelists had invented this story of the empty tomb, they would surely have taken care to harmonize the different versions in order to produce a single one. So they cannot be accused of making up a story from scratch.

On this subject, the theologian Henri Blocher quite rightly remarks: "Those who accuse the texts of contradictions seem to us to approach them with a strange rigidity. They would only be happy if the Gospels showed a perfect correspondence from the first reading, if the harmony was immediately obvious and without any obscurity. But that's like expecting the Bible to come out of the blue! Judges are well aware that, in general, testimonies that are all true but independent show considerable variations, and that it is initially difficult to harmonize them. This is due to the difference in points of view, the choice of elements and the elasticity of words. When credible witnesses appear to be in conflict, the judge does not immediately rule that they contradict each other: he tries to reconcile their statements in a plausible way. It is this sympathetic and flexible attitude that the Gospels also deserve. To show that they can be read in a way that does not oppose them is not to make a desperate and dishonest effort to save a sacred text from incoherence; it is simply to grant them the minimum that a man worthy of faith demands " (Henri Blocher, "L'accord des Évangiles et la résurrection", La Bible au microscope, vol. II, Édifac, 2010, p. 81).

Far from being an argument against the reliability of the Gospels, the dissimilarity between the accounts (as in the case of the Passion of Jesus or the discovery of the empty tomb) on the contrary weighs in favour of the general authenticity of the testimony, ruling out any suspicion of conspiracy on the part of the evangelists.

Going further:

Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels, by Jim Warner Wallace, David C Cook; Revised, Updated & Expanded Edition (10th Anniversary Edition) (September 5, 2023)

More information:

• The video : Do Gospel differences or errors mean Christianity is false?
• The video : The True Nature of Eyewitness Testimony Explains the Differences in the Gospels.
• The video : Why Differences Between the Gospels Demonstrate Their Reliability.