In 2017, Mike Licona, currently professor of New Testament studies at Houston Christian University, published the book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? with Oxford University Press.  Leaning heavily on Plutarch, he argued that most differences should be viewed as within the range of freedom Greco-Roman historians of the ancient Mediterranean world used.  He identified and illustrated a large number of these kinds of changes.  Licona’s new work makes his previous research more accessible and addresses various questions that arose to his 2017 book.  He writes for a Christian audience to try to give those troubled by the nature and number of the differences better answers than those traditionally given by inerrantists and those typically given by critics who find a significant amount of the Gospels untrue to the historical Jesus.  He refers to his view as “flexible inerrancy”.

Opening chapters discuss questions of normal variations in reporting, Gospel source criticism, the nature of ancient biography and levels of precision in truth-telling in antiquity.  Virtually everyone recognizes minor differences that don’t alter the meaning of parallel accounts, Markan priority remains our best starting point, almost all relevant ancient biographies of which we know were Greco-Roman rather than Jewish, and while ancients clearly distinguished between fictional narratives (often romance) and historical or biographical ones, the latter spanned a spectrum of care for accuracy in detail.

Licona then turns to specific techniques practiced by, and sometimes explicitly taught in compositional handbooks from, the ancient Greco-Roman world.  Chapters, in turn, discuss the practices of paraphrase, less radical techniques such as literary spotlighting, compression and simplification, the more radical technique of transferal, another one he calls displacement, and finally a chapter on “the outer limits of compositional devices.”  Spotlighting, the most common of the devices in Plutarch, refers to talking about only one person in a given account, when a parallel account has more individuals, precisely because one person is in some way more prominent.  Compression and simplification are both forms of abbreviation.  Transferal involves knowingly attributing the action of one person to another, while displacement means moving certain details from one context to a second one that may have some similarities to it.  The “outer limits” include repurposing Scripture, composite citations and editorial fatigue.

Most broadly evangelical or orthodox scholars, i.e., who believe in the classic creeds of the first five hundred years of the church, would cite at least some of these compositional devices as reasons why they do not hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, even if they still believe in its general reliability and authority for believers.  Licona, however, wishes to retain inerrancy but qualify it with the modifying phrase, “in all that it teaches.”  This is little different from more traditional views because we never are told how one determines what the Bible is and isn’t teaching in any given passage.  Licona repeatedly says that any definition we come up with has to fit the actual phenomena of Scripture, but when those phenomena themselves are susceptible to multiple interpretations, this does not provide that much help.

The majority of Licona’s volume is very helpful.  Those who are familiar only with a very conservative, quasi-dictational approach to inspiration and inerrancy, need to know that there are other options within the inerrantist “camp,” which in fact are held by almost all professional Bible scholars.  Many of the specific examples Licona gives of the various compositional devices are ones held by a fair cross-section of evangelical scholars.  Literary spotlighting almost certainly accounts for the variations among the Synoptics concerning the individuals/angels the women encountered at the empty tomb.  Matthew’s drastic abbreviation of Mark’s account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter may also be considered a compression. 

When Matthew has the centurion directly come to Jesus, while Matthew has his servants come as his spokesmen, this is a good example of transferal, one that we still employ when a news report announces that “the President today declared. . .” when it was literally his press secretary.  All of the examples of displacement that Licona gives involve what might better be termed topical re-arrangement of material from chronological arrangement; he does not address some of the more radical displacement theories that other scholars have suggested that may not be as persuasive.

It is not as clear that the “outer limits” chapter even belongs in a discussion of Greco-Roman compositional devices.  Licona’s examples of repurposing Scripture involve texts frequently discussed in treatments of the Old Testament use of the New and may better be explained by an understanding of typology, double and even multiple fulfillment.  Composite citations often deliberately referred to the less-well known of the two sources precisely to make sure that readers recognized it.  Editorial fatigue is a category invented (to my knowledge) by Michael Goulder, the Doktorvater of Mark Goodacre, whose work Licona cites.  It has never caught on, even in more radical scholarship as an acknowledged category of ancient editing.

Some of Licona’s examples of genuine compositional devices are less convincing.  Is the difference between Mark’s Jesus hearing the heavenly voice at his baptism say “You are my beloved son” vs. Matthew’s “This is my beloved son” a case of transferal (Licona’s subsection heading is “To Whom Did God Speak?” or is it simply a case of paraphrase by Matthew, who wanted his readers to know that the identification was intended to affect the onlookers as well as Jesus?  Is John’s account of the temple cleansing actually displacement or is it a separate event from what the Synoptics narrate (a classically thorny problem)?  Might the differences between Matthew and Mark in the sending out of the Twelve actually fit under “conflation” (a device Licona lists but does not discuss in the detail he does others) rather than “simplification”?

Moreover, as I demonstrated almost forty years ago, in the volume edited by Carson and Woodbridge on Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon, harmonization continues to be practiced by classical scholars and at times is the most viable explanation of differences among Gospel parallels.  Just because there have been fanciful and improbable harmonizations suggested doesn’t invalidate the entire method.  The varying endings of the parable of the wicked tenants form a good example, as I have discussed in several of my books, including Jesus and the Gospels.  But Licona is right that it shouldn’t be our default method; every apparent contradiction must be studied in light of all possible explanations and the most persuasive one adopted.

Licona’s previous work has been vigorously attacked by Lydia McGrew, whose critiques are always worth considering.  But she, too, overstates her case for rejecting most of the compositional devices that Licona employs.  Somewhere in between the two scholars lies the golden mean.  They are neither the panacea for all problems among Gospel parallels nor to be rejected as inapplicable almost all of the time.  It is not a matter of traditional vs. flexible models of inerrancy but a spectrum of how rigid or how flexible one decides one can be without eviscerating the term “inerrancy” of all meaning.  Ironically, McGrew adopts most of her rejection of Licona as a philosopher who is not herself an inerrantist. 

The discussion will thus continue.  To the extent that Licona’s work helps claim or reclaim some people otherwise tempted to reject the reliability or authority of the Gospels in a more wholesale fashion, his volume is most welcome.  To the extent that it scares some off of using critical tools and methods in perhaps a slightly more chastened fashion, it is a shame.  But Licona has certainly succeeded in making his work more accessible for a larger audience.

I will refrain from trying to identify a reason why the one author’s name that is out of order in the otherwise alphabetical listing of the general index is my own!

Craig L. Blomberg PhD
Professor Emeritus of New Testament
Denver Seminary
July 2024