story differences

peacefulpete

A comparison of Mark 14:3-9, Matt.26:6-13, John 12:1-8, Luke 7:36-50

Mark...setting Bethany,Simon the Leper's house,unnamed woman ,perfumed oil, on Jesus' head,complaint about waste of hundreds of denrii, response about poor always with you, timed to end of Jesus story.

Matt....setting Bethany, home of Simon the Leper, unnamed woman, perfumed oil on Jesus' head, complaint about waste of hundreds of denarii, response that poor always with you, timed to end of Jesus story.

John....setting Bethany, home of friend Lazarus, Mary used her hair, perfumed oil on Jesus' feet, complaint about waste of hundreds of denarii, response that poor always with you, timed to end of Jesus story.

The Wt attempts to harmonize these stories as two separate occasions. Luke has the one the other 3 record the other occasion. To do this they must ignore that the hosts name has been changed to Lazarus (a friend)in John from Simon a Leper in Matt and Mark. Further the differences between the womans actions. In John she is a friend (maybe girlfriend according to very early traditions and writings) Mary who pours oil on his feet and uses her hair. In Matt and Mark she is a nobody that pours oil on his head. The Luke version of the story has the unknown woman using her hair and pouring oil on his feet, more closely resembling the John version. The renaming of Simon the Leper to Simon the Pharisee (the standard haughty antagonist) was consistant with the reapplication of the tale to one condemning self righteousness and greed.

This Jesus tradtion was early, yet attempting to reconstruct the dependency of one version upon another is a complicated matter. How much were the versions altered to harmonize with another form? What alterations were made to endorse a particular position or to refute another. The inclusion of Mary in only John suggests to some that John in this passage reflects the early form of the tale, with Mary's role being deminished by anti-Marcion orthodox Christians. Or did Marcionites add the name to a deliberately ethereal allegory? The Luke form is certainy late. The trend to villify the Pharisees developing decades after the wars with the Romans. It's mess.

LittleToe

Setting John aside just a moment, coz I don't even want to go there is there a rule prohibiting Pharisee's from getting leprosy?
I suspect it highly unlikey, given their fastidious attitude to hygene, but not impossible.

peacefulpete

I'm sorry if I'm missing your point LT, but are you suggesting Matt and Luke are speaking of the same man? The endings are quite different. The time settings are are well. Perhaps you should reread the accounts.

Euphemism

Interesting, peacefulpete!

Yeah, even when I was a Witness, I found the WTS' idea that the exact same thing had happened on different occasions to be slightly absurd.

Gopher

DO you mean to say.... We've been LIED to ???

LittleToe

Doesn't it seem strange to you that redactors didn't straighten out the accounts, since all four were available to them?

Why leave it in a contradictory state, if they were interpolations, as you seem to surmise?

Satanus

LT

This is the straightened out version. The socalled intertestemental period, before paul came along, had many messianic stories, legends about prophets, etc.

SS

Narkissos

LT:

Each Gospel was meant to be the only Gospel (for a specific community and/or geographical area), never to be compared to the others. The "redactor" of Mark couldn't know the others. Matthew and Luke certainly knew some form of Mark, but their production was to replace it for their respective communities -- not to be read alongside.

The only ones who could have the four Gospels together were not redactors anymore, but Catholic copyists or scribes who held the text as sacred and wouldn't consciously change it. They did include some comparison data in the margins, which occasionally crept into the text at a yet later stage -- but modern textual criticism sorted this out.

peacefulpete

When the orthodox descision to limit the gospels to 4 was made it seems quite likely the text was still in some flux. It is also important to remeber that the stories were not meant to understood as literal history. By interpreting the stories as allegory or quasi-historical as best like the earliest Xtians did the apparent disagreements were not seen as especially relevant. But a Narkissos said, few had access to more than one of these particular 4 so as to compare. The popularity of other gospels (eg. Gospels of Peter and Thomas) eclipsed these 4 in many quarters. They in many ways contradict these 4 yet they were adopted as scripture without concern for any details. The NT really only has had to worry about harmony and logic since the scientific revolution.

Narkissos

Tatian's Diatessaron (the first known attempt to make one Gospel out of four) in the 170's shows not everyone felt comfortable with the four coexisting Gospels.

story differences

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