I stood by watching with amazement when my daughter was born. I only wrote down a few thoughts at the time, certain I’d never forget any detail.
More than two years have passed and now I realize my journal entry is utterly inadequate to the gravity of that moment. My wife’s record of it is locked in her memory and written on her heart. When we combine our accounts, we get a little closer to the day that changed our lives.
But we also get a little farther away. Neither of our stories suffices in isolation because we experienced the birth so differently. While we remain true to our individual witnesses, we also respect the differences in perspective.
Similar things can be said about the birth of Christianity — Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection followed by the spread of the gospel. The earliest witnesses of Jesus shared the gospel by word of mouth. Letters by the apostle Paul began appearing around the A.D. 50s, and it took even longer for the written Gospel accounts to appear.
About 50 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, one particular writer traditionally identified as Luke decided to present yet another “orderly account.” Luke was aware that many others had already written gospel records and scholars show he likely borrowed from a few of them. Four particular accounts eventually made it into our New Testament canon of scripture.
The birth of Christianity involved more than any one writer could hope to capture.
Because of their similarities, Mark, Matthew and Luke are called the “Synoptic gospels,” meaning they “see the whole together.” They follow the same basic chronology but they don’t always include the same information or agree on every detail. Mark doesn’t depict a Nativity scene, for instance, but begins his account at Jesus’ baptism. Most scholars see Matthew and Luke drawing on Mark for information, while supplementing their accounts with stories of Jesus’ birth. The gospel writers emphasize different aspects of Jesus’ nature and ministry — John differing most of all. “Each (account) is unique,” as the LDS Bible Dictionary explains, “and has much detail that is not shared by the others.”
Christians haven’t always appreciated the fact that a careful reading of the New Testament reveals different points of emphasis — not to mention contradictions. From Tatian the Assyrian’s "Diatessaron," written during the second century, to Elder James E. Talmage’s "Jesus the Christ," written in the early 20th, many writers have created gospel “harmonies.” Such harmonizations combine information from all four Gospels into a singular account of the story of all stories.
Harmonizations provide much food for thought, but they also risk overlooking important differences that might otherwise help us draw closer to Christ. For example, Luke’s repeated emphasis on women, the poor, widows and the marginal may be more relevant to some readers than Matthew’s focus on the fulfillment of Old Testament scriptures.
As Joseph Smith’s inspired revision of the Bible suggests, we’re dealing with “The Testimony of” individual gospel writers — testimonies. (The first footnote in the LDS edition of the New Testament cites the Joseph Smith Translation's change from “The Gospel According to St Matthew” to “The Testimony of St Matthew.”) Each wrote from a unique vantage point for a particular audience. As with any witness account — whether it be the birth of your own child, the birth of the Messiah or the birth of Christianity — we can expect variation.
This knowledge raises two questions that can prompt hours of fruitful New Testament study. First, in addition to their similarities, what differences exist among the four Gospels? Second, what do these variations suggest in particular cases (why do Matthew and Luke offer divergent genealogies of Jesus?) and in general (what do different perspectives suggest about the process of revelation?).
Differences don’t necessarily signal lack of reliability; they can tell us something about what particular witnesses were ready to receive, or what their life experiences helped them notice or filter out.
The New Testament features gospel accounts by four different writers with four different perspectives. The story of the mortal Jesus and the risen Christ is far too large for any single account to adequately cover.
Just as our own individual testimonies of Jesus Christ differ from each other based on our personal experiences, so also do the scriptural accounts. The Gospels challenge us with the paradox of unity in diversity.
The fact that our sacred scriptures include a diversity of witnesses suggests that God values diverse perspectives. And so should we.
Blair Dee Hodges is the public communications specialist for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University and host of the Maxwell Institute Podcast. His views are his own. Contact him at blairhodges@byu.edu.