Contradictions and Improbabilities in theDescriptions.

Each of the four Gospels contains a large number ofdescriptions of events that may be unique to one single Gospel orcommon to several if not all of them. When they are unique to oneGospel, they sometimes raise serious problems. Thus, in the case of anevent of considerable importance, it is surprising to find the eventmentioned by only one evangelist; Jesus’s Ascension into heaven on theday of Resurrection, for example. Elsewhere, numerous events aredifferently described-sometimes very differently indeed-by two or moreevangelists. Christians are very often astonished at the existence ofsuch contradictions between the Gospels-if they ever discover them.This is because they have been repeatedly told in tones of the greatestassurance that the New Testament authors were the eyewitnesses of theevents they describe!

Some of these disturbing improbabilities and contradictions have beenshown in previous chapters. It is however the later events of Jesus’slife in particular, along with the events following the Passion, thatform the subject of varying or contradictory descriptions.

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PASSION

Father Roguet himself notes that Passover is placedat different times in relation to Jesus’s Last Supper with Hisdisciples in the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel. John places theLast Supper ‘before the Passover celebrations’ and the other threeevangelists place it during the celebrations themselves. Obviousimprobabilities emerge from this divergence: a certain episode becomesimpossible because of the position of Passover in relation to it. Whenone knows the importance it had in the Jewish liturgy and theimportance of the meal where Jesus bids farewell to his disciples, howis it possible to believe that the memory of one event in relation tothe other could have faded to such an extent in the tradition recordedlater by the evangelists?

On a more general level, the descriptions of thePassion differ from one evangelist to another, and more particularlybetween John and the first three Gospels. The Last Supper and thePassion in John’s Gospel are both very long, twice as long as in Markand Luke, and roughly one and a half times as long as Matthew’s text.John records a very long speech of Jesus to His disciples which takesup four chapters (14 to 17) of his Gospel. During this crowning speech,Jesus announces that He will leave His last instructions and gives themHis last spiritual testament. There is no trace of this in the otherGospels. The same process can work the other way however; Matthew, Lukeand Mark all relate Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, butJohn does not mention it.

JOHN’S GOSPEL DOES NOT DESCRIBE THE INSTITUTION OFTHE EUCHARIST

The most important fact that strikes the reader ofthe Passion in John’s Gospel is that he makes absolutely no referenceto the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper of Jesuswith His Apostles.

There is not a single Christian who does not knowthe iconography of the Last Supper, where Jesus is for the last timeseated among His Apostles at table. The world’s greatest painters havealways represented this final gathering with John sitting near Jesus,John whom we are accustomed to considering as the author of the Gospelbearing that name.

However astonishing it may appear to many , themajority of specialists do not consider John to have been the author ofthe fourth Gospel, nor does the latter mention the institution of theEucharist. The consecration of the bread and wine, which become thebody and blood of Jesus, is the most essential act of the Christianliturgy. The other evangelists refer to it, even if they do so indiffering terms, as we have noted above. John does not say anythingabout it. The four evangelists’ descriptions have only two singlepoints in common: the prediction of Peter’s denial and of the betrayalby one of the Apostles (Judas Iscariot is only actually named inMatthew and John). John’s description is the only one which refers toJesus washing his disciples’ feet at the beginning of the meal.

How can this omission in John’s Gospel be explained?If one reasons objectively, the hypothesis that springs immediately tomind (always supposing the story as told by the other three evangelistsis exact) is that a passage of John’s Gospel relating the said episodewas lost. This is not the conclusion arrived at by Christiancommentators.

Let us now examine some of the positions they haveadopted. In his Little Dictionary of the New Testament (PetitDictionnaire du Nouveau Testament) A. Tricot makes the following entryunder Last Supper (Cène). “Last meal Jesus partook ofwith the Twelve Disciples during which he instituted the Eucharist. Itis described in the Synoptic Gospels” (references to Matthew, Mark andLuke) . “. . . and the fourth Gospel gives us further details”(references to John). In his entry on the Eucharist (Eucharistie), thesame author writes the following. “The institution of the Eucharist isbriefly related in the first three Gospels: it was an extremelyimportant part of the Apostolic system of religious instruction. SaintJohn has added an indispensable complement to these brief descriptionsin his account of Jesus’s speech on the bread of life (6, 32-58).” Thecommentator consequently fails to mention that John does not describeJesus’s intitution of the Eucharist. The author speaks of’complementary details’, but they are not complementary to theinstitution of the Eucharist (he basically describes the ceremony ofthe washing of the Apostles’ feet). The commentator speaks of the’bread of life’, but it is Jesus’s reference (quite separate from theLast Supper) to God’s daily gift of manna in the wilderness at the timeof the Jews’ exodus led by Moses. John is the only one of theevangelists who records this allusion. In the following passage of hisGospel, John does, of course, mention Jesus’s reference to theEucharist in the form of a digression on the bread, but no otherevangelist speaks of this episode.

One is surprised therefore both by John’s silence onwhat the other three evangelists relate and their silence on what,according to John, Jesus is said to have predicted.

The commentators of the Ecumenical Translationof the Bible, New Testament, do actually acknowledge this omissionin John’s Gospel. This is the explanation they come up with to accountfor the fact that the description of the institution of the Eucharistis missing: “In general, John is not very interested in the traditionsand institutions of a bygone Israel. This may have dissuaded him fromshowing the establishment of the Eucharist in the Passover liturgy”.Are we seriously to believe that it was a lack of interest in theJewish Passover liturgy that led John not to describe the institutionof the most fundamental act. in the liturgy of the new religion?

The experts in exegesis are so embarrassed by theproblem that theologians rack their brains to find prefigurations orequivalents of the Eucharist in episodes of Jesus’s life recorded byJohn. O. Culmann for example, in his book, The New Testament (LeNouveau Testament), states that “the changing of the water into wineand the feeding of the five thousand prefigure the sacrament of theLast Supper (the ‘Eucharist’)”. It is to be remembered that the waterwas changed into wine because the latter had failed at a wedding inCana. (This was Jesus’s first miracle, described by John in chapter 2,1-12. He is the only evangelist to do so). In the case of the feedingof the five thousand, this was the number of people who were fed on 5barley loaves that were miraculously multiplied. When describing theseevents, John makes no special comment, and the parallel exists only inthe mind of this expert in exegesis. One can no more understand thereasoning behind the parallel he draws than his view that the curing ofa paralized man and of a man born blind ‘predict the baptism’ and that’the water and blood issuing from Jesus’s side after his death unite ina single fact’ a reference to both baptism and the Eucharist.

Another parallel drawn by the same expert inexegesis conconcerning the Eucharist is quoted by Father Roguet in hisbook Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile). “Sometheologians, such as Oscar Culmann, see in the description of thewashing of the feet before the Last Supper a symbolical equivalent tothe institution of the Eucharist . . .”

It is difficult to see the cogency of all theparallels that commentators have invented to help people accept morereadily the most disconcerting omission in John’s Gospel.

APPEARANCES OF JESUS RAISED FROM THE DEAD

A prime example of imagination at work in adescription has already been given in the portrayal of the abnormalphenomena said to have accompanied Jesus’s death given in Matthew’sGospel. The events that followed the Resurrection provided material forcontradictory and even absurd descriptions on the part of all theevangelists.

Father Roguet in his Initiation to the Gospel(Initiation à l’Evangile), page 182, provides examples of theconfusion, disorder and contradiction reigning in these writings:

“The list of women who came to the tomb is notexactly the same in each of the three Synoptic Gospels. In John onlyone woman came: Mary Magdalene. She speaks in the plural however, as ifshe were accompanied: ‘we do not know where they have laid him.’ InMatthew the Angel predicts to the women that they will see Jesus inGalilee. A few moments later however, Jesus joins them beside the tomb.Luke probably sensed this difficulty and altered the source a little.The Angel says: “Remember how he told you, while he was still inGalilee . . .’ In fact, Luke only actually refers to three appearances. . .”-“John places two appearances at an interval of one week in theupper room at Jerusalem and the third beside the lake, in Galileetherefore. Matthew records only one appearance in Galilee.” Thecommentator excludes from this examination the last section of Mark’sGospel concerning the appearances because he believes this was’probably written by another hand’.

All these facts contradict the mention of Jesus’sappearances, contained in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (15,5-7), to more than five hundred people at once, to James, to allthe Apostles and, of course, to Paul himself.

After this, it is surprising therefore to find thatFather Roguet stigmatizes, in the same book, the ‘grandiloquent andpuerile phantasms of certain Apocrypha’ when talking of theResurrection. Surely these terms are perfectly appropriate to Matthewand Paul themselves: they are indeed in complete contradiction with theother Apostles on the subject of the appearances of Jesus raised fromthe dead.

Apart from this, there is a contradiction betweenLuke’s description, in the Acts of the Apostles, of Jesus’s appearanceto Paul and what Paul himself succinctly tells us of it. This has ledFather Kannengiesser in his book, Faith in the Resurrection,Resurrection of Faith (Foi en la Resurrection, Resurrection de laFoi), 1974, to stress that Paul, who was ‘the sole eyewitness ofChrist’s resurrection, whose voice comes directly to us from hiswritings [ ‘No other New Testamentauthor can claim that distinction’, he notes.], never speaks ofhis personal encounter with Him Who was raised from the dead-‘. . .except for three extremely , ‘he refrains moreover from describingdiscreet references . . . it.’

The contradiction between Paul, who was the soleeyewitness but is dubious, and the Gospels is quite obvious.

O. Culmann in his book, The New Testament(Le Nouveau Testament), notes the contradictions between Luke andMatthew. The first situates Jesus’s appearances in Judea, the second inGalilee.

One should also remember the Luke-John contradiction.

John (21, 1-14) relates an episode in which Jesusraised from the dead appears to the fishermen beside the Sea ofTiberias; they subsequently catch so many fish that they are unable tobring them all in. This is nothing other than a repetition of themiracle catch of fish episode which took place at the same spot and wasalso described by Luke (5, 1-11), as an event of Jesus’s life.

When talking of these appearances, Father Roguetassures us in his book that ‘their disjointed, blurred and disorderedcharacter inspires confidence’ because all these facts go to show thatthere was no connivance between the evangelists [ It is difficult to see how there could have been!],otherwise they would definitely have co-ordinated their stories. Thisis indeed a strange line of argument. In actual fact, they could allhave recorded, with complete sincerity, traditions of the communitieswhich (unknown to them) all contained elements of fantasy. Thishypothesis in unavoidable when one is faced with so many contradictionsand improbabilities in the description of of events.

ASCENSION OF JESUS

Contradictions are present until the very end of thedescriptions because neither John nor Matthew refer to Jesus’sAscension. Mark and Luke are the only one to speak of it.

For Mark (16, 19), Jesus was ‘taken up into heaven,and sat down at the right hand of God’ without any precise date beinggiven in relation to His Resurrection. It must however be noted thatthe final passage of Mark containing this sentence is, for FatherRoguet, an ‘invented’ text, although for the Church it is canonic!

There remains Luke, the only evangelist to providean undisputed text of the Ascension episode (24, 51): ‘he parted fromthem [ i.e. the eleven Apostles; Judos,the twelfth, was already dead.] and was carried up into heaven’.The evangelist places the event at the end of the description of theResurrection and appearance to the eleven Apostles: the details of theGospel description imply that the Ascension took place on the day ofthe Resurrection. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke (whom everybodybelieves to be their author) describes in chapter 1, 3 Jesus’sappearance to the Apostles, between the Passion and the Ascension, inthe following terms:

“To them he presented himself alive after hispassion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, andspeaking of the kingdom of God.”

The placing of the Christian festival of theAscension at forty days after Easter, the Festival of the Resurrection,originates from this passage in the Acts of the Apostles. The date istherefore set in contradiction to Luke’s Gospel: none of the otherGospel texts say anything to justify this in a different way.

The Christian who is aware of this situation ishighly disconcerted by the obviousness of the contradiction. The EcumenicalTranslation of the Bible, New Testament, acknowledges the facts butdoes not expand on the contradiction. It limits itself to noting therelevance the forty days may have had to Jesus’s mission.

Commentators wishing to explain everything andreconcile the irreconciliable provide some strange interpretations onthis subject.

The Synopsis of the Four Gospels edited in1972 by the Bibli cal School of Jerusalem (vol. 2, page 451) contains,for example, some very strange commentaries.

The very word , Ascension’ is criticized as follows:”In fact there was no ascension in the actual physical sense becauseGod is no more ‘on high’ than he is ‘below’ ” (sic). It is difficult tograsp the sense of this comment because one wonders how Luke couldotherwise have expressed himself.

Elsewhere, the author of this commentary sees a’literary artifice’ in the fact that “in the Acts, the Ascension issaid to have taken place forty days after the resurrection”. this’artifice’ is “intended to stress the notion that the period of Jesus’sappearances on earth is at an end”. He adds however, in relation to thefact that in Luke’s Gospel, “the event is situated during the eveningof Easter Sunday, because the evangelist does not put any breaksbetween the various episodes recorded following the discovery of theempty tomb on the morning of the resurrection…”-“. . . surely this isalso a literary artifice, intended to allow a certain lapse of timebefore the appearance of Jesus raised from the dead.” (sic)

The feeling of embarrassment that surrounds theseinterpretations is even more obvious in Father Roguet’s book. Hediscerns not one, but two Ascensions!

“Whereas from Jesus’s point of view the Ascensioncoincides with the Resurrection, from the disciples’ point of view itdoes not take place until Jesus ceases definitely to present Himself tothem, so that the Spirit may be given to them and the period of theChurch may begin.”

To those readers who are not quite able to grasp thetheological subtlety of his argument (which has absolutely noScriptural basis whatsoever), the author issues the following generalwarning, which is a model of apologetical verbiage:

“Here, as in many similar cases, the problem onlyappears insuperable if one takes Biblical statements literally, andforgets their religious significance. It is not a matter of breakingdown the factual reality into a symbolism which is inconsistent, butrather of looking for the theological intentions of those revealingthese mysteries to us by providing us with facts we can apprehend withour senses and signs appropriate to our incarnate spirit.”

JESUS’S LAST DIALOGUESTHE PARACLETE OF JOHN’S GOSPEL

John is the only evangelist to report the episode ofthe last dialogue with the Apostles. It takes place at the end of theLast Supper and before Jesus’s arrest. It ends in a very long speech:four chapters in John’s Gospel (14 to 17) are devoted to this narrationwhich is not mentioned anywhere in the other Gospels. These chapters ofJohn nevertheless deal with questions of prime importance andfundamental significance to the future outlook. They are set out withall the grandeur and solemnity that characterizes the farewell scenebetween the Master and His disciples.

This very touching farewell scene which containsJesus’s spiritual testament, is entirely absent from Matthew, Mark andLuke. How can the absence of this description be explained? One mightask the following. did the text initially exist in the first threeGospels? Was it subsequently suppressed? Why? It must be statedimmediately that no answer can be found; the mystery surrounding thishuge gap in the narrations of the first three evangelists remains asobscure as ever.

The dominating feature of this narration-seen in thecrowning speech-is the view of man’s future that Jesus describes, Hiscare in addressing His disciples, and through them the whole ofhumanity, His recommendations and commandments and His concern tospecify the guide whom man must follow after His departure. The text ofJohn’s Gospel is the only one to designate him as Parakletos inGreek, which in English has become ‘Paraclete’. The following are theessential passages:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. AndI will pray the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete.” (14,15-16)

What does ‘Paraclete’ mean? The present textof John’s Gospel explains its meaning as follows:

“But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Fatherwill send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to yourremembrance all that I have said to you” (14, 26).”he will bear witness to me” (15, 26).

“it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I donot go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I willsend him to you. And when he comes, he will convince the world of sinand of righteousness and of judgment . . .” (16, 7-8).

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide youinto all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, butwhatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the thingsthat are to come. He will glorify me . . .” (16, 13-14).

(It must be noted that the passages in John,chapters 14-17, which have not been cited here, in no way alter thegeneral meaning of these quotations).

On a cursory reading, the text which identifies theGreek word ‘Paraclete’ with the Holy Spirit is unlikely to attract muchattention. This is especially true when the subtitles of the text aregenerally used for translations and the terminology commentators employin works for mass publication direct the reader towards the meaning inthese passages that an exemplary orthodoxy would like them to have.Should one have the slightest dimculty in comprehension, there are manyexplanations available, such as those given by A. Tricot in his LittleDictionary of the New Testament (Petit Dictionnaire du NouveauTestament) to enlighten one on this subject. In his entry on theParaclete this commentator writes the following:

“This name or title translated from the Greek isonly used in the New Testament by John: he uses it four times in hisaccount of Jesus’s speech after the Last Supper [ In fact, for John it was during the Last Supper itself thatJesus delivered the long speech that mentions the Paraclete.](14, 16 and 26; 15, 26; 16, 7) and once in his First Letter (2, 1). InJohn’s Gospel the word is applied to the Holy Spirit; in the Letter itrefers to Christ. ‘Paraclete’ was a term in current usage among theHellenist Jews, First century A.D., meaning ‘intercessor’, ‘defender'(. . .) Jesus predicts that the Spirit will be sent by the Father andSon. Its mission will be to take the place of the Son in the role heplayed during his mortal life as a helper for the benefit of hisdisciples. The Spirit will intervene and act as a substitute forChrist, adopting the role of Paraclete or omnipotent intercessor.”

This commentary therefore makes the Holy Spirit intothe ultimate guide of man after Jesus’s departure. How does it squarewith John’s text?

It is a necessary question because a prioriit seems strange to ascribe the last paragraph quoted above to the HolySpirit: “for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever hehears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are tocome.” It seems inconceivable that one could ascribe to the Holy Spiritthe ability to speak and declare whatever he hears . . . Logic demandsthat this question be raised, but to my knowledge, it is not usuallythe subject of commentaries.

To gain an exact idea of the problem, one has to goback to the basic Greek text. This is especially important because Johnis universally recognized to have written in Greek instead of anotherlanguage. The Greek text consulted was the Novum Testamentum Graece[ Nestlé and Aland. Pub.United Bibles Societies, London, 1971.].

Any serious textual criticism begins with a searchfor variations. Here it would seem that in all the known manuscripts ofJohn’s Gospel, the only variation likely to change the meaning of thesentence Is in passage 14, 26 of the famous Palimpsest version writtenin Syriac [ This manuscript was writtenin the Fourth or Fifth century A.D. It was discovered in 1812 on MountSinai by Agnes S.-Lewis and is so named because the first text had beencovered by a later one which, when obliterated, revealed the original.].Here it is not the Holy Spirit that is mentioned, but quite simply theSpirit. Did the scribe merely miss out a word or, knowing full wellthat the text he was to copy claimed to make the Holy Spirit hear andspeak, did he perhaps lack the audacity to write something that seemedabsurd to him? Apart from this observation there is little need tolabour the other variations, they are grammatical and do not change thegeneral meaning. The important thing is that what has been demonstratedhere with regard to the exact meaning of the verbs ‘to hear’ and ‘tospeak’ should apply to all the other manuscripts of John’s Gospel, asis indeed the case.

The verb ‘to hear, in the translation is the Greekverb ‘akouô’ meaning to perceive sounds. It has, forexample, given us the word ‘acoustics’, the science of sounds.

The verb ‘to speak’ in the translation is the Greekverb ‘laleô’ which has the general meaning of ‘to emitsounds’ and the specific meaning of ‘to speak’. This verb occurs veryfrequently in the Greek text of the Gospels. It designates a solemndeclaration made by Jesus during His preachings. It therefore becomesclear that the communication to man which He here proclaims does not inany way consist of a statement inspired by the agency of the HolySpirit. It has a very obvious material character moreover, which comesfrom the idea of the emission of sounds conveyed by the Greek word thatdefines it.

The two Greek verbs ‘akouô’ and ‘laleô’therefore define concrete actions which can only be applied to a beingwith hearing and speech organs. It is consequently impossible to applythem to the Holy Spirit.

For this reason, the text of this passage fromJohn’s Gospel, as handed down to us in Greek manuscripts, is quiteincomprehensible if one takes it as a whole, including the words ‘HolySpirit’ in passage 14, 26. “But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whomthe Father will send in my name” etc. It is the only passage in John’sGospel that identifies the Paraclete with the Holy Spirit.

If the words ‘Holy Spirit’ (to pneuma to agion)are ommitted from the passage, the complete text of John then conveys ameaning which is perfectly clear. It is confirmed moreover, by anothertext by the same evangelist, the First Letter, where John uses the sameword ‘Paraclete’ simply to mean Jesus, the intercessor at God’s side [ Many translations and commentaries of theGospel, especially older ones, use the word ‘Consoler’ to translatethis, but it is totally inaccurate.]. According to John, whenJesus says (14, 16): “And I will pray the Father, and he will give youanother Paraclete”, what He is saying is that ‘another’ intercessorwill be sent to man, as He Himself was at God’s side on man’s behalfduring His earthly life.

According to the rules of logic therefore, one isbrought to see in John’s Paraclete a human being like Jesus, possessingthe faculties of hearing and speech formally implied in John’s Greektext. Jesus therefore predicts that God will later send a human beingto Earth to take up the role defined by John, i.e. to be a prophet whohears God’s word and repeats his message to man. This is the logicalinterpretation of John’s texts arrived at if one attributes to thewords their proper meaning.

The presence of the term ‘Holy Spirit’ in today’stext could easily have come from a later addition made quitedeliberately. It may have been intended to change the original meaningwhich predicted the advent of a prophet subsequent to Jesus and wastherefore in contradiction with the teachings of the Christian churchesat the time of their formation; these teachings maintained that Jesuswas the last of the prophets.