Below are excerpts from my transcript of Bart Ehrman’s interview with Megan titled Gospel Discrepancies: Why Matthew and Luke Tell Different Christmas Stories. He explains why discrepancies are not bad and should be viewed independently to gain the different insights of the different authors.
Well, the one thing I’ll say is that knowing these discrepancies is important, not only for people who want to know kind of historically, can we know anything or not? You know, do we have accounts that can reliably tell us about how Jesus was born? And the discrepancies on one level show that these accounts can’t both be right in their details.
And that should make you wonder how are these people dealing with the stories then? In other words, they make you realize that these authors are not just recording some kind of descriptive history. You know, they’re not being objective observers of what actually happened.
And if that’s the case, if you’re going to be reading them for what they want you to know, you’re going to be reading them for what kind of literary motifs they have, because they’re stories. If they’re not flat out history, objective history, then they’re stories. So you’ve got to read them like stories. So that’s one thing.
So there’s the historical thing. But the other thing is that realizing that they’re different from each other in ways that can’t be reconciled, drive you to consider what each one’s agenda is, because it’s not the same agenda.
And when I first realized this as a graduate student, I was a little bit terrified of the idea there could be contradictions. But then I realized, you know, it just means that Matthew’s actually emphasizing something that Luke is not. And the meaning of Matthew just exploded then for me, because I could see, oh my God, he’s saying this. And you can’t say, ‘no, he can’t be saying that, because Luke’s saying this’.
No, it doesn’t work like that. I’m trying to see what Matthew has to say, because I know that he’s got his own story, because he’s got discrepancies with [the] other story.
And I’m reading Luke for what Luke has to say. And it just opens up interpretation rather than shuts it down. When you try to reconcile everything, you shut it down.
You’re not letting each author say what they want to say. You’re making them say what some other author had to say. And that is not a good way to read something, that is to assume this author is saying something other than what he’s saying.
And so for me, the discrepancies are valuable for interpreting the Bible. They’re not an impediment.
