Jesus’ End
As with the rest of the gospels, the accounts of Jesus’ trial, crucifixion, and post resurrection appearances have many differences. For instance, how many times did the rooster crow, and to whom did Peter make his denials?[1] All four gospels give wording of the sign that was placed over Jesus on the cross, regarding his kingship of the Jews, but no two agree exactly.[2] Did the centurion at Jesus’ execution say that surely he was the son of God, or a righteous man?[3] One would think which he said would matter. What did Jesus say to Pilate? Did he say nearly nothing, as in the synoptic gospels, or did he have a fairly lengthy conversation, as in John? This is perhaps important, because where he says nearly nothing, his lack of defense is said to fulfill prophecy of Isaiah 53. And what were Jesus’ last words? Because the gospels give very different testimonies regarding what he said.[4] There are many such differences. However, I believe that these are less consequential, nor would I try to list them all anyway. What follows is what I would think would be the more substantive questions that arise when comparing New Testament testimonies. I would suggest that they’re more important because they seem most relevant to the main prophetic themes of the works, and because they seem to call into question the very evidences that they use to convince their readers that Jesus was the Messiah. Some of these evidences are intended to show the nature of Christ, or that he fulfilled Scripture. Many evidences are related to eye witnesses, which is one of the gospel writers’ favorite proofs it seems. And if witnesses are saying very different things, what are we to think of their testimony?
What Day Was Jesus Crucified?
Matthew 26, Luke 22, and Mark 14 all relate that Jesus and his disciples prepared a Passover meal on the day that the Passover lambs were sacrificed; they ate it with him that evening after sundown, which was the beginning of the next day by Jewish reckoning,[5] the day of Passover; after the meal during the night, they go to Gethsemane where Jesus is arrested, then Jesus is executed later on that same “day”, the day of Passover. John 18 and 19, on the other hand, place Jesus’ death on the day of preparation for the Passover; the chief priests didn’t want to enter Pilate’s palace so that they wouldn’t be defiled, so that they could eat the Passover later that evening, and Pilate sends Jesus to be crucified on “the day of Preparation for the Passover”. That seems pretty clear. And this apparent discrepancy is well known both among secular scholars and believing theologians and preachers.
And it has been observed that some of John’s other details are different as a result of his placing Jesus’ death a day earlier than the other gospels. Since the supper in John’s gospel cannot be the Passover meal since it was not yet Passover, there is no mention of his institution of the Lord’s Supper. Rather than institute the Lord’s Supper, John 13 has Jesus perform the famous foot-washing, which is not found in the other gospels.
Why would John depict Jesus as crucified on the day of preparation before the Passover, when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered? Because one of John’s main themes was that Jesus was the lamb of God, introduced in the very first chapter. He was the Passover lamb, the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement that took away the sins of the world. Interestingly, I have seen many fundamentalist preachers be okay with John moving his chronology just to make this point. I’ve alluded to shifts in chronology in the gospels in order to create a literary device; my guess is that most fundamentalists would not have a problem with these if they can learn to look past modern journalistic standards that the ancients did not keep. However, after trying to look beyond my own modern Western biases, and considering ancient writing styles that were less literal and exact, I think that John’s detail of when Jesus is killed is still harder to explain away. I would compare it to Paul’s insistence that Jesus had to come in the flesh in 1 Corinthians 15:[6] if that event never happened, Paul argues, then their sins could not be forgiven. Similarly, I would suggest that if John’s testimony that Jesus was crucified on the same day as the Passover lambs doesn’t appear to be literal, then the prophetic message behind it also seems to ring hollow. Of course, I could be mistaken.
There are several ways that people have attempted to harmonize John’s apparently different chronology of Jesus’ execution, such as his use of a different calendar. We know, for instance, that the community at Qumran was using a different calendar, and there are many striking similarities between the community of Qumran and that of Jesus, John the Baptist, the church of James in Acts, but also some differences. However, I do not believe that this different-calendar explanation is the best fit if one is going to find a possibility of harmonization. The most promising and “harmonizing” explanation by far seems to be that they used the expression “day of preparation” also for the day before the Sabbath (which all the synoptic gospels also do[7]), the day of Jesus’ execution, and that the Passover meals actually continued for a week. So there’s that theory if you need it.
Witnesses at the Tomb and After
The differing accounts of the scene at the tomb are nearly as different as the infancy narratives. There is only a small amount of overlap. Matthew 27 has a guard at the tomb, but none of the other accounts mention their presence.[8] So Matthew is also the only gospel that mentions that the guards “trembled and became like dead men” when the Angel descended to roll back the stone, or that they were bribed by the chief priests to not say anything about what they witnessed.
There are differences regarding who went to the tomb. Matthew 28 has Mary Magdalene and the “other” Mary going to dress the corpse with the spices. Mark 16 adds Salome to this group of women. Luke 24 mentions Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, and “other women”. John 20 only mentions Mary Magdalene.
What did Mary/the women find when they got there? Matthew 28 appears to indicate that one angel rolls the stone away in front of the women. The other three gospels say that the stone was already rolled away when they got there. Matthew has the one angel sitting on the stone; his clothes were super white and his appearance “like lightening.” Mark 16 has a “young man” seated in the tomb, dressed in a white robe. Luke 24 has two men suddenly appear beside them in “dazzling” clothes. The angels also say completely different things to the women in each account. John 20 doesn’t mention any angels at all when Mary first arrives. Two angels clothed in white only appear once she has left and returned with Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved; they were sitting in the tomb where Jesus had lain. She is still mourning when she first sees these angels, after she has already gone to tell the disciples about the tomb; this is a contradiction of Matthew 28. It is likely that John intentionally changes the order of things in order to build a literary device, yet this discussion must wait till a later book.
What did the women do afterward? In Matthew 28 and Luke 24, the angel tells them to tell his disciples. Immediately as they leave, Jesus appears to them and gives a similar message. In Mark 16, they tell no one![9]
The comparisons could go on and on. Jesus’ post resurrection appearances are also completely different across the gospels. The ascension accounts have different details. Luke 24 appears to present Jesus’ ascension as right after his resurrection; Acts 1 on the other hand says that he lingered about 40 days. Did Jesus appear to 120 people, as in Acts 1, or to 500, as in 1 Corinthians 15?
Perhaps the most glaring difference is whether he told them to remain in Jerusalem, or to return to Galilee when he was first resurrected. In the Matthew and Mark, when the angels and Jesus meet the women at the tomb, they tell them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee where he will appear before them all. In Luke who adds several more details about the post resurrection appearances, there is no command for them to go to Galilee. In fact, he meets a couple of them near Jerusalem, then the next day meets all of them in Jerusalem, then ascends! There doesn’t seem to be any time for him to meet them in Galilee in Luke 24. In John 20, neither the angels nor Jesus who appear to Mary tell her any message about going back to Galilee; he appears to them in Jerusalem, as in Luke. However, his resurrection is postponed more than a week, after which he appears to them in Galilee, where he performs actions and has conversations not found in any of the other gospels. Yet Acts 1 says that he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, and his ascension also occurred there.
The gospels considered the events and sayings of Jesus right before, during, and after his crucifixion to be “crucial”, if I may make an etymological pun. They might even be called the “crux” of Christianity, as the gospel itself, at least in 1 Corinthians 15, is depicted as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Such teachings were absolutely foundational for what Christianity would become. Yet there were other essential pieces of testimony that the New Testament writers offer, such as the nature of the Messiah and his kingdom. First I’ll cover one that only requires a brief overview, then the rest of the chapter’s main sections will cover the most important questions that the New Testament raised, ending with the most important question of all, how did Jesus become God? To read about that, check out my book here.
[1] Compare Matthew 26:71-74, Mark 14:66-72, Luke 22:56-60. For instance, Mark has Peter making his first and second denial to the same servant girl; Matthew mentions two girls for each of the first two denials.
[2] Compare Matthew 27:37; Luke 23:38; Mark 15:26; and John 19:19, 20.
[3] Compare Matthew 27:54 and Luke 23:47.
[4] Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 essentially have Jesus say the same thing, but Luke 23:46 and John 19:30 have Jesus saying completely different things. In fact, considering all the different things that the gospels have Jesus say on the cross, he did quite a bit of talking up there, if you are going to harmonize the accounts.
[5] Notice in Genesis 1 that each day is counted in the order of “the evening and the morning”. It is no more logical to consider the end of the day to be midnight (modern reckoning) than when the sun goes down.
[6] I explain this concept at greater length elsewhere. I call it “historical revelation”, where often even mundane events point to some prophetic truth, and it was used extensively by the Hebrew prophets.
[7] Compare John 19:31, Matthew 27:62, and Luke 23:54.
[8] Compare Mark 15:46-16:8, Luke 23:52-24:12, and John 19:38-42. Matthew is also the only account that includes an earthquake upon Jesus’ death, or that dead people walked out of their tombs.
[9] It is true that the second part of 16:8 does in fact say that they told “those around Peter” what the angel(s) had instructed them. However, this passage and what follows has mixed textual support. This so called “long” ending of Mark is missing from many ancient manuscripts, and appears to be a scribal “correction” to a very unsatisfactory ending.