‘Why Are There Differences In The Gospels?’ – Intro
Licona, Michael R. Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
Summarising the Introduction:
Any careful reader of the Gospels will notice that, despite many similarities, there are also differences between them.
Differences in parallel accounts can also be found in the secular biographies of the day: works by Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, etc.
Various explanations of these differences have been offered: memory lapse, use of different sources, elasticity of oral tradition, flexibile nature of the biography genre, redaction, selectivity between different sources or authors, use of idioms that are unfamiliar to us, altering of sources to make a story seem more plausible.…
