The discrepancy tables

Scholarly consensus

The four gospels disagree with one another at many points, in matters large and small. That they do is not a Muslim claim; it is in every critical introduction to the New Testament and in the footnotes of every study Bible. What a reader needs is to see the texts side by side, with chapter and verse, so that the disagreement can be checked rather than asserted. That is what the tables on this website do. Each sets the four accounts in parallel columns, records only what the texts say, and keeps interpretation apart from the table. The Gospel of Thomas has a column too; it is a sayings collection with no narrative, so it is empty wherever the others tell a story, and the table says so. A table that changes an existing page is announced in the corrections log.

The tables

• The genealogies: Matthew 1 and Luke 3 give different fathers for Joseph and different lines from David. Mark and John give none.
• The birth of Jesus: the visitors, the journey, Herod and Egypt in Matthew and Luke, and the gospels that have no birth story.
• The last supper: whether it was a Passover meal, the words over bread and cup, and what John tells instead.
• The crucifixion: the day, the hour, who carries the cross, the last words and the women.
• The resurrection accounts: who goes to the tomb, when, what they find, who speaks to them, what they are told, what they do, and where Jesus appears.

The five areas in brief

The resurrection table was the first because the resurrection is the claim on which the Christian reading of Jesus rests, and because the disagreements there are the hardest to reconcile. Each area is summarised below with its references; the tables linked above give the texts in parallel.

The genealogies

Matthew 1:1-17 traces Jesus from Abraham to Joseph in forty-two generations arranged as three fourteens; Luke 3:23-38 traces him from Joseph back to Adam in seventy-seven. From David to Joseph the lines run through different sons of David (Solomon in Matthew, Nathan in Luke), share only Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, and arrive at different fathers for Joseph (Jacob in Matthew, Heli in Luke). Both trace descent through Joseph while stating that Joseph was not the father. The usual harmonisations, that one list is Mary’s or that a levirate marriage joined two lines, are not in the texts and were first proposed in the third century.

The nativity

Matthew sets the birth in the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE (2:1); Luke sets it at the census of Quirinius, who became governor of Syria in 6 CE (2:2). In Matthew the family lives in Bethlehem, flees to Egypt, and settles in Nazareth only because Judaea is unsafe (2:22-23); in Luke the family lives in Nazareth, travels to Bethlehem for the census, and returns home after the presentation in the Temple (2:39). Matthew has magi, a star and a massacre; Luke has shepherds, a manger and angels. Neither mentions the other’s events, and the two itineraries cannot both be followed.

The Last Supper

In Mark, Matthew and Luke the Last Supper is the Passover meal, eaten on the evening of 15 Nisan (Mark 14:12-16). In John, Jesus dies on the afternoon of 14 Nisan, while the lambs are being slaughtered for a Passover that has not yet been eaten (18:28; 19:14, 31), and the meal of chapter 13 is “before the festival of the Passover” (13:1). John has no words over bread and wine; he has a foot-washing instead. The date of the crucifixion therefore differs by a day between the synoptics and John, and the difference has been argued over since the second century.

The crucifixion

Mark has Jesus crucified at the third hour, nine in the morning (15:25); John has Pilate still passing sentence at the sixth hour, noon (19:14). Mark and Matthew record one saying from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46); Luke replaces it with “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (23:46) and adds two others; John has three sayings of his own, none of them shared with the synoptics. In Mark both criminals mock Jesus (15:32); in Luke one defends him (23:40-43). Simon of Cyrene carries the cross in the synoptics (Mark 15:21); in John Jesus carries it himself (19:17). Matthew alone has an earthquake and the dead rising from their tombs (27:51-53).

The resurrection

The women who go to the tomb are three in Mark, two in Matthew, several in Luke and one in John. They find a young man (Mark), an angel who descends in an earthquake (Matthew), two men (Luke) or, later, two angels (John). They are told to send the disciples to Galilee (Mark, Matthew) or reminded of what Jesus said in Galilee and told to stay in Jerusalem (Luke). They say nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8) or run to tell the disciples (Matthew, Luke, John). Jesus appears first in Galilee (Matthew), in Jerusalem and Emmaus on the same day (Luke), in Jerusalem and then at the Sea of Tiberias (John), or, in the oldest text of Mark, not at all. The full table is on its own page.

How to read the tables

Each cell gives the text in brief with its reference, in chapter:verse form. A cell that says “None” means the gospel has no such passage. “No account” in the Thomas column means that Thomas, which contains sayings and almost no story, does not tell it.

A discrepancy is not the same as an error, and a table is not an argument. Two of the differences above may be no more than two witnesses noticing different things. But a reader who has been told that the gospels are four independent and consistent testimonies should see for himself that they are not, before deciding what to make of the Qur’an’s statement that they are confirmed in part and corrected in part. The measure this website uses is stated on the measure; the tables are the evidence it works on.

Related

• The synoptic problem: why Matthew, Mark and Luke share whole sentences.
• The Gospel of Thomas and its full text.
• The measure: the rule this website applies to every claim.

Sources

• Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, on the genealogies and the two nativities.
• Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, two volumes, on the passion narratives.
• Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, chapter 2, for a plain-language survey of the discrepancies.
• Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, on the date of the Last Supper.