Michael R. Licona. Jesus,Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently. Zondervan,
2024. Hardback. ISBN 978-0310159599. $34.99.
In this volume, Michael Licona addresses the specific literary challenge that the four canonical Gospels raise when read alongside one another: while strikingly similar in overall focus and narrative shape, they often differ in ways that call out for explanation. As he engages this issue, Licona draws upon personal experience, an apologetic framework, extensive historical research, and close textual analysis. This volume represents an accessible articulation of the positions that he develops at greater length and detail in previous scholarly works.
Because of the concluding claims of this study, it might be helpful to state directly that I am writing this review from a position of disagreement with Licona’s central theological thesis. I do not think that the nature of the differences among the Gospels requires a substantive revision of the classical meaning of the inspiration or inerrancy of Scripture.
With this in mind and because this is a brief review, my summary and comments here will focus on the insights of Licona’s work and their value for evangelicals who might ultimately disagree with his conclusions.
One important strength of this volume is its emphasis on intellectual honesty. Licona begins with an account of his personal experience of being disoriented when confronted with the synoptic problem for the first time (e.g., pp. 1–7). Throughout the book, he also shares correspondence he has received with skeptics and believers as they have wrestled with these topics (e.g., pp. 224–35). Licona helpfully illustrates the importance of maintaining a conceptual space for Christians to honestly grapple with textual, theological, and historical difficulties that they might find challenging or troubling when reading the Bible.
The goal, in this sense, would be to inoculate believers against skeptical falsehood rather than insulate or isolate them from any exposure to critical viewpoints. In this vein, too, Licona makes a compelling case that the truth of Christianity is not shaken by disagreement in even theologically significant matters. As he suggests throughout the book, “If the resurrection happened, then Christianity is true!” (pp. 6–7). This bedrock starting point provides a strong conceptual foundation for believers to stand upon as they encounter difficulties and weigh competing accounts of theological areas. When considering all that the biblical texts claim, I would want to say more than this, but I would not want to say less than this.
Another helpful aspect of Licona’s book is his accessible orientation to the complicated nature of the synoptic problem itself. The opening chapters in particular show the likelihood that there is a literary relationship among the Synoptic Gospels, that each author made distinct compositional decisions, that simple harmonization cannot solve every textual tension, and that Mark’s Gospel was written before the others (pp. 7–50). Licona further shows that a working understanding of the synoptic problem can help you when examining Gospel differences.
Historically, Licona’s comparative analysis also strengthens the current general consensus among NT scholars that the canonical Gospels are a form of ancient biography. For Licona, readers should take more seriously “the implications of the biographical genre on our reading of the Gospels” (13). Accordingly, the bulk of Licona’s study involves studying the features and “compositional techniques” of ancient biographers (chiefly the Lives of the ancient historian Plutarch) and demonstrating that the Gospel authors use these same techniques in their own writings (82–168). His central thesis is that “many items in the Gospels become clearer when the Gospels are read through a lens that has first-century literary conventions in view” (18).
Theologically, Licona interrogates some of the most important aspects of the affirmations of Scripture’s divine inspiration and comprehensive truthfulness. His central contention is that any view of Scripture should be consistent with what can be observed in biblical texts (pp. 190–91). This principle alongside his comparative historical analysis of the Gospels drives his revision (or “fine-tuning”) of the doctrine of inspiration and the adoption of a “flexible inerrancy” position (i.e., the overall message of Scripture is without error, but not necessarily every word).
This book is written for those who have little or no prior knowledge of the synoptic problem or the key ideas within a theology of Scripture. This can be seen in the comments at the end of many chapters encouraging a reader who may feel troubled, disoriented, or uncomfortable with the basic information being presented (e.g., pp. 18–19; 145–47). This person has never encountered Gospel differences and thinks of inspiration only in terms of strict dictation (regardless of what they’ve been taught). On the one hand, this feature of the book is helpful (and certainly needed in our increasingly post-Christian culture).
On the other hand, though, many times what is needed is not a rejection or substantive revision of classical doctrines like inspiration or the central affirmations of inerrancy but rather the articulation and clarification of these theological claims. Most evangelical proponents of these doctrines do not teach either a dictation theory of inspiration or a view of inerrancy that cannot account for textual features like awkward grammar or particularities of genre expectations.
Licona’s work deepens many historical insights about the Gospels as a form of ancient biography. His book is also a model of accessible writing to a broad audience. Even if one is not as optimistic about the explanatory power of biographical devices or is not as pessimistic about the value of any kind of reasoned harmonization, there is much in this work that will be useful for the study of the Gospels.
