Why Are There Differences in the Gospels: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography

Anyone who reads the Gospels carefully will notice that there are differences in the manner in which they report the same events.These differences have led many conservative Christians to resort to harmonization efforts that are often quite strained, sometimes to the point of absurdity.Many people have concluded the Gospels are hopelessly contradictory and, therefore, historically unreliable accounts of Jesus.The majority of New Testament scholars now hold that most if not all of the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography and that this genre permitted some flexibility in the manner that historical events were narrated.However, few scholars provide a robust discussion on how this plays out in Gospel pericopes (self-contained passages).Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? provides a fresh approach to the matter by examining the works of Plutarch, a Greek essayist who lived in the first and second centuries CE.Michael R. Licona discovers three-dozen pericopes narrated t