How to Study with the Greek NT: L7

Paralleling

ὁ δὲ παράκλητος, τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, ὃ πέμψει ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου, ἐκεῖνος ὑμᾶς διδάξει πάντα, καὶ ὑπομνήσει ὑμᾶς πάντα ἃ εἶπον ὑμῖν.

—ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ 14:26 [i]

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

—John 14:26 [ii]

Paralleling

In Lesson 3 we introduced the idea that the Bible is a closed system of revelation. By a method of cross-referencing GNT words and verses with parallel Hebrew OT words and verses, we were able to show that, when mentioned figuratively or as an archetype, the sea monster Leviathan is in fact Satan. We were only able to do this because of the unique and miraculous internal continuity in the books of the Bible.

Because of similar unique and miraculous feature of the NT, there is a unique tool similar to cross-referencing that we can employ when studying it. This unique feature is the four different and inspired eyewitness accounts of the life and earthly ministry of Jesus—the four Gospels. The unique study tool is what I call “Paralleling”.

Basically, paralleling is comparing passages in one Gospel with parallel passages in the other three, then, through examining where and why they do and don’t agree, come to a fuller understanding of the passage. This works really well in translation, but, of course, it is much more effective when we parallel the Greek verses.

Thus we have our seventh General Principle: Always Parallel the Gospels.

The Four Gospels

As you know, the Gospels are four separate eyewitness narratives of the life Jesus. They are the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The first three of those are sometimes called the Synoptic Gospels, because they are structurally very similar—the word “synoptic” is from the Greek words σύν, meaning “together”, and the adjective “οπτικος”, meaning “of or having to do with sight”. In other words, if you look at them together, parallel them, they will agree with one another for the most part.

Now, that being said, John’s Gospel isn’t entirely different from the others; there are many passages that are parallel to the others in content. Just compare Chapter 13 of John to Matthew 26, Mark 14 and Luke 22; all these chapters deal with the same time period in the life of Jesus—specifically, the last Pesach and His betrayal by Judas.

Like any eyewitness account, when the Gospels agree with one another, there is a special emphasis and/or confirmation imparted on the agreed upon details. However, it is in the areas where they disagree that we find the greatest amplification of detail and learn the most. For example, in the four chapters above, each evangelist gives us information the others don’t. John tells us of Christ washing the disciples feet; Luke mentions the disciples swords and tells of Peter using one to cut a guard’s ear off; Mark tells us that the “ointment of spikenard” the woman anointed Jesus with was worth more than 300 pence (δηνάρια), at the time nearly a years wages; and Matthew tells us that Judas got 30 pieces of silver for betraying Jesus.

Without all of those details, can one really say that he understands fully just what went on over the time period covered by those passages? In a sense it’s like viewing a rectangular prism head on. Unless you turn to see that it has three dimensions, you’ll have a flat, incomplete picture of a rectangular prism in your mind.

Of course, rather than areas of particular insight or amplification, the differences in the Gospel accounts are often pointed to by non-believers and skeptics as areas of contradiction which, to them, proves that the Gospels are fallible and therefore not inspired by a perfect God.

Yes, we are all aware of this problem associated with eyewitness accounts—we’ve all seen enough courtroom dramas to know that if you take the statements of four witnesses to an event you will have four versions of that event the details of which can often be wildly disparate. Or, like the old joke has it, if you’ve got four Jews in a room, you’ll have five opinions.

However, we students of the NT know that contradiction in the Bible is evidence of the reader’s lack of knowledge and insight—either of the whole measure of Scripture or, often, of the original language—rather than any lack of accuracy on the part of God’s amanuenses. If we look deeper at the “problem” verse, and pray for wisdom, the Holy Spirit will always show where our thinking is in error.

A common example of contradiction offered as proof of error, is the case of the Gadarene demoniac. Mark and Luke both mention a single possessed man, whereas Matthew mentions two. But if we compare—or parallel—the three accounts, we notice that Matthew only mentions the two men up to the point where the swineherds ran into the city to tell everyone what had happened. Only Mark and Luke mention a single person sitting “in his right mind”. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the Lord only healed one of the men and that he, the healed one, was the subject of Mark and Luke’s Gospel. For reasons only God knows, only Matthew saw a need to mention the other one.

The Rules of Evidence

That point on the reconciling of seemingly contradictory eyewitness reports brings to mind the remarkable case of Dr Simon Greenleaf. Greenleaf was the Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University in the late 1800’s (no mean feat for a man with a Jewish father), who was wont to enquire of his students whether they had “considered the evidence”. One day, upon announcing to his class that the resurrection of Christ was untrue, he was asked by a student if he’d “considered the evidence”. He was shamed deeply enough by his not having done so and making so sweeping a judgement, that he immediately undertook an examination of the Gospel claims about the resurrection of Jesus “by the rules of evidence administrated in courts of justice”. Obviously, he expected to find the evidence for the Resurrection to be abysmally unreliable and wholly inadmissible.

Well, after examining the Gospel accounts thoroughly, Greenleaf proclaimed that the Evangelists’ testimonies were incontrovertibly accurate under the rules of admission of evidence and was thereby convinced that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion. He even wrote a book about it called The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administrated in Courts of Justice. The book is now in the public domain and can be read in its entirety online. Here is a short quote from the forward of this astounding tome:

The things related by the Evangelists are certainly of the most momentous character, affecting the principles of our conduct here, and our happiness for ever. The religion of Jesus Christ aims at nothing less than the utter overthrow of all other systems of religion in the world; denouncing them as inadequate to the wants of man, false in their foundations, and dangerous in their tendency. It not only solicits the grave attention of all, to whom its doctrines are presented, but it demands their cordial belief, as a matter of vital concernment. These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. If not true, they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposture, which, not satisfied with having already enslaved millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroachments upon human liberty, until all nations shall be subjugated under its iron rule. But if they are well founded and just, they can be no less than the high requirements of Heaven, addressed by the voice of God to the reason and understanding of man, concerning things deeply affecting his relations to his sovereign, and essential to the formation of his character and of course to his destiny, both for this life and for the life to come.

So, seeing by the evidence that the Resurrection, the critical claim of Christianity, was true, Greenleaf was forced to conclude that Christ was indeed who He professed to be: God incarnate, the Messiah of the Jews. He then believed and promptly gave his heart, mind and soul to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paralleling the Parable of the Sower

Once, whilst reading the Gospel of Mark in the GNT, I was struck by the Lord’s question to his disciples regarding the Parable of the Sower. Sometime after Jesus delivered this parable to a huge crowd, when He was alone in “the house”, His disciples came to him and asked what the parable meant. The Lord first explains why he spoke to the crowd in parables and then said to “they that were about him with the twelve”, “Know ye not this parable? And how then will ye know all parables?” (Mark 4:10-13).

This was the first time I realised that the Lord was saying that the understanding required to “know this parable” was the same understanding required to “know” every parable. This intrigued me so much, that I decided to do a Bible Study on this passage and the parable.

So the first thing I did was parallel the parable. After reading the three Synoptic accounts (this parable doesn’t appear in John’s Gospel), I broke the parable down into like verses and grouped them together under Key Points or Subheadings (see Gospel Comparison Table). Once I had them in this form, I was ready to examine the parable, and its context, exhaustively.

Obviously there isn’t time to examine the entire table—it took me many hours to do that and the Bible study itself took about 5 hours in all to deliver—so we’ll just examine one single word in one verse and see where that takes us.

Without

Take a look under the key point The Mysteries. Make note of the word “without” in the Mark 4:11 text box.

The Mysteries

Matt 13:11	He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
Matt 13:12	For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
Mark 4:11	And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:
Luke 8:10	And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables;

All three Gospels tell us that the Lord told the Parable of the Sower outside to a great many people; a “multitude”, people out of “every city”. In fact, there were so many people, that Mark records how, with the crowd staying on shore, Jesus taught them sitting in a ship; presumably so as not to be overcrowded and crushed by them. So, huge numbers of people heard the Parable, but none of them, not even the disciples, understood it.

In fact, from the Lord’s question regarding all parables, we can infer that they didn’t understand any of the parables He told that day. Confused, they asked Him why He spoke to the people in parables. The Lord’s reason was shocking: He didn’t want them to understand, “lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them” (Mark 4:12).

Here, the Lord draws a very clear distinction between the disciples who came to Him afterwards—“they that were about Him with the twelve” (Mark 4:10)—and the people “without” (Mark 4:11). The word translated “without” is εξω, which literally means “out of”, but is used idiomatically for “outside the house”. Remember, when the Lord was alone later, He was inside the house.

This same word is used throughout the GNT to distinguish those with Jesus and those against—as in the “Who is My Mother and Brother” pericope (which, significantly, occurs just prior to the Sower Parable in Matthew and Mark and shortly after it in Luke). This is the passage where, whilst teaching in a house, Jesus is told that His mother and brothers are “outside” wanting to speak with Him. The Lord then tells those “inside” that they are His Mother and Brothers because they “do the will of [His] Father”. Luke says is slightly differently, “My mother and my brethren are these which hear the Word of God and do it.” Remember that His mother and brothers were coming to shut Him up; the people in the house were eager to hear every word He had to say!

So, after hearing the Parable of the Sower, who was seen to do the will of God? Who were, in effect, His family?

Well, according to the Gospels, no one who heard the parable that day understand it; neither those without, εξω, nor those within the house. Those outside did not care enough to come to the Lord later to find out what it meant. Those inside the house did. It was they who were doing His will and, as such, to them only had it been “given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven[1]” (Matt 13:11). The ones inside were in the Family of God.

This idea of those in the Family of God being the ones “inside” and those not in the Family being “without” is seen throughout the Gospels. We think of the foolish virgins who’ve been shut out of the marriage (Matt 25:11); all those “cast into outer darkness” where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth—the unbelieving Jews of Matt 8:12; the guest without a wedding garment (Matt 22:13); the servant who hid his one talent (Matt 25:30).

The clearest statement of this idea in the Gospels, however, is in Luke 13:23-29:

Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.

“When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open unto us’; and he shall answer and say unto you, ‘I know you not whence ye are’.

Then shall ye begin to say, ‘We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.’ But he shall say, ‘I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.’

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.”

So, we see that when we paralleled these verses, the word “without” was conspicuous by its being mentioned in only one Gospel. We then examined the original Greek word; making note of its meaning and searching all its occurrences in the GNT. From this examination we discovered an entire theological doctrine: Those who remain without are the damned according to the Lord’s Will and those who remain within are the saved according to the Lord’s Will. Not a bad result from paralleling a single word! (Btw, we know from Scripture that His mother, Mary, and several of His step-brothers made it into the house.)

Conclusion

It is clear to anyone with any intellectual honesty to see that, rather than being a weakness, one of the greatest strengths of the New Testament is that the life and earthly ministry of Jesus the Christ has been recorded in four separate eyewitness accounts. By arranging His Scriptures in this way, the Lord has enabled a four-fold confirmation and amplification of his doctrine to be preserved and passed on from generation to generation. We students of the Master can now compare passages in one Gospel with passages in the other three, examine where they do and don’t agree and why, and always come to a fuller understanding of the Lord’s words. We have learned that, when studying the NT, because of this miraculous arrangement, we can and should always Parallel the Gospels.

[1] Mark and Luke use the term “Kingdom of God”, thereby showing the two are synonymous.

[i] All Greek citations from THE NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK ACCORDING TO THE TEXT FOLLOWED IN THE AUTHORISED VERSION TOGETHER WITH THE VARIATIONS ADOPTED IN THE REVISED VERSION, edited by F.H.A. Scrivener; CAMBRIDGE: At the University Press 1949.

[ii] Whilst all English Bible verses are taken from the King James Version, modern punctuation and quotation markings will often be used where appropriate without reference (I.e. Capitalization after question marks; double inverted commas on opening quotes, then single inverted commas for internal quotations.).

Pages

L7