Are the Gospels like Hollywood movies that fictionalize history?

Note: Everyone is welcome to read this article, but it’s directed mostly to my fellow evangelicals. Theologically conservative Roman Catholics and other Christians might also find it relevant. But if you aren’t a Christian, or if you identify as a “progressive” Christian who doesn’t accept the authority of the Bible, then you probably won’t get much out of it. As I said, you are still welcome to read it, but I’m not sure you will find it of interest.

In my book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, I critically examine the views of evangelical New Testament scholar Michael Licona on the historical accuracy of the gospels. I think some of his proposals are at variance with the historic Christian view of the Bible from the early church until the rise of modernism. I recently talked about Licona on a podcast with Alisa Childers. Our discussion of Licona was brief—around 9 minutes in a 68 minute podcast. Dr. Licona responded on Trinity Radio with a two-hour (!) critique of our brief discussion. In some ways, I’m grateful for Dr. Licona’s comments. Although much of what he says is directed at positions I don’t hold, when he does address my actual points I think his comments show I accurately described his views. Even though Licona obviously disagrees with my criticisms of him, he doesn’t seem to claim that I have misrepresented what he has said. I appreciate that.

To understand the context of our back and forth, a bit of background is required.

Like Hollywood Movies?

In his writings, Licona compares the gospels to Hollywood movies that are “based on true events” but use “artistic license” to change the facts to better present the story they want to tell. He suggests that the gospels’ authors felt similarly free to alter facts, invent stories, change the location and context of historical events, and even dramatically refashion what Jesus said to make their theological points.

For example, Licona has argued that the account in Matthew 27:52–53 of additional people being resurrected after Jesus’s resurrection may be “legend” rather than fact, asserting that the “most plausible” reading of the text is that it was simply literary “special effects.” In other words, the story was likely a pious fabrication. After considerable criticism, Licona seemed to pull back—a bit. He still didn’t affirm that the event described was real; but he said he now believed it was just as likely to be factual as fictional. I’m not exactly sure whether this is still his current position, since in the new video he seems to say that he didn’t change his original position: “I wanted to change my mind. It would’ve been kind of in my best interest at that time to change my mind. But I had to be honest to my own thoughts and where my research was. And… I still remain convinced of where I’ve landed with Matthew’s raised saints.” This would seem to suggest that he still believes that the “most plausible” reading of the story is as a work of fiction.

But it’s not only events in the gospels that may have been invented, according to Licona. The very words attributed to Jesus himself may differ—dramatically—from what Jesus actually said. For instance, Licona argues that Jesus’s words “I thirst” reported in John 19:28 never happened in reality. He thinks John took Matthew’s and Mark’s account of Jesus saying on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and radically refashioned it as “I thirst!” Licona insists that “John has redacted Jesus’s words but has retained their meaning.” Others might beg to differ.

Licona similarly contends that Jesus’s words “it is finished” in John 19:30 are not historical. They are supposedly a creative adaptation of Jesus’s words “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit” in Luke 23:46. Licona likewise suggests that when the writer of John attributes the statement “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22) to Jesus, he may have invented the statement in order to foreshadow the coming of Pentecost. More broadly, Licona has expressed doubts about whether any of the “I am” statements by Jesus reported by John (e.g., “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” “Before Abraham was, I am”) were said in any recognizable form by the historical Jesus. He suggests that they too were John’s creative reinterpretations of what Jesus actually said. “So how far did John go when restating Jesus’s words?,” he asks. “It is impossible to know.” Let’s be clear. What Licona is proposing here is far more than the gospel writers merely “paraphrasing” Jesus’s words. He is essentially claiming that they contrived statements Jesus never said, almost like a scriptwriter for a Hollywood film.

Licona justifies his view by claiming that the gospel writers embraced literary genres where fictionalization was expected. In The Mirror or the Mask (2019), Lydia McGrew meticulously rebuts Licona’s claims, making a convincing case for what she calls the “reportage model of the gospels,” which views the authors as “trying to tell us what really happened” and “record[ing] what was said in a way that was recognizably historical.” According to McGrew, and contra Licona, the evidence shows that the authors of the gospels “were highly successful at conveying true factual information, even in details.”

In his two-hour long response to me and Alisa Childers, Licona talks about how he once believed the “naive” view that the gospels provide “the exact words of Jesus.” But then he came to recognize that the gospel writers used paraphrase to convey what Jesus said. I’m not sure why he goes on so long about this since neither Alisa Childers nor myself claims that the gospels provide verbatim accounts of everything Jesus said. We both accept that there is paraphrasing going on, and we said so in the very podcast to which he is responding! I say so in my book as well. What we deny is that the creative inventions proposed by Licona are validly described as paraphrases. If we gathered 1,000 people together and asked them to paraphrase “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” how many of them do you think would come up with “I thirst”? This kind of invention goes far beyond what most people understand as “paraphrase.”

Imaginative Speculations

There is something really important I want to stress here. Licona isn’t just trying to reconcile seeming contradictions among the gospels. For the gospel writers to report different statements Jesus made while on the cross is not contradictory. The simplest and most parsimonious explanation is that he made all the reported statements. As near as I can tell, Licona’s claims to the contrary are based on elaborate subjective assessments. He offers guesses about what the historical Jesus could have/would have said. He relies on conjectures about how willing gospel writers were to change the words of Jesus to fit their their own theological missions. I know Licona doesn’t like me dubbing this “Jesus Seminar lite,” but it’s hard for me to see a principled difference in the approach he has adopted and the approach of liberal theologians who thought they could sit in judgment on whether certain statements attributed to Jesus in the gospels were really said by him or not. It is certainly a radically different approach to the accuracy of the Bible than orthodox Christians have taken for most of Christian history.

Again, the changes Licona is talking about in the gospels go far beyond what most people understand as “paraphrase.” With regard to “I thirst,” perhaps Licona’s best attempt to offer a justification for his view is his pointing out that “I thirst” can have a deeper spiritual meaning involving our thirst for God. I agree with him. But it doesn’t prove what Licona wants. The spiritual meaning of “I thirst” does not cancel out its ordinary physical meaning. The option for interpreters here isn’t either/or. Indeed, it’s quite typical for the Bible to point out a spiritual meaning for things that really happened. So even if John is trying to highlight the spiritual meaning of “I thirst,” that doesn’t mean he invented the statement in order to do that.

In his video interview, Licona maintains that he is an historian, not a theologian, implying that unlike theologians he is trying to stick closely to the historical record. But the justifications he offers don’t seem to me to be good history. They are imaginative speculations.

A Consensus of Scholars?

Licona argues in the video that a lot of evangelical Bible scholars agree with his approach, and he implies that I am ignorant and simply need to read them. Well, I actually have read many of the people he cites. But I admit I’m not especially impressed by his argument from the alleged consensus of current evangelical scholars. After spending 12 years as a professor at an evangelical Christian university, I saw this argument deployed time and again to preempt criticisms of shaky ideas proposed by self-identified evangelical scholars. Often those evangelical scholars were simply echoing the views and assumptions of modern secular intellectuals. So, of course, they must be right. At least, that was the implicit message.

This was one of the arguments of choice made by evangelicals who defended modern evolutionary theory against the sophisticated scientific criticisms made by intelligent design proponents. The arguments of those evangelical scientists haven’t aged well.

So pardon me for being nonplussed by this kind of defense. Instead of the current consensus among evangelical scholars, I’m far more interested in the consensus of orthodox Christians over the past 2,000+ years. And you will be hard pressed to find many (any?) orthodox Christian thinkers before the rise of modernism who adopt Licona’s proposal that gospel authors thought it was perfectly okay to invent new (ahistorical) sayings of Jesus based only on a supposed creative reinterpretation of Jesus’s theological ideas as taught elsewhere in other ways.

The Case of Craig Blomberg

But is it even true that all major evangelical scholars today agree with Licona on the specific examples that I raise? Let’s take Craig Blomberg, whom Licona repeatedly relies on in his video interview. I know they are friends, and Blomberg respects and values Licona’s work. Licona suggests that I wouldn’t be making my ignorant claims if I read people like Blomberg. He especially recommends that I read Blomberg’s book The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel (2001). Here’s the thing: I have read it. In fact, I own several books by Blomberg, and I have read his works going all the way back to The Historical Reliability of the Gospels in 1987.

So what does Blomberg say about Jesus’s statements in John “I thirst” and “It is finished”? Does he agree with Licona that these were invented by John from different sayings of Jesus in the other gospels? Read for yourself: “Only in John does Jesus then say, ‘It is finished.’ Like his cry of thirst, the statement is patently true at a literal level.” (Blomberg, Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel, 253; emphasis added) In an even more recent book (from 2016), Blomberg again makes clear that he thinks both “I thirst” and “It is finished” were historical statements by Jesus: “That he would be thirsty is the most natural element in the entire scene…and ‘It is finished’… is almost as natural a way to declare the end of one’s life at hand. John would have rightly understood both statements as far more profound at a spiritual level… But these additional elements in no way detract from the probable historicity of Jesus’s words.” (Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, 227; emphasis added)

What about the passage in John where Jesus breathes on his disciples and tells them to “Receive the Holy Spirit”? Does Blomberg think that was invented by John? Nope. He appears to believe it was historical too. (See Blomberg, Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel, 266-267.) Or what about Jesus’s statement in John that “Before Abraham was, I am”? Licona communicates in the video that while he can’t “rule out” Jesus made that statement, he clearly doubts it. Does Blomberg share Licona’s doubts? You be the judge. In his discussion of the “Before Abraham was, I am” passage, Blomberg argues: “the tradition reflects an authentic dialogue involving the historical Jesus.” (Blomberg, Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel,150; emphasis added)

So is Blomberg as ignorant and ill-read as I am supposed to be? Or might it be the case that Licona is going beyond what some other evangelical scholars he respects are saying? Licona wonders why I’m particularly concerned by what he is advocating. As I stress in my book, it’s not because everything he says is wrong. A lot of what he says isn’t new or controversial. None of Licona’s major critics deny that gospel writers used paraphrase, simplification, summary, hyperbole, thematic organization, etc. The trouble is Licona uses non-controversial literary devices to justify things that go far beyond them. Again, converting “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” into “I thirst” would not be a paraphrase. It would be inventing something Jesus never said. And as Lydia McGrew points out, the usage by gospel writers of (genuine) paraphrase or ordinary, recognizable figures of speech like hyperbole does not prove Licona’s claim that they regularly employed fictionalizing devices.

Argument by Red Herrings

In his podcast interview, Licona muddied the discussion by conflating the views of his critics with positions they do not hold. For example, there is a painful section where he invoked his dad as an object lesson to expose just how out-to-lunch he thinks his critics are. I’m sure Licona loved his dad, but for the life of me, I don’t know why someone would want to use their parent like this. Licona’s father apparently thought that the parables of Jesus (like the story of the prodigal son) had to be literal historical accounts. Otherwise they were “lies.” See how foolish and ignorant we are supposed to think a Christian like his dad was? Well, apparently that’s supposed to be like Alisa Childers and myself or presumably anyone who thinks that inventing new sayings by Jesus wouldn’t have been done by gospel writers! Sigh. This is argument by red herring. It obfuscates rather than clarifies. And that’s why it is concerning.

An aside. At one point, Licona claims that in my book I accuse him of being like a wolf: “John, in his book, he is talking about the wolves among the sheep, accusing me to be like a wolf among the sheep by positing these things.” I don’t know whether Licona has read my book. Perhaps he has simply seen the cover that features a wolf among the sheep and has assumed that I must be referring to him. For the record, Licona is not a major figure in my book. I devote 9 paragraphs to him out of 357 pages. And nowhere in the book do I call him a wolf. Moreover, if Licona reads the explanation of the cover on p. 349, he will learn that the wolf on the cover represents secular culture, not Christians. Licona could fairly say that I worry he is a Stockholm Syndrome Christian who has been unduly influenced by the assumptions arising from secular scholars. To be clear, I don’t explicitly label Licona a Stockholm Syndrome Christian in my book either, but that would be a reasonable interpretation. It’s not a reasonable interpretation to state that my book accuses him of being a wolf. It doesn’t.

Invitation to a Public Discussion

Well into the podcast, Licona invites me to participate in a “friendly public discussion” with him about his views. I’m honored by the invite, but I’d like to suggest an alternative—that he participate in a public discussion with one of his main scholarly critics like Lydia McGrew, who wrote a book-length critique of his views, or Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie, or theology professor Bill Roach at Veritas International University. I think that would be a lot more productive for all concerned. They can discuss things at the level of detail that Mike wants to go into. If Mike is interested in such a discussion, I am happy to help facilitate it.

Resources for Further Exploration

You can find the references to my quotes from writings by Licona and Lydia McGrew in the notes to Chapter 1 of my book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity.

In addition to his two-hour podcast, you can find Mike Licona’s views in his books Jesus, Contradicted and Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?

As mentioned previously, Lydia McGrew’s main critique of Licona is presented in her book The Mirror or the Mask. Licona responded to her with a series of videos, and McGrew responded to Licona and others with her own videos.

You can find other critiques of Licona by going to the Defending Inerrancy website and putting “Licona” in the search box.