4. From Witnesses to Car Wrecks

As I began to show in the previous study session, viewing the Gospels as "witnesses" and the interest in harmonizing them did not begin with current-day preachers or writers in apologetics. Christians have been combining and attempting to reconcile Gospel stories from very early on.

Growth of an Analogy

In this session, I'll take a much closer look into some of the fascinating history of how the Gospel writers and their differences have been portrayed.

Doing so, we can watch the interpretive movement develop—from simple conflation, to reconciliation and harmony, to the courtroom witness-stand model, then to the accident analogy, and finally to the familiar car-wreck illustration. Along the way, the imagery becomes simpler and more familiar—but also increasingly inadequate for describing the literary and theological character of the Gospels.

Tatian (Late 2^nd Century)

One of the earliest and most striking examples is Tatian’s Diatessaron (= "according to the four"), produced sometime around 180 CE[1]—about 100 years after the Gospels were written. Tatian did not compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he literally conflated them together into one continuous story of Jesus, pulling first here and next there from any of the Gospels that fit his needs. In other words, as with all efforts at harmonizing, this was a work of interpretation, arrangement, selection, and omission. 

We have enough of his work to show quite clearly what he was doing. Following is a summary of his Resurrection story:

1. evening of the Sabbath / dawn of the first day Mt 
2. while darkness still remained Jn 
3. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary come Mt 
4. other women are included with them Lk 
5. they bring the prepared spices Mk/Lk 
6. they wonder who will roll away the stone Mk 
7. earthquake; angel rolls away the stone Mt 
8. women enter and find no body Mk/Lk 
9. young man seated at the right Mk 
10. angel announces Jesus is risen Mt/Mk 
11. two men in shining clothing appear Lk 
12. women are told to inform disciples/Peter and go to Galilee Mt/Mk 
13. women leave in fear and joy, saying nothing Mt/Mk 
14. Mary runs to Peter and the beloved disciple Jn 
15. Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb Jn 
16. they inspect the grave cloths; beloved disciple believes Jn 
17. they return home Jn 
18. Mary remains outside weeping Jn 
19. she sees two angels Jn 
20. Mary sees Jesus but mistakes him for the gardener Jn 
21. Jesus calls Mary by name; she recognizes him Jn 
22. Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene Mk 
23. guards report to chief priests and are bribed Mt 
24. Mary reports that she has seen Jesus Jn 
25. Jesus meets the other women; they worship him Mt 
26. women report to the Eleven and others Lk 
27. disciples do not believe the women Mk/Lk

Notice that this does not match the harmonizations noted earlier. More importantly, look at what Tatian leaves out:

1. Mark's Salome is not named among the women. Mk
2. Mark's The "women buying spices after the Sabbath" Mk
3. Mark's “Very early … when the sun had risen” Mk
4. Mark’s "the women looking up” / "stone already rolled back" Mk
5. Luke’s "Peter running to the tomb by himself,"
   Tatian uses John’s Peter-and-beloved-disciple version. Lk
6. John’s opening sequence. Jn

The most striking omission is #6 where Mary, in John, sees the stone removed and immediately runs to Peter and the beloved disciple. Tatian leaves it out entirely, and inserts for it the Synoptic angel/tomb material before Mary goes to them.

Also important is #3: Mark’s “the sun had risen.” Tatian keeps John’s “while the darkness yet remained” and simply drops Mark’s competing time reference.

Also #5: Luke and John give competing versions of Peter’s visit, Tatian essentially chooses John and leaves Luke’s version out.

In other words, this is exactly what I have been calling the “5th Gospel.” It was already being produced in the late second century.

However, the early success of the Diatessaron should not be taken to mean that everyone was content to let a harmonized Gospel become the standard and replace the four separate Gospels.

By the 5th century, there was a clear move in Syriac Christianity to restore the four Gospels as the standard. Rabbula of Edessa ordered churches to use the separate Gospels, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus later reported finding more than two hundred copies of Tatian’s Diatessaron in churches under his care. He removed them and replaced them with copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.[2]

Augustine (5^th Century)

A little more than two centuries later, Augustine approached the problem differently. Around 400 CE he wrote a work called De consensu evangelistarum, literally "The Accord of the Gospel Writers" (which has been translated, "The Harmony of the Gospels").[3]

In this work, Augustine does not simply conflate the four Gospels into one text, as Tatian had done; instead, he works systematically through their differences one text at a time and argues that their separate versions can be reconciled with one another.

At points he explicitly speaks of bringing the statements of the writers together into a single retelling of the story. A very good example is found in 2.5.17, where he reconstructs the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke:

If any one wishes, however, to make up one complete narrative out of all that is said or left unsaid by these two evangelists respectively, on the subject of Christ's nativity and infancy or boyhood, he may arrange the different statements in the following order…

He then proceeds to do precisely that, creating a single chronological sequence. He begins with Luke’s account "Now the birth of Christ was on this wise"; inserts Matthew’s account of Joseph and Mary; and continues to conflate the material of Matthew and Luke together into one very long continuous story, ending with "And Jesus increased in wisdom and age, and in favour with God and men."

Augustine is not merely trying to demonstrate that Matthew and Luke don't contradict one another; he deliberately takes material that the two Gospel writers present separately, determines where the pieces must fit chronologically, and constructs from them what he himself calls “one complete narrative.”

From Witnesses to Witness Stand
(18^th and 19^th Centuries)

From such beginnings, where the Gospel writers "testify" to the Gospel, they came eventually to be called witnesses.

The idea of reading the Gospels as courtroom witnesses was taking shape at least by the eighteenth century. Anglican Thomas Sherlock (1729) staged the resurrection evidence as a courtroom proceeding; [4] English Baptist Robert Robinson (1786) compared the four Gospel writers to witnesses before a jury;[5] Princeton theologian Archibald Alexander (1825) described them as “four distinct and independent witnesses”;[6] and Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf (1846) treated Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as witnesses whose testimony could be tested by the same principles used in a court of law. [7]

Spurgen (19^th Century)

I don't know when the now familiar car-wreck illustration first appeared, but the idea itself is considerably older than the automobile. Notably, the prominent London Calvanistic Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon (1866) delivered a particular message on the Gospels[8] in which he not only offers an accident illustration, but sounds an insightful note about harmonies of the Gospels.

Now, it is not always easy to harmonize the testimony of four perfectly honest witnesses upon the same subject. I will venture to say, that if there should be a simple accident upon the railway, and four persons present were to give their accounts of it with rigid exactness, yet they would each one be likely to mention some point not mentioned by the other, and, moreover, differ upon the points which they notice in common. Although we might be morally convinced that they all spoke the truth, yet it would be difficult to put the story together so as to make a harmonious whole of it.

Sometimes it is not easy to put the stories of the Evangelists together, and many of the “Gospel Harmonies,” so called, which have been produced by very admirable writers, are not quite correct, but show at once the difficulty attaching to that which some brethren have been trying to attempt, and which perhaps will never be fully carried out, namely, the making of it into one harmonious idyl [i.e., idyllic picture, gdc].

I call this notable for two reasons: first, he is much more willing (in this place, at least) to admit the almost inexplicable difficulties in some Gospel passages—i.e., he is not given to easy harmonization; and second, he is not much persuaded by the ability of "so-called Gospel Harmonies" to accomplish what they promise.

A Car Wreck (20^th and 21^st Century)

Once cars began showing up, it was an easy and obvious transition: train wreck, car wreck. As I was growing up in the mid-20^th century, I heard about this car wreck many times. It's still used to this day.[9]

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why anyone trying to defend the Gospels would compare it to a train wreck or car wreck. Yes, I do understand that the point is the eye-witnesses. But, really! A train wreck!

Yes, I get that it's supposedly "just an illustration." But that is just the point: It's a bad illustration that becomes an oversimplified template for how people think about the nature of the Gospels.

First, the story of Jesus is not a train or car wreck. This is not just being picky. Were not talking about a single event in a single location at a particular time in the afternoon. We're talking about many events in many locations over a 30 year period of time.  Nor is it enough to object that the analogy is often applied to individual events. Of course it is, which then, in the same breath, gets applied to the entire Jesus story. It's simply a bad analogy.  

Second, the so-called "witnesses on this stand" do not in fact claim to be eyewitnesses. This all by itself explodes the analogy. The actual fact is, no Gospel offers any uncontested claim, proof, or indication that any of them were written by eye-witnesses. The Gospel of John comes the closest, but is still highly debatable, and even doubtful.[10] The Gospel of Luke specifically does not claim to be written by an eyewitness—rather a careful and studious researcher. Mark makes no claim at all. Nor does Matthew.

Any assertion or pretense that, "Hey, after all, we know they really were eyewitnesses, so we might as well say it (as someone in one of my live onsight classes once said)—well, this actually says it all. What we can't prove, we just assume and say it's true. This is actually unbecoming of Christian witness.

Third—the biggest problem of all—the witnesses/car-wreck analogy becomes a substitute for careful thought and sound reasoning about the nature of biblical texts. The analogy itself is easily grasped; but thinking through the issues about the nature of what is actually in biblical texts takes a lot of time, care, and energy. The biggest problem with the analogy is that it gets taken as fact and is then pressed far beyond what it can bear.

Getting More

From Tatian and Augustine to the witness stand, Spurgeon, and finally the car-wreck analogy, we have traced how Christians learned to read the Gospels as pieces of one larger story that must somehow be fitted together. But those familiar approaches can become substitutes for the harder work of listening carefully to the texts themselves. Learning to question those assumptions gives us better tools to get more from Bible study.

https://www.biblicalconversation.com/more

Questions to Consider

1. What happens to the distinctive voices of the Gospels when we begin treating them primarily as witnesses whose testimony must be reconciled?
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. What does the history from Tatian to Augustine show about how early Christians tried to deal with Gospel differences?
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Why is the courtroom or car-wreck analogy attractive—and where does it begin to distort the literary and theological character of the Gospels?
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. If an illustration becomes the lens through which we read the Gospels, how can we tell when the illustration has started controlling the text instead of helping us understand it?
   __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Next Week  

5. "From Harmonized Story to Gospel Voices"
What do we begin to hear when we stop forcing the Gospel stories to fit together?

Series Note

This is Study Session #4 of the free, online, ten-session Bible study series: Beyond the 5th Gospel. It is best to begin with Study Session 1 and follow the entire study in the proper order, on a week-by-week schedule.

Because this is copyrighted material intended for personal or goup study, you are granted the right to freely use this material in Bible classes, small groups, private study, or similar settings—as long as you keep the material unchanged and intact, including this series note.

If you have come to this study session out of sequence, please go here for the beginning of the series:
https://www.biblicalconversation.com/blog/5th-gospel-prelude

Go here for all available PDF downloads:
https://www.biblicalconversation.com/studiesbc#section-1788376027032

Thank you.
Gary D. Collier

Footnotes

[1] Tatian, Diatessaron, Section LII–LIII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9, available at https://ccel.org/ccel/tatian/diatessaron/anf09.iv.iii.lii.html. Tatian’s original second-century text has not survived intact. What we have comes through later translations and other witnesses, especially Arabic and Syriac materials, which preserve enough of the work to show clearly how the four Gospels were conflated into a single continuous narrative. I will illustrate this here.

[2] See Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Compendium of Heretical Fables 1.20, where he reports finding “more than two hundred” copies of Tatian’s Diatessaron in churches and replacing them with copies of the four Gospels; cf. the canon of Rabbula of Edessa directing that churches provide and read the “Distinct Gospel,” i.e., the separate Gospels. See also Judith Hartenstein, “Tatian’s Diatessaron: The Arabic Version, the Dura Europos Fragment, and the Women Witnesses,” Journal of Theological Studies 72 (2021): 192–230, especially her discussion of the growing insistence that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John be treated as authoritative and individual Gospels. See also the older work, Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2, §158. He discusses the wide circulation of Tatian’s Diatessaron and Theodoret’s removal of more than two hundred copies from his diocese.

[3] English translation: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1602205.htm

[4] Thomas Sherlock, The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (London: J. Roberts, 1729). Sherlock structures the argument as a legal proceeding in which the evidence for the resurrection is examined through witnesses and testimony.

[5] Robert Robinson, Sixteen Discourses on Several Texts of Scripture: Addressed to Christian Assemblies, in Villages near Cambridge. To Which Are Added, Six Morning Exercises (London: Charles Dilly, 1786), 58. Robinson argues that “four witnesses relating a history in the manner of the evangelists” gain credibility from their differences rather than lose it.

[6] Archibald Alexander, A Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion, 2nd ed. (Princeton: D. A. Borrenstein, 1825), sec. V. Alexander explicitly writes, “we have four distinct and independent witnesses,” and then argues that differences among the evangelists function like the testimony of witnesses examined separately.

[7] Simon Greenleaf, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists, by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice (Boston: C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1846). Greenleaf’s stated purpose is precisely to subject the testimony of the four Evangelists to the kinds of tests applied to evidence in human courts. Some current-day authors still follow this path. E.g., Fr. David Subu, The Case for Christ: A Course in Christian Witness, Orthodox Church in America, Session 3, “The Evangelists on the Witness Stand.” The lesson explicitly proposes putting the evangelists “on the witness stand” and applying eight legal-style tests of eyewitness reliability.

[8] Charles H. Spurgeon, “Peter’s Three Calls,” sermon no. 702, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 12 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1866), 409. Located here: https://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/peters-three-calls

[9] Gideon Mwale and Kris Bjorgen, chap 2: "Introduction to the Gospels" in New Testament Survey, n.d. https://online.flipbuilder.com/tbeal/rhpe/index.html#p=18. Scott Hoezee and Dave Bast, “Easter: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Groundwork Bible Study, audio radio/podcast episode with transcript, April 20, 2019, esp. 1:16–1:41. https://groundworkonline.com/episodes/easter-the-resurrection-of-jesus-christ. David Scharf, “Bible Study: The Bible’s Account of Easter Morning,” Forward in Christ 108, no. 4 (April 2021), online magazine article. https://forwardinchrist.net/account-of-easter-morning/. Darrell Delaney and Scott Hoezee, “Easter: Jesus Is Risen!” Groundwork Bible Study, audio radio/podcast episode with transcript, April 20, 2025, esp. 1:47–2:41. https://groundworkonline.com/episodes/easter-jesus-is-risen. Chuck Missler, “Resurrection Sunday,” Koinonia House, online article, March 29, 2026 (an excerpt from Missler’s book The Easter Story: What Really Happened, so the 2026 date is the date of this online publication. https://www.khouse.org/personal_update/articles/2026/resurrection-sunday

[10] Asserting that Jn 19:35 "the one who has seen has testified" and 21:24 "this is the diciple bearing witness to these things and who has written these things" are claims of authorship is highly debated. Even Raymond Brown—the influential Roman Catholic Johannine scholar who regarded the Beloved Disciple as a genuine eyewitness source—did not conclude that the eyewitness was therefore the writer who composed the Gospel in its present form. Brown wrote that after the Beloved Disciple’s death, one of his disciples collected and edited his teaching into a Gospel, which was subsequently expanded by another editor. Andrew Lincoln goes further than Brown, seeing both texts a literary device. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII–XXI, Anchor Bible 29A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 936, on Jn 19:35; see also Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 369–70. Andrew T. Lincoln, “The Beloved Disciple as Eyewitness and the Fourth Gospel as Witness,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 24, no. 3 (2002): 3–26, esp. 18–24. See also Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Continuum, 2005), 22–25, 479–80.