Although not currently featured in the SAB sidebar in Matthew, an objection has been posed by skeptics about a harmonization-difficulty in Matthew 20:29, Mark 10:46, and Luke 18:35. The question basically is this: did Jesus encounter Bartimaeus as Jesus was entering Jerusalem, or while He was leaving?
The verses stack up thusly:
Matthew 20:29 - "And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed Him." (Followed by the account about two blind men being healed.)
Mark 10:46 - "And they came to Jericho. And as He was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside."
Luke 18:35 - "As He drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging."
Matthew and Mark agree that Jesus and Bartimaeus encountered each other as Jesus was leaving Jericho. But what about Luke? There's more than one way to resolve this question.
One way is to observe that there were two cities called Jericho -- the old city, which was something of a tourist trap/landmark, and the new, well-populated city. If Matthew and Mark were referring to Old Jericho, and Luke was referring to New Jericho, then there's no discrepancy in the texts; the entire problem emanates from readers' misunderstanding of which Jericho is meant by the different authors.
That is a possible resolution. (And even the idea that there were several blind men healed on the same day in the vicinity of Jericho is not impossible.) But I think that Luke used a draft of the Gospel of Mark as one of his sources, and I don't see any motive that Luke would have for replacing the Jericho that Mark had in mind with the other one. There's another, and imho better, resolution.
The phrase that Luke uses to begin Luke 18:35 looks ordinary in English, and the Greek words are ordinary too. But Luke used them here in a somewhat unusual way. Jesus, says Luke, "had come to be near Jericho." The Greek term "egeneto" is utilized. It's quite possible to come to be near a city when one is departing from it. And if Luke understood from his sources that Jesus initially left Jericho, and then partly returned to heal Bartimaeus, and then returned altogether after encountering Zacchaeus, it's understandable that Luke would spare his readers such extraneous details and simply begin the pericope at the point where Jesus and Bartimaeus meet.
(In other words, the words rendered "drew near to Jericho" in Luke 18:35 would be better translated as "came to be near Jericho," and are merely an elegant way of summarizing the less elegant (but clearer) contents of Mark 10:46a.)
It may be worth mentioning a third possible resolution. If one posits that each account is condensed, and that Luke places the pericope about Zacchaeus non-chronologically, then each account would describe the following series of events: Jesus enters Jericho, and as He does so, someone informs Bartimaeus that Jesus is passing by. Bartimaeus interprets this to mean that Jesus is passing by the city as a whole, i.e., He will be leaving the same day. So later, as Jesus begins to depart, Bartimaeus is ready, already yelling incessantly, and things proceed from there.
Though this third theory is not as simple as the linguistically based one, it intriguingly explains the detail in Luke 18:39 that "those in the front" rebuked Bartimaeus -- i.e., instead of referring to people in front of Bartimaeus, this would mean that those who preceded Jesus and the apostles in the crowd as they left Jericho were the first to encounter Bartimaeus and rebuke him.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
The verses stack up thusly:
Matthew 20:29 - "And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed Him." (Followed by the account about two blind men being healed.)
Mark 10:46 - "And they came to Jericho. And as He was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside."
Luke 18:35 - "As He drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging."
Matthew and Mark agree that Jesus and Bartimaeus encountered each other as Jesus was leaving Jericho. But what about Luke? There's more than one way to resolve this question.
One way is to observe that there were two cities called Jericho -- the old city, which was something of a tourist trap/landmark, and the new, well-populated city. If Matthew and Mark were referring to Old Jericho, and Luke was referring to New Jericho, then there's no discrepancy in the texts; the entire problem emanates from readers' misunderstanding of which Jericho is meant by the different authors.
That is a possible resolution. (And even the idea that there were several blind men healed on the same day in the vicinity of Jericho is not impossible.) But I think that Luke used a draft of the Gospel of Mark as one of his sources, and I don't see any motive that Luke would have for replacing the Jericho that Mark had in mind with the other one. There's another, and imho better, resolution.
The phrase that Luke uses to begin Luke 18:35 looks ordinary in English, and the Greek words are ordinary too. But Luke used them here in a somewhat unusual way. Jesus, says Luke, "had come to be near Jericho." The Greek term "egeneto" is utilized. It's quite possible to come to be near a city when one is departing from it. And if Luke understood from his sources that Jesus initially left Jericho, and then partly returned to heal Bartimaeus, and then returned altogether after encountering Zacchaeus, it's understandable that Luke would spare his readers such extraneous details and simply begin the pericope at the point where Jesus and Bartimaeus meet.
(In other words, the words rendered "drew near to Jericho" in Luke 18:35 would be better translated as "came to be near Jericho," and are merely an elegant way of summarizing the less elegant (but clearer) contents of Mark 10:46a.)
It may be worth mentioning a third possible resolution. If one posits that each account is condensed, and that Luke places the pericope about Zacchaeus non-chronologically, then each account would describe the following series of events: Jesus enters Jericho, and as He does so, someone informs Bartimaeus that Jesus is passing by. Bartimaeus interprets this to mean that Jesus is passing by the city as a whole, i.e., He will be leaving the same day. So later, as Jesus begins to depart, Bartimaeus is ready, already yelling incessantly, and things proceed from there.
Though this third theory is not as simple as the linguistically based one, it intriguingly explains the detail in Luke 18:39 that "those in the front" rebuked Bartimaeus -- i.e., instead of referring to people in front of Bartimaeus, this would mean that those who preceded Jesus and the apostles in the crowd as they left Jericho were the first to encounter Bartimaeus and rebuke him.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
