Undesigned coincidences inspired by the Holy Spirit

An undesigned coincidence occurs when one account of an event leaves out a bit of information that does not affect the overall picture, but a different account indirectly supplies the missing detail, usually answering some natural question raised by the first.

Blunt supplied this definition in his book, Undesigned Coincidence, and provided examples which he argued demonstrated the veracity of the various books of the Bible. According to Blunt, this verse in Luke 9:36 “And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen” prompts the question “Why did they keep silent?” Blunt further suggests that Mark in 9:9 answered the question “Jesus told them to tell no one.”

Do Blunt’s examples of undesigned coincidence provide a working list of one way indicators? It is certainly something worth investigating further.

I understand the purpose of Undesigned Coincidence to be establishing the veracity of the Bible; I do not understand it to providing one way indicators. Nonetheless, Blunt’s undesigned coincidences may be valuable leads for my one way indicator research.

The definition provided by Blunt seems to suggest that one writer intentionally sought to answer a question prompted by an earlier writer. Yet in reading Undesigned Coincidence, Blunt acknowledged that the second writer may not have known he was answering a question. Hence my title: Undesigned coincidences inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Certainly Josephus did not intend to answer questions suggested by Matthew in 2:22 or Luke in 3:14 or 3:2. But there is no question that Josephus is in fact responding to the effectiveness of the NT as a tool in the recruiting of new members of the Way from the ranks and files of Judaism. However the evidence of dependence suggested by Blunt needs to be supplemented by internal evidence from Josephus.

In four examples supplied by Blunt, Mark and Luke seem to be responding to Matthew yet in one example Matthew is responding to Mark and in two other examples Matthew and Luke seem to be responding to John. In three examples Luke (2) and Matthew (1) seem to be responding to John. These comments indicate that Blunt’s examples need to be supplemented by other evidence.
Blunt’s examples, although inconclusive as to one way indicators may be evidence that one or more gospels were rewritten or revised after initially circulating within the communities of the followers of Jesus. It is such possibilities that make the Synoptic Problem appear to be intractable.

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One Way Indicators

If Theophilus is the High Priest to whom Luke addressed his gospel as I have argued in my recent book, Who are Johanna and most excellent Theophilus?: The Irony of the Intended Audience of the Gospel of Luke, then what does this say about early dating of the Gospel? Luke could have written any time between 30 CE and 130 CE but I have argued that Luke wrote to Theophilus while he was serving as High Priest. Marshall has stated “Luke shows a particular interest in Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and Peraea from 4 B.C. until his disposition by Caligula in A.D. 39. Luke 3:19; 8:3; 9:7,9; 13:31; 23:7-15; Acts 4:27; 13:1.” The Theophilus proposal explains this interest. Luke wrote his Gospel during the reign of Herod Antipas. Consequently Luke wrote his gospel between 37 and 39 C.E.

There are a number of reasons why Luke is early and probably is the first gospel written in Greek. I have assembled nearly 100 reasons and probably will add a few more as I organize my thoughts. This list of reasons why the Gospel of Luke should be dated early is really the beginning of an outline for a series of articles on the priority of Luke. Admittedly the Theophilus Proposal is the primary reason for dating Luke early. These articles will address some of the reasons for early dating which are unrelated to the identity of Theophilus.

A one way road sign lets the driver know that on this street traffic moves only in one direction. By analogy, a one way indicator lets the reader know that the indicator demonstrates or illustrates that one document is dependent upon another document. If we know the relative dates of publication of the two documents, it is easy to state that Gospel Luke alludes to the Book of Ezra because Ezra was published earlier than Luke.

However we have not been able to conclusively date each of the four gospels. Therefore we must use one way indicators to assist us but we need to be careful that we have not created circularity. Sometimes, “the evidence from one way indicators is contradicted by linguistic usage.” We will be examining in a series of articles examples of one way indicators from the Gospels that demonstrate Lucan priority.

As an example of the type of argument being presented, consider the following: “The Lucan Jesus does not walk on water.” In our next article, we discuss the priority significance of this statement. This particular argument is not based on linguistic usage or compositional analysis. Therefore it is not likely to suffer from the problem of circularity.

copyrighted 2011