I wanted to share another great quote from Wright’s “Surprised by Hope,” this time on the apparent differences between the Gospels. Do these differences show an inconsistency or do they actually point to the authenticity of the Gospels? Before I get to the quote, I want to remind everyone that N.T. Wright will be on The Colbert Report tonight. Should be interesting!

“… I conclude this first section of the chapter eith a proposal that it is far, far easier to eblieve that the [Gospel] stories are esentially very early, pre-Pauline, and have not been substantially altered except for light personal polishing, in subsequent transmission or editing. Yes, they show signs of the theological interests of the different evangelists: Matthew’s story of the resurrection emphasizes typically Matthean themes, and so on. But this is like what you get when different artists paint portraits of the same person. This painting is certainly a Rembrand; that is indubitably a Holbein. The touch of the individual artist is unmistakable. And yet the sitter is fully recognizedable. The artists have not changed the color of her hair, the shape of his nose, the particular half smile. And when we ask why such stories, so different in many ways and yet so interestingly consistent in these and other features, could have come into existence so early, all the early Christians give the obvious answer: something like this is what happened, even though it was hard to describe at the time and remains mind-boggling thereafter. The stories, though lightly edited and written down later, are basically very, very early. They are not, as has so often been suggested, legends written up much later to give a pseudohistorical basis for what essentially was a private, interior experience.” (pg. 57)