The Art of Ancient Quotation

The great thing about the New Testament is that if you take all of the controversial passages out or all of the controversial books out (had their been stricter canonization or something like that) then nothing has changed. All of the books are really trying to portray the same Gospel message. You could even take out a whole chunk of the thing and the same principles would still be there in text. I find this amazing by the way.

Same goes for quotations (and translations for that matter). The exact wording is not important to the story of the redemption of God's people, Jesus' triumph over death at the cross. Basically, no matter how you swing it, you can't escape the Gospel in the New Testament.

But check this out. I was thinking about this while reading Luke recently.

Exact quotations don't seem very likely. After all, though we now think the Gospels were written within one generation of Jesus (i.e. the writers would have been able to interview eye witnesses) it's not like they were going to his sermons with pencil and pad like these days. They didn't take their recorder or replay it later that night on the podcast to make sure they got the wording correct. However, what if it were possible that these quotations were exact or even almost exact (at least in the Greek)?

We all know how shocking what Jesus said is to all us here today. And we understand that it would have been more shocking to his audience back in the day. So given the oral customs of the society and the shocking nature of what Jesus said, people may have actually remembered exactly what he said. Furthermore, the Gospel writers may have been able to even corroborate these quotes with other eye witnesses. How rad is that to think about? I think I just might have remembered exactly what the man said if I had been there and heard him speak once. How about that for the providence of God. So maybe all the Gospels have similar quotations and stories and what not because they all interviewed the eye witnesses. Whoa. That would pretty much ruin anyone who doubted the Bible's credibility. Or maybe they are so similar because of Q. Whatever.

Just a provocative thought I had.