Why We Should Expect Witnesses to Disagree

I’ve worked more cases involving witnesses than I can even count. A career in law enforcement will put you in direct contact with eyewitnesses on a daily basis, starting with your very first night on the job. After interviewing literally thousands of witnesses over the course of twenty five years, I think I’ve learned something about reliable eyewitness testimony. I want to share three simple characteristics of reliable eyewitness testimony and relate these three characteristics to the Gospels:

Reliable Eyewitnesses Never Agree
In all the cases I’ve ever worked, from simple theft and assault cases, to robberies and homicides, I’ve yet to have a case where the witnesses of the event agreed on every single detail. It’s never happened. I’ve learned that perspective is important, and it’s not just one’s physical perspective that determines what a witness did or didn’t see. When you’re staring down the barrel of a robber’s pistol, you have a tendency to miss certain details that are picked up by the witness who is watching from across the isle of the liquor store. There are many factors that contribute to one’s perception of an event. Physical location, past experience, familiarity with a feature of the crime scene; a witness’ physical, emotional and psychological distinctives play a role in what they see and how they communicate this testimony after the fact. No two people are alike, so no two people experience an event in precisely the same way. If you’ve got three witnesses in a murder case, expect three slightly different versions of the event. Don’t panic, that’s normal. In fact, when three different witnesses tell me the exact same thing, I start to get suspicious.

Reliable Eyewitnesses Raise Questions
As a young, inexperienced investigator, I used to think that an eyewitness would answer all my questions about an event. I wish this were true, but the reality is that for every question an eyewitness answers about what occurred at a crime scene, a new question is often raised. There are times when eyewitnesses even raise more questions than they have answered. I’ve worked a number of cold-case homicides in which an eyewitness account was captured decades ago, at the time of the original investigation. After reading the testimony, I was left with a few troubling questions. How could the crime have occurred like the witness described it? How could the suspect have done what the witness said? There are times when an eyewitness just doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. But after paging through the case file to the next eyewitness statement, the questions raised by the first eyewitness are sometimes answered by the second observer of the event. I call this “unintentional eyewitness support”; times when an eyewitness raises questions that are then unintentionally answered by a second observer. I’ve seen this so many times over the past twenty-five years, that I’ve come to recognize it as a feature of reliable eyewitness testimony.

Reliable Eyewitnesses Are Sometimes Incorrect
There are times when an eyewitness gets something wrong. In fact, I’ve seen this repeatedly over the course of my career. Witnesses are people and people make mistakes. But the fact that a witness might be wrong about a particular detail or element of the crime does not necessarily disqualify them or render their testimony unreliable. If that were the case, we would never be able to prosecute anyone for anything. When examining the reliability of an eyewitness and encountering some factual error, I’ve got to determine (1) if the errant aspect of the statement is relevant to the larger issues in the case, and (2) the reason why the witness got the detail wrong in the first place. If a victim of a robbery misidentifies the kind of shirt the suspect wore at the time of the robbery, I have to ask myself this misidentification makes the victim an unreliable witness. Is there a reason why the stress of the situation may have caused the victim to focus on issues other than the kind of shirt the robber wore? Is the truth about the shirt captured in some other way (like in the surveillance video) that can help us determine the truth of the matter? Does the misidentification of the shirt make a difference to the larger nature of the case? Is the victim accurate on the other more pertinent details of the crime? A witness can be incorrect about a particular detail, yet still be reliable as an eyewitness.

Now let’s take a look at the gospel accounts. Skeptics often cite the variations between accounts as evidence of their unreliability. As a detective who has worked multiple eyewitness cases, I find their variations to be with an expected and acceptable range. And, like other cases involving more than one eyewitness, I find that some gospel accounts raise as many questions as they seem to answer. Interestingly, I also see the expected “unintentional eyewitness support” from one gospel account to another (I’ve written about this in my book); this support is precisely what I’ve seen in cold-case homicides that I’ve worked. Finally, let me say something about inerrancy and reliability. While I believe that the original gospel narratives are inerrant, I don’t need this standard to trust what the gospel accounts have to say about Jesus. Remember, reliable accounts are sometimes incorrect in some particular detail. This does not necessarily disqualify them, especially if the detail is not essential, can be understood on the basis of some additional testimony or evidence, and if the error on the part of the witness can be explained. Inerrancy is not required of witnesses in a court of law, reliability is. With a standard far lower than the gospels possess, the documents can still be considered reliable.

I spent the first nine years of my career investigating crimes as a committed atheist. Even then, I would have approved the notion that witnesses who fail to agree on every detail, raise as many questions as they seem to answer and are inaccurate in some detail of the event, could still be trusted as reliable eyewitnesses. Even my old atheist criteria for eyewitnesses would have been sufficient to make the case for gospel reliability. I now know that the gospels actually exceed what I would require to consider them reliable.

Comments

[Keith from Amish Paradise]

Mr. Wallace, would the red flags go up for you if the witnesses all said the exact same thing? For me, that would be something of significance. Thanks for sharing. Thanks also for your hard work in defending the truth of Christianity.

[WisdomLover]

But the eyewitness testimonies given in the NT are not mere eyewitness testimonies. They are also inspired by God. As such if, in the end, the way they were verbalized contains an error, God has only Himself to blame.

Unless there is a good reason for God to deceive us even as He is revealing Himself to us, we have to proceed on the assumption that what He revealed is inerrant. Not merely reliable.

We do not need to assume that all the hand-copies made through the long years were all perfect copies, because there is no claim of inspiration on the copy process.

Having said that, I don't expect the eyewitnesses to all say the same thing or to answer every question. So the first two points seem correct.

[Sam]

J., do you think the gospels were written by eye witnesses, or do you think the authors relied on eye witness testimony? Because it looks like Matthew and Luke both relied heavily on Mark's gospel (and I suspect Luke used Matthew). If Matthew and Luke were both fresh gospels based on interviewing eye witnesses, it would be surprising that so much of the wording is exactly the same. I think a better explanation is literary dependence.

[WisdomLover]

Historians closest to the events place the historical order just as they are included in the NT...with Matthew first.

Markan priority is based on how cleverly academics read the texts (so-called 'internal' evidence). It usually is with an eye toward making Jesus less divine.

Augustine first introduced the idea that there was a dependence of one on the other, and He saw it as Mark being dependent on Matthew and Luke on Matthew and Mark.

Literary dependence may explain part of what you see in the Gospels, but it is probably a much smaller part than even Augustine imagined.

It's obvious, isn't it, that in some cases, Jesus would have repeated many of the things he said many times, so on reports of such events, you'd expect to get pretty strong agreement even on the assumption of total independence.

The lion's share of the so-called 'triple-tradition' that agrees on all details consists of Jesus' parables and teachings. So does a lot of the 'double-tradition' (found in the academic fever-dream known as the 'Q gospel'). These are the very things you expect Jesus to repeat a lot.

These repeated teachings are things that Matthew and Peter heard so much that they could probably say them in their sleep. Mark also heard these things plenty...the apostles weren't the only eyewitnesses. Mark was also there (assuming that he was the follower of Christ that fled naked when Jesus was arrested). And he had Peter to help him besides. Luke was not an eyewitness, but he spoke to many. And he had Paul who probably was among the Pharisees constantly hounding Jesus, and who, in any case, had a later miraculous interview with Christ to which Peter said he could add nothing.

I'm guessing that a very big part of the dependence argument turns on the data of greatly repeated teachings. Data which is no data, since you would expect strong agreement by all eyewitnesses even on the assumption of independence.

And clearly there were other aspects of the Gospels that truly were independent. Some sections are only included in a single Gospel.

And some sections tell of the same thing, but the details differ.

Luke and Matthew tell completely different (though not incompatible) stories of Jesus' earliest years and lineage, for example. Luke tells of his birth and biological lineage from Mary. Matthew tells of the days before his flight to Egypt and his legal lineage from Joseph.

There are also differences in details in many of the miracles that are described. For example, Jesus healed three blind men near Jericho for example--one on the way in and two on the way out--but no account tells of all three. Luke tells of the one on the way in. Matthew tells of two on the way out. While Mark tells only of the one whose name he knew: Bartimaeus...healed on the way out. What's more, apart from all the blind men saying "Son of David, have mercy on me" (which everyone said...not just blind men near Jericho) the summaries of Jesus' conversations with the blind men were quite different.

Because the details are different critics point to them as 'Bible contradictions' when the mood seizes them. But even though the details are different we are often asked often by the same critics to still count them as 'evidence' of literary dependence. It obviously can't ever be both. It can't even ever be the latter. And it is probably never either.

Of course, Mark and Peter may have sometimes used Matthew to jog their memories, and Luke and Paul may have used both. But much more is made of the synoptic 'problem' than it probably deserves.

[RonH]

But the eyewitness testimonies given in the NT are not mere eyewitness testimonies.

They are not eyewitness testimonies at all.

You cannot have an eyewitness testimony without an eyewitness.

An eyewitness can be cross-examined.

NT writers cannot be cross-examined.

Yet, the eyewitness apologetic persists.

Interesting.

[WisdomLover]

Ron-

You.have.got.to.be.joking.

[Louis Kuhelj]

WisdomLover

The scope RonH uses here is simply limited to court cases, not the broader definition of what constitutes an eyewitness. The essential component of an eyewitness of a court case is that he must actually be available for cross-examination and present what he saw there. RonH is actually correct that there is a difference between an eyewitness of ancient times and that of our time where we have more direct access to the individual in question. But at the same time, he assumes that this difference invalidates written eyewitness accounts as valid on that difference alone. I think this is the misstep he makes. That someone of our time cannot have a heart-to-heart conversation with the individual, does not automatically erase the facts of the individual having witnessed the events he reported on or the scrupulous efforts at accurately recording them for posterity, nor the evidence of their faithful transmission throughout the ages. Though I could be wrong, it seems to do that in the mind of RonH.

[RonH]

Louis,

That the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etc, were not eyewitnesses does not imply to me that these documents get anything wrong.

RonH

[WisdomLover]

Ebenezer Hinkley is said to have given eyewitness testimony regarding the Boston Massacre.

Ebenezer Hinkley is dead.

Ebenezer Hinkley cannot be cross-examined.

So Ebenezer Hinkley was not actually an eyewitness to the Boston Massacre.

In fact, none of the so-called eyewitnesses to the Boston Massacre can be cross-examined, since all of them are dead.

Therefore, there were no eyewitnesses to the Boston Massacre.

Q.E.D.

[WisdomLover]

One 'correction' on the synoptic problem. You can argue that the triple-tradition includes more narrative than teachings. But to do so, you have to include some things that it might be surprising to consider part of a 'tradition'.

For example, early on, Jesus goes into Galilee after John has been arrested. This event is described in Matthew 4:12-16, Mark 1:14 and Luke 3:20 and 4:14-15.

I think you can see just by the verse counts that there is quite a bit of difference between these three passages. And it turns out that the claim of triple-tradition boils down, I kid you not, to the fact that all three use the phrase "into Galilee".

[Darth Dutch]

"But the eyewitness testimonies given in the NT are not mere eyewitness testimonies.

They are not eyewitness testimonies at all.

You cannot have an eyewitness testimony without an eyewitness.

An eyewitness can be cross-examined.

NT writers cannot be cross-examined.

Yet, the eyewitness apologetic persists.

Interesting."

RonH,

By your logic you cannot believe anything that has happened prior to your lifetime, or maybe 50-75 years before that as there will not be any eyewitnesses alive to be cross-examined regarding whatever events are being investigated.

Darth Dutch