Chapter 5: HANG ON EVERY WORD
Chapter 5
Principle #5:
HANG ON EVERY WORD
After an exhausting day of interviews, we were really no closer to having a suspect in view. We were still looking for a trailhead, a direction that would lead us to the suspect who killed a beautiful young woman in our city in 1981. We managed to locate all the men and women who had been suspected of this crime many years ago and arranged interviews with them. Eight hours into these meetings, I was still undecided about who might be the most likely candidate for the murder. Then Scott Taylor said something that caught my attention.
Scott dated the victim about one year prior to the murder. He had been interviewed back in 1981, along with many other men who dated or knew her. The original investigators had been unable to single out any one of these men as a primary suspect. Today, Scott said something that seemed unusual. It wasn’t anything big. In fact, my partner didn’t catch it at all.
We asked each candidate how he or she “felt” about the victim’s murder. We were careful to ask the question the same way each time we asked it; the responses were important to us as we tried to understand the relationships between the potential suspects and the victim. One responded, “I’m shocked that someone could have killed her.” Another told us, “It’s tragic; I hope you guys catch the killer.” A third said, “Although we had problems, I was devastated when I learned about it.” Scott said something very different.
“Let me ask you, Scott, how did you feel about her death? Did you have any feelings about it one way or the other?” I asked him casually, hoping to gauge his response.
Scott paused for a second, choosing his words. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and said, “Well, I was sorry to see her dead, you know. We didn’t always get along, but it’s never good to see anyone die.”
Of all the possible responses that Scott could have offered, this one struck me as odd and a bit telling. It may have simply been a figure of speech that was common to Scott—I would have to interview him more thoroughly to see if I could provoke a similar response about something else—but it was interesting that Scott’s first reply to our question was that he was “sorry to see her dead.” We knew the killer stood over the victim’s body and made sure she was dead by nudging her. It could reasonably be said that the killer “saw her dead” prior to leaving the scene. Was Scott inadvertently telling us something about his involvement in this crime?
Forensic Statement Analysis
It would be another year before we would complete our investigation. Ultimately, we learned a lot more about Scott’s relationship with the victim, and we eventually determined that he killed her because he didn’t want anyone else to date her following their breakup. We discovered a large amount of circumstantial evidence that came together to make our case. Scott’s statement about “see[ing] her dead” pointed us in his direction and was eventually used in court (along with everything else we learned) to convict him. Was this statement enough, on its own, to make our case? Of course not. But it was consistent with Scott’s involvement and truly reflected the way he felt in the moments following the murder.
Scott’s case taught me the value of paying close attention to every word a suspect might offer. We all choose the words we use. Sometimes we choose as a matter of habit. Sometimes we choose words that reflect, either consciously or subconsciously, the truth about how we feel or the truth about what really happened. I’ve learned to hang on every word.
THE ART OF FORENSIC STATEMENT ANALYSIS
In my first years as an investigator, my department sent me to a number of classes, seminars, and training exercises to improve my skills. One of these classes was a course in Forensic Statement Analysis (FSA). There I learned to refine my ability to hear and interpret every word offered by a suspect in a case. I began to employ FSA techniques almost immediately. I routinely asked suspects to write down what they did back on the day of the murder, accounting for their activity from the time they got up in the morning to the time they went to bed. I provided each suspect a blank piece of lined paper and a pen. Any alterations in their statement would have to be scratched out, and as a result, I was able to see what they initially wrote and where they were uncomfortable with their original choice of words. I would then examine this statement, asking several important questions. What kinds of words did the suspect use to describe the victim? Does the suspect ever inadvertently slip from the present to the past tense, giving away his or her presence or involvement at the scene of the crime? Does the suspect compress or expand the description of events in order to hide something or lie about how something occurred? Does the suspect over- or underidentify the victim in an effort to seem friendlier or disinterested in the victim? In essence, I examined every word to see if it provided any clue related to the suspect’s involvement in the crime.
Let me give you an example. Imagine that we asked a suspect about his activity last night with his wife (who is now the victim of a murder). In describing what happened, the man responded:
“I took Amy, my beautiful wife of thirty-one years, out to dinner and a movie.”
I’ve already learned something about their relationship in just this one sentence. Notice that the suspect told us his wife’s name, and was apparently proud enough of her (or their relationship) to mention how long they had been together. Notice also that the suspect used the possessive expression “my beautiful wife” when he could easily have described her in some other way. Imagine, for example, if he had said this:
“I took my wife out to dinner and a movie.”
While he still used a possessive expression (“my wife”) in this response, he did not describe her as beautiful, and he reserved the information about her name and the length of their relationship. Maybe he’s a private person who was uncomfortable with revealing personal details. Maybe he was not as proud of his wife or wanted to distance himself from her. We’d have to spend some time with him to learn more. Let’s now imagine that he said this in response to our questioning:
“I took the wife out to dinner and a movie.”
The suspect dropped the possessive language and described his wife as “the wife.” Hmm. Why would he do that? Maybe this was just a figure of speech that he always used in describing anyone he had a relationship with, whether good or bad. Maybe he was distancing himself from his wife for some reason. Once again, we’d have to investigate this further. Finally, let’s imagine that he said something like this:
“I took the old lady out to dinner and a movie.”
What Is the Forensic Statement Analyst Trying to Achieve?
Here, the suspect may simply have been using a figure of speech that was common to his region or his culture or even his family. He might, however, have been revealing something about his feelings toward his wife. He did not use possessive language, he gave us very little information about her, and he described her in a less-than-flattering manner. We would have to look at other areas of his statement to see if he used similar language when describing others or if he reserved these kinds of words for his wife alone. In any case, his use of words told us something important.
Clearly, this sort of word examination is more an interpretive art than a hard science, but the more we understand the importance of words, the better we become at discerning their meanings. Remember, all of us choose the words we use, and we’ve got lots of words to choose from. Our words eventually give us away.
THE FORENSIC GOSPELS
I had been interviewing and studying suspect and eyewitness statements for many years before I opened my first Bible. I approached the Gospels like I would any other forensic statement. Every little idiosyncrasy stood out for me. Every word was important. The small details interested me and forced me to dig deeper. As an example, the fact that John never mentioned the proper name of Jesus’s mother (Mary) was curious to me. In his gospel, John repeatedly referred to Mary as “Jesus’s mother” or “the mother of Jesus” but never referred to her by name (as did the other gospel writers). Why would this be the case?
The answer might be found in the nineteenth chapter of John’s gospel when Jesus entrusted Mary to John at the crucifixion. Jesus told John that Mary was now his mother, and He told Mary that John was now her son. John took Mary and cared for her (as he would his own mother) from this point on. Writing the gospel of John many years later, it just may be that John was uncomfortable calling his own mother by her formal name. I’m sure by this time in his life, John was referring to Mary as “my mother.” It doesn’t surprise me then that John would hesitate to call his adopted mother by her proper name in the gospel.
The more I read the Gospels, the more interested I was in taking a forensic approach in an effort to read between the lines of the gospel writers. My interest reached its peak in the gospel of Mark.
One of my Christian friends told me that Mark’s gospel was really the eyewitness account of the apostle Peter. The early church seemed to agree. Papias (ca. AD 70–ca. 163), the ancient bishop of Hierapolis (located in western Turkey), claimed that Mark penned his gospel in Rome as Peter’s scribe. He reported that “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ.”21 Irenaeus (ca. AD 115–ca. 202), a student of Ignatius and Polycarp (two students of the apostle John) and the eventual bishop of Lugdunum (now Lyon, France), repeated this claim. He wrote, “Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter.”22 Justin Martyr (ca. AD 103–ca. 165), the famous early church apologist from Rome, also mentioned an early “memoir” of Peter and described it in a way that is unique to the gospel of Mark.23 In addition, Clement of Alexandria (ca. AD 150–ca. 215), the historic leader of the church in North Africa, wrote that those who heard Peter’s teaching “were not satisfied with merely a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, who was a follower of Peter and whose Gospel is extant, to leave behind with them in writing a record of the teaching passed on to them orally.”24 These early church leaders and students of the apostles (from diverse geographic regions) were “closest to the action.” They repeatedly and uniformly claimed that Mark’s gospel was a record of Peter’s eyewitness observations. But could a forensic statement analysis of the gospel of Mark verify these claims?
As I began to study Mark’s gospel forensically, I observed a number of interesting anomalies related to Peter. These peculiarities seemed reasonable if Peter was, in fact, Mark’s source for information. Let me share some of them with you.
MARK MENTIONED PETER WITH PROMINENCE
Peter is featured frequently in Mark’s gospel. As an example, Mark referred to Peter twenty-six times in his short account, compared to Matthew, who mentioned Peter only three additional times in his much longer gospel.
MARK IDENTIFIED PETER WITH THE MOST FAMILIARITY
More importantly, Mark is the only writer who refused to use the term “Simon Peter” when describing Peter (he used either “Simon” or “Peter”). This may seem trivial, but it is important. Simon was the most popular male name in Palestine at the time of Mark’s writing,25 yet Mark made no attempt to distinguish the apostle Simon from the hundreds of other Simons known to his readers (John, by comparison, referred to Peter more formally as “Simon Peter” seventeen times). Mark consistently used the briefest, most familiar versions of Peter’s name.
MARK USED PETER AS A SET OF “BOOKENDS”
Unlike in other gospel accounts, Peter is the first disciple identified in the text (Mark 1:16) and the last disciple mentioned in the text (Mark 16:7). Scholars describe this type of “bookending” as “inclusio”26 and have noticed it in other ancient texts where a piece of history is attributed to a particular eyewitness. In any case, Peter is prominent in Mark’s gospel as the first and last named disciple.
MARK PAID PETER THE UTMOST RESPECT
Mark also seemed to respect Peter more than any other gospel writer did; he repeatedly painted Peter in the kindest possible way, even when Peter made a fool of himself. Matthew’s gospel, for example, describes Jesus walking on water and Peter’s failed attempt to do the same (Matt. 14:22–33). In Matthew’s account, Peter began to sink into the sea; Jesus described him as a doubter and a man “of little faith.” Interestingly, Mark respectfully omitted Peter’s involvement altogether (Mark 6:45–52). In a similar way, Luke’s gospel includes a description of the “miraculous catch” of fish in which Peter was heard to doubt Jesus’s wisdom in trying to catch fish when Peter had been unsuccessful all day. After catching more fish than his nets could hold, Peter said, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:1–11). Mark’s parallel account omits this episode completely (Mark 1:16–20). While other gospels mention Peter directly as the source of some embarrassing statement or question, Mark’s gospel omits Peter’s name specifically and attributes the question or statement to “the disciples” or some other similarly unnamed member of the group. When Peter made a rash statement (like saying that Jesus’s death would never occur in Matthew 16:21–23), the most edited and least embarrassing version can be found in Mark’s account (Mark 8:31–33). Over and over again, Mark offered a version of the story that is kinder to Peter.
MARK INCLUDED DETAILS THAT CAN BEST BE ATTRIBUTED TO PETER
Mark alone included a number of seemingly unimportant details that point to Peter’s involvement in the shaping of the text. Mark alone told us that “Simon and his companions” were the ones who went looking for Jesus when He was praying in a solitary place (Mark 1:35–37). Mark is also the only gospel to tell us that it was Peter who first drew Jesus’s attention to the withered fig tree (compare Matt. 21:18–19 with Mark 11:20–21). Mark alone seemed to be able to identify the specific disciples (including Peter) who asked Jesus about the timing of the destruction of the temple (compare Matt. 24:1–3 with Mark 13:1–4). While Matthew told us (in Matt. 4:13–16) that Jesus returned to Galilee and “came and settled in Capernaum,” Mark said that Jesus entered Capernaum and that the people heard that He had “come home” (see Mark 2:1). Mark said this in spite of the fact that Jesus wasn’t born or raised there. Why would Mark call it “home,” given that Jesus appears to have stayed there for a very short time and traveled throughout the region far more than He ever stayed in Capernaum? Mark alone told us that Capernaum was actually Peter’s hometown (Mark 1:21, 29–31) and that Peter’s mother lived there. Peter could most reasonably refer to Capernaum as “home.”
MARK USED PETER’S ROUGH OUTLINE
Many scholars have also noticed that Peter’s preaching style (Acts 1:21–22 and Acts 10:37–41, for example) consistently seems to omit details of Jesus’s private life. When Peter talked about Jesus, he limited his descriptions to Jesus’s public life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Mark also followed this rough outline, omitting the birth narrative and other details of Jesus’s private life that are found in Luke’s and Matthew’s gospels.
Mark used specific titles to describe Peter, gave him priority in the narrative, uniquely included information related to Peter, and copied Peter’s preaching outline when structuring his own gospel. These circumstantial facts support the claims of the early church fathers who identified Peter as the source of Mark’s information.
By hanging on every word, we were able to construct a reasonable circumstantial case for the gospel of Mark as an eyewitness account. When combined with the testimony of the early church, this evidence becomes even more powerful.
A TOOL FOR THE CALLOUT BAG, A TIP FOR THE CHECKLIST
Keep this principle in mind as you gather the tools in your callout bag and make your own investigative checklist. By paying close attention to the words witnesses use, we can learn a lot about the reliability and legitimacy of their statements. It’s been fashionable recently to question the authenticity of the Gospels and the claims of the early church fathers related to their authorship. Were the Gospels intentionally misattributed to the apostles or their associates? Was there a conspiracy of some sort to make the Gospels seem authoritative? The forensic internal evidence of language can help us verify the claims of the early church related to these texts. The specific words used by the authors can teach us more than you might previously have thought possible. While it’s been popular in the twenty-first century to try to cast doubt on what was so certain to those in the first and second centuries, thoughtful consideration of the words themselves will verify many of the claims of the early church leaders. We need to do our best not to trust others (including me) for this careful analysis. Instead, read the Gospels for yourself and examine every word. We each have the obligation to do the heavy lifting for ourselves.
I recognize that many of us, as Christians, are hesitant to treat God’s Word as though it were a suspect or eyewitness statement that needs to be picked apart forensically. It almost seems to disrespect the holy nature of the text. I’ve even known brothers and sisters in the faith who were hesitant to write on the pages of their Bibles out of love and respect for the Word. I certainly understand this kind of reverence, and I also understand that it’s easy for us to leave this kind of analysis to experts in the field. But you’ll be amazed at how rich and deep your faith will become as a result of careful analysis and study. Some of us don’t think we have enough training or experience to be able to examine the language of Scripture. But imagine for a minute that one of your sons wrote you a long letter describing something important to him. As an interested reader, you would find yourself intuitively measuring his choice of words. You would inevitably “read between the lines” and find yourself gleaning far more from the letter than the simple content intended. We all have enough expertise to begin to question the use of specific words and develop a richer understanding of the biblical text if only we will become interested readers of Scripture. There are a number of reliable experts in the field who can help us sort out the language. We simply need to raise the bar on our approach to the biblical text. Yes, it’s hard work, but it’s our duty as ambassadors for Christ and as defenders of the faith.
CASE NOTES
21. Papias, quoted in Eusebius, “Church History,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wallace (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 172.
22. Irenaeus, quoted in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers—Justin Martyr—Irenaeus (Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1885), 414.
23. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (Wyatt North, 2012), Kindle edition, Kindle locations 2349–2351.
24. Clement of Alexandria, quoted in Eusebius, “Ecclesiastical History,” The Fathers of the Church: Eusebius Pamphili, Ecclesiastical History Books 1–5, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1953), 110.
25. Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Palestine 330 Bce – 200 Ce (Philadelphia: Coronet Books, 2002), 91.
26. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), Kindle edition, Kindle location 1938.