7 Undesigned Coincidences

7

Undesigned Coincidences

Undesigned coincidences have not typically been present in discussions on New Testament reliability even though they have been recognized for years. One of the first publications that focused strictly on undesigned coincidences was by J. J. Blunt in 1847, titled Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings Both of the Old and New Testament: An Argument of Their Veracity. However, undesigned coincidences have recently garnered more and more attention in reliability discussions. They can indeed be a helpful factor to consider because they address issues of reliability from a different angle from any of the ones mentioned thus far. The goal in this chapter is to introduce undesigned coincidences and provide some examples of how they corroborate New Testament accounts.

Before I do this, it is worth noting that undesigned coincidences generally provide zoomed-in reliability perspectives. The reason for this is because they corroborate events that are often isolated to a specific event. However, if a cumulative case is made and a number of undesigned coincidences are found within a writing, this would demonstrate that the author has consistently been reliable at various points. If an author has been reliable where we can verify, then it becomes reasonable to trust the same author in areas where we might not be able to corroborate the accounts. Or, in the words of F. F. Bruce, “Accuracy is a habit of mind, and we know from happy (or unhappy) experiences that some people are habitually accurate just as others can be depended upon to be inaccurate.”

INTRODUCING UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES

So what is an undesigned coincidence? In a recent work on the subject, Lydia McGrew defines them this way: “An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts. Despite their apparent independence, the items fit together like pieces of a puzzle.” The puzzle analogy is particularly helpful. Just as two puzzle pieces connect and bring clarity to the bigger picture, so too do undesigned coincidences bring clarity to the bigger picture of a historical report.

European scholar Peter J. Williams describes them as an agreement between sources of such a kind that renders it “hard to imagine as deliberately contrived by either author to make the story look authentic. Often the agreement is so subtle and indirect that all but the most careful reader are likely to miss it.” The result is that an event reported by sources is considered more likely to be historical because the sources unintentionally corroborate one another.

The reason that undesigned coincidences add to the historical weight of a report is that if an event were fabricated or invented, then it is highly unlikely that there would be an actual coincidence between the two accounts. This is all the more the case when the data or events in question are of secondary importance. Details like this are often included when two different sources write about the same event but with different aims and points of emphasis.

Think of it this way. Imagine you are sharing a story with one of your friends about a car accident you were recently involved in. As you share your story, another passenger in the car comes along and shares many different but complementary details. Now, if one or both of you were inventing details wholesale, what are the odds that there would be any illumination of secondary or tertiary elements? Not very likely, indeed. Thus, as McGrew points out, “Casual comments, allusions, and omissions that fit together are not what one would find in different fictional or fictionalized works written by different people. They are also not to be expected among different legendary stories that grew up gradually long after the events. They are the sort of thing that one gets in real witness testimony from people close-up to real events.”

It is important to note that a single undesigned coincidence would not typically provide a knock-down argument. Instead, undesigned coincidences function best as part of a cumulative case where multiple examples are presented, with the weight of each one adding more and more to the overall argument. Each case will vary in its persuasiveness and effectiveness, with some examples being stronger than others. With this in mind, I can present only three cases here, though several others can be found in the recommended readings below.

WHAT DID HEROD SAY? MATTHEW AND LUKE EXPLAIN

Matthew 14:1-2 says that the words and deeds of Jesus reached Herod. As Herod “heard the news about Jesus,” his response to these reports was, “This is John the Baptist; he himself has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” What is interesting about these two verses is that they state that Herod said these comments to his servants. This leads us to ask, How could Matthew have known these details if Herod reported them to his servants?

One could assume that Herod heard about Jesus from his servants and so his initial reply was to the very servants who told him about Jesus in the first place. This is possible, and if we had nothing else to go on, this would make logical sense of the text. But it raises the question of how Matthew knew what Herod was talking about on any occasion, let alone a discussion that specifically mentions Jesus.

Luke 8:1-3 provides a detail that some, such as McGrew, consider evidence of an undesigned coincidence with the text in Matthew. Luke’s text states that there were some women who were following Jesus. One of these women was “Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward” (Lk 8:3). The wife of Herod’s manager, then, was traveling with Jesus along with the Twelve. In addition to her mere presence, she is mentioned with others “who were contributing to their support out of their private means” (Lk 8:3).

Luke thus provides information about those close to Herod in an entirely different context. The result is that Luke and Matthew illuminate each other in ways that seem highly unlikely to have been contrived in advance. Matthew is the only one to reference Herod’s discussion with his servants, while Luke mentions that the wife of Herod’s manager traveled with Jesus, the Twelve, and many others. It seems incredible to suggest that Luke would have invented his text in order to explain Matthew’s passing comment. Similarly, Matthew does not provide any evidence that he invented his text as a consequence of Luke 8:1-3. The result is that these texts illuminate each other in a way that adds reliability to their reports.

WHY WOULD PHILIP KNOW? LUKE AND JOHN EXPLAIN

In John 6, readers are presented with an account of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. One interesting component of John’s report is that Jesus asks Philip where to purchase bread so they can buy food for the people to eat. In the Synoptic Gospels, a more general picture is presented, with the disciples responding to this issue as a group, but in John readers are given specifics. In John, Philip specifically is identified, is asked, and answers (Jn 6:5-7).

A few chapters earlier, readers were informed, “Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter” (Jn 1:44). So these three are all from the same town. So what? What does this have to do with John 6 and the feeding of five thousand or Jesus’ querying Philip? These are good questions, and this information alone leaves these questions unanswered.

However, the Gospel of Luke makes an interesting comment that illuminates these texts. In Luke 9:10, readers are informed that the feeding of the five thousand occurred in Bethsaida. According to John, this is the town that Philip was from. Luke’s text does not mention that Philip is from Bethsaida, so it is highly improbable that Luke invented Bethsaida as the location of the feeding in order to explain why Jesus asks Philip where to get food in John 6:5.

We might add to this the fact that both Andrew and Peter are also reportedly from Bethsaida, and neither of these two is asked where to get food. One would expect that if John were inventing this report, he would have had Jesus ask Peter where to get the food. Or he could have given a more general description like that found in the Synoptics. Yet this is not what we find. Rather, this undesigned coincidence between these two texts indicates reliability in their reports.

PROCONSULS? LUKE AND TACITUS EXPLAIN

The two previous examples use writings from the New Testament. While this is perfectly legitimate, I do want to present a possible example of how a source outside the New Testament could provide similar corroboration of a New Testament report. We should note, however, that this case is not as strong as the prior two.

In this example, the two sources are Acts, written by Luke, and the Annals, written by the Roman historian Tacitus. In Acts 19:35-40, a riot is breaking out in Ephesus. The city clerk reminds the crowd in Acts 19:38 that if one wants to make a complaint, then “the courts are in session and proconsuls are available.” (A proconsul was a Roman authority to whom a complaint could be taken.) The key feature here is that Luke uses the plural. This is crucial because it was an “elementary and universally known fact” that there was only one proconsul and not multiple proconsuls.

As Craig Keener points out in his massive four-volume commentary on Acts, “It is next to impossible that Luke, as an urban citizen of the Roman Empire, was unaware that Rome assigned only one proconsul per province.” So, again, why does Luke use the plural (proconsuls) here?

An answer may be found in a report by the Roman historian Tacitus. In Annals 13.1, he reports that the proconsul of Ephesus, Silanus, was assassinated and was the first death under Nero. As Keener points out, each proconsul had three deputies, and with the death of the proconsul it would be natural that these three would likely have been filling the late proconsul’s position together. We should point out that these events reported by Tacitus appear to correspond well chronologically with the events Luke reports in Acts 19, the same time when Paul would have been in Ephesus.

The result, then, is that we have two different texts that are clearly not trying to corroborate each other by design. They are, however, illuminating the details and veracity of one another. Luke’s use of a plural of proconsuls would have seemed odd to ancient readers who expected only one proconsul. Nevertheless, his use of the plural could, based on Tacitus’s report, highlight historically accurate details about a plurality of proconsuls because of the extraordinary events that were unfolding at that time.

CONCLUSION

I have only briefly presented three potential undesigned coincidences. Two of them are internal to the New Testament, and one of them uses a source external to the New Testament. As I noted at the outset, each undesigned coincidence’s strength will vary in persuasiveness. Moreover, the force of the overall argument comes in a cumulative case, and these three examples are just a sampling of what such a case would look like. There are several other examples that we could not investigate here but are surely worth considering.

Ultimately, undesigned coincidences add another factor to our case for the reliability of the New Testament. If the New Testament was composed of mass fictions or legends that mutated egregiously over time, then it would be unlikely that we would find these undesigned coincidences between the authors of the New Testament. They thus provide a mark in favor of the New Testament’s reliability.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES

RECOMMENDATIONS

McGrew, Lydia. Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts. Chillicothe, OH: DeWard, 2017.

Wallace, J. Warner. Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2013.

Williams, Peter J. Can We Trust the Gospels? Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018.

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