Why Didn't All The Gospels Say The Same Things

One question that I ask myself and often hear being brought up as a point made by the skeptics is why do only some (or just one) of the Gospels (The Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) mention a particular fact or occurrence while the others omit them? Why do the Gospels have so many areas of silence among them? If something was so important for one to mention it, wouldn't all of them want to mention it? Don't these discrepancies between the books mean one or more of the authors made these stories up?

For example, John's lack of mention of the darkness at the crucifixion or Matthew's report of an earthquake. Even the miraculous Christmas story is missing from some of them! There are many other examples like this.

I recently came across an interesting article that sheds some light on at least one reason why this occurred, and it is one I never would have thought. The cost and size of paper. In short, that's what it boils down to.

Today, because paper is so cheap and plentiful, we don't think of it as something that would be hard to come by, or expensive to purchase. But back in the first century, this was not true.

Their "paper" was either papyrus or parchment and was provided not as individual, loose leaf, pages like today but as scrolls. In fact, the typical book format that we know of today (coined "codex") was not widely used until Christians began using that format almost exclusively as they copied the New Testament documents and bound them together (the birth of the Bible as we know it).

These scrolls were expensive because they were labor intensive to make. In fact, frugal scribes would often reuse parchment rather than make or purchase new parchment by erasing and writing over top existing ones - this was so common, that these documents have their own name - they are called palimpsests. However, it is more likely that the original New Testament documents were written on papyrus scrolls (which may be one reason why so little documents from the first century are extant - because papyrus degraded faster than parchment). That said, a papyrus scroll was still considered expensive (a roll of papyrus could cost the equivalent of one or two days' wages)

Scrolls were also limited in size. While technically you could have any length of scroll by simply adding on to the end of it, in practice "the length of a papyrus roll was limited by considerations of convenience in handling it; the normal Greek literary roll seldom exceeded 35 feet in length." ("The Text of the New Testament; Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration", Metzger, pages 11-12). Papyrus sheets were roughly no more than 15 inches high by 9 inches wide, and a standard scroll consisted of 20 sheets pasted together (ibid, page 7). This amounts to roughly no more than 20 sheets of today's standard size loose leaf paper (single sided!).

Given those two limitations, the authors of the Gospels had to make very important decisions. What did they want to say in the limited space they had to say it? I'm sure they wanted to limit their writings to a single scroll if they could help it because the generations beyond that would want to preserve the work would have to buy as many scrolls as the original when they make copies. In these early times, if you wanted your work to disperse among many people, limiting the cost of reproduction was a wise move.

Notice one historical account that is mentioned in all four of the Gospels - the resurrection of Jesus! At the core of Christianity is the resurrection - without it, Christianity is nothing. As Paul says, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain." (1 Corinthians 15:14) Therefore, room had to be set aside on those scrolls for something so central to Christianity. If it meant something else had to be omitted, so be it.

So all four have the resurrection. But what to write on the rest of the scroll? The miracles? His parables and teachings? The Christmas story? Jesus' lineage? Each author had to decide what his theme to the narrative was going to be - what did he want to get across. It isn't surprising that they may have included common things but departed amongst each other in different ways. And they only had so much space on a scroll to do all of this, so they couldn't put down everything. In fact, John laments this fact at the end of his book, when he says "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." (John 21:25)