Living in Harmony: A Case Study of Harmonisation Techniques and Weaknesses
The Faith of the Centurion
Matthew 8:5 - 13
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.
Luke 7:2 - 10 There a centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.
Harmonisation by Matt Slick https://carm.org/who - brought - the - centurions - request - to - jesus Who brought the Centurion’s request to Jesus as is depicted in Matthew 8:5 - 13 and Luke 7:2 - 101? It clearly states that the Centurion came to Jesus in Matt. 8:5, but it also says that the Jewish elders came to Jesus. The order of events seems to be that the Centurion first sent the Jewish elders (Luke 7:3). Jesus then agreed to go. Then the Centurion came to Jesus (Matt. 8:5). Jesus walked everywhere he went. Centurions commanded hundred - men groups in the Roman legion. “Such men were prestigious members of a relatively small class governing the military.”(Achtemeier, Paul J., Harper’s Bible Dictionary, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985.) Therefore, the centurion most probably had a horse upon which to ride to and from where Jesus was. If this is so, then he probably returned to his home, checked on the servant, and then sent friends (Luke 7:6) to speak to Jesus and say that he, the Centurion, was not worthy for Jesus to even enter his home. Jesus continued on. Then as Jesus neared the home, the Centurion himself approached Jesus (Matt. 8:8) to tell Him that he was not worthy for Him to enter his house.
My comments and discussionThe CARM article is a perfect illustration of what critics mean when they say harmonisation can become strained, convoluted, or even hermeneutically backwards. It’s not that harmonisation is always wrong - it’s that sometimes the effort required to preserve “no contradiction” ends up doing more violence to the text than simply letting each evangelist speak in his own voice.
Let’s look at why this particular example is often used in biblical‑studies classrooms as a case study in the limits of harmonisation.
It requires inventing events that neither Gospel mentions. To reconcile Matthew’s “the centurion came to Jesus” with Luke’s “he sent elders,” the harmoniser must propose:
The centurion sent elders (Luke)
Then he sent friends (Luke)
Then he personally rode to Jesus (not in Luke)
Then he personally spoke to Jesus (Matthew)
None of this sequence is stated in either Gospel. It’s a reconstruction built only to avoid contradiction. If your interpretation requires adding multiple unmentioned events, the text is no longer leading the reading - the harmonising impulse is.
Matthew and Luke are not trying to report the same event with journalistic precision. They shape stories for theological emphasis. Matthew often compresses stories and has characters speak directly to Jesus to highlight faith and authority. Luke emphasises intermediaries, social structures, and the humility of Gentiles approaching a Jewish holy man. Each version makes perfect sense within its own narrative world. Forcing them into one timeline can erase those distinct emphases.
When someone insists that the Gospel accounts must be reconciled as if they were CCTV footage, they’re applying a modern expectation to ancient texts that simply weren’t written with that aim. The CARM - style defence is a classic example of what happens when that expectation is taken to its logical extreme: the interpreter ends up constructing an elaborate, unmentioned sequence of events purely to preserve literal synchronisation.
A few things become clear when you look at it through a historically sensitive lens. Ancient biography wasn’t trying to be “filmed as it happened”. Matthew and Luke are not journalists. They’re ancient biographers and theologians. They shape stories to highlight themes. They compress or expand scenes. They use representative speech freely. They’re not concerned with whether the centurion physically stood in front of Jesus or spoke through intermediaries. Expecting them to behave like modern reporters is anachronistic.
We might say that we don't know which story accurately depicts events. Did Matthew compress the narrative so it was not what happened literally? Or did Luke adjust it to put the gentile Centurion at one remove from Jesus for his readers even if that was not what happened literally? We don't know.
That’s exactly the sober, historically responsible place many scholars land - not out of scepticism, but out of respect for what ancient texts are and what they’re trying to do. We don’t know which version is “what literally happened,” and the Gospels themselves don’t seem to care about that question in the way a modern historian would.
The question “Which one is literally accurate?” may be the wrong question. It’s a modern question, born of post‑Enlightenment expectations about history and reportage. The evangelists are not competing journalists. They’re theologians, storytellers, and community - shapers. Their aim is not to give us a single camera angle but to give us insight.
If Matthew shows bold Gentile faith approaching Jesus directly, and Luke shows humble Gentile faith approaching Jesus through Jewish intermediaries, then the two portraits together give us a richer understanding of the centurion’s character and of Jesus’ ministry. You don’t need to decide which one “really happened” to receive the theological gift.
Some things are contradictory, but trusting that the authors knew what they were doing has not erased the contradictions; it has transformed them into a doorway to deeper understanding.
I have heard these kinds of difficulty described as “so - called contractions”. Calling them “so‑called contradictions” often smuggles in the assumption that the tension is only apparent, only superficial, only waiting for the clever reader to dissolve it. But once you acknowledge that some things genuinely are contradictory at the level of surface detail, you’re finally free to read the texts as the evangelists actually wrote them, rather than as modern harmonisation expects them to be.
When that attitude about “so‑called contradictions” is coupled with the statement ““The Gospels were intended to be read as history” which is often the case, there is a clear misunderstanding at work between modern and ancient history. It is reading back into ancient texts a modern understanding which simply is not there.
Ancient “history” is not modern “history”. When a modern writer says “history,” they usually mean chronological precision, factual reconstruction, eyewitness verification, consistency of detail, and a single coherent timeline.
Ancient writers — including the Gospel authors — did not share those expectations. Ancient historia meant shaping events into a meaningful narrative, arranging material for rhetorical or theological effect, using speeches, summaries, and compression, prioritising significance over sequence and presenting truth through literary artistry.
The phrase “so‑called contradictions” usually signals a refusal to acknowledge genuine narrative differences, an assumption that ancient authors aimed at literal precision and a defensive posture rather than an interpretive one. But the Gospels do contradict each other at the level of surface detail — order of events, who speaks, what is said, where things happen, how many people are present. These contradictions are not errors. They are the natural result of ancient biographical practice. To deny them is not faithfulness — it’s anachronism.
The evangelists shaped material for theological reasons. Matthew and Luke rearrange the temptations. Matthew may compresses the centurion story; Luke may expand it. John relocates the Temple cleansing. Mark doubles Bartimaeus into two blind men in Matthew. These are not mistakes. They are deliberate narrative choices. To insist they must all be literally harmonised is to miss the artistry.
The Gospels are “history” in the ancient sense — theological biography. They are rooted in real events, shaped by memory and tradition, crafted for communities and arranged for meaning, not chronology.
Calling them “history” is fine — as long as we mean ancient history, not post‑Enlightenment historiography. When someone collapses those categories, contradictions become “problems” rather than “features.”
Eyewitnesses in the ancient world - as described by Luke do not mean eyewitnesses as we would understand it providing material to be presented exactly as it happened. When Luke speaks of “eyewitnesses” (autoptai) in Luke 1:2, he is not describing the kind of eyewitness testimony that a modern historian, journalist, or court of law would expect. To put it bluntly: ancient “eyewitness” does not mean “I saw it with my own eyes and now I will give you a verbatim, chronologically precise account.” It means something far richer, and far less literal.
Ancient historians shaped eyewitness material freely. Writers like Thucydides, Polybius, and Josephus — the gold standard of ancient historiography — routinely rearranged events, composed speeches, summarised long episodes, omitted details, emphasised theological or moral meaning. And they still called their sources “eyewitnesses.” Luke is working in that same world.
Luke 1:1–4 is often read through modern eyes, as if Luke is promising: “I will give you the exact sequence of events as they happened.” But what he actually promises is a carefully ordered account, based on traditions handed down, from eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, so that the reader may have certainty (i.e., confidence, stability). “Ordered” (kathexēs) does not mean chronological.
It means “arranged meaningfully.” Luke is offering interpretive, theological biography, not CCTV footage. It’s not that Luke is unreliable. It’s that he is reliable within his genre, not ours.
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