What did Jesus really say? (And did he speak in red letters?)

For decades I've been reading the four accounts of Jesus' life and teaching - the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. From a young age I've enjoyed reading "red letter" editions of the Bible which use red fonts for the words spoken by Jesus.

This has the effect of lifting those words up a little higher off the page. These red letters communicate to the reader, "Pay attention to these words more than the rest."

But are those the words that Jesus really said?

Here are some thoughts about that issue.

First, Jesus spoke in Aramaic. The gospels were written in Greek. They are translated from the Greek manuscripts into English. Anyone who has ever worked translating from one language to another knows there is NEVER 100% word for word accuracy because different languages work differently than each other. Translators have to come up with different sentences to convey the meaning of the original speaker.

Second, the gospels were not written down as the events happened, when someone MIGHT be able to recollect with 100% accuracy the words of a story or the events of the day or the words of an oral teaching. They were written down decades later (people argue about how many decades, but there was definitely YEARS in between the actual events and the writing of the gospels.)

Third, Jesus did not write anything down himself. We do not have "the gospel according to Jesus". We have 4 differing accounts of Jesus' life and teaching. Every one of the "red letter words" comes to us through the research, life experiences, and memories of another human being.

For just a moment, assume you are fluent in Spanish (maybe you are). Now imagine you heard an inspiring teacher 3 weeks ago tell you a story about the way life works best. Now, you're sitting down to capture that story in English. How much of that would you get "exactly perfectly correct"? How much of what ends up in your English version would be filtered through your own research methods, understanding of the two languages, personal reactions to what you heard or learned, and what you hope your audience will receive from your efforts?

It seems obvious to me every word written down comes through all of those filters. I would naturally remember certain parts of the teaching more verbatim than others. I would re-create certain parts of the teaching in a way that was faithful to the original teaching, but would not pass the "video recording test" of accuracy. Even if it did pass the "video recording test" I would still have to make many decisions to create the best English subtitles, and much would be lost (and added) in the translation process.

So what's my point with all of this? To remind myself to hold loosely to any super strong convictions about specific words and phrases I read in the gospels. To remind myself to look for themes, for big ideas, rather than get lost in the minute details of the words I'm reading. And to encourage other people to do the same.

Many Christian people believe the Bible is unique in all of ancient literature in how it was created. It is a common idea, found in a few verses in the New Testament itself, that the words of scripture came to us through a unique process that can give us certainty about the correctness of every word. As the reasoning goes, the writers of scripture are inspired by God, and thus the words of scripture are "God-breathed". This leads to the very modern conclusion (in the last 150 years) that every word of the Bible must be 100 percent without error and come to us across the millenia and across the translation process 100 percent perfectly.

Although the logic of this argument seems solid, the actual process scripture went through to be created and then eventually grouped together with other literary works (with only 66 included and many other excluded) appears to have humanity involved in every single step. Was God inspiring it all? I believe so. Does that mean the final product we read today is 100 percent accurate and without any errors? No.

So I keep reading the scriptures, and I look for the big ideas, those things that are clear, and I hold loosely to minor thoughts and ideas that only show up here and there. Along the way - I'm going to keep on loving people and loving my Creator.