Coincidence II.3: “I Am Among You as the One Who Serves”
The Alleged Coincidence
In this example we return to the foot-washing scene in John. McGrew wants to argue that there is a double coincidence between this scene and Luke’s Last Supper. Earlier she argued that Luke explains Jesus’s foot-washing in John by providing the fuller context: Jesus isn’t washing the feet “out of the blue” but because, as Luke tells us, the disciples disputed about who the greatest is. As we saw, that explanation is implausible and unnecessary. Now she wants to argue that John’s version of the scene explains a detail in Luke’s version.
In Luke, Jesus’s response to the disciples’ dispute is the following speech:
“The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:25–27) 1
McGrew is troubled by the last line. “To what, specifically, does that statement refer?” she asks. “In Luke’s account, Jesus does not do anything conspicuously servant-like, so how is he among them as the one who serves?” 2
The answer is supposedly the foot washing as recorded in John. There we read:
And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. (John 13:2–5)
McGrew concludes:
When Jesus [in Luke] said, “I am among you as the one who serves,” he was not merely making some generic statement about his being a servant-like leader. He was referring to his concrete act of having taken on the garb of a servant and having washed their feet.
Thus, Luke and John coincide because the foot-washing in John is the act of service Luke’s Jesus is referring to when he says, “I am among you as one who serves.”
First Failure: Coincidence Is a Terrible Explanation
McGrew’s explanation—that Jesus in Luke 22:27 is referring to the foot-washing—is preposterous.
McGrew argues that Luke omits the foot-washing because his eyewitnesses sources forgot about the foot-washing and just “told what they remembered”. But it’s simply ridiculous to suppose that all of Luke’s sources remembered that Jesus said “I am among you as one who serves” but didn’t remember that he was talking about washing their feet. And the ridiculousness doesn’t go away if we imagined that one of Luke’s source did tell him that Jesus was referring to the foot-washing. Why, then, would Luke include the statement but not what it’s referring to—especially if the statement is referring to something as extraordinary and meaningful as Jesus’s act of foot-washing?
Simply put, this coincidence is a terrible explanation of the data. A far better explanation for why Luke doesn’t include the foot-washing is that he didn’t know about it or didn’t think it happened. There’s no coincidence here, and hence, no evidence for reliable eyewitness testimony.
Second Failure: Coincidence Is Not Necessary
Not only is the idea of a coincidence between the foot-washing and Jesus’s statement preposterous, but it’s also unnecessary. We don’t need to look outside of Luke to find a plausible candidate of what Jesus is referring to.
McGrew asserts that Jesus in Luke is “not merely making some generic statement about his being a servant-like leader”. But why not? It’s long been noted that Luke’s Gospel emphasizes Jesus’s concern for the poor, sick, and socially outcast. Throughout the Gospel Jesus heals people of disease and infirmities, and twice he brings people back from the dead. 3 He also exemplifies the humility required of a “servant-like leader”: He repudiates wealth and status, and loves and forgives his enemies. Luke’s Jesus, then, is reminding the disciples of how he has behaved while he’s been among them, and that they should emulate him.
In sum, there’s no need to search outside of Luke for the meaning of Jesus’s statement. And since it’s highly unlikely that Luke would have included this statement of Jesus’s if he wasn’t referring to something within his own Gospel, there’s no reason we should look elsewhere for its meaning.
Conclusion: A Failure in Plain View
This alleged coincidence is a terrible explanation of the data, extremely implausible, and completely unnecessary. As a result, it provides no evidence for reliable eyewitness testimony. It’s a stupendous failure.
More Evidence for Oral and Literary Traditions
As in other examples of undesigned coincidences, McGrew passes over evidence that the Gospels are not based on reliable eyewitness testimony but rather oral and literary traditions that have been changed.
Luke’s source for the disciples’ dispute and Jesus’s response to it is almost certainly Mark. Here are Jesus’s words in Mark’s account:
So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45)
Compare these words to those of Jesus in Luke 22:25–27, quoted above. Because there are several passages in Luke, like this one, where the words are so similar to Mark, the scholarly consensus is that Mark was one of Luke’s sources. 4
Luke, however, has made significant changes. One obvious difference is when the dispute occurs: in Mark, it occurs while Jesus and the disciples are traveling to Jerusalem; in Luke, it occurs during the Last Supper. But a more substantial difference is how Luke changed what Mark’s Jesus says about himself and serving. In Mark 10:45, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man and adds that his life is given as “a ransom for many”. However, Luke’s Jesus simply says, “I am among you as one who serves.” There’s no allusion to his death and, more importantly, no conception of Jesus’s death as atonement.
These omissions are hugely significant. This is one of three places where Luke has taken something from Mark but eliminated the reference to Jesus’s death as atonement. The other two are:
- The Last Supper. In Mark, after the disciples drink the wine, Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:24–25; my emphasis). However, Luke’s Jesus simply says, “Take this [the wine cup] and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:17–18). 5 No comment about the atoning power of his blood.
- The Temple Curtain. In Mark 15:37–35, the curtain in the Temple rips after Jesus dies. This symbolizes how Jesus’s death gives people direct access to God and can now have their sins forgiven without the intercession of the High Priest and Temple sacrifices. However, in Luke 23:45–46, the Temple curtain rips before Jesus dies.
And it’s not hard to understand why Luke removed the doctrine of atonement from these traditions: Luke didn’t buy into it. Atonement doesn’t show up anywhere in the Gospel of Luke or its sequel, Acts.
The point of this discussion is that we see Luke (or a storyteller before him) changing traditions about Jesus and the meaning of his death. McGrew might want to argue that these differences just come from Luke’s eyewitness sources, who remember things differently from Mark’s eyewitness sources, but this explanation is highly implausible. These differences are clearly intentional and have a clear theological purpose. They are almost certainly not coming from eyewitnesses whose memories differ; rather, they’re the product of storytellers making theological changes to oral and literary traditions about Jesus.
- Unless otherwise noted, I use the NRSVue for all biblical translations. ↩
- I’m using the Kindle version of McGrew’s book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017), making page numbers useless. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from McGrew in this post come from Chapter II, section “3. ‘I am among you as the one who serves’”. ↩
- The widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11–17) and Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8:40–56). ↩
- Mark was also one of Matthew’s sources. ↩
- Of course, there is a famous textual variant in this passage. Many manuscripts—and modern Bible translations—include the words, “‘. . . which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’” (Luke 22:19–20). I don’t think these words were original to Luke because (1) Luke no where else, in neither his Gospel nor Acts, contains the doctrine of atonement; and (2) it’s harder to explain why scribes would remove these words, but easy to see why they would add them: to make Luke align with Mark’s version and to include the doctrine of atonement. For these arguments, including the argument about the Temple curtain, see Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (HarperOne, 2005), pp. 165–7. ↩