Jeff,

 

Re: "Doesn't this assume..."  No.  I'm not claiming that the authors always had exhaustive knowledge or believed that they did.  Therefore I'm not claiming that whenever two parallel accounts describe chronological events differently (one account adding an episode that is unmentioned in another, for example), it is always the case that the authors therefore would have disagreed with and rejected one another's accounts.  That would be an extreme and unreasonable position: because in our experience people never have exhaustive knowledge about events nor generally do they think that they do - so when presented with accounts not identical to their own, people are generally willing to accommodate them within their own - within limits, that is, and there is the rub.  For when a parallel account B does not just include additional episodes or details that are complementary with one's own account A, but instead (or additionally) includes episodes or details that are in tension, or even arguably contradictory, with A, then it is more likely that one will take issue with B rather than simply incorporate it into one's own A.  So if we see parallel accounts that are sufficiently in tension with one another due to whatever uncomplentarity in detail, it is reasonable to conclude that the authors likewise would have disagreed with one another as well, for otherwise their accounts wouldn't be so much in tension.

 

As an example, if you and I both give an account of a car crash at a traffic intersection, and your account mentions the car having run a red light when entering the intersection, while my account just mentions the car having sped into the intersection - here we have a case of complementarity in detail.  The harmonization is that the car ran a red light; and this is an acceptable harmonization because it isn't significantly in tension with either account: it is not in tension at all with the first account, and it isn't significantly in tension with the second account because it only adds a detail which does not inherently clash with any other information given in the second account, and which could readily have been overlooked by the observer or by those handing down the story.

 

But if your account describes the car subsequently overturning in the intersection and coming to a stop, while mine describes the car driving off a cliff and exploding on impact - here we have a case of significant tension in detail, because the fate of the car is a major detail and the two fates are so different from one another.  Yes, it is possible to harmonize the accounts as follows: the car overturned in the intersection, slid off the road and over a cliff, exploded on impact at the bottom of the cliff, and then came to a stop.  But this is not (to me) an acceptable harmonization because it provides a solution that clashes with both accounts (especially the first) by postulating a bizarre occurrence (interweaving all the details from both accounts, but itself described in whole in no account) in just that area of the story - the dramatic fate of the car - which should have been most memorable.  If either author had known that this harmonization was the real story, or even felt that they had gaps in their knowledge about the fate of the car, then surely neither author would have written their account with the subset of details they gave.  Nor would you or I have written our accounts in such unhesitating, closed and assured manner, as if we each believed we ourselves knew enough about what actually happened to believe that our's was the whole story.

 

To bring us back to the topic, I believe that some (by no means all) of what passes for harmonization between parallel biblical accounts is construction, in this way, of hypothetical scenarios that one or another author (at least) would probably not have accepted or affirmed as true.  Now, this in itself is not a problem for me - in my own approach to the Canaanite genocide, after all, I take a view that the Israelites, including the authors of Numbers and Joshua, would not have accepted as true.  But it is a problem for anyone holding to inerrancy and verbal plenary inspiration, whose apriori doctrine requires them to make everything in scripture mutually consistent and cross-supporting.  And since harmonization is largely undertaken to satisfy the inerrantist crowd, what this means, to my mind, is that harmonization simply does not always work: it does not always give us an understanding that we can then confidently affirm as inerrantly true, eg "what really happened" or "what the real state of affairs is".  Sometimes it works - in fact in varying degrees it often works - but not always, to my mind.

 

As for Christ and the Mosaic law on divorce: in Matthew 19:8 Jesus clearly states that the Mosaic law was given "for your hardness of heart", and then he goes on to give a clearer understanding of God's opinion of divorce.  That is, Jesus says the Mosaic law on divorce was not what God really wished for the Israelites as his best, but was rather a step along the way, a condescension to them at the time, due to their immaturity in coming to know God's righteousness.  So Moses gave the Israelites this law and God permitted it (though grieved by it) out of accommodation.  It seems pretty straightforward to me.  And perhaps accommodation is at work to some extent in the Canaanite genocide accounts as well: the Israelites slaughtered their neighbors, and God permitted it (though grieved by it) out of accommodation - in fact turning their evil to what good could be made of it, by later appropriating the story to teach faith lessons about such things as the abhorrence of Canaanite religious practice, the need for separation from evil, the need for obedience to God, and/or what-have-you.

 

Scott