Jesus's Unrecorded Dialogues
Explaining the Greek text and its translation
Many of Jesus’s verses in the Gospels are recorded as parts of long monologues. In these monologues, the verses often jump from topic to topic without any apparent connection. In examining the Greek closely, every change of topic is accompanied by linguistic evidence that Jesus was answering a question or responding to a comment, but that the only part of the dialogue that was captured in the Gospels was Jesus’s response, not the question or statement that elicited it.
Unfortunately, many of the signs that would indicate that Jesus’s words were part of a dialogue are lost in English translation. Information that is obvious in Greek, such as whether Jesus is addressing an individual or a group, is unavoidably lost in translation. Other indications are intentionally edited out, perhaps because the translators didn’t want them to confuse modern Bible readers. Ancient readers of the original Greek, would have seen these indications as signs that Jesus spoke as part of an dialogue. They would have accepted that capturing both sides of the dialogue would have been impossible.
The Evidence
There are two general categories of evidence for these unrecorded dialogues that are easy to understand. They both explain Jesus’s jumping from one topic to the next.
Jesus changes from addressing a group to an individual or from an individual to a group based answering a question or comment.
Many of these verses start with “because” or “however” that seem out of place in the context of the previous verse. The “because” indicates that Jesus was answering an question. The “however,” indicates that he was contradicting an statement.
As we will see, when the topic suddenly shifts, one of these types of linguistic features usually accompanies that change. These changes in topic would have been less confusing to early Gospel readers because they would have seen this evidence and assume an question or comment prompted it. In this era, students did not learn from long lectures. They learned from asking questions and listening to the answers.
Groups and Individuals
Jesus often changes from addressing groups to talking to individuals. This is the most obvious evidence in the Greek. This change is invisible to English readers. In Greek, whenever Jesus uses the pronoun “you,” Greek readers can tell if he is addressing a crowd or an individual because the singular pronoun “you” is very different from the plural pronoun. “you.” This can also be seen in the verb endings because plural verb endings are different from the singular.
This change from addressing a group to addressing an individual and back happens throughout the Gospels. It happens perhaps a dozen times in the Sermon on the Mount. The first time is Matthew 5:23:
NIV: Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you,
The topic before this was calling our brothers names, and Jesus addressed the whole gathering. The topic of gifts at the altar is new and addressed to an individual. We cannot see it but the “you,” and “your” words here are all singular. When this change takes place, it usually continues for several verses until the topic is changed again. After this verse, the topic changes from gifts at the altar to court cases.
NIV: Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
This is not only a different topic, but it sounds like this problem belongs to a completely different individual.
“Because” and “However”
These jumps in topic are also often accompanied by signal words. The most common such words are “because” and “however.” In translation, these words are often left out or changed because they seem out of place.
A good example of this are Luke 6:43 and Luke 6:44:
NIV: No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
NIV: Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers.
There are two changes of topic here. Because it lacks a “you,” this could have been spoken to an individual or the crowd. The verses before these two about trees are about seeing a speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye, which was not spoken to the crowd, but to an individual. Nothing about those verses suggests a change of topic to trees. In the second part of the second verse here, we see another change in topic. The statement about grapes, thorns, figs, and briars is unrelated to trees, good or bad.
The evidence is that these changes of topic appear because Jesus was answering questions. Each line here starts with a “because” that is left out of translation. What Jesus’s listeners heard was more like:
Because a good tree is not producing rotten fruit nor again a rotten tree producing good fruit.
Because every tree is recognized from its own fruit.
Because they do not collect figs from thorn bushes, nor do they pick grapes from brambles.
Each “because” line seems to be answering a different question, an initial one and a couple follow-up questions. We can only guess at these questions, but the first might have been about the sources of good and evil. Each question changes the specific focus of the conversation.
We see something similar with the word, “however,” being left out or changed. A “however” indicates that Jesus is contradicting a previous statement, either his own or someone else’s, but we see many places where the “however” appears and there is no such contradiction. The topic of the conversation, however, does change. A good example is Matthew 12:43:
NIV: When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it.
The verses before this were part of a long criticism of the Pharisees. The topic changes here to impure spirits. The signal for this is a “however” that has been edited out. This is the verse that his listener’s heard.
However, when that unclean spirit exits out from this man, it passes through dry places, seeking rest and doesn't discover it.
Notice the verse starts with a “however” as though something is being contradicted, but this is completely unrelated to what Jesus said previously. It does relate to his healing a deaf and dumb man on the Sabbath that was the basis for the Pharisees’ criticism.
Conclusion
People call what is recorded as a Jesus monologue a “sermons” as though Jesus gave sermons like we hear in church today. And yet no pastor would prepare a sermon that jumped from topic to topic without connecting his ideas. It is more interesting to imagine what questions his listeners at the time would have had regarding his statements. Unlike us, they were hearing these ideas for the first time. Jesus’s teachings flowed from their traditional beliefs, but they emphasized very different ideas.