The answer to the title of this blog post is, “Depends on which Gospel you read.” It’s an appropriate question to ask as we cuddle up to Palm Sunday this year, because Matthew’s gospel, unlike the other gospels, has Jesus riding in on two, count ’em two, donkeys.
And it’s one of the bulwark examples of why the Scriptures cannot be inerrant nor infallible.
If your church teaches the infallibility or inerrancy of the Scriptures, send your pastor this blog and ask them to defend the position. They will come up lacking; there is no defense.
Ready for the in-depth analysis? Here we go…
Matthew’s “entry into Jerusalem” begins in Matthew 21 and goes through verse 11. And Matthew, as he’s wont to do, likes to cite the Hebrew scriptures in his writing because he thinks it gives him both credence and authority.
And for his accounting of Jesus’ “triumphant entry” he borrows from a few places: Psalm 118 (this is where the Hosanna’s come from), Isaiah 62 (this is about the entry of salvation coming to Zion), and the prophet Zechariah, chapter 9.
It is Zechariah that Matthew struggles with here, and Zechariah is the one who mentions donkeys.
So, read Zechariah 9:9. Zechariah has this long poem, and in it he recounts the Messiah’s entrance into the hearts of the people, and he does this thing in his poem that lots of Jewish poets did at the time, something that I think Matthew doesn’t understand…or if he does, he’s ignoring it.
See, in ancient poetry, especially Jewish poetry, you’d offer up one line of poetry, and then follow that first line up with a second line that reinforced that first line, further emphasizing it. You see this in the Psalms all the time.
And Zechariah does this. He notes that salvation will “ride in on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah is talking about one donkey here, with the second line repeating with emphasis that first line.
But Matthew doesn’t get it.
And so, in Matthew’s gospel, the disciples go and untie two donkeys: an adult and a colt. And they bring them both to Jesus and, the writer says, “Jesus rides them” into Jerusalem.
Now, think about it: this makes no sense. Riding one donkey is hard enough. Can you imagine riding two? And not just two donkeys, but two of differing heights and sizes?!
Impossible.
Why does Matthew do this? Because he really wants to cite Zechariah, and this is what Zechariah writes. And so he paints this picture of Jesus riding two donkeys. He says Jesus rode two donkeys.
And listen folks, this isn’t a case of “well, different people have different perspectives of the same event…” which is what literalists usually argue has happened when the Gospels differ.
It’s clearly not that. It’s clearly wrong! Matthew doesn’t get what Zechariah is writing, and gets it wrong.
To say the scriptures are inerrant would mean to say that Matthew gets it right…but in doing so, you’d say that Mark, Luke, and John get it wrong, which cannot be. To say that the scriptures are infallible would be to say that Matthew understands Zechariah, which clearly he does not.
So what can you say?
You can say that Matthew is really dedicated to the Hebrew scriptures, so much so that he really goes to great lengths to use them as proof texts in his accounting of Jesus’ life, and he sometimes misses the mark.
And that’s OK. It doesn’t have to be inerrant or infallible to hold the truth. Inerrancy and infallibility are brittle things. Poetry is flexible, and this is more akin to poetry than prose, Beloved.
So, did Jesus ride two donkeys or one when he entered Jerusalem? Eh…depends who you ask. The point?
He got there.
Reluctant Xtian 
this came up in our zoom bible study ! Thank you!
Yay! Glad it did.
Obviously, in the translation there was a mistake, while this in no way makes the Word of God errant, we can put our trust in the Scriptures. Looking for a way to discredit the scriptures will only lead the person doing so to confusion and in many cases to leave their faith. For if there is a falsehood or even an exaggeration in the text then who can trust any of it. Trying to find these kind of errors may seem a good task, but I would warn you that taking out the foundation of what one believes because someone finds a supposed error thus nullifying the whole is a dangerous place to be. Let no man think he is wiser than God and or the Spirit of Christ that inspired the original writers to pen their Gospel accounts. Matthew does use scripture to endorse the perspective of Jesus that he is declaring, he presents Jesus as the King of kings or the Messiah and he is writing to the first century Jew who might have received a miracle or at least seen or heard of them but still refused to see that Jesus is God in the flesh. He uses more old covenant verses than the others because he is validating his claim and that Jesus fulfilled them.
Looking at a commentator that I like, I found this explanation and it clears up this supposed contradiction. The fact that Matthew refers to two is correct, he is filling in a little more detail, and that the others omit the momma doesn’t conflict with the truth. if there were two, there was one, and the foal was the one that Jesus rode and the momma was of no consequence to the story so the others did not mention her. We have a similar omission of a second blind man in the story with Bartimeus, Mark only mentions Bartimeus because he is the focus of the story.
Here is Adam Clarke’s explanation to your question.
Matthew 21:7 [And they set him thereon.] Kai epekathisen epanoo autoon, and he sat upon them; but instead of epanoo autoon, upon THEM, the Codex Bezae, seven copies of the Itala, some copies of the Vulgate, and some others, read ep’ auton, upon him, i.e. the colt. This is most likely to be the true reading; for we can scarcely suppose that he rode upon both by turns,-this would appear childish; or that he rode upon both at once, for this would be absurd.
Hi Clint,
Thanks for reading and commenting. It’s clear we don’t agree and that’s ok.
I’m glad you found some commentaries that say things you like. The mental and grammatical gymnastics one has to go through to apologize for the text are pretty far fetched to me.
Scripture isn’t trustworthy because it all agrees or is free of error. It’s trustworthy because it contains Gospel.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
You can reconcile anything with enough complicated fabrications.
The idea that the contradiction is solved because someone today reasoned that the others didn’t talk about the second donkey is in fact, not a solution for the contradiction of two texts saying two different things still exists. Instead you have a fifth gospel, a fabrication written by Adam Clarke.
This is so common in people desperately wanting to believe the authors are all saying the same story. But they simply aren’t. The gospels all have different agendas and points of view about pretty important theological claims.
And your original assertion, that confusion and inquiry are an enemies of faith is very telling. Faith is without evidence, by definition. No text, or contradictions in the text, will remove that faith. If it does, then it was built on sand to begin with. Knowledge is the enemy of faith, for to know, is to have no ability to believe without evidence And yet people still twist themselves into knots about contradictions. Better that they believe their new gospels written by solvers like Adam Clarke and stop questioning what they’ve been told. Better to have faith in Jesus and just acknowledge that their new gospels that synthesize those four old ones is simply the Truth with a capital T.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Dex!
Came across this blog post. Appreciate your thoughts. Have you studied the Greek text? Where does it say that Jesus rode on two donkeys? It doesn’t take grammatical gymnastics to say that Jesus did not ride on two donkeys. The “them” refers to the garments Jesus rode on. Garments is the context and agrees with the word usage and parsing of the Greek.
Thanks for reading and replying, Dan.
I hear you on this. And I’ve heard the argument before.
This argument has been used by some defenders of infallibility, but actually doesn’t hold water. Why would Matthew be sure to note the disciples brought both animals, but then only go to talk about him sitting on the cloaks? That seems like it makes even less story sense than what I’m proposing in this article.
The riding is not on the coats, but on the beasts, and is reinforced by the plain meaning of the text. The writer is not concerned about the coats, but about the fulfillment of prophecy. Saying that the Greek refers to multiple coats instead of multiple beasts ignores what the coats are on and is a neat trick some have used to make the text rhyme with what they want it to say.
Another tactic some have used is to say that Jesus rode the donkey up the hill to Jerusalem, and then switched to the foal in the city, necessitating two beasts.
My point is: we bend over backward to try to make it make sense instead of actually saying what really makes sense, namely, the writer of Matthew is mistaken. In his zealous need to have Jesus be the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophecies he misreads his scripture and imparts pieces into the scene that make no sense.
It’s ok to disagree on this issue, too.
I don’t have interest in defending infallibility here, just the translation of the Greek text. You don’t have to bend over backwards to translate the Greek text. It is not a “neat trick,” but a plain reading of the Greek text. The garments are highlighted in the phrases before and after “he sat on them” because this was a sign of royalty. The people spread their garments on the donkey and colt, as well as the road for him because they wanted him to be their king (consider the story of Jehu in 2 Kings). I agree it is possible that Matthew mentioned the two animals because he wanted to embellish the story to agree more with the prophecy of Zechariah, but the Greek text does not need to say that he road on two animals at the same time.
Again, I appreciate where you are coming from and not wanting to uphold the infallibility of Scripture at all costs. We have one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, not the Bible. Today was Palm Sunday, which is how I found your post, and as a former pastor, I know of other pastors that avoided preaching Matthew because they didn’t want to get bogged down in a debate of why Matthew differs by including two animals instead of one, but I think that’s a disservice to our fellow believers. Let’s get into it and discuss–that’s my view–and not be afraid of the outcome.
For the Greek text,
7 ἤγαγον τὴν ὄνον καὶ τὸν πῶλον καὶ ἐπέθηκαν ἐπʼ αὐτῶν τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ ἐπεκάθισεν ἐπάνω αὐτῶν. 8 ὁ δὲ πλεῖστος ὄχλος ἔστρωσαν ἑαυτῶν τὰ ἱμάτια ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ
They brought the donkey and the colt and they put on them their *garments* and he sat upon *them* and most of the crowd spread their *garments* on the road
Peace to you
I hear you, Dan.
But your parsing of the Greek is missing the forest for the trees. Even if the Greek does refer to the coats, they were placed on the two beasts according to Matthew.
And he sat on them: the coats on the two animals.
One thing we do agree on, though, is that this is certainly a replay of Jehu’s coronation event…hence why everyone was confused when it didn’t end in a regime change.
Again, thanks for reading and commenting. I hear your interpretation, I just don’t think it’s as clarifying as you want it to be.
Brother Matt messes up. And that’s ok. He’s allowed to.
And even if “them” does refer to the coats, who procured said donkey or donkeys? Matthew, Mark, and Luke say that Jesus sent out two disciples to find them. John says that Jesus “found” the donkey himself. Which is correct?
Regarding the entry into Jerusalem, according to Matthew and Mark, in the weeks prior to his death, Jesus had been making his way towards Jerusalem, followed by multitudes of people, traveling from Galilee to Capernaum, crossing the Jordan into Judea, then going on to Jericho, Bethphage, and Bethany. But …
According to John, Jesus raised Lazarus and caused a HUGE sensation by doing so. The Chief Priests and Pharisees plotted to kill him “from this day on.” Jesus stopped traveling openly, went into hiding, and holed up with his disciples in the Judean wilderness in a town called Ephraim.
Which is correct? It can’t be both.
And I can do this all day long………..event after event after event.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Bob.
You are correct: there are many inconsistencies and multiple issues.
Which, to me, is ok.
If our beliefs are held up by such a deck of cards, we must get used to disappointment.
And actually, “getting used to disappointment” might be the best and holy and healthy thing for all of us.
Thanks for reading.
To say that the Greek requires Jesus to be sitting on all the garments on the two animals at once is untrue. Multiple garments are placed on both animals. Jesus does not ride both animals at once. You can believe that is what Matthew says, but not many Greek scholars would agree with you. I know Bart Ehrman likes to mention this story, but I don’t know any other Greek scholars that would agree with him. Do you? I’d be interested in reading their analysis.
Dan, I get that you and I see this differently.
That’s ok by me.
I didn’t say the Greek requires Jesus to be sitting on all the garments on the two animals. The Greek doesn’t require anything. But it mentions they put the garments on the two animals, and that he rode on the garments.
That’s the Greek.
“They put their coats upon them (animals), and he rode on them (coats).”
Where does that say he rode on one animal? You infer it, it helps your argument, and I get it.
It’s fine.
I don’t think we’re going to agree here, but I will say we’re reading the same text and seeing the same words and coming to different conclusions.
I wonder why you think you’re commenting “for fellow believers.” Do you not assume I am? I wonder why.
Ehrman is a great scholar and a wonderful mind. He’s forgotten more Greek than you and I will ever know.
And yes, I’ve seen and heard a number of scholars note this conundrum in the text, including Dr. Fred Niedner who has written extensively on the text. And yes, there are others who don’t apologize for Matthew (as you do), but instead make the case that Matthew is trying to point out that Zechariah is correct…but gets his scripture wrong.
The Greek here is not clarifying in the way you want it to be.
The Messiah did enter Jerusalem Two Times on a donkey. 1st time humble and lowly as a 40 day old infant. Then the last time as a grown man. Single donkey first time. Two donkeys second time to fulfill COLT. So mother had to be present. They (Disciples) set him (Jesus) on them (the clothes). Not both mother and colt. The Bible I read has no errors. Only man errors.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Nobody.
It’s clear we disagree. I get your poetic approach, but this doesn’t hold up to either scholarly or plain reasoning scrutiny.
Appreciate you reading.
Big words. Without your scrutiny. So let’s have it. Or are you just buying time.
If your church teaches the infallibility or inerrancy of the Scriptures, send your pastor this blog and ask them to defend the position. They will come up lacking; there is no defense..Tim don’t mislead weak people in faith.
Hi Nobody,
It’s ok. We disagree.
You’re not welcome to comment on my work, and use my first name, when you sign yours “Nobody.”
I’m not misleading in the least here. And I’m pretty sure folks who think about things without swallowing ideas hook, line, and sinker aren’t the “weak” ones.
Thanks for reading.