Sheshbazzar

He could have easily employed his inhuman magical zombie powers to keep himself levitated just out of their reach.
Or maybe just a touch more of that old thunder, smoke, lightening, and earthquake shit that he was so fond of. That ought to held 'em off

You gotta be shitting me. A three days dead zombie corpse that arises from the grave, can change its appearance at will, and magically appear and disappear, is supposed to not affect the plausibility of this outlandish fairy tale?

Adam

According to John 20:25, Thomas had previously made extravagant demands even to touch nail holes. According to the NJB translation of John 20:17, even Mary Magdalene had touched Jesus, implied by "Do not cling to me".

Lk 23:43 reads "Paradise", not "Heaven". Even assuming that Jesus was still limited after the Crucifixion to being one place at a time, this verse does not necessitate Ascension. According to the Creed, Jesus descended to the Dead, perhaps broadly covering various forms of afterlife, and freeing many. Paradise could be an old good place or the new good "place". These theological nicesities are not integral to textual reconstruction.

arnoldo

Adam, what significance do you place that in John 19:39 Nicodemus has Jesus's body prepared with myrrh and aloes whereas in Mark 16:1 it is the women who bring spices to anoint the body.

Adam

The Passion Narrative source underlying John 19:39 did not include this verse about Nicodemus that was in the source underlying Mk 16:1. The people in the latter did not know what Nicodemus had done or wanted to do more, maybe like bringing flowers more as a ritual than a burial procedure. I didn't deal with this in my posts #1 and #3 because Barker's challenge did not include the preceding days.

John Kesler

Whether Matthew meant that people in addition to the disciples met Jesus in Galilee doesn't change the fact that Matthew 28 clearly includes the disciples among those who saw Jesus, and that this was understood as Jesus' first postresurrection appearance:

The unlikely spin that you propose is that Jesus appeared to the disciples at least three times before this--two visits in Jerusalem a week apart, then another time in Galilee near the "Sea of Tiberias"--before meeting them as narrated in Mathew 28. Meanwhile, the "500 bretheren" and other "brothers" hung out for over a week on this mountain waiting for Jesus. Keep in mind that Galilee and Jerusalem are about 60-70 miles apart. If you say that the Matthew-28 appearance to "the eleven disciples" took place at any time before the Sea-of-Tiberias appearance (John 21), then you must admit that John was wrong when he said that the John-21 appearance was "now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead" (v:14).

arnoldo

Dan Barker's challenge includes the purpose of the women arriving at the tomb. He notes that in Mark and Luke the women came to the tomb bringing spices but in the gJohn the body “had already been spiced.” As per Luke 23:55 the women had already seen Jesus placed in the tomb and would’ve presumably known how he was buried (with spices as per John 19:39 ). If anyone knows the custom of first century jewish burials perhaps they could determine if a body could be “spiced” both before and after burial.

Adam

His Easter Challenge starts with Easter morning, so I admit I paid too little attention to the spices. Specifically I should have continued Mark 16:1 to place in the full rest of the verse, "bought spices with which to go and anoint him." (Merging this in my mind with Luke 24:1, I only had in mind that Mark 16:1 would have been "brought" not "bought.) To reconcile it would seem Luke 23:55-56 meant that the women noticed where Jesus's body had been layed in the tomb, but hurriedly left (before Nicodemus arrived per John 19:39) and prepared spices before Sabbath (sundown Friday) occurred. To reconcile with Mark 16:1 we would assume they had insufficient spices and went and purchased some more a little over 24 hours later. I'm just saying, because the points at issue here are not critical to plausibility--I'm not an inerrantist, but it can be defended here at least.

Adam

Good points, but havn't I already covered all these in the Post #28 you quote, in my #24 (and its links to various posts in
Resurrection@Casey
especially #26, #29, and my longest bolded comment in my Post #1), and in my bracketed notes in my original text in #3 in this Easter Challenge thread? As a side-note (not applicable to Dan Barker's terms as this verse is accepted as textually sound), John 20:14 is assigned by Teeple to his R, the final Redactor. He was not an eyewitness, and just working with this text of gJohn before him, this was the third appearance of Jesus. He was apparently not well informed if he thought there were no other appearances elsewhere. I agree with Teeple in my dim regard for this Redactor. (He is most notable as having written everything from John 21:18 on to the end, probably John 6:51b-59, and lots of interpolations in John 13.)

You disagree. Join the crowd.

James Brown

If we take Mark 16:1-3 at face value, the women get up early, bought spices, and walk to the tomb knowing full well that they won't be able to access the body--meaning the entire trip was pointless. Presumably they would arrive at the sealed tomb, look at the stone, and then go back home. So why did they bother?

It seems as though the omniscient narrator knows something that the characters don't--which is common in fiction.

Adam

Why does anyone visit relatives in a cemetery? They leave flowers, frequently, maybe back then leaving spices was common.
Good idea to look for indications for whether it was fact or fiction. In my Gospel Eyewitnesses thread I came up with seven independent eyewitnesses to Jesus. But was it more likely seven independent fiction writers? Really?

Anyway, they seem to be asking who will move the stone, not whether anyone would be found at all. They may have to search someone out or wait a while. Not a big problem, except as you say, whether it indicates a fictional account.

I'm still waiting for someone to respond to any of my links cited in The Nature of Scholarship #39. I have been presenting plenty of evidence that at least some early sources of the gospels are simple factual accounts of Jesus.