Adam

Strike one. I needn't even debate against such a feeble swing.
Next?

Toto

Stop pretending that you have actually made a case.

Explain whether the tomb was open or not when the women arrived, and how you reconcile the accounts.

Did an angel of the lord/earthquake open the tomb while the women were there, or did they find it open?

In Matt 28, the women arrive, then there is the earthquake that opens the tomb and scares the guards, and an angel speaks to them.

In Mark 16, the tomb is already open, and there are no guards, and only a young man.

:huh:

John Kesler

John's gospel records post-resurrection appearances of Jesus:

Notice that John 21:14 explicitly says that the appearance by the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee is the third appearance of Jesus, and this one occured over a week after the resurrection, since we are told that the second one was a week after the first. But what about the appearance in Matthew 28, which is clearly intended by that author to be the first post-resurrection appearance of Jesus?

Adam

Good points, but my "footnotes" [the brackets] explain that I already saw this objection. John 21:14 can be counted as the third time in John, or the first appearance where Thomas was not present could be dropped from the count. Another solution would be to place John 21 before Mt 28:16-20, because only seven apostles are present. The bigger picture is to regard the Matthean appearance in Galilee as the main one not limited to just eleven people, but to great masses of disciples (500 per Paul) for perhaps an extended time, presumably having started before the apostles arrived (the appearance to the 500,to James).

In Mt. 28:9 Jesus tells the women to tell his brothers to go to Galilee. This means that Jesus's earthly brothers would only see him in his main appearance, the events of I Cor 15 and Mt 28:16-20. This current thread of mine is an offshoot of my discovery of the importance of this verse in that other thread. See the OP (largest bolded comment by me) and post #26 and #29 in Resurrection@Casey
Good toss, Toto. Ball One.
I'm quite aware of the difficulties you bring out from gMatthew, which is hard to reconcile with the others. I have always taken a dim view of gMatthew as prone to reliance on hearsay. But it can be worked in. Kingsley even keeps sequential order by placing Mt 28:1 as a separate visit just before sundown on Saturday. By my order placing Mt. 28:2-4 ahead of 28:1, the questions you raise are not a problem. In no place is it said that the tomb was closed when the women arrived. The opening had already occurred in 28:2-4. As in my Post #1. But since I had to move 28:1, that gets you a ball, not a strike.

John Kesler

John 21:14 says that the preceding appearance was the third one of Jesus. To argue that it's only the third one that John knew about is to admit that John was wrong. Is that what you are saying? John also counted the appearance in which Thomas was not there as one of the three. Was he wrong about this?

To construe the appearance narrated in Matthew as intended to be anything other than the first does injustice to the text. Matthew 28 says that Jesus was on his way to Galilee to meet the disciples: "...he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Your spin would have an angel, then Jesus himself, say on Easter morning that in Galilee is where Jesus would meet the disciples, even though at least two appearances in Jerusalem and at least one in Galilee (John 21)--spread over a week after Easter--would intervene. That's just not credible.

Toto

When you start switching the sequence of verses, you lose.

Sheshbazzar

Against my better judgment I'll set foot in this steaming pile of...

So according to you, Jesus ascended to his Father between these two verses? Or did they all suffer from an incredibly short memory?

And why then bother with telling the brothers "I am ascending to my Father and your Father and my God and your God.” If he already ascended and decended to his Father between these two selected verses?

Shouldn't they have been reporting to his brothers that they had met Jesus twice on their way back from the tomb, and that morning he had both ascended to his Father and came back again?

Adam

Looks like you posted before I edited in the following:

It would also have helped if you had read the bracketed comments by me in my OP and Post #3. In Mt 28:10 Jesus directs his literal "brothers" to see him in Galilee, along presumably with the bulk of his "disciples" of 28:7. In contrast he soon appears to the apostles (and a very few others) in Jerusalem in Luke 24 and John 20.

Adam

Only Mary Magdalene would have noticed any discrepancy, and she might have been p.o.ed that Jesus allowed the other women to touch him when he told her not to. What was Jesus supposed to do? Zap them because they were so effusive? He would have preferred the more dignified reverence of Mary Magdalene, but he knew the other women were more "carnal"? There could be lots of explanations besides that Jesus ascended right then and came back. Or it could be that inerrancy is not true, or that different eyewitnesses gave reports that just seem to conflict. Nothing here affects plausibility.

Diogenes the Cynic

Why did he tell Thomas to touch him? Also,didn't he tell the bandit on the cross that they would be in Heaven together that very day? So hadn't Jesus already ascended the same day he died?