Amaleq13

You need a rough picture of what it's like to be too scared by an experience to tell anyone about it in order to obtain relevance to the story. The implied temporary nature of the reaction your choice of phrase carries just disappears when we stick to what is actually written, doesn't it?

Certainly less than this "told no one" = "temporarily shocked mute" nonsense but the silence doesn't have to be permanent in order to contradict the immediate reports described in the other versions.

jjramsey

Well, Mark obviously doesn't know about Luke.

Considering the reaction of the women and the command from the man in white to not be afraid, it is implausible that the man in white was supposed to be anything but an angel, and certainly not Mark. The "do not be afraid" is standard-issue OT angelophany.

Magdlyn

Conceded. John is telling people about Jesus and then says, "Look, here comes that Lamb of God now!" I guess Jesus could've been just arriving back from the wilderness.

But then GJohn has Jesus at this point annex two of John the B's followers, here at the river: Andrew and the unnamed disiple. Andrew immediately calls his brother Simon Peter to come join up. Then Jesus decides to go to Galilee.

Whereas in GMark, Jesus gets those guys while they are fishing at the Sea of Galilee.

James and John as well.

jjramsey

Mark 16:8: "So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

Considering that their silence was directly attributed to their terror, "temporarily shocked mute" is a reasonable interpretation.

Agreed. But you read my reply to Hallq, so you knew that, right?

Roland

However, in Mark, it doesn't say that that is Jesus' FIRST encounter with them (although the way Mark tells it could certainly lead to that conclusion). In fact, it kind of makes more sense if one assumes Jesus did know the two men before; it makes their suddenly giving up their nets and following him more plausible.

Roland

Good point.

Do you have any theories, then, on who the naked man might be?

Roland

Does anyone have any possible responses to the contradictions I posted in #6?

ziffel

"God is love." (1 John 4:16)

vs.

The Old Testament

Pastor's Nightmare

Another discrepancy between the two accounts is that there is one angel in the Matthew passage(Matthew 28), and there are two angels in the John passage(John 20).

As far as using lists of contradictions goes, keep in mind that many "contradictions" were fixed when the New International Version of The Bible was created. Thus, contradictions in The King James version of The Bible may not exist in the NIV Bible.

As far as weasling out of contradiction in the strict sense, there are thousands of possible ways to weasle out. Let me give you a few, and I'm sure you can come up with several more weasling mechanisms after reading these. Just remember that Christians are creative, and there eternal soul is at stake; so, they will think long and hard to get out of any contradictions you come up with. Sometimes it will become a group effort. Furthermore, the explanation only needs to be sufficiently good for them to believe it not you.

It is possible to say that John simply omitted the first conversation with the angel. Thus, the Bible is not errant. The book of John simply has an omission, which is filled by the Book of Matthew. Next, we can say that the angel in Matthew is simply one of the two angels mentioned in the book of John. Furthermore, there are two Marys. You can say stuff like John was describing what the first Mary saw, and Matthew was describing what the second Mary saw, etc. Next, keep in mind that a Christian will generally be a bit sloppy. They will stop once they have a plausibility argument. It may not stand up to scrutiny, but they will give you this pseudo-fallacious argument, and you will have to point out what is wrong with the argument. It is possible to go back and forth 20-30 times, and by the time you have gone through about 15 or so arguments back and forth, they will have forgotten what number 1 was, and they will run the same argument by you again. They're not trying to be difficult, they simply can't remember. Being exposed to an internal inconsistency in The Bible is a pretty traumatic experience for a Christian. It is kinda like someone telling you a bunch of stuff about string theory or low dimensional topology. Your mind just doesn't absorb it.

The Bishop

Isn't this all a storm in a teacup? The fundamentalist position is that the Bible is inerrant, but any apologetic will involve omissions or the admission of misunderstandings - the authors being human, in point of fact - which detracts not only from inerrancy, but from scripture being "God-breathed" (2 Tim 3:16 NIV - the best translation of that phrase, I always thought, much better than "inspired by God").