Roland

You ask how we (that is to say "Mark") could know about the story if the women remained silent.

That is only a problem if the story is nonfiction. If it is a work of fiction, then no explanation is necessary. Another poster on here came up with the intriguing theory that the writer of Mark put himself into the story as a character, that it is he who is the young man in the robe standing in the empty tomb (and, perhaps, also the enigmatic naked man in the Garden of Gethsemene scene). It's an unprovable theory, but I find it intriguing.

hammodius

I'm not trying to comprehend divine insight here, I'm just trying to piece together chronological details of what happened. This is no paradox of predestination vs. free will, this is a straightforward account of actions taken and events witnessed by real people. I'm not trying to interpret why the angels' message was delivered to the women or why Mary M. was the first to witness the risen Jesus; I'm trying to establish basic circumstances, like who was where when.

I reject the notion that gospel errors can be rationalized as human scribes failing to understand God's revealed message. Maybe murky theological points can escape by that loophole, but not the concrete gospels.

ThePhoenix

Really? Have you ever seen the results of police studies on what witnesses see? The results don't even come close to matching. There's records of women misidentifying their rapists as black (when DNA evidence showed who the assailent really was). Humans are BAD at observation. REALLY bad.

hammodius

As I understand it, inerrant means far more than merely factually correct, it means theologically sound and having absolute moral authority. I can understand how the latter two categories might be hard for human scribes to understand and communicate, but the "factually correct" category is a minimum requirement for an inerrant document.

I am not considering here the question "did the disciples witness a miraculously empty tomb, angelic visitations, and appearences of the risen Jesus?" If that were the question, I wouldn't cavil over factual discrepancies, I would shrug and say, as you did, that humans are lousy at observing and remembering facts. The question I'm considering is, "are the gospels absolutely correct in the facts they relate?" If they are, then they must also be consistent with each other, they must describe the same events.

How would a human being produce an inerrant document? Only under the direct inspiration of God. The gospel writers were not (according to the doctrine of inspiration) operating at the mercy of witnesses with faulty memories alone, they were operating under the direct guidance of God.