Wayne Delia

It seems you've admitted as much yourself, in the bold part of your opening post - you've left out Mark 16, because if you included it, the reconciliation becomes impossible.

spin

I'm not following this thread, but I note people are trying to make something out of Mk 16:9ff, when the earliest exemplars didn't have that material, so all the bolding and big characters and pleading for its relevance are basically f.o.s.

Sheshbazzar

There are many Fundamentalist Christian sects whose very existence, doctrines, and practices are founded upon the contents of Mark 16:9-29.
These verses are specifically included in -Dan Barkers Easter Challenge- because they have a direct bearing upon what texts millions of practicing Christians accept and employ as being an essential and integral part of their accepted Easter Ressurrection story.

That we have early exemplars that lack Mark 16:9-20 cannot properly be taken as any absolute evidence that no such early texts ever existed.
Early texts display many differences. We have got what Christianity preserved and has handed down to us as being best represenative of Chrristian endorsed NT texts. The Mark 16:9-20 variant has been attested to as being a known part of that 'recieved' Christian tradition from the days of Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus, was incoporated into the Diatessaron, c 160-175 CE, and into the recieved NT Gospel from the foundation of the Christian Canon.

These verses in Mark 16:9-20 are read aloud and expounded upon in millions of Christian church's every week.
Thus the content of Mark 16:9-20 cannot be lightly dismissed. Those Christians that choose to retain and to employ the verses of Mark 16:9-20 as part of their Easter Story, and as justification for certain of their more notorious doctrines and practices (as millions do) need to explain how they can rationally integrate that material.

Don Barker's Easter Challenge is a challenge to the -Christians- who claim these texts, including these verses in Mark 16:9-20, are inspired and accurate accounts, to set ALL these NT verses in a rational and sequential order.

The opinions of Skeptics, Atheists, Agnostics, Muslim's or Hindu's regarding the legitimancy of Mark 16:9-20 is really not a factor in Dan Barker's Easter Challenge to Christians.

Adam

So it's a Catch-22 like the Amazing Randi's offer of a million dollars, no scholarly response to Dan Barker's Easter Challenge is possible. I admit that with the Long Ending of Mark (16:9-20) that the Resurrection cannot be placed in chronological order. I would have interpreted "to the end of...Mark 16" as meaning the scholarly-accepted 16:8.

Oh, well, at least no one has suggested that my account in this thread is implausible (other than supernatural interventions). Nor has anyone named any specific contradictions. That not every verse (165?) is included is not relevant, as many essentially identical verses occur in various places, especially in the Synoptics.

For all practical, even academic purposes, I have apparently met Dan Barker's Easter Challenge.

Diogenes the Cynic

That's the whole point. As soon as you apply critical scholarship you are conceding that the text cannot be inerrant. Mark's appended ending is canon, and some of the verses (15-18) have a central importance to many denominations, especially Pentecostals (Jesus appointing apostles to spread the Gospel, telling them to baptize, telling them they can cast out devils, speak in tongues and take up serpents).

Defending inspired inerrancy is exactly what its apologists are being challenged to do. No form criticism is allowed.

Sheshbazzar

So you're just going to ignore the glaring fact that over the last 2000 years -billions- of your fellow Christians have accepted and endorsed Mark 16:9-20 as being inspired NT Scripture, a valid part of the Christian Passion Story, and text fundamental to how the Christian religion is to be propagated, 'The Great Commission', and the prophetic Biblical witness to the validity of those innumerable 'These signs shall follow them that believe' which have been wrought 'In The Name of The Lord Jesus Christ' amongst them all down through the ages?
You realise that by this rejection of Mark 16:9-20 you are essentially admitting that all of Christianities recorded miracles performed "In The Name of The Lord Jesus Christ" have been frauds founded and perpetrated on the acceptance of a false text?

Would you care to guess the total number of Christian Bibles that have been printed containing Mark 16:9-20?

Or how many times those verses of Mark 16:9-20 have been quoted and preached?

Or how many Christian 'brothers' have been cast out and shunned for not accepting these texts?


Or alternatively, would you care to guess the total number of Christian Bibles available that DO NOT contain Mark 16:9-20 ?

Do you own a Christian organization produced Bible that DOES NOT contain Mark 16:9-20?

What is the name of this Version? and where may it be purchased?

Far as I have been able to determine no known Christian Church or Christian organization has any such Bible available either to give away or to sell.

Thus I do not think I am out of line in concluding that Christianity as a whole accepts and endorses Mark 16:9-20 as being valid New Testament Gospel truth.

Then allow me to remedy that. Your account is implausible because the story presented is loaded with implausible scenes and situations whose implausibility have been discussed at length.
Simply setting these implausible situations into chronological order does not remove their implausibility, you still end up with an implausible account.

How could they, when you have already edited out anything that contradicts?
Your tale is a 'plucked chicken' that does not contain all of the feathers that once adorned that old carcass.
In your mind. Now contact DAN BARKER and reveal your amazing accomplishment to him.
See if you impress him half as much as you impress yourself.

Adam

Lots of food for thought there, Shesh. Basically, it’s why did (does) God allow the Bible in general to be out there with lots of stories (of battles and worse) and teachings that are not conducive to good thoughts and behaviors. A big topic. Not to mention why does God allow all those other books out there in religions farther off the mark than Christianity.

On the point at hand, you’ve already declared my response faulty in Barker’s eyes by omitting Mark 16:9-20, as Tektonics feels justified to do in its rather flimsy response. (And I now notice that it would be helpful for me to omit Luke 24:12 as textually dubious—saves Peter’s second visit to the tomb that Kingsley feels forced to do).
A more substantial answer came from Pastor Stephen Kingsley in 2008 after five years of struggling with it. He claims he submitted it to Barker without getting any response as of 2009 (and apparently not yet either) to refute it.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/pa...allenge-38053/

Here’s the link to Kingsley’s proposed solution:
http://easteranswer.com/uploads/imag...er%20Chart.pdf
I don’t see it as conclusive, because the attempt to reconcile Mark 16:9-20 does not really gel. He also splits out more duplications that I do. He is constrained by inerrancy, but allowing more latitude would allow his account to stand, and even more easily mine. Kingsley has a book that gives his explanation in full, but I have not read it.

But it looks like the attempt by David of Biblewheel Sept 2012 failed. Its parallel columns only serve to make the contradictions clearer:
http://www.biblewheel.com/forum/show...ified-Timeline

Here's John Loftus's response to Kingsley. http://debunkingchristianity.blogspo...wer-is-no.html

Maybe no one has responded to Barker in terms Barker would accept, if Kingsley is the only one who posted on the internet and got a skeptic's response. But does the very noted Evangelical Wallace's concession only apply if he is burdened with both Mark 16:9-20 and inerrancy? I think my proposal basically works, not to mention that my understanding of the gospels would allow me to merge together some verses that don't agree very well, instead of splitting off separate wordings as two or more distinct events.

But Nielsen owes the $1,000 to Kingsley according to http://sntjohnny.com/front/review-of...gsley/546.html
Here's a good harmony of the 4 gospels to work from:
http://www.tentsofshem.com/Home/tabi...e/Default.aspx

Toto

John Loftus on Kingsley's answers

Sheshbazzar

You have perhaps missed an essential element in this story. Pastor Stephen R. Kingsley is an inerrantist Fundamentalist Pastor.

The good Pastor writes a book that he knows will appeal to the inclinations of an inerrantist Fundamentalist audience.
It does not need to be one hundred percent accurate, or even meet the standards of the challenge presented, all it need do is please the ears of the 'choir', and appeal to the predilections of those Fundamentalist congregations which he will tour promoting and selling said book, and basking in their honor as being a great defender of Bible inerrancy and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Pastor needn't be concerned with receiving any paltry $1000 prize, when with a good sales pitch to a primed and amen-ing audience, he can reap that in on any Sunday, knowing that most of his buyers will place his book on their Christian bookshelves without even reading a chapter, smugly convinced that the challenge has been adequately answered because the Pastor claims it has been.

The good Pastor like so many others before him, is a religious opportunist, selling uncritical sheeple exactly what they want to hear.
Thousands of Christian produced works of similar dubious quality are readily available. Most can be purchased through Amazon for about one tenth of the 'donation' they can elicit from a well 'worked' audience.

YOUR book Adam, if you ever decide to publish one, will with little promotion sell to that audience, no matter how badly its premises are savaged here. They won't care if you overlook things or make glaring errors, as long as you are composing words to the song they want to sing.

Tenorikuma

Mk 16:2c when the Sun was rising. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll the stone away from the door of the tomb for us?”
Lk 24:2 They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb

There's one right off the bat. If they found that the stone had been rolled away already, they wouldn't be asking "who will roll the stone away for us?".