The Bishop

Y'see, that's what I love about this place - the fact that someone can express a logical viewpoint that happens not to "disprove the Bible", and get branded as an apologist.

Sometimes non-apologists say similar things as apologists, it doesn't make them so.

Amaleq13

No, I'm sure it has a sound basis in all the research that has been conducted at major universities on the typical duration of the shock experienced upon hearing frightening/disturbing/confusing information from an angel.

Magdlyn

My recent favorite:

In GMark, "immediately" after his baptism, Jesus is driven by the "spirit" into the wilderness for 40 days.

In GJohn, after being declared Lamb of God by John the Baptizer (no baptism for Jesus mentioned), in Bethany beyond the Jordan (location unknown? traditionally understood to be east of Jerusalem and the river near the Dead Sea ) Jesus hangs around a couple days, collects a couple followers from amongst followers of John, then "on the third day" is suddenly at a wedding in Cana in Galilee with Mom and his buds.

The typical route, avoiding Samaria, was 120 miles from Jerusalem to Galilee. On foot.

Contradictory and absurd. I gave you a bonus.

this site struggles mightily to figure out where this Bethany beyond Jordan could possibly be.

http://www.ancientsandals.com/overvi...the_jordan.htm

This site explains the contradiction:

http://www.inerrancyexposed.com/baptism.html

Sarpedon

Couldn't they have taken a boat?

Magdlyn

Imagining Jesus white water rafting down the Jordan.

Who needs a baptism?

jjramsey

OTOH, while we obviously aren't familiar with shock from angels, we do have a rough picture of what it's like to be scared speechless.

hallq

JJ-

The problem with supposing that the silence is temporary is that all the gospels make clear that the women told the disciples that same day, before any appearances had been reported. Matthew goes to the point of saying that they ran to tell the disciples. "Told no one" might mean "told no one for a week" or even "told no one until appearances had been reported." It does not mean "told no one for half an hour."

Roland

I'm going to play "devil's advocate" here since, personally, I think the whole Jesus story is a work of fiction. But I can see how an inerrantist might slither out of this one.

Since John DOESN'T record the baptism, you might be able to assume that the baptism happened earlier (off camera, so to speak) as did the 40 days in the wilderness (also off camera). Then, John picks the story up after Jesus has returned and has started gathering the disciples. Could this be a possible "out" for the inerrantist?

I think a better "contradiction" might be the way Mark and Matthew describe the calling of James and John compared to the way Luke portrays it in Chapter 5.

Another problem is that John the Baptist has clearly been imprisoned BEFORE Jesus calls the disciples in Mark (1:14), but, in Luke, John is still out there doing his thing AFTER the disciples have been called.

I would assume that the apologist would reconcile this by saying that John had been arrested, then set free for some reason, then arrested again. And that's the basic problem with arguing over "contradictions" with an inerrantist. The human mind can almost always find a way to rationalize or smooth over any seeming anomaly even if it makes mincemeat out of the text and defies the very "Literalist" reading they claim to be championing. True irony.

jjramsey

If you wanted to object that only Mark portrays the women as dumbfounded while the other Gospels do not, that is fair game. It doesn't even really rest on the length of time the women were silent.

It's the "told no one" = "permanent silence" that looks like junk to me.

Roland

But if they "told no one" but the silence was only temporary, why would Mark even find it necessary to include that fact, especially since Luke shows them telling the disciples almost immediately anyway. If someone tells you a secret which you then blab to someone else a half hour later, what would be the point of a person writing an account of that saying, "He told no one"? Why not just jump over that half hour and show you blabbing the secret?

My theory is that Mark DID end his gospel here, and that the silence of the women is actually a way of explaining to his readers why they've never heard the story till now. Perhaps Mark is, himself, the man in a white robe who greets them in the tomb with word of Christ's resurrection (he is not really said to be an angel in this account). Maybe he's also the strange, unaccounted for man who runs away naked at Jesus' arrest. In other words, perhaps the author has put himself into his own fiction as an eyewitness at strategic points to help account for the newness of the tale.

Just a theory, of course, but it seems to clear up some of the otherwise inscrutable aspects of Mark's work.