Matthew_Green

I don't think for a minute that Luke is slippery at all with his pronouns. Let's take a closer look at the narrative. I quote the following from the New American Standard Version:

I have bold-typed all the pronouns. In verses 1-4, the pronouns can only refer to the women. In verse 5, the pronouns don't switch at all (I am curious as to which translation switches the pronouns). From verse 8-10, the pronouns can only refer once again to the women because only they left the tomb. The pronouns cannot refer to the angels or anyone other than the women after they flee the tomb. In verse 10 it says that Mary Magdalene was one of the "they/them" that told the disciples of "all these things" in verse 9. If the "they" in the narrative is switched to describe the angels, it's only because "two men" are introduced as a possible antecedent for the pronouns but once the women leave the scene, the angels no longer are able to serve as an antecedent for any pronouns because they are no longer present. Luke, thus is not slippery with any pronouns; he makes normal transitions once grammatical antecedents are introduced and dropped. After verse 8, the pronouns can only refer to the women, like it or not, until the disciples are introduced.

I would ask anyone reading this post of mine not to get the impression that I have never tried to reconcile the resurrection narratives. I have tried to reconcile them. I once came up with my own way to reconcile the synoptics with John and refuted it. I have come to conclude that it's very difficult-if not impossible to reconcile them.

Matthew

hammodius

Roland, excellent points. Your first post is basically a demand for consistency. I've never been through this gospel harmonization before, so I'm learning for the first time what sorts of flexibility is needed. Should I assume the same sort of flexibility when I read other stories? To be fair, yes.

For example, Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives got into the ark, according to Genesis 7:7,13. In Genesis 9:18 we're told that Noah and his sons exited the ark, told their names, and told that their descendents spread over the whole earth--but the wives aren't mentioned explicitly. The wives might have gotten on the ark and never gotten off. Two of them might have fallen overboard. Maybe a new wife was rescued from, perhaps, a high tree where she'd perched to escape the rising water. That's all speculation, but because the Genesis account is so sparse on detail, no one can claim that what I speculated certainly did NOT happen.

Granted, there's no reason to suppose anything of the sort DID happen (assuming the Genesis story is basically true). But sometimes pastors will preach sermons that hinge entirely on a point as obscure or unsupported as Noah's wife's survival of the flood.

Wow, your second point is more persuassive still. I just read Mark and Luke, paying attention to Mary Magdalene. There's no question in my mind, from those two sources, that she did enter the tomb, as you say, and see the angel.

The question is, is harmonizing John *expanding* on the information from Mark and Luke or *changing* the meaning of Mark and Luke? Arg, uncomfortable question.

As far as the car accident story, you're right the first account is misleading. But is it in error? If it's a police report or a newspaper articile, it certainly fails, because we expect from both of those things not only correctness but completeness. But if it's an eyewitness testimony, or a second-hand testimony, it's not so far wrong. In fact it's very likely the sort of account the police would hear, when they were interviewing witnesses later. They'd say, "From witness A we get the names Mary M. and Mary, from witness B we get these other names, from witness C we get the fact that Mary M. slipped out to buy cigarettes...." and they'd reconstruct what happened. Each testimony illuminates further the true story of the accident.

But the question remains, is A's testimony inerrant? I lean towards the answer "no".

Thanks for telling me your objections and not blowing me off entirely as a hard-headed inerrantist! It helps keep me real. These are hard questions indeed.

hammodius

Matt_the_Freethinker, I confess I was not thorough enough in my version checking. The King James Version has very confusing pronouns in Luke 24:5, and I thought the vagueness was Luke's, but in turns out, in comparison with your translation and a few others, to have been the translator's.

Minus that point, my defense of loose pronoun interpretation is appreciably weakened.

BTW, if you're willing to share and have a handy copy you could cut 'n paste, I'd be very interested to see your attempted-then-rejected reconciliation.

Legion

When getting this detailed in an analysis of words, where were placed, who they referred to, etc., I don't think that an English translation is reliable enough for the job. You really need a Greek translation and the ability to read ancient Greek to truly be able to see where the pronouns were placed and judge what they referred to. I can't read Greek, so I can't help you there.

Legion

The point you're making still stands, but the flood story is not really a good example for it; most scholars agree that two flood stories have been interwoven together to form one whole. If you apply the inerrancy test to this story, it will fail because of that. The stories don't match on a lot of the details (which means that when reading it now, instead of having two versions, such as with the synoptic gospels and John in the case of the gospels, you have one story with contradictory details within itself).

hammodius

Hmmm, I'm interested in what you claim about the Noah's ark story, Legion. Can you give chapter and verse for the two different versions?

Your point about needing the original Greek is relevant, and about to become more so. For Matthew's Easter account to mesh with the other three, one must assume an a-chronological progression, hinging on the words introducing the earthquake-and-angels-descending verses. Oh well, as a non Greek scholar I do what I can, and inform myself of the possibilities within reason. I don't have the motivation just yet to learn Biblical Greek.

Roland

It seems to me that the use of antecedents for pronouns would have to be just about a universal rule of language. Without that rule, how could true clarity of thought be expressed? What narrative writer, in any language or in any time period, would write a story without first making clear who was taking part in the story?

hammodius

I think the point is the Greek might not have pronouns, it might have identifiable nouns like "the women" and yet the English translator might have put "they" on the assumption the reader knew what came before. Kind of like the KJV did in Luke 24:5.

However, I tend to agree with you that pronouns must refer to clear antecedents, and this rule applies across languages. Breaking that rule leads to unclear writing. Unclear writing isn't necessarily incompatible with inerrancy, however.

partial plate

As an alternative to learning Greek, one can take advantage of the resources at Blue Letter Bible.org (links to Luke 24). I can't figure much out by looking at it... the verb in question isn't associated with a noun or a pronoun ("they said unto them" in verse 5)... but you can look at the greek text, the greek transliteration (in order of the english language rendition), and you can click on each word in the transliteration (or its Strong's number) to get a fuller expansion on its meaning. There are also notes on verb tense, voice, etc... It's no substitute for learning ancient Greek if you want to get serious about this stuff, but it's good enough for government work, if you are just trying to make sure the Christians haven't snuck around and been right about something behind our backs - like I do.

hammodius

Ah, so the KJV is closer to the Greek after all! Most translations I've looked at use "the men" to make Luke 24:5 clearer, but from the link you gave, partial plate, it looks like the original Greek uses pronouns.

So the argument for Luke's use of slippery pronouns still stands.