hammodius

(Doh, simultaneous post, Vinnie. Your point is well taken.)

Legion

Fair enough. And yeah, too bad they get confused so much, though I more often run into people who either refuse or are unable to see the difference, rather than just mixing them up.

Matthew_Green

Hammodius,

Well, for starters, I commend you for at least trying to be critical about this. I realize that you weren't adding Luke and Matthew. That's fine. I would encourage you to study them at your own pace and see that you study the accounts carefully. When you add Luke and try to harmonize the accounts, let me know what you come up with if you would like some constructive criticism.

Matthew

hammodius

Thanks, Matthew. I definitely do want constructive criticism. I'll be posting my Luke addition later tonight.

hammodius

I'm adding Luke to the mix. First I'll summarize the Mark and John visits for reference, along with the Luke visit.

Mark A

Mark 16:1-8. On the first day of the week at sunrise, Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome come bringing sweet spices to annoint Jesus. As they go, they say among themselves, "Who will roll away the stone?" They arrive to find the stone rolled away. They go inside and see a man sitting on the right side, wearing white. The man says, (roughly) "you seek Jesus, he's not here, he's risen, look at the spot where he was lying. Go and tell the disciples and Peter that he's going to Galilee and they'll see him there." The women leave quickly, trembling and afraid, and say nothing to anyone.

John A

John 20:1-2. While it's still dark, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and finds the stone rolled away. She runs to Peter and "the other disciple" and tells them, "they've taken the Lord from the sepulchre and we don't know where they put him."

John B

John 20:3-18. Peter and the other disciple run to the tomb, Peter falling behind. They investigate and see the burial cloths. They "believe" but do not understand that Jesus had to rise from the dead to satisfy scripture. They leave, but Mary lingers behind outside the tomb, weeping. She peers into the tomb and sees two angels, one at the head and one at the foot of the place where Jesus had lain. They ask her why she's weeping. She tells them because someone removed Jesus' body. She turns and sees Jesus alive outside the tomb, but doesn't recognize him. He says, "Why are you crying?" --"They've taken him." "Mary"--and she recognizes him....she returns to the disciples with the news.

Luke A

Luke 23:55-24:10. The women "who came with him from Galilee" came to the tomb with spices, found the stone rolled away, went in, and didn't see Jesus' body. They were wondering about this, and suddenly they there were two men in shining clothes with them. They were afraid, bowed to the earth, and the men said, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He's not here, he's risen. Don't you remember what he said before, that he would rise on the third day?" They rememberd his words. They returned from the tomb and told these things to the eleven and the others. It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things.

Luke B

Luke 24:11-12 The disciples heard the women's story (Luke A) and didn't believe them. Peter went running to the tomb, and he stooped down examined the linen grave clothes and departed in amazement.

To harmonize Mark and John, I settled on a hybrid theory in which John A and Mark A were the same visit from two different points of view. I also considered and rejected alternative theories such as Mark A was John B, or happened between the Johanian visits. All of these were very implausiable. I won't go through that exercise with the Lukan visits because surface resemblences make it clear that Luke A describes the same visit as Mark A, and Luke B a variation of John B. Any other piecings together will quickly lead to contradictions. The question is, can the intuitive reading be made to fit with the other gospels without violating the principle of inerrancy?

Proposed Harmonization (expanding on the hybrid theory)

A group of five women including Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, Joanna, and Salome come together early in the morning with the intent of annointing Jesus' body. Mary M. gets ahead of the others, sees the rolled away stone, and runs off to tell Peter and the other disciple as John A relates. Meanwhile, the other Mary and Salome go inside the tomb, see the angels, hear the declaration, and keep silent about it as Mark says. Then Peter et al. come running as John B describes.

The Luke account does present some difficulties with the harmonization. I'm not even going to mention the very easy ones like missing people from one account, or two angels versus one, because an account might be perfectly correct and yet omit details. But I will list the rest of the discrepancies I see.

DIFFICULTIES

The lists of women are different.--If there was a group of five or more women, all three gospels under consideration could be right in mentioning one or two or three out of the group by name.

Mark has the women see the angel on their way into the tomb, Luke has them see the angels after they've already checked the tomb.--Mark may have been summarizing more than Luke. This story: "the women go into the tomb, note the body's absence, wonder about it, and then have an angelic visitation"--may be summarized as "the women enter the tomb and see an angel." Detail is lost, but the summary is not in error.

The angelic messages are different--Mark's is "Don't be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you into Galilee, and they'll see him there."

Luke's is: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again."

This is resolvable in much the same way as the number and names of the women: the whole message is greater than any one gospel relays to us. Perhaps the angel said everything listed above, and Mark focused on one bit, Luke on another. Two bits of the message were remembered by both Luke and Mark: Jesus is not here, and Jesus is risen.

Pronouns are slippery!--This one is the big one. As pointed out earlier, Mark's "they" must include women he doesn't mention by name and also let out Mary Magdalene before the angelic visitation.

Luke's "they" must be even more elastic. It initially refers back to Luke 23:55, the women "which came with him from Galilee". That must include all the women Mark mentions. It must let out Mary Magdalene when she makes her early exit. Finally, Luke appears to define his "they" for us explicitly in 24:10 "It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James and other women which told these things unto the apostles." That strongly implies Mary Magdalene did NOT make an early exit from the group as must be supposed to harmonize John (Matthew_the_Freethinker's "nail in the coffin").

I've stated the problem as harshly as I can, but I think there are ameliorating factors to consider. First, Luke's "they" clearly can't refer to women exclusively. In 24:5 he uses "they" to refer to both the men in shining clothes and the women, all in one sentence, without bothering to clarify. We can only tell which he means by context. "And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?" If Luke is so slippery with his pronouns in one sentence, we are not justified in claiming his list in verse 10 has any greater scope than it claims: the list is those who told these things to the apostles. We know from John that Mary Magdalene told Peter and another disciple her story, which is consistent with the Lukan list. We know from Luke 24:9 that a group of women told their stories, which is also consistent with the list.

I would have to be a Greek scholar (which I'm not) to state that a loose interpretation of pronouns is not allowed here for some reason that's not apparent in English. I've consulted several translations and I don't think I'm being misled by any single unorthodox translation. It seems entirely reasonable that the gospel writers did not have the attitude towards grammatical correctness we have today.

Mark says the women didn't tell anyone, but Luke and John say they do.--This is another tough one, maybe the real sticking point. I've heard it argued that the women's silence in Mark 16:8 was only temporary, but at face value it reads like permanence. And Luke doesn't leave room for even a temporary silence. 24:8-9 reads, "And they remembered his words. And returned from the sepulcher, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest." I might attempt to say the Markan silence meant "for the duration of the trip from the tomb to the disciples only," but that is clearly absurd. The silence was notable. Especially as the Markan angelic injunction was to "tell his disciples and Peter." It seems like Mark is making a point about their silence.

Tentatively, I put this one in the category of solid arguments for errancy.

John has Peter running to the tomb in response to Mary's "He's missing" report, whereas Luke has Peter running to the tomb in response to the report of the angelic message.--This can be resolved if we're willing to assume something other than strict chronological time in Luke. Luke 24:10 in particular sounds like an interruption of the narrative, a stepping back to establish facts ("and the list of women includes..."), and when the story resumes in verse 12, ("Then Peter ran to the tomb"), I'm not convinced this happened in response to verse 9 directly, instead in response to Mary as John says. That requires a loose reading of chronology in Luke. In support of such a reading, I submit 23:55, in which the parenthetical "women which came from Galilee" statement doesn't happen in real chronological time either, but is supplying us with extra background.

Conclusion

In spite of being willing to take pronouns and chronological time loosely, I'm stuck on a contradiction between Mark 16:8 "the women said nothing to anyone because they were afraid" and Luke 24:9-10 "And returned from the sepulchre and told all these things to the eleven...and it was Mary M. and Joanna..." Apart from that (can anyone propose a solution?) I'm willing to accept Luke's version into the mix.

If I take extra effort trying to reconcile the accounts, it is because on my first reading of Luke tonight, what struck me was not how different Luke was from the other accounts (though I noted the differences) but how similar. The events Luke describes are the same events as Mark and John describe, only from a different persepective. I gain extra information by reading Luke, and my idea of the events in question becomes that much clearer.

Legion

I think it's worth pointing out now that it seems a bit disingenuous to me (and I'm not saying that you are doing this, but the conservative Christians that I know do) to proclaim "inerrancy" and then dismiss contradictions and difficultities in an attempt to harmonize the accounts. If they are inerrant, there should not be a need to try to figure out ways to make them not be in disagreement when they pretty clearly are. Not reporting the same bits of information is one thing, but reporting directly contradictory pieces of information is another.

As you continue to add another gospel, it becomes more and more difficult to harmonize them, until it's pretty much impossible. That seems like a pretty dramatic strike against inerrancy to me. That, and the Bible never says it's inerrant (nevermind the whole circular reasoning logic that it would require to believe that even if it did).

hammodius

I'm trying hard to stay agnostic about inerrancy while I look for contradictions. If I can suspend belief or disbelief long enough, I might have a chance at seeing what the texts themselves say.

But it's quite tricky, and you have a good point. Each resolved difficulty involves a loosening of the standards to some degree. I'll want to assemble a list of all the rules I bent at the end before I proclaim "inerrant!"

Roland

What I find surreal about these kinds of "harmonization" discussions is that, in an attempt to make a case for "inerrancy," the person devising the harmony becomes guilty of the exact same sin that he usually accuses the nonbeliever of committing - that is not simply accepting the accounts exactly as written. If an event is recorded only one time in the Bible, the inerantist has no trouble boldly proclaiming that that is exactly how it happened, with no room for quibbling. But if the same event is recorded in two or more places with variations in the record, then suddenly each individual account DOESN'T mean exactly what it says. Maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all just meant exactly what they wrote (Matthew, Mark and Luke that Mary M. went into the tomb and learned the news of Jesus' resurrection, and John that she didn't).

Roland

If John's gospel didn't exist and someone tried to make the case that Mary M. DIDN'T go into the tomb and receive the message, the inerrantist would declare, "Of course, she went into the tomb. Matthew, Mark and Luke clearly show that she did, and a literal interpretation of them demands that we believe that!"

Go figure.

Roland

Here's a modern parallel:

Let's say this is a story about a fatal car accident.

Matthew reports it thus:

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were riding in a car. Just as the women moved into the intersection, they were hit head on. They died.

Now suppose we discover that there were actually more women in the car and that Mary M. had actually been let out of the car BEFORE the accident, so she wasn't killed. Would we then consider Matthew's account in any way truthful or accurate?