JohnV

A confession of incompetence:

When I go to give blood, they ask me what I've had to eat. I realize that they need to record that I've had something to eat recently, but the exact amount isn't important. So, I might say I had "a bowl of cereal," when in fact I had TWO - yes, TWO - bowls of cereal.

JohnV

Not at all. I understood you just fine, and I'm sure everyone else did too! I was applying Family Man's methods - which you now seem to agree are pretty ridiculous!

Kosh

So then you are claiming that each individual Gospel was not meant to be comprehensive?

JohnV

Sure, I'll claim that. Seems obvious, and John comes right out and says it in the last verse:

25Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

Kosh

So when Luke wrote:

He wasn't really trying to give an exact account (by omitting that John, a major figure in the story) also ran to the tomb. Was he:

- lying?
- incompetent in his research?

Wasn't he being inspired by the Holy Spirit when this was written?

Then there are other problems.

Mark, Mathew, and Luke have the women at the tomb alone, speaking to a young man (or men, or angels), and being told to go tell the disciples.

However, John has Mary see the stone rolled away, she runs and gets the disciples, they then leave the tomb,and THEN she engages the angels.

How do you reconcile this? The two are quite contradictory.

Mark 16:7 But go tell his disciples and Peter.

There is simply no wiggle room here, John. The angel is talking to Mary,in the tomb, and telling her to go tell Peter. According to you (and John) Peter has already been to the tomb and left.

Could you explain this?

Remember, the challenge was to reconcile the accounts without making any ommisions.

Family Man

Your analogies are terrible and inaccurate as to the context the language is being used. To say that a speaker at a convention spoke about such and such is not unusual -- even when there are other speakers -- because the speaker is being defined by the topic of his speech.

Similarly, there could be two Senators at a rally where one Senator criticizes Bush. The other, however, apparently didn't. The Senator is being identified by his criticism. If both criticized Bush then the writer, indeed, is being incompetent.

Furthermore, it is not unusual at conventions and rallies for there to be other speakers. It would naturally be assumed, thus it isn't necessary to identify these other speakers while concentrating on one. These conditions are not present at the tomb. We can't assume there were more that one "man" there. Your analogies are completely underminded by the context they occur in.

However, imagine a woman who is alone in her locked house. She doesn't expect anyone -- she lives alone. However, when she goes to her bedroom she sees -- a man!

How many men were there? One. How do we know? The singular was used. No one would claim otherwise. Now try to insert "only one man" in place of "a man" in the previous sentence. It doesn't work. In fact, it's absurd. That would imply she was expecting more than one man -- but she wasn't expecting anyone.

Yet this is exactly the same scenario that the women who went to the tomb were in. They weren't going to a convention or a rally where they were expecting to see different people. They were going to a tomb where they were expecting to meet no one. The only possible interpretation of Mark is that they encountered one and only one man. That is, unfortunately, contradictory to other gospel accounts.

Before you go "hehe" I suggest you suggest the validity of your arguments. It's not as easy as you think.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: Family Man ]</p>

Family Man

Uh, you are the one who are insisting that we must insert "only" into the text to conclude that only one man is seen in Mark's account. Yours is the argument dependent on a word that isn't there. The text as written identifies only one man in Mark's account.

Do you have any arguments that aren't dependent on invalid linguistic analysis?

Family Man

No, Kosh was being completely competent. He referred to me by name and referenced only my argument. Since he was referring to a single argument, his use of the singular was quite competent.

Moreover, everyone here is aware that others have criticized your argument. If he were giving a summary of the thread to someone who wasn't familiar with it, and referred only to me, he would have been incompetent. However, given the context, he was perfectly within his rights.

Your argument, however, is incompetent in the extreme.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: Family Man ]</p>

Family Man

True, but you are being inaccurate. Is that your defense, Mark was being inaccurate about what, arguably, would have been the most important event in human history if it were true?

Gosh, I guess Mark was incompetent.

David Bowden

Hi, John. I do have a couple of "particular detail" issues (I typed this while offline, and I'm quoting these passages in the New Jerusalem Bible translation):

But Matthew's account is completely straightforward in saying that the guards and the women are present at the same time that the angel (consistently referred to by Matthew in the singular, never in plural) descends, opens the tomb, and sits on the stone. The women
(Mt 28:1-5)
Clearly Matthew is telling the story with the understanding that the women were present at the time of the angel's sudden arrival, and that they witnessed the tomb's opening and the cowering of the guards. There is no indication at all that Matthew thought that these events were separated in time, or that the women hadn't yet arrived in time to see the angel descend. The language of the passage ties it together in time: Matthew contrasts the sudden, glorious, fearsome arrival of the angel, with his gentle pacification of the women: "suddenly" there's this grand and terrible entrance, "but" the angel calms the women's fears.

Your harmonization also makes it seem that the angel played peek-a-boo with the women, by arriving, terrifying the guards, initially sitting down on the stone, but then disappearing while the women make their initial visit (prolonging their confusion), only to reveal himself later on.

This is absurd when viewed from the straightforward perspective of the Matthew account, where the the women came; they witnessed the sudden, fear-inspiring angelic arrival and the opening of the tomb; but are immediately calmed by the angel; and they leave, happy, to tell the disciples.

So the harmonization you've given doesn't mesh with Matthew's account; it specifically omits the angel's magnificent demonstration during the women's visit.

Actually, Matthew says that after seeing the angel's arrival, and the immobilized guards, and the open and empty tomb (in one unbroken episode), the women were "filled with awe and great joy"(v.8) and left to explain what they'd learned to the disciples.

Mark, on the other hand, agrees with you - sort of. After the angel's explanation of the empty tomb (which in your harmonization hasn't occured yet) the women are "frightened out of their wits" and they run away and say "nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" (16:8). Luke almost agrees with Mark when he says that the women are terrified at the angelic appearance - but he has the women sharing their experience, directly contradicting Mark's statement. (More on that contradiction later.)

John's account skips the angelic revelation altogether, and just says that the women - sorry: woman, singular - who came to the tomb also left it without knowing what had happened to Jesus. That woman, Mary Magdalene, is later confronted by Jesus himself and has everything explained to her.

Unfortunately, here John contradicts Matthew, who tells us three things:
1.) that an angel explained Jesus' whereabouts to Mary Magdalene (and the other Mary) before she encountered Jesus, and
2.) that Mary Magdalene left that angel in a state of awe and joy as a result of his information, and
3.) that between the time of her visit to the tomb and the time she shared her news with the disciples, Jesus appeared to her and further reassured her.

Unless we posit that Mary Magdalene was horribly forgetful (which means she wouldn't have been a good interviewee for any gospel-writer), we have to conclude that the gospels are in contradiction as to Mary Magdalene's state of mind after her visit to the tomb, and before her encounter with Jesus. Your harmonization omits several details specifically mentioned in the NT Easter accounts.

But the angel has already appeared to the Marys, in Mark's and Matthew's accounts, and told them to tell the disciples. In Matthew they obey; in Mark, they do not. Please reconcile both of these gospel elements with your harmonization.

Actually in Matthew the women were invited to look into the tomb by the angel (consistently singular in his account); they saw him well before they looked in the tomb. And in Mark, the angel (again, consistently singular) is already seated when they notice him. He doesn't appear to them and then sit; he is already there, already seated, when they enter the tomb. Mark also gives no sign of a previous visit to the tomb by the women, or a look-see by any male disciples. An honest reading of Mark 16:4-5 would not interpret him as believing that these events occured between those verses; rather it would seem clear that the women went directly into the tomb on their visit very early on Easter morning.

Your harmonization here breaks up the clear storyline of these two gospels, and posits an event that Matthew's testimony does not agree with at all; it also contradicts a clearly stated detail in Mark.

But Mary has already been "filled with awe and great joy" (Matthew 28:8) by the angel's explanation to the women that Jesus is alive and going ahead to Galilee (Mt 28:6-7). Mary is not distraught after meeting the angel, and she knows full well what has happened to Jesus, and is already happy about it before encountering Jesus. This episode in your harmonization (and John's gospel) doesn't jive with Matthew's gospel. It's a direct contradiction; Mary is being characterized in two different ways at the same time. A harmonization would seemingly have to either say she was both happy and sad, and both knew what happened to Jesus and didn't, or to simply omit one version of Mary's state of mind. Your harmonization does the latter, but this doesn't meet the Easter Challenge criteria.

But Mark's testimony (the part that is accepted as authentic) is clear: the women "said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." (Mk 16:8) Your harmonization does not integrate this gospel element at this point after the angelic appearance. It must do so, in order to fulfill the criteria of the Easter Challenge.

This was quite a creative effort, JohnV. I think it's fair to say that you didn't resolve all the contradictions, however; you don't strike me as a "Biblical literalist" Christian, so I'm sure it's no big deal to you. I personally couldn't care less if all the gospels lined up perfectly on the matter of the resurrection, and when I was still a preacher the discrepancies didn't bug me. But it's a fun (if rather exhausting) exercise and it drives the literalists nuts whenever we bring it up.

Oh, one additional, minor quibble: your harmonization didn't try to explain the odd contradiction between Jesus and the angel telling the women (in Matthew and Mark) to inform the disciples that he is going ahead, and will meet them in Galilee, vs. his appearances in the Jerusalem area, on Easter day.

Why did the women need to tell the disciples something that Jesus himself would have had the opportunity to tell them, later that same day? ("Oh, ladies, in case I forget to mention it when I talk to them tonight, could you tell the guys that I'll be up Nazareth way and could they hoof it; I've only got a little time before my departure flight...") So if you're in the mood, I'd be very interested in a believable harmonization of his mentioning an upcoming Galilee rendezvous, prior to the Jerusalem appearances where such an announcement could be heard by all the disciples straight from the horse's mouth.

-David