[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: The Harmony of the Gospels, Part II

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Posted by Donald:
The Harmony of the Gospels, Part II
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1206248130.shtml


   This is a continuation of the previous post on the Harmony of the
   Gospels, specifically as it refers to the resurrection. There I quoted
   from all the gospels, here I talk about the differences.
   You'll note that there are differences between the gospel accounts. In
   my younger days, this troubled me a lot. I've had twenty years now to
   think on this, but while I won't claim to have fully figured it out
   (although I do have some thoughts I'll share in a moment), I have
   learned that the weight of the evidence is convincing, even if my
   belief in the Gospels' inerrancy remains troubled. Before I discuss
   some possible interpretations, it's fair to ask whether it's worth the
   effort. Lee Strobel in [1]The Case for Christ rightly points out that
   there is enough agreement that the essential story is clear, and
   enough differences to indicate that the four accounts came from
   different sources. C.S. Lewis in [2]Miracles (Chapter 16) points out
   that there's more to the Resurrection than the first morning:

     When modern writers talk about the Resurrection they usually mean
     one particular moment--the discovery of the Empty Tomb and the
     appearance of Jesus a few yards away from it. The story of that
     moment is what Christian apologists now chiefly try to support and
     sceptics chiefly try to impugn. But this almost exclusive
     concentration on the first five minutes or so of the Resurrection
     would have astonished the earliest Christian teachers. In claiming
     to have seen the Resurrection they were not necessarily claiming to
     have seen that. Some of them had, some of them had not. It had no
     more importance than any of the other appearances of the risen
     Jesus--apart from the poetic and dramatic importance which the
     beginnings of things must always have. What they were claiming was
     that they had all, at one time or another, met Jesus during the six
     or seven weeks that had followed His death. Sometimes they seem to
     have been alone when they did so, but on one occasion twelve of
     them saw Him together [by twelve here C.S. Lewis (and Paul) means
     the Twelve, who in fact were only eleven by that point], and on
     another occasion about five hundred of them. St. Paul says that the
     majority of the five hundred were still alive when he wrote the
     First Letter to the Corinthians, i.e. about 55 A.D.
     The "Resurrection" to which they bore witness was, in fact, not the
     action of rising from the dead but the state of being risen; a
     state, as they held, attested by intermittent meetings during a
     limited period (except for the special, and in some ways different,
     meeting vouchsafed to St. Paul).

   The actual events of Resurrection Sunday are, for the most part,
   skimmed over very briefly in the first three gospels. Why? One reason
   is pointed out by C.S. Lewis--those events were actually a very minor
   part of the Resurrection story. The apostles themselves didn't see any
   of it, and the story told by the women didn't convince them. Women,
   after all, were not considered reliable witnesses in first century
   Judea, which may be another reason that their involvement wasn't dwelt
   upon. There are a few other points to keep in mind, which have more to
   do with the nature of ancient histories and biographies than the
   gospels themselves. The first is that chronology was never considered
   terribly important in ancient histories: the point is to tell the
   events, not necessarily to get them in an exact order. The second is
   that quotes are not full quotes. Go ahead and read the Sermon on the
   Mount (Matthew 5-7). I doubt it will take you more than fifteen
   minutes. Yet Jesus usually taught for hours on end. None of the
   sermons we have are full transcripts; they are all highly abridged,
   and that likely applies to all quotes found in ancient writings. Some
   commentators argue that all the quotes are paraphrased; they are at
   the least translations, as Greek, the language in which the gospels
   were written, was not the spoken language of Judea at this time. There
   are some scholars who believe that no quotation used by ancient
   writers is even meant to be exact, simply what the writers think the
   speaker should have said. I don't subscribe to that theory myself. The
   third and final point is that when listing people present, writers
   usually just listed the important people, leaving an assumed "and
   others." If you want more on the nature of ancient histories and the
   reliability of the gospels, I recommend F.F. Bruce's [3]The New
   Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
   Since John is the most clearly different, and the most detailed of the
   accounts, we'll start with his gospel account and build on that.
   Clearly, John was telling the story of Mary Magdalene, so the focus is
   on her, and the other women aren't even mentioned. According to Luke,
   there were at least five of them there: he lists three, and then says
   there were other women (plural). Of these, four are named in the
   Gospels: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and Joanna
   (I suppose it's possible that Salome and Joanna are two names for the
   same woman--I don't really know). The exact time is around dawn. John
   says that it was still dark, Mark says that it was "when the sun had
   risen." I'll admit that this bothered me at one point, but I don't
   remember why. It can be pretty dark just as the sun is rising, and I
   imagine the episode--travelling to the tomb, arriving, witnessing,
   then leaving--took long enough that it was dark when it began and
   light when it was over. In any case, Mary Magdalene arrives, sees the
   tomb is empty, then runs to get Peter and the other disciple (John,
   who carefully avoided naming himself throughout the gospel). There's
   no account of angels or Jesus yet in John. Of course, there's no
   mention of the other women either, and I wonder what they were doing.
   Did they go with Mary, or did they remain there? One possibility,
   which is one I've never heard mentioned in any commentary I've read,
   is that they split up. When they found the tomb empty, Mary went back
   to find Peter and John--perhaps alone, perhaps with some of the
   others--while the others remained there. There they saw the angels.
   This, then, could be the main source of the discrepancy between the
   gospels. If the other women remained while Mary went to get Peter,
   then perhaps there are two encounters with the angels, one by these
   women and one by Mary Magdalene, and perhaps, although I'm less
   certain of this, two encounters with Jesus. Jesus and the angels were,
   after all, in the area. Jesus would be meeting with lots of people
   that day, including some of his disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke
   24:12-32), and the apostles that evening (Luke 24:33-49). 1
   Corinthians 15:5 tells us that he met with Peter before the apostles,
   although we're not told exactly when (he may have been one of the
   disciples on the road to Emmaus).
   This resolves most of the difficulties involved, except for a couple
   of details. First off, how many angels were there? At least two. There
   could have been a whole choir involved in this event (I imagine there
   wasn't any lack of volunteers). All the accounts except Matthew's
   mention two, but Matthew's is the only one which has an angel doing
   more than talking to the women. After doing all the hard work of
   subduing the guards and moving the stone, before the women arrived it
   appears, this angel gets top billing in doing the actual speaking.
   Where were the angels? While Matthew's active angel was sitting on the
   stone at one point, there's no reason to assume he was still there
   when the women arrived. Who reported to the disciples? All of the
   women, apparently, but it seems that it was Mary's report, when there
   were still very few facts, that got Peter to go and look, as recorded
   in Luke and John.
   This is clearly not the only possible explanation for the differences,
   and I make no claim that it is the correct explanation. It's simply
   the one that makes the most sense to me, but I've been convinced that
   the weight of evidence is such that the exact details are less
   important than I once thought.

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310209307/qid=1081733213/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/002-1974181-7582401
   2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060653019/qid=1081733154/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-1974181-7582401?v=glance&s=books
   3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0830827366/qid=1081733088/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-1974181-7582401?v=glance&s=books