Post resurrection accounts of Jesus in the gospels, consistent or not?

If Christianity is merely an intellectual exercise, then it’s not worth much.

Wait a minute. I thought science cannot conclude this. How are you making this determination that a God Baal is not real?

By the evidence of God’s providence and by trusting in legitimate testimony.

Who said we were talking about science?

And given that some of those reconciliations have turned out to be quite real and legitimate, then any objective observer would do well to withhold judgment to some extent, and not be so quick to affirm or conclude a contradiction… otherwise it appears that the critics or skeptics have just as much a “need” to find a contradiction as the believers are accused of having a “need” to defend their book from accusations of error.

The feeding I find a perfect example. Your proposal that Jesus fed the multitudes on two separate occasions is of course entirely legitimate, and requires absolutely no “creativity” on the part of any modern Christian. Thus if someone, hypothetically, were to claim a contradiction in this case, this belies that they want to see a contradiction there… As they are obviously jumping to the conclusion of it being a contradiction when there still remain very obvious and legitimate alternatives, and perhaps it is them that doesn’t have all the facts.

And this is a courtesy I give to any ancient authority, religious or secular. I personally wish people would be more hesitant to claim an error or contradiction in either the Koran or in Herodotus… rather we would do well in many cases to acknowledge that it may be we who don’t have all the facts.

Case in point, the Koran famously “errs” in articulating (and opposing) the doctrine of the trinity, articulating the three persons as God, Jesus, and Mary. I personally find it lazy to pin this “error” on Muhammad. Rather, if I give him the benefit of the doubt, it rather gives me the possible insight that there well may have been Christian sects that had corrupted this teaching, to which Muhammad was responding. To conclude a contradiction is to affirm that we know more than the author, without question, and that we don’t admit the possibility that we have anything else to learn from him on the topic at hand.

Or, case in point, perhaps Herodotus knew what he was talking about in his description of certain Egyptian boats, and all those scholars over the years that assumed he had erred or fabricated the idea ought to have been slower to conclude that Herodotus had simply erred…

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There is so much to respond to in all that has been said here. As I look at and compare the various accounts of the post resurrection appearances, it really is hard to get away from the Galilee vs Jerusalem issue. To use some hyperbole, that issue seems like a contradiction in the accounts wide enough to fit a passenger plane through, the simple and straightforward reading of the texts paints that much of a different picture. This I find particularly so considering the geography of how far away Galilee and Jerusalem were - Galilee ain’t no Bethany just a little walk down the road! I agree with @Vinnie when he says

@Daniel_Fisher I think you raise many valid points about not being too quick to judge errors and contradictions because we don’t know all the facts of a matter. For me personally though, I just find the differences and the logical sequence of how the 11 (or 10 with the whole Thomas issue) disciples went from Jerusalem to Galilee and then back to Jerusalem too much to be able to easily harmonise. Something’s off. I find it the efforts of various people to harmonise the accounts indicative of a need to ‘make it work by whatever means’ (not saying you were doing this, as I see you weren’t actually trying to harmonise the accounts but just saying not to write off that we could be missing something when seeing through our modern lens). Indeed, I could be maybe missing something and very much remain open to being shown otherwise.

It’s very depressing for me, this issue. I can’t just treat it as an intellectual one - it’s so much more than that. The emotions connected to it run deep. Did Jesus actually rise, or not? The weight of that question is so intense. Carefully looking at the different post resurrection accounts is akin I think to the child who starts to get the feeling they’ve got it wrong with the whole Santa. There are of course still various wild explanations still accessible to them to sustain the belief … but they start to feel the belief slipping. That light of sweet innocence fades out of their eyes (I never really thought much about Santa growing up but it goes without saying some kids are pretty shattered when they realise it’s a ruse and it’s cute to hear them not give the belief up as they earnestly hold on). I want to believe in the Resurrection, quite desperately. I hope it is real and I hope I’m totally wrong and God will extend grace to me and open my heart/eyes in the future to realise I was wrong here (and not in a scenario after I die and am facing a terrible judgment, I make the request for any realisation of my error to please not happen like that in the presence of all reading). Right now though, I’m finding an intellectually honest reading of the various accounts makes this most important story painfully hard to just accept in the way I used to. Frankly, it’s so frustrating there are such significant differences in the various accounts. When piled up against so many other factors about the Bible and concept of God generally, this is just another knife wound and this one in particular really hurts.

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Christopher, very good and honest thoughts. Admittedly I am a believer in inerrancy, but I do hope it comes across that I don’t bring with that a desperate need to harmonize every discrepancy or variance.

I could give lots of further theorizing and explanation, but I wonder if you’d indulge with me in a thought experiment…

Imagine if I were asked to write a personal account of my experiences in Bahrain. (Let’s say I wrote it to my cousin Matthew… who was interested in visiting there someday) I would describe my ship coming to Bahrain, the missions we did there, the responsibilities, the culture. I’d describe how I sailed in my Ship from Japan in Summer of 2004 for a month, the first time being off the ship since leaving Japan was stepping into Bahrain to the sweltering heat, even in late September, though I certainly enjoyed the climate of Bahrain better in early January… I enjoyed the various tremendous shopping experiences and the truly amazing food, enjoying choice hotels, met a Navy Captain (the most senior officer I met in Bahrain) and met two U.S. / American Navy Chaplains during my deployment, who took me out to an amazing British Pub (!) there in Bahrain for my birthday.

Then, for a different reason, imagine if I were asked to describe a report or after-action review of the mission where I spent time supporting the defense of Iraq’s Oil platforms. (We’ll say I wrote it to a friend named Luke who was preparing for a similar Navy at-sea defense mission). I would describe living on a ship and nothing else, how my ship left Japan with orders to immediately sail to the Oil Platforms for their defense. We made no port visit en route but hightailed it right to those terminals, where I visited them on a regular basis, making trips by small boat to and from the platforms, occasionally sleeping out on them. I never described any port visits regarding this time period, and described the awful food - how the food was limited to military MREs on the platforms, their only decent warm meals being delivered by our ship (whose food wasn’t that good) when I visited those oil platforms. And it was there during this time I met a 4-star Marine Corps general, the most senior officer I’d ever met. And I close to note that my time in the Persian Gulf lasted only a month, and then I closed off the description by describing how I spent my entire birthday very busy on the waters working that defense mission, and on that day I also happened to meet two chaplains, one American, one an Australian chaplain, part of the Australian Navy.

I dare say, if we subjected my two accounts of “My deployment to the Persian Gulf” to the same methods we use to deconstruct the discrepancies between gospel accounts, I would be accused of all manner of contradiction. The two events as I described them in those two different accounts seemed to be describing the same event, but with wide divergences likely wide enough to sail an aircraft carrier through…? - if My actual military orders were really to support the oil platform defense, why did I not even mention it once in the first account? obviously, I must have been talking about some same events, since in both accounts I describe meeting two chaplains, but somehow the wires must have been crossed since one account says both chaplains were American, the other says one was Australian. The accounts say we went immediately to the oil terminals and that I went off the ship to visit them, but the other account that my first time off the ship was in Bahrain? Also, anyone familiar with the military commands there knows that the only Marine Corps 4-star general in the area at the time had his headquarters there in Bahrain, I wouldn’t have met him out in the middle of the Persian Gulf on an oil platform - that part of the story must have been conflated from one to the other. One account mentions being there September through January, the other that the my time in the Persian Gulf lasted only a month, etc. Obviously both couldn’t be true. People would look at my letter to Matthew, and my report to Luke, and suggest the accounts are so full of irreconcilable details that they hopelessly contradict.

But this is how we talk, this is how we write, these are how we communicate - we don’t try to give every specific detail about things that don’t fit our purpose on the off-chance that someone might want to reconcile my details with another account. We narrate the event how we want to communicate in a natural format, simply omitting all manner of things that simply aren’t relevant to our purpose, describing only those details relevant to our purpose as it fits our narrative.

Either of those hypothetical accounts I described above are very realistic accounts I could very likely have given on an occasion given the particular focus or pupose of my communication. And both I can testify are absolutely correct, accurate and true, even though I expect an outsider would look at the two of them and see hopeless irreconcilable contradictions between the two. But both accounts are indeed completely true above, however many very wide irreconcilable contradictions someone might suspect they find between those two accounts.

So, I would challenge you to try to “reconcile” my two accounts above - in a way that a third party neutral observer wouldn’t very likely accuse you of coming up with some “very creative” and near-desperate contortions of my language to try to reconcile the two accounts. The different purpose or audience might explain some of the divergence, but wouldn’t the far more likely explanation be that I had simply erred in my recollection in one or both of those accounts at various minor points?

Thinking through a thought experiment like this is ultimately what gives me pause when I consider the differing accounts of the resurrection, or other such ancient accounts. My commitment to inerrancy certainly gives me sympathy to consider possibilities, but at core, inerrancy or not, I can recognize that two accounts can genuinely appear significantly irreconcilable with very different details that don’t seem to line up, and still both be true. This simply will be the result of trying to reconcile two independent summaries of a very complex, moving, multifaceted event, where each author was selecting certain details to form his narrative from a wide variety of possible facts that could have been included.

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Hello again,

So I’ve read all the post resurrection accounts again after thinking about this topic more. Bear with me as a ‘think out loud’ a bit here to gather my thoughts - it’s been a largely positive experience. What had come to mind was that there were 40 days that Jesus appeared to the disciples before his ascension

After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.”
‭‭Acts‬ ‭1:3‬ ‭

I read too that Jesus’ command to stay in Jerusalem was given in Luke pretty well just before his ascension:
“I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭24:49-51‬

Considering this, I realise that the disciples seeing Jesus in Galilee is not necessarily inconsistent with the disciples being told to stay in Jerusalem and Jesus ascending from the Mount of Olives - it’s just that those events could very well have occurred after the disciples must have seen Jesus in Galilee.

After reviewing the various accounts again carefully I didn’t so much find an inconsistency in the disciples seeing Jesus

  • first in Jerusalem after the resurrection
  • then with the idea that they went in to Galilee
  • then returned where where Jesus ascended.
    That could quite conceivably happen after 40 days.

Even the ending of Matthew allows some flexibility- at first I thought this gospel was saying Jesus ascended from the mountain in Galilee but I don’t necessarily think it is, it’s a tad vague:

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.””
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭28:16-20‬

Allegedly (and this is crucial to the whole argument really) the word “then” can mean “after”. I hope someone can cross reference that.

I don’t know - what do others think of this - does this make sense? I think this more or less reconciles the issues … to use a potentially bad analogy … after this reexamination I kind of feel like I was on one side of a creek where the accounts could not be, honestly, reconciled. Then after looking at this and allowing for the 40 days, it was like haphazardly throwing stones into the water one by one … by stepping on the logic stones you can cross to the other side of the creek where the accounts can be reconciled but, your feet get wet and it’s all a bit messy and kinda awkward to get there (and you might fall in if you don’t have a good footing so you need to be good at making awkward logic jumps). I hope that makes sense :slight_smile:

In all this, I feel like there are some details I’m still maybe not properly considering?? @SuperBigV and @Vinnie maybe you can cross check this - as I understand what I’m suggesting here would contrast what you were saying in the thread. I feel it’s important to kinda nut this out and hopefully - if possible (!) - come to some kind of conclusion (can that creek so to speak be crossed or not!).

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I feel like the 40 day timeline may actually quite easily accomodate the:

  • initially Jerusalem
  • week later still in Jerusalem (John 20:26)
  • then travelling to Galilee as per Jesus’ instruction to the women to tell the disciples to meet him there (Matthew 28:10) being initially ignored (Luke 24:9-11) meaning they didn’t go to Galilee, until …
  • Jesus appeared to the disciples once without Thomas
  • then with Thomas, in Jerusalem, a week later and they realised “hang on, Jesus said to the women initially to go to Galilee” and so off they went
  • once they got there, they kinda just waited around and Peter eventually said to the others (maybe after a few days and it seeming a little dull) “well guys, I’m gonna go fish” as per the opening of John 21
  • and then it happened, Jesus appeared to them on the shore and officially reinstated Peter as in the gospel of John account

How they then, after this, ended up back in Jerusalem I don’t know - as that is not specified. This honestly is a shame as it’s a fair old journey from Galilee back to Jerusalem and probably expensive for a group as well who had already tracked to Galilee from there. I don’t know how many days it’d take but it would be a fair few I imagine there and back - Jesus kept them moving haha, I imagine he did that on purpose. I guess to be honest, that part of the 40 days (them returning from Galilee to Jerusalem) is pretty patchy. You, honestly, would think more effort would be made to tracking the whole process of how those days unfolded? :man_shrugging: I mean, this is the time the Risen Christ was appearing on earth before he ascended - that’s a reeeeally important, one time only window never ever again to be repeated. The fact it’s so vague is at best a shame and at worst, well I don’t necessarily believe it - but it’s pretty suss (picture someone standing in the middle of the fast flowing creek now, looking uncertain, that’s me lol- but I’m facing the “reconcile” side).

This dynamic of it being vague is especially disappointing when you have Luke who took pains to kind of track the detailed unfolding of the whole story not even mentioning the Galilee trip. I mean Luke, dude - what happened? In fact, Luke really reads as though the disciples never left Jerusalem. I mean, it’s a bit weird.
[Sigh] that said, when you take into account the 40 days, the Jerusalem, then Galilee for old times sake and then back to Jerusalem for the business of receiving the Holy Spirit, can work. It’s enough time (I think).

I’ll leave it there for now but would love to hear others’ thoughts on this

Christopher, I believe the word you’re referencing that is translated “then” in NIV (I believe?) is simply the word “and” in Greek (kai / καὶ). A most generic and common connective conjunction that could imply all sorts of things. For stylistic reasons it looks like NIV translated it “then”, but it is simply “and” which could imply all host of things depending on larger context, but for strict accuracy is usually just best translated “and”. it is translated as such in ESV and KJV, for instance.

a lot can happen in 40 days indeed!

I would be more than happy to discuss some of the details if you are interested… but as mentioned above, I personally don’t find an urge or need to iron out all the details, for reasons mentioned in my analogy above about the two accounts of my persian gulf story. Matthew wanted to select those parts of those 40 days and wanted to talk about Galilee, apparently, Luke selecting other details.

One thing that stands out to me is the obvious fact that, whatever Jesus did or didn’t mean by “Stay in the city”, he clearly couldn’t mean it in the strictly literalistic sense that they were not for any reason for any length of time exit those city’s walls, since the very next sentence says he led them out of the city to Bethany. Sure, Bethany is closer than Galilee, but neither are “in the city.”

So i understand Jesus words there easily could have been a general guideline, a principle not to relocate, or begin missionary journeys, or to move their gathering headquarters, or something to that effect. And again, this isn’t me forcing a foreign interpretation onto the text in order to avoid a contradiction… it is the very next sentence that qualifies and gives context to his instruction:

But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.

(it should be noted that, also in Acts, where the command on"stay in the city until the Spirit’s coming" was repeated, and again they are recorded as having left the city with Jesus and returning before the Spirit’s coming. clearly the “stay in the city” instruction isn’t strictly literal.)

so he told them to “stay in the city”, then led them out to Bethany, and then they returned to the city. And recall this is either a very general summary, or one very small selection, out of the 40 day period where he said all manner of things, and I find the trip to Bethany unlikely o be the only excursion they made during an entire 40 days while staying true to the general principle of his command.

Also instructive to me is thinking about Jesus’s individual appearance to Peter alone… it is referenced in passing twice to my knowledge…

in Luke…

And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

and in 1Corinthians(!)…

that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Now this was surely an event of extreme significance and importance, but the details were not included anywhere, Luke making only the most passing reference. But as it is, those passing references make the accounts between 1Corinthians and Luke consistent on that part… that he appeared first to Peter, and then to the larger group of disciples.

Now, imagine if by some chance Luke had not made that passing reference… I suspect people would then see a contradiction between Luke and 1Corinthians. Did Jesus first appear to his disciples, or first to Peter alone, I would be asked.

Point is, please consider… if Luke had chosen to omit that one little relatively insignificant passing detail, simply because it didn’t fit his purpose, or for his own literary agenda, or for whatever reason as he selected from a great corpus of things he could have written about… would this very minor and rather insignificant omission have introduced an actual error or contradiction between the two accounts? of course not. such an omission would introduce a discrepancy or difficulty that we would probably be unable to easily harmonize. but it wouldn’t make a contradiction., even if I had no earthly idea how to so reconcile the two.

that, for what it is worth, is why I handle i variances between the resurrection accounts as i do… i personally don’t feel the need to reconcile every discrepancy, largely because i think it is simply and truly impossible to so reconcile them for these and other reasons… not because i believe them to actually contradict. there is just too much that may have happened in 40 days, too much selection, too many different (legitimate) agendas, too much that is a summary or overview not intended as a detailed blow-by-blow account, that even someone like me that works from the working assumption that there are absolutely no errors or contradictions whatsoever between the accounts would also affirm that i find them hopelessly irreconcilable, for the reasons i described above given my example about my persian gulf deployment.

we don’t have to reconcile the accounts to have prima facie confidence that they are all describing something accurate, even with different details, purposes, selection of material, and degree of summary or condensation involved. and, as somewhere mentioned above, the fact that they easily harmonize or line up is further evidence that these are all independent accounts, not accounts all gathered from the same source, and multiple independent attestation is a major tool used in historical study to confirm an historical account.

Well, again, i’ll observe that he specifies (twice) that they left Jerusalem, but I assume you mean left for the relatively long journey to go so far as Galilee. but again, just one thought to consider how i try to be generous to such historical accounts… It is conceivable that Luke didn’t know or was ever aware that the disciples ever went to Galilee. I don’t personally think that likely, given his research and familiarity with the eyewitnesses… i think it is better explained by his literary focus and specific purpose of writing and his literary agenda and outline of Acts where the gospel starts at Jerusalem and then went to galilee and then the ends of the earth, and describing the earlier trips to galilee would just have been (literarily at least) a bit of a distraction.

But it would be conceivable at least that he wasn’t aware of those journeys. and if so, (and here’s the point)… that would still introduce no conflict or contradiction into the account… Just like someone who had only heard me tell of my adventures in the persian gulf may have passed on that story and never shared that i ever went to Bahrain, being i orang of that fact… but this would not introduce a contradiction between his account and someone who related my adventures in Bahrain.

one additional though just occured to me… it is entirely conceivable that the instruction to stay in Jerusalem happened at or near the end of the 40 days…

the end of Luke’s gospel is clearly quite telescoped… summarizing 40 days in about 8 verses or so. So perhaps that reference to staying in Jerusalem is simply something that happened immediately before the ascension? That is certainly the impression given in Acts, as I read it at least…

He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Again, I don’t point this out in order to establish some firm or solid harmonization, but simply to recognize how very complex a reconstruction we would be dealing with… trying to grasp what happened when, what happened before what, who was where, given that all we have are selections and summaries of an entire 40 day period.

So again consider… if we didn’t give allowance for summary or telescoping in the account… If we read Luke’s account alone, we would likely get the impression that the ascension (and “stay in Jerusalem” instruction) happened near immediately after the day of his resurrection when he first appeared to the disciples, no? But reading the second book by the same author, that is when we realize that the period between Luke 24:43 and Luke 24:51 (~8 verses) covers a period of some 40 days.

So it certainly strikes me as entirely conceivable that the instruction to stay in Jerusalem may well have happened at the end of that period, well after their other adventures in Galilee, and for that matter, who knows where else.

You are assuming the 40 days is not just a round, theological number in Luke mirroring the 40 years Israel spent in the desert. You may claim he only appeared to his disciples for 40 days but we do know he appeared to a non-disciple Paul well after his reported ascension (40 days in Luke). So certainly a 40 day limit to the appearances of the risen Jesus to people can’t be true by Paul’s account. Unless we are somehow distinguish between bodily and spiritual appearances? I wouldn’t put much emphasis on the exactness of a special number in antiquity.

Your harmonization is not very convincing to me. It defies the plain sense of the text and is very counterintuitive from any storytelling standpoint.

Mark 16: 6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

The simplest idea here is that Jesus will appear to his disciples in Galilee for the first time. Anyone reading Mark, this is what they would think from a narrative perspective. Thats the only reading that makes sense. And I say that fully aware that no one account is a complete record of events and John mentions only a singular Mary Magdalene but has a “we” in reference to the women. I can only presume this is the sense of what Mark means to narrate.

In Matthew 28:5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” This is on the sabbath in the morning.

Again, the same as Mark. An angel tells the women to go tell the disciples to go to Galilee where they will see Jesus. This is narrated as if it is where the disciples see Jesus for the first time. Then a little bit later Jesus appears to the women and tells them the same exact thing: "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

This again is clearly narrated as if the disciples will see Jesus for the first time in Galilee. It is incoherent otherwise. Matthew 28:17 has the disciples seeing him but some are doubting. This doesn’t sound like a host of Jerusalem appearances and explanations have happened–it sounds like a first appearance. You might say its understandable for the disciple to be so nervous as seeing a dead man rise but the only people harmonizing these accounts are the ones who think they are all true. Under that pretext, these disciples already saw Jesus raise the dead, walk on water, control the weather, the sky went dark in the middle of his crucifixion, he fed 5000 people with a few fish and bread and performed a host of miraculous healings. If he already appeared to them a few times in Jerusalems, this is an odd reaction. Especially when they expect him on orders from the women. This type of exegesis would convince you 99% of the time on every other issue and would certainly be used to explain away errors.

It is clear in Luke 24 that they see Jesus in Jerusalem for the first time. The tomb is empty, Peter sees the linen then Jesus appears to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Finally they recognize him at a home and they rush to Jerusalem to tell the disciples its true Jesus has risen. Recall that Luke 24:13 shows this is all on the SAME DAY. The two disciple immediately rush to Jerusalem and tell the disciples who are now startled as Jesus appears to them.

John 20:19 also has Jerusalem appearances: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders…” A week later, because Thomas was missing, Jesus appears again to the twelve.

Galilee is too far from Jerusalem to assume Jesus could have appeared to his disciples first in both locations on the same day. The plainest sense of Matthew and Luke indicate Jesus first appeared to his disciples in Galilee. Luke shows no awareness of any Galileans appearances. Matthew and Luke also show no awareness of Jerusalem appearances to the disciples. John 20 shows a Jerusalem appearance to the disciples (two as Thomas is not there the first time). Original John shows no knowledge of Galilean appearance stories. John 21, the second ending, which was added later by a redactor has Galilean appearance stories.

You have to read and understand the text in a bizarre way to avoid errors. Basically, you have to want the text to not have errors. You have to have inerrancy, the theological anti-virus software running in the background of your mind forcing you to come up with any logically possible solution to these discrepancies, to the point where you have to reject the plain meaning of what scripture says. Also, how does one explain the complete lack of Jerusalem experiences in Mark? I mean, if this was actually based on Peter’s preaching, wouldn’t Peter talk a lot about the appearances of the Lord over 40 nights? Wouldn’t the resurrection of Jesus be a central point of Peter’s preaching? Likewise, wouldn’t the apostle Matthew record details of both the Jerusalem and the Galilean traditions, being that he was eyewitnesses to both? How on earth, under traditional authorship, does one find two such diverse streams of tradition in the gospels? We could include original John (ending at chapter 20) in this as well. No to mention Luke has the text of Mark in front of him but chose to omit this line. Its quite plain that Luke has a theological geography here. The appearance of Jesus and ministry of the apostles starts in Jerusalem and slowly spirals outward ending with Paul preaching in the capital of the world, Rome. That is not history, its theology. The simplest solution is that there were two sets of appearance traditions floating around. The redactor of John added 21 bringing both together in his gospel.

Paul’s list adds a complication as Jesus appears to Cephas first and then to the Twelve but there were only 11 per the gospels account of Judas’s betrayal, unless Paul is unaware of that tradition, which if historical, would seem odd.

Not to mention , there are a host of other discrepancies between the accounts (time they went, the stone etc., some of which can be reconciled and some which cannot and most of which are minor but are discrepancies none the less. I’ll post screenshots of a table from Pheme Perkins’ book Resurrection New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection

What’s not conceivable is that Peter’s eyewitness preaching and Matthews eyewitness preaching betray no knowledge of the Jerusalem appearances and that John’s (originally which ended at ch. 20 in my view) betrays no knowledge of Galilean appearances along with Luke from the Pauline churches.

Even if you want to accept this harmonization, you have to drop traditional authorship to do it. But if the accounts weren’t written by eyewitnesses, what’s even the point in trying to harmonize their details any way? Such competing streams of thought (Galilean vs Jerusalem appearances), if you are really that driven to harmonize them with a logically possible solution nowhere suggested in the text itself, can only really be explained by non-eyewitnesses who have come down with different, incomplete streams of apostolic preaching.

Vinnie

The contrasts between Kings and Chronicles is instructive for anyone interested in recognizing author’s intent and intentional selection of material. It is generally without dispute that Chronicles used Samuel/Kings as source, practically rewriting it for different purposes.

And while much of Chronicles is copied verbatim from Samuel/Kings, there are large swaths that are entirely skipped and ignored… for instance, all the palace intrigue and political assassinations and competition for the throne when Solomon became king.

What is the more reasonable explanation in that case? That the author of Chronicles was unfamiliar with the record of these events? or that he omitted them as they did not fit the purpose or intent of his writing? Clearly the second.

Why, then, would one rule out that very real possibility on the part of authors such as Matthew… that they, similarly, were simply selective of their source material in constructing their narrative, unless to stubbornly insist that there must be a contradiction or error?

See my recent discussion on the practice of insisting on certain questionable interpretations (such as what was the “real” ending of a gospel), when only that interpretation can sustain the supposed error (since, obviously, John 21 describes just such events in Galilee).

And speaking about a forced reading to find a contradiction or error at any cost… even any fair reading of John up through Chapter 20 doesn’t display a lack of knowledge about events Galilee, it simply tells the events around the immediate appearances in Jerusalem.

Claiming that by describing striking events that occurred in Jerusalem, the author “betrays no knowledge of Galilean appearances” is just about as reasonable as claiming that a short account of Churchill’s most significant speeches to Parliament (e.g., Winston Churchill's inspiring wartime speeches in Parliament) “betrays no knowledge of his speeches to the United States Congress in Washington, D.C.”

image

Trying to work this all out feel like …

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And not to be rude… but as if i needed yet another example of a forced or utterly unnatural interpretation unsupported by the text, embraced in order to invent an error or contradiction that simply isn’t there.

The text obviously gives 40 days Jesus spent physically and bodily present with his disciples before his bodily ascension, and says nothing about some strict 40 day limit to any “appearances” of any kind, whether in dreams or miracles… whether or not he would “appear” in some other fashion, in dreams or other such spiritual or miraculous appearances… such as to Stephen in his vision at his death, to Ananias in a similar vision, to Peter in a Dream, or to a Paul on the road to Damascus.

To see something that “can’t be true” here I fear speaks far more about the need of an interpreter to see errors, and the contortions of logic he is willing to embrace to that end, than it does about any actual errors in the text.

You are misinterpreting me here and it is probably because I was not clear. The idea that Jesus appeared over time to his disciples is clearly scriptural. My point is I question the “40 days” of Luke on the basis of the number being so symbolic. It could have been 10 days, it could have been 100, it could have been 5 years. The basic idea of the Ascension is Jesus ascends to heaven after commissioning the eleven. In no sense, historically, would I suppose that Jesus must have ascended to heaven on resurrection day.

In mark, the ending is complicated. Does it end at 16:8 or is there a lost ending. If so, which one? That is not clear either way.

In Matthew Jesus is going ahead of the disciples to Galilee. This could be a hundred mile trip and it would have taken them a while to make it. My points only I would offer no judgment or restrictions on how long Jesus appeared to his followers. He appeared to Paul years later.

When Jesus disappeared where did he go? Was the “ascension” special, or just one of the many times Jesus ascended into heaven throughout the time period he appears to his followers? Was there one ascension or many? I admit that point is not clear to me.

In John 20:17 Jesus says to Mary Magdalene says, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Personally, I thought the ascension was a one time event where Jesus went to heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father at the end of his apostolic omission. Any errors on my part would be solely due to that thinking. Maybe “the ascension”, the one among many, is significant because it was the last time Jesus appeared to his disciples all together and commissioned them and they saw him ascend, for a final time into heaven?

Under no circumstances am I saying Jesus’ appearance could not and did not occur over time in the Gospels. Obviously he was around at least a week by John 20. Of course John 21, which I think was added later extends this further to Galilee.

Vinnie

No one is ruling out omission or authors being selective with their source material. I am ruling out your view of Matthew’s omission of all of Luke material, which you deemed “striking” as unintelligible and disingenuous. That the writers selected and omitted on theologically grounds is absolutely axiomatic. Luke has the text of Mark 16:7 in front of him (Marcan priority) and theologically chooses to ignore any Galilean appearances and wants to (misleadingly and incorrectly!) portray the church and disciples as Jerusalem centric. Jesus is clear to them: do not leave the city (at the end of Luke on resurrection day). Then Jesus leads them to Bethany for his ascension (Luke). It narrates they returned to Jerusalem and continually worshipped at the temple. I believe this is the only the reason in Acts 1:12 the disciple are at the Mount of Olives is because Bethany is on the slopes of it. Luke notes that afterwards to disciples returned to Jerusalem (a sabbath day’s walk). I understand its your view that this occurred after the Galilean appearances of which there is not the slightest evidence of in Luke.

Clearly Luke’s Jerusalem focus is theological which for me, absolutely calls into question its historicity. He knows of Jesus telling the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee but ignores it despite including so much of Mark in his own Gopels. How does one claim Luke is selectively writing a theological Gospel that misleading portray’s the early apostolic church while simultaneously wanting to accept every detail as historical? The Jerusalem centric nature of the early apostolic church in Luke is clearly theological and contrived. Something about having your cake and eating it comes to mind.

Are you actually positing that Matthew knew of and omitted all the following?

  • The double appearances of Jesus to the disciples in Jerusalem (with and without Thomas)
  • The stated third appearance to Jesus’ disciples in John 21:14 (this was not all of them) by the sea as they were fishing.
  • Peter and the Beloved Disciple running to the tomb
  • The ascension of Jesus into Heaven on the mount of Olives.
  • Not to mention all the other conflicting details between the accounts

Matthew leaves out all of that. You literally refer to the events in Jerusalem as “striking” but then claim Matthew purposefully omits them all. Somehow, you posit its intelligible for Matthew to ignore all that and only say the women were told to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and they go there and Jesus appeared them, 100 miles away. Matthew knows Jesus appeared twice to his followers over at least a week in Jerusalem, at which point all 11, despite being told to stay in Jerusalem by Jesus until Pentecost (Luke 24:28-49), make a 100 mile trek to Galilee. Matthew knows Jesus appeared to a cluster of them while fishing in Galilee? Then Jesus appears to them on a hill/mountain in Galilee and gives them the great commission (which is a fitting end to the appearance of Jesus by the way). Then they go back to Jerusalem and Jesus lead them Bethany to the mount of Olives and ascends into heaven before their eyes.

You could imagine them ignoring the women but even after Peter and John see the empty tomb? Possible. You can certainly attempt to harmonize bits and pieces. The problem is when you try to harmonize so many different streams of thought you just end up writing fiction. You have to couple this with all the other details given in the table above. Theological omissions and incomplete accounts are okay, but your harmonization is unlikely and contrived and based on a host of material not in any of the individual texts.

This solution is scarcely conceivable to anyone without theological antivirus software running in the background. If you don’t approach the text with the a priori belief it cannot contain an error, you would not end up here. Today its widely know that even eyewitness accounts of the same event and court testimony differ significantly. We know all the pitfalls of memory and inaccuracies of eyewitness testimony. Sure, they may have been better in an oral culture but not perfect. Whether or not these even represent eyewitness testimony is debated. The brunt of four accounts may ultimately depend on Mark though the question of Johannine dependence is pretty well divided in scholarship today. The point is, all these stories would presumably have been told and retold for years, taking on various shapes and features in different communities. Different details would emerge and find their way into our gospel accounts. There is absolutely no reason to ever suppose the accounts should be perfectly harmonious.

The final version of Matthew is ommitting material to the point of being misleading and this seems true for Luke as well. He wants to portray a Jerusalem centric apostolic church despite him knowing that was not really the case. The disciples are clearly 100miles away fishing in Galilee in other accounts. For the communities they write to, from a narrative standpoint, Matthew very clearly gives the impression Jesus appeared to his followers there for the first time. This is the best interpretation form a literary standpoint. Luke gives the exact opposite. Only somebody with a four-fold gospel years later, being on viewing them all as one inerrant story would think otherwise. This is a textbook example of eisegesis.

Second, I never argue anything must be an error. It is conservative apologists who are biased and operate under the assumtion that every discrepancy in the Bible must be capable of harmonization as the text cannot contain errors. That is 100% factual for many views of inerrancy. The Bible could have 5 errors or 5,000. The amount is completely irrelevant to me, which allows me to interpret each author on their own merit, as opposed to force fitting ideas together. But just one error undermines the entire doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. It is the conservative apologist who has to jump through linguistic hoops and engage in mental gymnasts in defense of a doctrinal proposition.

If an account doesn’t narrate something it doesn’t mean it doesn’t know of it. It means they didn’t know of it or they knew of it and thought it not within their purpose or they knew of it and disagreed with it and chose to omit it.

The bottom line is up until John 20, there is no evidence the author knew of Galilean appearance stories. Just like there is no evidence in Matthew, that the author knew of any Jerusalem appearance stories. Just like in Luke there is no evidence in the text itself (we know he saw it in Mark) that Luke knows of Galilean appearance stories. I believe these are all 100% statements of fact. If you know of any passages that dispute these notions feel free to point them out, as opposed to using bad Churchill analogies. If Matthew or Luke gave hints of other appearances then maybe your exegesis would have a chance. The simple fact is you are reading it all into the text. The Gospel of John, with two endings, merges these two streams of thought togther.

And your imaginative harmonization and interpretation that Matthew omitted a whole bunch of striking material he knew of is not a “questionable interpretation” itself? That the disciples didn’t listen to the women despite Peter and the beloved disciple seeing the tomb empty and Matthew narrate it (even if via omission) as if they did listen them, is not questionable to you? Inerrancy advocates are under the delusion that merely coming up with any logically possible solution saves the doctrine of inerrancy. You are just retreating up a never ending hill I do not subscribe to that ideology. Thats not how the real world works. Imagine if in court cases, in order to defend a suspected criminal, we were allowed to come up with any imaginable interpretation in our defense and if it was logically possible, despite having no real evidence in it favor, we would have to abstain from a guilty verdict. The majority of all verdicts would be non-liquet and therefore not guilty.

I will also continue to interpret John 21 as a second added ending until I am presented with a compelling case that it was not and that the Gospel intentionally has two endings, the second of which is also addressing the incorrect eschatological timetables of the community.

deepest apologies then for the misunderstanding, and i agree 40 may well have been a round number, and i have no issue with that, except that calling something 40 days that really was either 2 days or 5 years is where i would begin to classify something as an “error”, intent iona, or not.

quite true, but this at least is borne out by actual textual differences in extant manuscripts. for what it is worth, the suggestion that John 21 is not original, or written by someone else, is entirely theoretical, not supported by any textual evidence.

very much appreciate the other thoughts… one other observation if i may…

I can’t speak fo others, but as I mentioned above to Christopher, I for one have no need or desire to harmonize these various accounts… given different authors, with both different availability and intentional selection of (true) events, and (accurately) summarizing, telescoping, and condensing the accounts for their literary purposes… i believe the accounts are hopelessly irreconcilable and the idea of harmonizing them is impossible… I simply don’t think this means that there must be an error or contradiction. this is just how such events are recorded.

I’d point again to my illustration above about my trip to the Middle East… Even though i can testify to you that both accounts are absolutely true, I seriously doubt that you could harmonize them in a way where the harmonization is also accurate and true. i would be interested in such if you wanted to try. it that is my point… different accounts of the same thing, when different particular events are selected for different purposes, may still be hopelessly irreconcilable even when both, in actual fact, are actually true.

Matthew recorded one and only one single appearance of Jesus to his disciples, where Jesus spoke a total of about 60 words (as translated in English) to them. I don’t think it is far fetched to recognize that he omitted a lot of other things he was likely aware of and probably could have recorded.

Otherwise, we’d have to suggest that Matthew, writing after Mark, presumably somewhere around the same timeframe that Luke wrote his gospel, was familiar with a ton of other traditions and teachings and events and things about Jesus not recorded in Mark, as he had gathered and researched (all the so-called “M” material)… much of which Luke also had access to (the so called “Q” material)… but somehow in all that he had not encountered a single other detail or account or claim or tradition or legend or anything about Jesus after the resurrection… save this one extremely bare bones event he recorded about the mountain in Galilee? And Jesus great commission?

I’m not desperately seeking a harmonization or the like, but it just seems at face value that, for whatever reason, Matthew indeed just wanted to emphasize that one event and that one command of Jesus. The only alternative seems to be that somehow, collecting all the information, events, records, claims, traditions, stories, legends, of Jesus’s life from all manner of sources, that he had discovered no other account whatsoever of Jesus’s life or interaction with his disciples?

it seems to me far more plausible that he simply chose to record the one event he did as a fitting closing to his gospel for his own literary purposes and theological agenda.

Not to mention, this event itself is obviously very condensed and summarized and extremely short on detail (“they worshipped, but some doubted”. who doubted? did they overcome their doubt? What did Jesus say in response to their doubt? talk about a summary and bare-bones account!)

Even in this one account i can’t help but notice that Matthew was, for whatever literary purpose or agenda, making a very quick summary rather than going into great detail about even this event… and i imagine he had much more information about this particular event than he chose to share… he obviously gave just the briefest summary for his purpose.

So, no, I’m not positing that Matthew was aware of any particular event and chose to omit it, but in general, I think it absolutely reasonable ( and I think pretty obvious) that he certainly would have been aware of much, much more than he for whatever reason chose to write about there.