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

Faith & Science Conversation
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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

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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

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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.”

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And sure he selected material for his narrative and purpose… much like I did with my Middle East trip for illustrative purposes. Some things, while true, just don’t fit the purpose and agenda of my narrative, and they are omitted. other things fit the flow and story i am telling, u select those things, partly because it fits a narrative agenda, partly so you don’t get bogged down in all the details.

as mentioned above, if My hypothetical friend Luke were giving a military after action report about the actual mission, based on my recollection of the event as given to him, he might omit any reference i made to Bahrain simply because it didn’t fit his narrative, not to try to deceive my audience into thinking i never went there. And no one would accuse his account as being “contrived” for such a reason.

I am struck by the narrative as told in the 1990s Harrison Ford Movie “The Fugative.” if you watch the beginning… you recognize that it omits entirely any defense Dr. Kimble gave at his trial. nothing about the defense he, or his defense attorney, gave was presented… no exculpatory evidence, no witnesses, no defense whatsoever. The only thing presented to the audience is the prosecution’s case, evidence used by the prosecution, and the verdict.

Is this because the filmmakers were really trying to communicate to the audience that Dr. Kimble actually made no defense, or because those events simply didn’t fit or contribute meaningfully to the particular story they were telling?

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Although the title of this thread focuses attention on post-resurrection accounts of Jesus in the gospels, I choose to focus on Paul’s testimony in 1 Corinthians, to wit:

  • 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, …
    4 that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
    5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: [T.S. note: Which I take to mean, Peter saw Jesus, then Jesus’ disciples saw Him.)
    6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once [T.S. note: “at the same time”); of whom the greater part remain unto this present [T.S. note: “are still alive”], but some are fallen asleep. [T.S. note: “are dead”]
    7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
    8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. [T.S. note: By which I assume Paul is referring to his own encounter with Jesus during Paul’s ride to Damascus to round up some Christians."

IMO, all other accounts "in the gospels" are amendments culled by the authors from the memories of others who may or may not have been actual witnesses to the events described.

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Your analogy seems to fail for a few reasons. There is no legitimate reason for Matthew to omit any of the “striking” (again, your own words) details he did. You wrote a story for two different purposes. Matthew and Luke are describing the same event: the events of resurrection day and thereafter. They wanted to relay the same exact story, Jesus rose from the dead and I’m sure they wanted to include the most important and relevant details of that event. The penultimate event in Christianity would surely elicit such treatment from the Gospel writers.

Your analogy may fail for a second reason that creates some friction with the first (there are a lot of variables). Luke has Mark in front of him (Marcan priority). Mark clearly has the women being told to tell the disciples to go to Galilee to meet Jesus. I have to say that Luke had this and would probably have known about Galilean appearances (if he was such the careful researcher that people claim). It seems likely that he purposefully suppresses any appearances there to give the impression of a Jerusalem centric apostolic Church. Your analogy is way off base. If you purposefully withheld true information in one of your letters to make someone believe something that wasn’t true, I’d charge you with the same difficulty as Luke. We know Luke has a theological hobby-horse here. Whats the excuse for Matthew’s terse account? That he knows of no other tradition and narrates this as the one is the best response. Or that he created this himself.

I suppose you could claim Mark ends at 16:8 and the women told no one anything because they were afraid and Matthew, using Mark, made up the Galilean appearance traditions and Luke made up the Jerusalem ones. Of course if you believed that you wouldn’t be trying to fit the details of the account together in the first place.

That can be argued though. John 21 could be indirectly or directly dependent on Matthew’s creation or maybe even a potential lost ending. Not knowing Galilean appearance stories at least gets Luke off the hook for deliberately suppressing information to promote a falsehood. Better a mistake in scripture than a legitimate falsehood.

The resurrection accounts are a maze. Did the women tell the disciples or did they run away afraid and told no one anything (Mark)? What does that even mean? Did they not speak of it ever again? Clearly Mark’s passage cannot be pressed over-literally. But still, was this ending justifying maybe an empty tomb story Mark created? Maybe that is why no one heard of it yet because the women never told anyone it was empty. Then along come Matthew and Luke adding all sorts of details to Mark. None of these seem well evidenced but they are all possible speculations on par in credibility with the attempted harmonization you offered above.

Vinnie

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They would have wanted to include those details that they felt most relevant according to their individual purpose and how it supported their larger literary purpose. But what they felt was most important and relevant may well differ from what you seem to think ought to have been most relevant… and what I think is most relevant.

I, personally, am struck that nowhere do we have any details about Jesus’s post resurrection appearance to a Peter. To me, that seems like it would have been a most significant, important, and relevant detail. But Luke makes only the most passing reference to this event, but goes into the small details of Jesus eating fish and how it had been cooked.

The appearance to Peter, I could say, “would surely elicit such treatment from the gospel writers.” Yet Luke simply makes the most passing reference. Point is, you and I can’t judge Luke and Matthew’s choice of what to include on the sole basis of comparing it to what you or I would have chosen to include.

I for one like what Lewis said in this regard…

You may say, of course, that such reviewers are foolish in so far as they guess how a sort of book they never wrote themselves was written by another. They assume that you wrote a story as they would try to write a story; the fact that they would so try, explains why they have not produced any stories. But are the Biblical critics in this way much better off? Dr Bultmann never wrote a gospel. Has the experience of his learned, specialized, and no doubt meritorious, life really given him any power of seeing into the minds of those long dead men who were caught up into what, on any view, must be regarded as the central religious experience of the whole human race? It is no incivility to say—he himself would admit—that he must in every way be divided from the evangelists by far more formidable barriers—spiritual as well as intellectual—than any that could exist between my reviewers and me.

Essentially, we need to respect Luke and Matthew and their purpose, agenda, sources, selection of material according to their literary ends and reasons, much of which we can’t necessarily discern, and not assume that “they wrote a gospel the way I would write a gospel.”

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You are assuming Jesus actually appeared to Peter alone. That’s not a point to argue from, you would have to argue for it. Paul’s appearance list adds more complications to the gospels account did you try to harmonize them in.

Cephas and then the twelve (not the eleven?). Was Judas a creation of the later church? Is Paul being overly general and in exact here assuming his readers knew the Jerusalem story and they he would mean 11? If so why not just say 11.

I’d hazard a guess today if we had 10 more resurrection accounts in scripture you’d find some way to harmonize them. It’s not that you have shown these accounts to not contain an error. You are just demonstrating how your hermeneutic precludes them.

For all we know, Paul’s order was about apostolic primacy rather than narrating chronological history. Or maybe his works also contradicts the Gospel narratives. You are assuming it doesn’t and assuming the factual historicity of an individual appearance to Peter before anyone else and arguing from that. That line of argumentation doesn’t work when we are actually discussing the legitimacy of the details in the accounts in the first place. You are assuming what must be demonstrated to argue a corollary point.

One might conclude the later evangelists really had no idea of specifics. Just that Jesus had appeared to his earliest followers and they are relaying whatever traditions they found.

I favor the Galilean ones. The disciples went back to their lives, were fishing, Jesus appeared to them. I find John 21 to be more reliable. It really all really boils down to what you view as history remembered and creativity in the passion narratives. Certainly a point that must be argued for, at any rate.

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And you are also being disingenuous in my opinion . You are saying this because the logic leads to an error. We regularly try to understand the text in lieu of common sense. Theology, hermeneutics and apologists all work on the principle of making sense of authorial intent. You remove that, you remove the Gospels themselves.

Mark would not end at 16:8, Mark does not have a messianic secret, Jesus is presented this way because…The disciple ignored Jesus’ abolishing of food laws, these two accounts don’t contradict because, etc etc etc a million times over.

The truth is you read a text individually and get a sense for the author’s theology and identify redactional seems and dig behind the text given other texts and evidence. No historian would ever just assume 4 separate accounts (5 with Paul) must all be completely accurate and force fit them into a cohesive whole. Especially not these accounts with dozens of striking differences and historical difficulties. This is just a double standard and is only useful if you assume before hand the text is absolutely inerrant in all details. Otherwise you don’t do this.

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No, I’m assuming that Luke was aware of the claims or tradition (or he invented them) about this appearance to Peter and yet chose to make no more than a passing reference. The fact that Paul did or didn’t reference that same event is irrelevant to my point there.

Point remains, Luke simply did not include any further details about what would have been a very significant event… an event that Luke seems to have heard had happened since Luke made a passing reference to it. My point still remains.

Because “the twelve” had become shorthand, just like referencing the “twelve tribes” of Israel even though there were technically 13? Just like John was obviously aware of Judas’ betrayal yet also still refers to the disciples as “the twelve” after the resurrection?

Again, this begins to look like a hermeneutic of wanting to find a conflict.

I’m afraid this statement demonstrates how your own hermeneutic assumes errors… even if tomorrow we found 2 lost gospels that recorded these 10 additional resurrection accounts, why in the world would you assume this must automatically entail some sort of conflict requiring harmonization?

It would be a bit like me saying, “If I shared 10 more (previously undisclosed) details about my time in the Middle East, I bet someone could find some way to harmonize them.” why in the world would I say something like that, unless I was already assuming that they would be in irreconcilable conflict with the previously disclosed details? but that would be a completely unwarranted assumption.

It is interesting that you would be willing to grant this, a potentially legitimate interpretation (though I don’t think probable)… but don’t seem willing to allow that hypothesis to potentially explain the differences between accounts, that Matthew may have been aware of certain traditions and Luke of others that, while different, do not conflict.

I don’t favor this interpretation (preferring literary purpose and selection especially given Matthew’s obviously brief and overly-generalized ending), but I do find it interesting that you are willing to entertain this hypothesis… just so long as it does not potentially resolve an apparent conflict between two resurrection accounts?

Just like my two accounts of my time in the Middle East, given striking differences and historical difficulties, an outside observer would be foolish to try to “force fit them into a cohesive whole.” but said observer would also be foolish to assume a contradiction, either.

Now, I can’t speak for other historians, but I strongly disagree with this atrocious habit of assuming an error on the part of ancient authors or ancient historians- religious or secular- when we simply don’t know all the facts. I am equally hesitant to conclude an error in Herodotus or any similar ancient historian for similar reasons as all I described above.

For instance…

In particular, Herodotus’ account of shipbuilding practices in 5th century Egypt has been met with incredulity by many modern scholars. His description of the baris, a Nile cargo boat, is like nothing ever encountered by modern archaeologists, and it has been widely debated in the scholarship. Until now, most historians believed Herodotus’ account to be at best an error introduced by his sources, and at worst, a deliberate fiction. (https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/03/18/boat-in-the-nile/)

Perhaps “most historians” would have done better to be a bit more humble, and not have been so quick to conclude an error on Herodotus’ part?

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To @Daniel_Fisher and @Vinnie I would summarise the situation as thus: a plain sight comparison of the texts does indeed create confusion and would seem to reasonably pose that there were two ascension stories circulating. As you argue however Daniel, there could well be some kind of dynamic at play whereby the different authors just didn’t record all the details in a way that matched together. Sadly, on the balance of probabilities it does seem there were the two stories however … balance of probability does not mean actuality and with faith, one can still believe and embrace Christ. It is upsetting though that the accounts don’t quite lock in together as one would hope and that this has never, and can never, be fully addressed or reconciled.

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i think your comment here is quite instructive… notice you mention “two ascension stories circulating.” But we don’t have multiple ascension stories in conflict (unless you count the one in Luke and the one in Acts, but these are by the same author)… the conflict we have been discussing is between the Galilee event (in matthew) or the jerusalem one in Luke/Acts. But there are not two ascension stories. The idea that they were both relaying ascension stories was a (false) assumption brought to the discussion by the interpreter (in this case, yourself).

i fear that is often exactly what happens… we read two accounts, then understand them based on various lenses we are wearing, various assumptions we bring to the text… and based on those assumptions (Matthew and Luke surely must have been talking about essentially the same event, or the same timeframe, etc.) we find a conflict… when in fact Matthew and/or Luke may not have shared those assumptions.

Not to pick on this rather inconsequential little error, but it is so instructive and illustrative… in this particular case, the (false) assumption that both Matthew and Luke were referring to “ascension stories”, and thus referring to the same event and/or same timeframe, is exactly where the conflict would arise. But in that case, the conflict would arise form the false assumption brought to the texts, not from the texts themselves.

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Just because the same author wrote them does not mean they do not conflict. I am not pushing the ascension(s) in Luke-Acts as an irrefutable contradiction but when I read the texts, I don’t have theological antivirus software running in the background. Luke very well may have written something that expands his earlier work, leaving an incongruity between the end of Luke and beginning of Acts. It is absolutely common and expected for people to make mistakes and occasionally contradict themselves in their writings. The problem is under no circumstance, will you concede a principle that is actually axiomatic for unbiased interpreters.

You cannot derive the complete lack of overlap between Galilean and Jerusalem appearances through different historical streams as you have done. History works in terms of probability and your scenario is extremely improbable and requires a lot of specific moving parts to be accurate. I already pointed out Luke presumably knows of Galilean appearance stories. He copies Mark who has the women tell the disciples they will see Jesus in Galilee (they are afraid and the gospel ends with them telling no one). Luke purposefully removes Mark’s statement all together (remember, he is copying the text of Mark under Markan priority!).

Luke is purposefully narrating only Jerusalem stories. He is in all likelihood, supressing the other appearance stories in a bit of theological artistry. I mean, if he was such the amazing historian and careful researcher, and and he followed Paul and consulted apostolic sources and lots of oral tradition, surely knowledge of appearance stories in Galilee would have been of PARAMOUNT importance in early Christianity. The evidence Jesus rose from the grave and wasn’t a crucified criminal was the complete impetus for the birth of Christianity. To surmise these stories are historical and Luke does not know of them, or never heard of them, undercuts his credibility to begin with. He must not be very acquainted with what the apostles actually taught and preached. There is simply no good method of bifurcating the streams of tradition into two independent but completely accurate historical appearance stories based on location. Luke is engaging in theological artistry ( to be honest, lying by modern standards-- IF (big IF) absolute truth was his goal) or the accounts are in error, or both.

Vinnie

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But of course, this is hardly disputed. But as discussed before, intentional or purposeful selection of material in constructing a narrative, and the resultant omission of other extant available information, does not a contradiction make. It is what all historians and authors do. Select what is most important for your purposes and as it fits with your particular narrative.

If, as you suggest (and is generally believed), Luke was well aware of the existence and dissemination of the gospel of Mark, then odds are he constructed his narrative to add to the existing corpus of knowledge, rather than some attempt to “suppress” details found in Mark’s gospel?

Unless you’re suggesting that Luke actually went around burning all other copies of Mark’s gospel that he could find after he wrote his Jerusalem-centric gospel, I have a hard time grasping this claim that Luke was trying to “suppress” existing information about Jesus’s other appearances…

This is always a particularly unconvincing line of reasoning… somehow possessing enough clairvoyance to know what would or would not have been of “paramount” importance to the purposes of any one author.

I’m not sure where you’re getting this… this was your suggestion, if i recall correctly, one which i hesitatingly acknowledged could be legitimate, though i found it unlikely… while I acknowledged in response to your suggestion above that limited knowledge of the events on the part of the gospel writers was “a potentially legitimate interpretation”,

So i think it sounds possible that we might agree that both Matthew and Luke selected from a variety of traditions and accounts and reports available to them in constructing their narratives, according to each one’s literary purpose and the narrative flow of the writing they were composing.

Point remains, if, hypothetically. Jesus had spent time with his disciples both in Galilee and Jerusalem, and Matthew selected certain parts of those history for his narrative, and Luke others for a different theological purpose and narrative, I simply fail to see where the actual contradiction lies… regardless if the different material was included due either to ignorance or intentional selection.