Problems in Matthew's resurrection account

[rakovsky]

Previously we discussed several issues in Mark's gospel:
http://christianchat.com/bible-disc...s-account-jesus-resurrection-appearances.html

Here I raise 5 issues in Matthew's gospel:

(1) Whether (A) Matthew embellished Mark's portrayal of the youth with Jesus at Gethsemane and later inside the tomb as a white robed human who delivered the message, turning the human into an angel in "shining" white who paralyzed the soldiers and sat on the tomb and gave that message, (Matthew 28:2-7) or
(B) Mark downplayed the angel's divine properties by depicting him as a youth.

That the youth at the tomb in Mark appears to be the human youth who followed Jesus on Thursday evening is proposed by some Christian scholars:

Fascinatingly, the word neaniskos ("youth"), which is rare in the Christian Testament, crops up a second time in Mark, to describe the young man in the long white robe who tells the women disciples that Jesus has been raised... If the previous dress [of the youth in the garden] was the linen cloth, this one [he wears] in the tomb, however, is white. Though he is dressed in both cases, the difference in dress expresses the development within the narrative. The portrayal is therefore characterized by closure: the shameful condition of the young man as he flees the scene of Jesus arrest in the nude is replaced by his restoration.

The effect of Mark's location of the young man's character is to create an inclusio. The last one who has been with and who then abandons Jesus is also the first one to announce his resurrection.

What is the significance of the young man who runs away naked in Mark's gospel? - Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange

It's understandable that Matthew might have concluded the youth in Mark was angel. How else would the youth have known that Jesus rose and went to Galilee like he told the women? Had he been staying at the tomb and saw what happened? Did he find the tomb empty before they did and assumed that, as He told the women, Jesus rose and "went to Galilee like He (Jesus) had said" previously (ie. Jesus' prediction in Mark 14:28)?

(2) How did Matthew know that the angel rolled the stone away, sat on the stone, and paralyzed the guards with fear like he wrote? In Matthew 28:1-5 it sounds like the women were present when that happened because of the sequence:

28:1 Magdalene comes to the sepulchre.
28:2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake.... for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and... rolled back the stone
28:5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye

However, in Mark 16:4 it sounds like the women showed up after the stone was rolled away and the youth was already inside the tomb: "And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away".
And Luke 24 says "And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre."

So which version is correct and how did Matthew know?

(3) Why in Matthew 28 did the alleged guards, paralyzed by an angel, spread rumors that the disciples took the body instead of believing? If they were so scared of the angel that they were paralyzed and ran away, it would show them the role of the supernatural or divine in Christianity. Why would they risk spreading rumors about something they were so scared of and why not become believers?

(4) The rumor among the people that Matthew mentions suggests an alternative explanation for the disappearance of Jesus' body at the tomb. Is this realistic?

Of all the groups who could have taken the body, Jesus' followers and grave robbers had the most to gain. But would grave robbers have left the linen behind to make it look like resurrection? Jesus had instructed his followers to arm themselves and Peter had already cut a soldier's ear when they had come for Jesus, so perhaps he or others would be able in enough numbers to overwhelm a guard. Perhaps the guard was not a Roman one but a Temple one, or perhaps the guards didn't exist since they aren't mentioned in the other gospels? And perhaps the body was taken on Friday before the guards were posted on Saturday?

(5) What could have been the specific basis for the apostles' doubt in Matthew's account?
Matthew's gospel ends with mentioning only one appearance of Jesus to the disciples, on a Galilean mountain:
28:17 And when they saw him,they worshipped him: but some doubted.

If they saw Jesus right in front of them and he spoke to them at length in the appearance like it says, what basis for doubt could there have been? The account does not say whether that appearance of Jesus was physical, but if it was it would be extremely hard to doubt. Perhaps instead the appearance was more like His appearance to Paul (ie. a vision) or like the sightings of Mary to hundreds or thousands of people at once. In some of those, some people see Mary, others see the sun "dance", and others don't notice anything. Perhaps the apostles were like the witnesses to the Marian apparition who saw nothing? If so, it puts in greater doubt whether the appearance was real.

 

[sltaylor]

10 discrepancies in the first two gospels???

 

[directline2iam]

Instead of reading into the gospels with a knitt-pick attitude why not except the simple message..Jesus rose from the dead and you really need to hear what the Spirit is saying...BELIEVE

 

[flob]

I don't know what the significance of the young man running away, Mk 14:51-52, is, yet.
Other than that it's a fact. Thanks for bringing it up.

I see no discrepancies whatsoever between the first Gospel written, Matthew (around AD 40 if not earlier),
and the following three Mark and Luke in the late 60s apparently and John around 100.
The questions "How did Matthew know..." are absurd on their face. From "scholars." They indicate both unbelief,
and worse, bias, on the "scholars'" part. At a minimum, they indicate they aren't scholars in the least.

If the "scholars" assume that the Gospels should be or would be 'xerox' copies of one another, that makes no sense.
Why would they? Why should they?

Luke mentions the two "men," two angels. This coincides with Matthew and Mark which mention one each. Two........
includes one. It's not a difficult nor a reaching concept. Nor, by the way, are the Gospels video recordings. In other words
a video might capture "everything." Whereas writing is necessarily limited and less inclusive. In Mark the women ask one
another who will roll away the stone. That does not mean they saw the stone that morning before it was rolled away. The force of Mark 16:3-4 or Lk 24:2 neither require it, nor even suggest it. Since they knew about tombs, and fully expected, in their natural understanding, that the tomb would be sealed. Matthew mentions the earthquake. Mark and Luke and John do not. And...................so..........? Some readers feel that if they were writing, they would include it? Then congratulations.
Inclusion vs omission, unless they show contradiction, are not contradictions. Are not discrepancies. To suggest they are.....
isn't scholarship. Isn't even careful reading. Matthew alone also mentions the guards. Perhaps, somehow unknown to me, one
or more of the guards were the source of the information (to Matthew---the earliest Gospel writer) about the earthquake.
Since it appears to me to have happened before the women saw the tomb that morning. Matthew 27:11 records that "SOME
from the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests..." Some as opposed to all. Although the false account,
27:15, could have been widely spread among the Jews as late as the 60s, when Luke and Mark wrote, to me it suggests
the nearness of Matthew's Gospel all the more, to the events which Matthew records.

Thanks for this opportunity to re-enjoy the Gospels resurrection recordings and share them. There's more I want to take
the chance to address, especially some of the (no offense: laughable) speculations of other readers, as well as the intelligible
questions and 'issues' they raise. So.........i'll try to, as soon as I can

 

[birdie]

(1) Whether (A) Matthew embellished Mark's portrayal of the youth with Jesus at Gethsemane and later inside the tomb as a white robed human who delivered the message, turning the human into an angel in "shining" white who paralyzed the soldiers and sat on the tomb and gave that message, (Matthew 28:2-7) or
(B) Mark downplayed the angel's divine properties by depicting him as a youth.

That the youth at the tomb in Mark appears to be the human youth who followed Jesus on Thursday evening is proposed by some Christian scholars:

Fascinatingly, the word neaniskos ("youth"), which is rare in the Christian Testament, crops up a second time in Mark, to describe the young man in the long white robe who tells the women disciples that Jesus has been raised... If the previous dress [of the youth in the garden] was the linen cloth, this one [he wears] in the tomb, however, is white. Though he is dressed in both cases, the difference in dress expresses the development within the narrative. The portrayal is therefore characterized by closure: the shameful condition of the young man as he flees the scene of Jesus arrest in the nude is replaced by his restoration.

The effect of Mark's location of the young man's character is to create an inclusio. The last one who has been with and who then abandons Jesus is also the first one to announce his resurrection.


What is the significance of the young man who runs away naked in Mark's gospel? - Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange

It's understandable that Matthew might have concluded the youth in Mark was angel. How else would the youth have known that Jesus rose and went to Galilee like he told the women? Had he been staying at the tomb and saw what happened? Did he find the tomb empty before they did and assumed that, as He told the women, Jesus rose and "went to Galilee like He (Jesus) had said" previously (ie. Jesus' prediction in Mark 14:28)?

The word 'angel' simply means messenger. True believers are Christ's messengers and Jesus is the chief messenger. The Bible uses the word angel for men many times. I do not place much stock in the popular notion of angels, winged or otherwise. It is not that they do not exist. It is just that the Bible mentions so many times that they are men. No doubt the term messenger implies that these are, at the very least, men who are doing God's will. The Bible uses parable language and many popular notions of angels stem from incorrect interpretation of the many angel passages.

 

[GodIsSalvation]

Previously we discussed several issues in Mark's gospel:
http://christianchat.com/bible-disc...s-account-jesus-resurrection-appearances.html

Here I raise 5 issues in Matthew's gospel:

(1) Whether (A) Matthew embellished Mark's portrayal of the youth with Jesus at Gethsemane and later inside the tomb as a white robed human who delivered the message, turning the human into an angel in "shining" white who paralyzed the soldiers and sat on the tomb and gave that message, (Matthew 28:2-7) or
(B) Mark downplayed the angel's divine properties by depicting him as a youth.

That the youth at the tomb in Mark appears to be the human youth who followed Jesus on Thursday evening is proposed by some Christian scholars:


(2) How did Matthew know that the angel rolled the stone away, sat on the stone, and paralyzed the guards with fear like he wrote?

(3) Why in Matthew 28 did the alleged guards, paralyzed by an angel, spread rumors that the disciples took the body instead of believing?

(4) The rumor among the people that Matthew mentions suggests an alternative explanation for the disappearance of Jesus' body at the tomb. Is this realistic?


(5) What could have been the specific basis for the apostles' doubt in Matthew's account?
Matthew's gospel ends with mentioning only one appearance of Jesus to the disciples, on a Galilean mountain:
28:17 And when they saw him,they worshipped him: but some doubted.

1. Both accounts tell the same story, but in Mark's gospel with brevity. The youth is the same as the angel.

2. That's all speculation. We know that neither Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke was there for the event or immediately after it. Their points of view they could have accumulated feasibly from the other followers they knew or from the direct witnesses. This is where Gospel of John is most handy because John and Peter are the first ones Mary tells and the first ones on the scene, and of course John is the writer of Gospel of John making him a direct witness.

3. In Matthew 28 it says that the guards went back to the Pharisees and told them what had happened. The Pharisees bribed them to tell a lie.

4. No it is not realistic. Firstly you know the guards were bribed. Even overlooking this, the guards were there in the first place to prevent his body from being stolen.

5. I think this is the easiest and most understandable question. You have never seen someone dead come to life. Nor have I. I don't blame no one for questioning this part, and I find it to be the most interesting of the 5 questions. I suppose the answer comes from that event itself, but perhaps better analyzed from Gospel of John chapter 20 with Thomas (John 20:24-31).

 

[jb]

Problems in Matthew's resurrection account...

There is NO problem, that's your problem!

 

[p_rehbein]

Instead of reading into the gospels with a knitt-pick attitude why not except the simple message..Jesus rose from the dead and you really need to hear what the Spirit is saying...BELIEVE

Yeah, I was kinda wondering about that too. Who reads the Bible to find "fault" with it? What "spirit" directs someone to search the Scriptures for errors and such?

 

[endtimes]

Previously we discussed several issues in Mark's gospel:
http://christianchat.com/bible-disc...s-account-jesus-resurrection-appearances.html

Here I raise 5 issues in Matthew's gospel:

(2) How did Matthew know that the angel rolled the stone away, sat on the stone, and paralyzed the guards with fear like he wrote? ...

You are reading and understanding in ignorance and in the flesh...

2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:


Just because a scripture leaves out a piece of information, does not mean it does not exist.

Here is an example of what I am saying...

Matthew and John give an account of the exact same event. Only one account offers more information than the other. See if you can spot it...


Matthew 26:51 And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear.

John 18:10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.


It was John that had more information. John lists the name of the servant who's ear was smote off, AND lists the name of the person that had drew the sword. The other scripture did not mention these facts, but where it is not mentioned does NOT mean that it did not happen. It simply was not mentioned.

By not putting your trust in God, you are in serious error and not seeing the WHOLE picture.



God bless!

 

[3Scoreand10]

I see no discrepencies in Mat or Mark, only a lack of understanding by some that is the result of improper study.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Flob,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I agree with your point that a gospel can say one thing (a woman's arrival) and then another gospel can add facts that don't conflict (like more than one woman coming).

If the "scholars" assume that the Gospels should be or would be 'xerox' copies of one another, that makes no sense.
Why would they? Why should they?

If all 11 disciples had seen Jesus physically, the accounts would tend to line up well in their major aspects, like whether there was a human youth at the tomb or two angels who accomplished the feat of scaring the guards. I think a clearer problem is whether Jesus said to "stay in Jerusalem" and "not to leave" it until Pentecost (Luke 24 and Acts 1) or gave instructions to see Jesus in Galilee (Mark 16 and Mat 28), which they did (Mat 28 and John 20-21). But I discussed that problem more in

You wrote:

Luke mentions the two "men," two angels. This coincides with Matthew and Mark which mention one each.

This would make sense, however my issue is rather that in Mark it sounds like the youth in Gethsemane is a human who loses his robe like putting off the flesh and gains a white robe at the tomb like the resurrection. This would be different than an angel, which is what Matthew describes, even though the human and the angel give the women the same message.

You are right when you say:

In Mark the women ask one another who will roll away the stone. That does not mean they saw the stone that morning before it was rolled away. The force of Mark 16:3-4 or Lk 24:2 neither require it, nor even suggest it.
Matthew mentions the earthquake. Mark and Luke and John do not. And...................so..........?

So yes, in Mark and Luke it sounds like the women saw the stone had already been rolled away. The problem is that Matthew makes it sound like the women did see this based on the way Matthew lays out the chronology, even though Matthew never explicitly does say that the women saw it. So either (A) Matthew is just leading the reader to think that it happened that way and Matthew is intentionally misleading as a writer, or (B) maybe it's no big deal that Matthew might just be writing things out of sequence.

Now why is it a problem whether or not the women saw the angel roll away the stone? Because in Matthew's gospel that's how we know that it was an angel who rolled away the stone. If the women didn't see it happen, how do we know that Matthew was right that an angel did it?

You did come up with a good explanation though:

Perhaps, somehow unknown to me, one or more of the guards were the source of the information (to Matthew---the earliest Gospel writer) about the earthquake.
Since it appears to me to have happened before the women saw the tomb that morning. Matthew 27:11 records that "SOME
from the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests..." Some as opposed to all.

Thanks for this opportunity to re-enjoy the Gospels resurrection recordings and share them.

OK.

 

[rakovsky]

The word 'angel' simply means messenger. True believers are Christ's messengers and Jesus is the chief messenger. The Bible uses the word angel for men many times. I do not place much stock in the popular notion of angels, winged or otherwise. It is not that they do not exist. It is just that the Bible mentions so many times that they are men. No doubt the term messenger implies that these are, at the very least, men who are doing God's will. The Bible uses parable language and many popular notions of angels stem from incorrect interpretation of the many angel passages.

Hello, Birdie.
Yes, I know what you mean to say: That the young man was an angel in the sense that God gave this human a message to share with believers. You are saying that the Bible is calling the angels at the tomb "angels" in the way of a parable and that nowadays people just make a bad interpretation in thinking that they were actual miraculous beings.

Naturally, if what you were saying were the correct interpretation, it would make the gospels' account much easier to believe than an account with miraculous beings.

The problem with your seemingly reasonable explanation is that Matthew 28:2 clearly describes the angel as a divine being when it says: "...there was a great earthquake: for [ie. because] the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door."
That is, the angel caused the earthquake by rolling the stone. And not only that, but it says this angel "descended from heaven". And besides, this angel in verse 4 scared the guards so much that they were paralyzed. It is hard to imagine a human "messenger" doing those things.

I suppose you could reply that Matthew is just "allegorizing" the human messenger as descending from heaven or making an earthquake. But in that case Matthew would be playing so loose with his allegories while depicting them as facts to the readers that his accounts of the resurrection would not be reliable. The reader would wonder how much more of Matthew's account was just an allegory: Maybe even the idea that the women touched the resurrected Jesus' feet was just an allegory too (Matthew 28:9)? After all, John 20 has Jesus telling those women not to touch Him. And then that leaves open whether the other alleged physical appearances of Jesus were allegories, which is not what I would prefer. I would prefer for them to be real stories of physical events.

 

[yaright]

Previously we discussed several issues in Mark's gospel:
http://christianchat.com/bible-disc...s-account-jesus-resurrection-appearances.html

Here I raise 5 issues in Matthew's gospel:

(1) Whether (A) Matthew embellished Mark's portrayal of the youth with Jesus at Gethsemane and later inside the tomb as a white robed human who delivered the message, turning the human into an angel in "shining" white who paralyzed the soldiers and sat on the tomb and gave that message, (Matthew 28:2-7) or
(B) Mark downplayed the angel's divine properties by depicting him as a youth.

That the youth at the tomb in Mark appears to be the human youth who followed Jesus on Thursday evening is proposed by some Christian scholars:

What is the significance of the young man who runs away naked in Mark's gospel? - Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange

It's understandable that Matthew might have concluded the youth in Mark was angel. How else would the youth have known that Jesus rose and went to Galilee like he told the women? Had he been staying at the tomb and saw what happened? Did he find the tomb empty before they did and assumed that, as He told the women, Jesus rose and "went to Galilee like He (Jesus) had said" previously (ie. Jesus' prediction in Mark 14:28)?

(2) How did Matthew know that the angel rolled the stone away, sat on the stone, and paralyzed the guards with fear like he wrote? In Matthew 28:1-5 it sounds like the women were present when that happened because of the sequence:

28:1 Magdalene comes to the sepulchre.
28:2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake.... for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and... rolled back the stone
28:5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye

However, in Mark 16:4 it sounds like the women showed up after the stone was rolled away and the youth was already inside the tomb: "And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away".
And Luke 24 says "And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre."

So which version is correct and how did Matthew know?

(3) Why in Matthew 28 did the alleged guards, paralyzed by an angel, spread rumors that the disciples took the body instead of believing? If they were so scared of the angel that they were paralyzed and ran away, it would show them the role of the supernatural or divine in Christianity. Why would they risk spreading rumors about something they were so scared of and why not become believers?

(4) The rumor among the people that Matthew mentions suggests an alternative explanation for the disappearance of Jesus' body at the tomb. Is this realistic?

Of all the groups who could have taken the body, Jesus' followers and grave robbers had the most to gain. But would grave robbers have left the linen behind to make it look like resurrection? Jesus had instructed his followers to arm themselves and Peter had already cut a soldier's ear when they had come for Jesus, so perhaps he or others would be able in enough numbers to overwhelm a guard. Perhaps the guard was not a Roman one but a Temple one, or perhaps the guards didn't exist since they aren't mentioned in the other gospels? And perhaps the body was taken on Friday before the guards were posted on Saturday?

(5) What could have been the specific basis for the apostles' doubt in Matthew's account?
Matthew's gospel ends with mentioning only one appearance of Jesus to the disciples, on a Galilean mountain:
28:17 And when they saw him,they worshipped him: but some doubted.

If they saw Jesus right in front of them and he spoke to them at length in the appearance like it says, what basis for doubt could there have been? The account does not say whether that appearance of Jesus was physical, but if it was it would be extremely hard to doubt. Perhaps instead the appearance was more like His appearance to Paul (ie. a vision) or like the sightings of Mary to hundreds or thousands of people at once. In some of those, some people see Mary, others see the sun "dance", and others don't notice anything. Perhaps the apostles were like the witnesses to the Marian apparition who saw nothing? If so, it puts in greater doubt whether the appearance was real.

The doubt comes from those who have taken parable language and used interpretation according to the things which seem right to a man. The New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament; even the parable of two swords, which has been taken out of text (number 4) to accomplish nothing more than confusion for lack of understanding. This is not unusual behavior. Many biblical scholars have turned writings in the bible into a secular language which has nothing at all to do with the fulfillment of Old Testament Law and words of the prophets. If it isn't written in creation language, if it isn't the fulfillment of Old Testament Law and/or words of the prophets; than what is being portrayed by the 'scholar' is a deception causing doubt. The bible is not manufacturing doubt, it is the scholar and the one spreading the rumor for the scholar. Wear the shoes of the disciples and follow the teaching on a personal level. That's right, read the bible in such a manner that our Lord and King is teaching you in as much as He was teaching the first disciples. If everything Jesus said and did is the fulfillment of Law, than why would you exclude yourself from that teaching and offer your opinion according to the things which seem right to you?

 

[rakovsky]

Dear G.Is.Salv.:

I liked how you went through each of the issues.

1. Both accounts tell the same story, but in Mark's gospel with brevity. The youth is the same as the angel.

i don't know what to do with the fact that as I said in the opening post Mark makes it look like this was the unnamed human in Gethsemane who got a white robe in the tomb after he lost his robe in Gethsemane.

2. Their points of view they could have accumulated feasibly from the other followers they knew or from the direct witnesses.

What other witnesses could there have been if the women and the disciples weren't at the tomb when the angels rolled away the stone? The only explanation I can think of is that at least one guard must have become Christian and told the story, unless there were some other unnamed witnesses to the event. I suppose even Jesus could have explained it later to the apostles. So I suppose it's not such a problem after all.

3. In Matthew 28 it says that the guards went back to the Pharisees and told them what had happened. The Pharisees bribed them to tell a lie.

Yes, it says that the temple officials bribed them. But isn't it strange that people who had just seen an angel descended from heaven make an earthquake, roll away a stone and paralyze them with such fear that they escaped would go for a bribe instead of becoming believers? After all, if the sight of the angel rolling away the stone and making an earthwuake scared them so badly, why would they go on and lie about it? Wouldn't that experience have a greater impact on them than money? On one hand, the angel could just show up again and come after them, and on the other hand, seeing an angel do all that would be a near total proof of Christianity and its doctrines of heaven and hell.

4. No it is not realistic. Firstly you know the guards were bribed. Even overlooking this, the guards were there in the first place to prevent his body from being stolen.

First, we don't know the guards were bribed, we are relying on Matthew to think that. Second, it says Jesus was buried on Friday and the guards were posted only on Saturday. Third, couldn't followers have overwhelmed the guards at night?

5. You have never seen someone dead come to life. Nor have I. I suppose the answer comes from that event itself, but perhaps better analyzed from Gospel of John chapter 20 with Thomas (John 20:24-31).

Turning to John 20, it says that Jesus showed Himself to the eleven and ate with them (Luke 24), then he showed himself to them again when they were with Thomas, because Thomas hadn't been there. Then in John 21, it says Jesus' "third" appearance is to the disciples fishing when He eats fish. Matthew's appearance of Jesus in Galilee to the "eleven" must have come after those three times when Jesus proved His appearance, yet "some" of the disciples (at least 2, but probably more) were back to doubting again.

The fact that some of the disciples were still doubting after He had appeared to them four different times raises the question of what really happened in these alleged appearances. Perhaps even though Luke and John talked about Jesus proving Himself to the "eleven", they were misleading and there were much less than eleven disciples at those appearances? In that case, some disciples weren't present and this could explain their later doubt. But if Luke and John were misleading about that, then what else did they write that was misleading?

The disciples would know that it wasn't an imposter or a rare but fully natural and mortal survivor of Crucifixion, since they had spent 3 years getting to know His physical appearance well, and He appeared to them when the doors were locked, showed them His wounds. And they would know that He wasn't a ghost because they saw Him give physical proofs like making physical contact with them and eating food. A hallucination would be very unlikely, since they as a group saw and heard Him talk at length and gave them those physical proofs.

So if some of witnesses still came away doubting after four appearances, perhaps the appearances didn't happen quite as the gospels recorded? Perhaps they had some very good, specific reasons for their ongoing doubt that the gospels don't mention?

 

[rakovsky]

Yeah, I was kinda wondering about that too. Who reads the Bible to find "fault" with it? What "spirit" directs someone to search the Scriptures for errors and such?

Dear Rehbein,
Hello! In my case I find the gospels to be inspirational and have very strong moral truth. I want them to be real. However my problem is that I know at the mental level that unfortunately many things that I find good and inspiring and want to be real are not factually true. It leaves me with uncertainty. So that leads me to look at the accounts of the Resurrection to see if they are very reliable. If I have doubts or uncertainty it's not because I prefer the resurrection appearances to be fabrications or embellished hallucinations.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, End Times.

You are reading and understanding in ignorance and in the flesh... 2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

I agree that the scriptures in general are inspirational, but how do we know know that everything in it is factually true in reality? For example, must we believe that there was an actual flood that covered the whole world for a long time and the plants survived it and the world's animal pairs got on board a boat about half the size of the Titanic?


I do agree with the point you are making here:

Just because a scripture leaves out a piece of information, does not mean it does not exist. Here is an example of what I am saying... Matthew and John give an account of the exact same event. Only one account offers more information than the other. See if you can spot it... Matthew 26:51 And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. John 18:10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.
It was John that had more information. John lists the name of the servant who's ear was smote off, AND lists the name of the person that had drew the sword. The other scripture did not mention these facts, but where it is not mentioned does NOT mean that it did not happen. It simply was not mentioned.

Some skeptics point to many things like that and claim that there is a problem because one gospel is silent about something. But as you point out, they are incorrect to do so.

Instead, problems arise not when a gospel is silent, but when one of the accounts rules out what another account says or provides information that suggests the accounts are not very reliable.

 

[valiant]

Here I raise 5 issues in Matthew's gospel:

(1) Whether (A) Matthew embellished Mark's portrayal of the youth with Jesus at Gethsemane and later inside the tomb as a white robed human who delivered the message, turning the human into an angel in "shining" white who paralyzed the soldiers and sat on the tomb and gave that message, (Matthew 28:2-7) or
(B) Mark downplayed the angel's divine properties by depicting him as a youth.

The angel appeared in form as a man as angels usually do. He appeared in dazzling form to the Temple guards so as to render them powerless. They did not run away they swooned (became as dead men.) He would not want to dazzle the women. He wanted to comfort them. His words reveal clearly that he was an angel. The 'young man' in the garden would not have had this knowledge (only atheistic scholars would suggest it).

However they would not dare to admit to their superiors that they had swooned Thus their excuse.

That the youth at the tomb in Mark appears to be the human youth who followed Jesus on Thursday evening is proposed by some Christian scholars:

Not by any genuine Christian scholars. Only extreme sceptics.

What is the significance of the young man who runs away naked in Mark's gospel?

It was probably Mark himself.

It's understandable that Matthew might have concluded the youth in Mark was angel.

Luke also saw him as an angel. A man clothed in white is a regular description of an angel.

How else would the youth have known that Jesus rose and went to Galilee like he told the women?

H

He certainly would not otherwise have stated so confidently 'He is risen'. No one expected Him to rise.

Had he been staying at the tomb and saw what happened?

Being an angel he would know what happened. The women went before dusk. The stone across the tomb was too heavy for three or four burly women to remove. To suggest someone other than appointed guards were at thee tomb all night points to extreme scepticism.

Did he find the tomb empty before they did and assumed that, as He told the women, Jesus rose and "went to Galilee like He (Jesus) had said" previously (ie. Jesus' prediction in Mark 14:28)?

Only the disciples knew of this suggestion. as they did not believe He would rise they would not have told anyone. The young man's confident statement dos not suggest someone making suppositions. Why would the young man be the ONLY ONE who believed and it not be said so anywhere?

 

[Elin]

Baloney. . .

 

[Agricola]

I have no problem with the accounts, its an eyewitness testimony, not a scientific report detailing everything down to what colour flowers were growing.

Thankfully I asked Jesus to show me he was real, he done that and I have a realtionship with Jesus and Holy Spirit, so yes Jesus really did rise from the dead after 3 days.

If it did not happen then it would have easily been debunked back then, but it wasnt.

 

[MadParrotWoman]

This is interesting too! Shocking Biblical Discovery Made in Egyptian Mummy Mask... Atheists Are NOT Happy