Examining the Resurrection Narratives

It’s Easter, and I remembered that a few years ago I wrote a comparison of the crucifixion accounts found in the four gospels. 

What astounded me, when I went to look up what I had written, was that I actually wrote two blog posts and not just a few years ago but eight whole years past. I wrote Examining the Crucifixion Accounts on Good Friday of 2014 and Omissions, Discrepancies and Contradictions within the Crucifixion Narratives on Easter Monday. After eight intervening years, which seemed to go by very quickly to this old fella, here I am, in effect, trying to complete the post, for I didn’t get past the crucifixion and into the resurrection accounts at that time.

You have the links (above) if you wish to go and read what I wrote back then, but basically, I found many discrepancies amongst the four crucifixion narratives. The new resurrection material in this post will make it too long to rehash any of the old crucifixion material here, but, in summary, I found that some of the differences seemed, to me at least, to be quite contradictory. 

Methodology

My technique is very simple. It doesn't require a post doctorate degree in theology to undertake a basic comparison. I divided a piece of paper into four columns, wrote an outline of what happened in one gospel, then went to the next gospel and noted its narration, adjacent to the first gospel, and so on.

Like this. ↓

What? Can't read it? Don't worry, I also had some difficulty after setting the chart aside for a few weeks. However, I do own a magnifying glass, and I still had a bible or three at my disposal to refer to once again if and as needed. The point is not for others to try to read it but to see how I went about it.

Normally, we read one account (assuming we read any at all, and most don't). Then we may peruse another gospel at some later time. After awhile, our brains smoosh all of the disparate accounts together into one narrative, or at least they attempt to. However, by outlining the key events across from each other in four columns, as I have done, both similarities and differences can be readily seen.

So, what are some of the things that I observed?

Who went to the tomb and what did they see and hear?

In all four gospel accounts, one or more women went to the tomb on the first day of the week. John mentions only Mary Magdalene while the three other gospels also mention Mary, mother of James. Mark also ad­ds Salome, and Luke refers to Joanna and also “others.”

The stone was rolled away in each gospel, and in each, either an angel or two, or a young man or two, were present. All beings, whether identified as young men or angels or whether there were one or two, were described as being bright in appearance. 

In Mark a young man was sitting inside the tomb, but in Matthew one angel was sitting outside on the stone that had been dislodged by an earthquake. However, there were two men standing inside in Luke while in John, Mary Magdalene saw two angels seated inside after the two disciples went back home. It was then she was surprised by Jesus who talked to her.

Did you catch the differences? Depending on which gospel one reads, there were one or two men or angels. They may have been seated or maybe have been standing, and they may have been inside or outside.

It seems significant that had Jesus spoken to Mary Magdalene one the way to tell the disciples, as recorded in Luke, that the other writers did not know about it. It was a significant moment after all, but 

only Luke knows abut it. As we shortly see, Matthew reports a different appearance by Jesus to Mary.

Also of note is that Matthew describes that an earthquake caused the stone to move. Oddly enough, Matthew was also the only one of the four gospel writers to report an earthquake in the crucifixion  stories when Jesus died. He knows about two earthquakes that the other three writers don't report.

 

 What were the women told, and what happened next?

In both Mark and Matthew, the women were told to go and tell the disciples about the resurrection and that Jesus would meet them in Galilee. In Mark they were too afraid to actually do this, but in Matthew they ran to inform them. Matthew also records that Jesus appeared to them on the way, and he repeated the angel’s message to meet him in Galilee. 

There are no instructions recorded in Luke, but when the women told the disciples about the resurrection, they didn’t believe them. Then Peter ran to the tomb, saw the linens, and wondered what had happened.

John also tells it a little differently. He writes that Mary went to tell the disciples, and that Peter and the and "the other disciple" ran to the tomb. John records that the other disciple believed. The significant difference as that after they both left, Mary remained and was crying, and it was then that Jesus appeared to her. 

To be clear from the above, there were differences among the accounts. The women didn’t tell the disciples in Mark, but they did tell in in the other gospels. Also, two of the gospel writers don't mention any appearance by Jesus. The two that do describe the appearance tell it differently. Matthew writes that Jesus appeared to them on their way to tell the disciples. Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus appearing to Mary and consoling her in the garden by the tomb, after the two disciples had left.

What about the post resurrection appearances?

Although I will write a little about the post resurrection appearances, they aren't particularly important to what I am concerned with in this post because they are not really describing the same events. It is possible, I suppose, that all could have occurred. Or none for that matter. 

Mark ends abruptly, or at least the original Mark ends that way, the last twelve verses being seen as a insertion by later scribes who felt that a fuller ending was in order. Most recent editions of the bible will add a disclaimer something like this one in the NIV translation: "The two most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20." 

Meanwhile, Matthew adds a story about the authorities bribing the guards to keep the resurrection quiet.

Luke doesn't write about the bribes but does describe an experience that two followers had when Jesus appeared to them while walking along the road to Emmaus. After the two returned to Jerusalem to tell the others, Jesus appeared to the whole group. The location in Jerusalem is interesting, for we were told earlier that Jesus had instructed them all to meet up in Galilee. One other thing that surprises me quite a bit was that Luke is the only gospel to describe an ascension.

Finally (yes, here we are at long last), the Gospel of John is the only one to contain the Doubting Thomas narrative. He also describes the encounter with Peter on the Sea of Galilee: the one in which Peter tried and failed to walk on water. A salient point is that, in John, the disciples were in Galilee and not in Jerusalem as they were in Luke.

What do I conclude?

It was somewhat meaningful to me to complete the project that I began so long ago. It affirmed to me what I had heard from scholars about the accounts differing from one another. Just as I had once done, with the crucifixion accounts, I discovered differences in these resurrection narratives. For me, it indicates that there were various stories circulating in those times that could not be stringently verified after four decades. It seems most likely to me that the four different writers heard different accounts and also that some may have added their own events that suited the narratives that they wished to tell. I suspect that Matthew's earthquakes and John's walking on water events fall into the category of writers improvising. Of course, that is just my own speculation.