Skip to main content

The Easter Fable, Part 3: 'There were 2 angels...no, wait...one...I mean none...'

By God O Rama ~

The New Testament teaches that since Jesus was victorious over death, everyone who believes in him will be raised from the dead just as he was.

After years of hearing Easter sermons that the resurrection of Jesus was the critical event that all history had led up to, I decided one spring day in the early-1990s to do an in-depth study on the subject.

I started by comparing the gospel accounts of the resurrection. The Internet was in its infancy, and online Bibles hadn’t been invented yet, so I photocopied the relevant passages from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and pasted them side-by-side on a poster board. I was ready for God to reward my desire for spiritual understanding with exciting new revelations about that great day.

As I studied the four passages at once, I can’t fully describe what took place inside me. It was a revelation alright, but not the kind I had been hoping for. It was a realization that apparently nobody could get their story straight regarding what was supposed to have been the most significant day in the history of the universe. All the accounts had a vague similarity, but none of them was even remotely close to the others. There were irreconcilable differences regarding:

  • Who went to the tomb first
  • What time they arrived
  • How many angels were there
  • What the angels said
  • The reaction of the disciples upon hearing that Jesus had risen
  • Where the resurrected Jesus appeared first, and to whom he appeared
  • Jesus’ instructions to the disciples when he appeared to them

I got up from my desk and walked outside confused.

Evangelicals explain the inconsistencies in the four accounts of the resurrection as being what you would expect whenever there are multiple eye-witness accounts (http://bit.ly/16HEV0I) of any event. I would grant them that if we were talking about the notes of investigators interviewing eyewitnesses to a plane crash or a fender-bender.

But the gospels don’t claim to be raw, unedited police reports about the life of Jesus. They claim to be infallible, inerrant records written by men who were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and who were recording for all humanity the resurrection, the very event upon which the Bible teaches the fate of the whole human race would be sealed for all eternity—and, furthermore, an event at which the purported author himself, Mr. H. Ghost, was supposed to have been present and active.

As such, it would seem to me that accounts told from different perspectives should have meshed effortlessly, like an event being recorded simultaneously by four different cameras. Maybe I would be able to see a little more or a little less detail from a different perspective, but it would still be quite obvious that, regardless of the camera angle, I was observing the same event.

Each successive gospel account of the resurrection should confirm the veracity of the previous one, perhaps adding detail or nuance, but should in no way conflict with or add confusion to the original version, thereby providing through collective affirmation a water-tight story that is complete and irrefutable.

But the four gospel accounts of the resurrection do not provide this type of cohesive story. What I found instead was that nearly every fact presented in successive versions of the story serve only to confuse rather than enlighten the reader. A complete list of contradictions and inconsistencies can be found here (http://bit.ly/zCgEeW).

I went back in the house, put my chart away, and decided that I would just have to “wait until I got to heaven” to get a clearer picture of the resurrection.

I would later learn that 19th-Century Harvard Law Professor Simon Greenleaf (http://bit.ly/SaDDod)had attempted to harmonize these four accounts of the resurrection in his book, The Testimony of the Evangelists (http://bit.ly/YEIHAp). I was not only unimpressed but also very disappointed to discover that in order to force the stories fit together, Greenleaf actually rearranged the order of the verses in Matthew Chapter 28.

This seemed completely disingenuous—what my wife would call a “tap-tap rule,” one that has been arbitrarily made up in the middle of the game by a kid who is losing—given the fact that every one of the gospels is told in a linear chronological fashion, starting with Jesus’ birth or the beginning of his ministry, and ending in his death and resurrection. (Also, you have to ask yourself, “Why would it be necessary for a Harvard law professor to argue God’s case for the resurrection anyway?)

The full weight of how significant this issue was did not occur to me at the time. For years, I had just pretended that it was no big deal. However, in this case, the significance of a flawed account is devastating, because if the New Testament “evidence” about the resurrection is not credible, there is no basis whatsoever for Christianity.

As the New Testament itself says, “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain…. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (I Cor. 15:13-14, 18).

Website: http://www.godorama.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro