Appendix D: Resurrection Accounts (July 2002)

One of the early topics of a monthly Christian/skeptic discussion group I attend was the reliability of the gospel resurrection accounts. Our assignment was to attempt to harmonize the four accounts together and to present our findings. The following is my analysis, minus the color-coded accounts:

In this document, I have color-coded and brought together the events surrounding Jesus’ resurrection as told by the four gospels. I have not attempted to harmonize every detail (John Wenham in his “Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Accounts in Conflict?”, Baker, 1992 has put forth a lot more effort to that end than I will ever be able to expend), and I recognize that more work on my part would make the accounts flow together more seamlessly. I am not much concerned with whether there were two angels or one, or exactly which women saw the empty tomb. Though I never could decide how best to synchronize the Johannine and synoptic accounts of the first morning and cannot fathom how John Wenham could have harmonized them (I did not consult outside sources), I can allow for the possibility that these events could be harmonized to some extent. Rather than focusing on these relatively minor details, I would like to explore a significant discrepancy that I believe undermines the entire story, that is, the location of Jesus’ first appearance. I am not a scholar, nor have I investigated this in great depth, so I stand ready to be corrected, but I am simply taking the opportunity to present my initial impressions of the matter.

It appears, both on an initial reading and upon further investigation, that the authors of Mark and Matthew (hereafter abbreviated as Mark and Matthew) intended to place Jesus’ first appearance in Galilee, while the authors of Luke and John (hereafter abbreviated as Luke and John) indicated that it took place in the environs of Jerusalem. John was explicit in numbering the appearances, the first two occurring a week apart in Jerusalem (Luke 24:33 corresponds to the first appearance and happened in Jerusalem) and the third by the Sea of Galilee some time later (John 21:1,14). This means that, if Jesus did indeed appear to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee, it must have occurred after the third appearance mentioned by John.

However, an honest reading of Matthew strongly suggests (even demands, I would say) that Jesus first appeared to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Even before his death, Jesus prophesies at the Last Supper in Matt. 26:32, “But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” In the resurrection account, 28:7, Jesus tells the women, “Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee.’” The women ran on, and Jesus met them a second time, as if to underscore the point, saying “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (28:10). If it was Jesus’ intention to appear to the disciples in Jerusalem, why did he instruct them three times before appearing to them that they were to meet him in Galilee? The fact that he twice sent word to the disciples through the women demonstrates to the unbiased reader that he did not intend to see them first in Jerusalem, where he could have simply instructed them face-to-face to go to Galilee. Matt. 28:17 reads, “when the Eleven saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted,” further suggesting that Jesus had not appeared to them before, at least not three times as John suggests. In the second appearance, Thomas had already seen Jesus and had overcome his doubts (20:28 “My Lord and my God!”).

This is all troubling enough, but it gets worse. Not only does Luke not mention a Galilee appearance, but on the day of the resurrection, in the environs of Jerusalem, Jesus tells his disciples, “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (24:49). There can be little doubt that Jesus is referring to the promise of the Holy Spirit, poured out at Pentecost after the ascension in Acts 2. If this is so, then Jesus is in effect prohibiting the disciples from going to Galilee, in direct contradiction to his multiple instructions in Mark and Luke.

Furthermore, there is evidence that Luke has tampered with his source account (Mark) to place the first appearance in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee, perhaps for political purposes:

Mark: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.
John: ⁵The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
Luke: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? ⁶He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ⁷'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " ⁸Then they remembered his words.
Mark:⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "

Matthew: ⁷Then 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."
Mark: ⁸Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
Matthew: ⁸So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

Note how the synoptic accounts are tightly bound in virtually every detail until Luke changes Mark’s wording (Mark is generally agreed to be a source for the other two synoptics) from “He is going ahead of you into Galilee” to “Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee…” What is the purpose of Luke’s mention of Galilee? Standing alone, it is a very incidental detail. It hardly seems to matter whether Jesus told them these things in Galilee or Judea. But if Luke was using Mark as a source, and if he preferred Jesus’ first appearance to be in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee, then he could have done so while preserving the original mention of Galilee by transforming Jesus’ instructions to go to Galilee into an historical speech that happened to be located in Galilee. I cannot claim to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is what Luke is doing, but it all appears very suspicious to me. We have already noted the lengths to which Matthew goes to place the first appearance in Galilee, and the lengths to which Luke goes to insist on an initial Jerusalem appearance to the exclusion of any other appearance, so it should not be surprising that Luke would purposefully manipulate his source text in this case to put aside the idea of a Galilean appearance. I want to underscore again the correspondence in detail in this passage among the synoptics, suggesting that they are drawing from a common source (likely from Mark), except in this case, where a specific geographical location is mentioned. It would be difficult to pass this off as a coincidence. My conclusion is that Luke is deliberately bending the narrative to some end, and that he is not to be trusted as an objective historian, much less a divinely inspired writer. When viewed from a historical-critical perspective, there are numerous other examples of such alterations in the gospels, reflecting the particular motives of the authors within the context of the early church. In fact, this is probably the case in the very next verse:

⁸Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:8)
8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. (Matt. 24:8)

Most scholars (even the translators of the NIV) recognize the second half of Mark 16 (after v. 8) as being a later addition. So “They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” is how it all ends according to Mark, who may have been explaining why no one had yet heard of the empty tomb up until the time of Mark’s writing. Notice how Matthew skips on from the word “afraid” in Mark, fleshing it out into a positive account that effectively contradicts Mark’s: “afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” Matthew, writing later that Mark, after the story has had more time to spread and progress, turns Mark’s abrupt ending into a full-fledged resurrection account.

Evangelicals will take exception to this analysis, figuring my heart is already bent against belief and prone to look for the negatives, unwilling to consider any possible harmonization. Even if this is so, could it not also be that those who try to force Matthew to allow for an initial Jerusalem appearance are not reading according to Matthew’s intentions but are feeding their prior judgments into the text? Anyone unfamiliar with the story and reading it for the first time would no doubt conclude that Matthew meant what he said: Jesus first appeared to the disciples in Galilee.

Consider also this: If a man claimed to have run a one-minute mile, I would demand precise, irrefutable evidence that it was so before accepting his claim. I would demand to see him do it with my own eyes, I would use two stopwatches, I would videotape it, I would look at it from every angle to preclude the possibility of foul play, and only then would I be willing to accept it. Am I too much of a doubting Thomas? I don’t think so. As Hume (I believe) said it, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” If a man claimed to have run a four-minute mile, I would require less proof than for the one-minute mile, because I know a four-minute mile, while a great feat, is within the realm of natural possibility. Likewise, I believe I am willing to accept the resurrection of a dead man, but not only is the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection merely circumstantial, but it is based entirely on four anonymous accounts which at times draw from each other and at other times diverge so completely that they cannot agree on which end of Palestine Jesus first appeared. If it took five hours to travel by horseback from Jerusalem to Galilee, that would correspond to the five-hour flight between New York and LA. If one witness to a crime placed the crime in New York, while the other placed it in LA, what is there left of their testimony worth listening to? Crimes happen all the time, but not resurrections. I would more easily believe the two contradictory witnesses to the crime than the contradictory witnesses to the resurrection.

Well, that’s my take. I chose to focus on one discrepancy, but there are a number of others, most of which I consider to be minor compared to this one. Again, I stand ready to be corrected on any point. My aim is to know the truth, not necessarily to trample others’ beliefs, though it may seem that way at times.

Let’s continue pursuing the truth together,

Ken