h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm in the mood for a bit of friendly discussion on these matters, anyone care to join me?

To start off, that bit about the gospels is a bit off. Well actually, it's not off assuming the young man who the Colonel was talking to believed the gospels were eye-witness accounts. That is really not the case anyway. John if anyone would have been an eyewitness to many of the events, but even he would have to accept the reports of others on some points (like the Marys at the tomb). Therefore the writers are accepting material once removed from their sight at the least. Also, the gospels are certainly not intended to be totally objective reports. They are narratives mostly concerned with preaching the message of Jesus, not presenting a complete picture of his life. Therefore they must pick and chooose what they discuss, what events to describe, what words are used, to fit in with their intended message. So the old defense of differing multiple eyewitness accounts is an oversimplification of the matter. Much too oversimplified, and therefore the Colonel's illustration doesn't hold up for me. But in his defense, he was only responding to an overused cliche that I'm sure has been repeated to him a number of times.

I think this is a failure of general Christian teaching, that the average Christian picks up little "answers" that are not complete enough to hold under too much scrutiny.

any bites?

You know I'm always up for this sort of thing... after all, it was due in no small part to our little sparring matches here that enabled me to perform so well in a face-to-face encounter.

I think that the one most important thing that cannot be overlooked is the evolution of the Jesus myth of ascension, as told by the gospel writers. Mark is the first one to publish, and he tells a rather simple, unremarkable story. Luke comes along next, and more or less goes along with Mark, except for a couple of embellishments. Then comes Matthew, whom we know to have either plagiarised or at least had available for reference Mark's testimony, and yet he embellishes the tale with angels descending from heaven, earthquakes, etc. Then John becomes published, and he takes the story even further than Matt does.

John's gospel was not written by the apostle of that name. His gospel comes too late. Some believe that his gospel was written by "the disciple whom he loved", but that cannot be John. Eleven disciples are named in that gospel, and John is one of them.

The meat of your argument, though, is that the gospel writers had to choose what they would discuss. Yet all four chose to discuss the crucifixion and ascension... rightly so, as without the ascension of Jesus, there is no point to Christianity. But if you read the accounts comparitively, the accounts of the crucifixion are coherent, with certain disparities... John has Jesus carrying the cross himself, but the other three agree that is was Simon. They all fairly agree that he had a drink, said some final words, and died at about sundown. They all agree more or less that he was beaten and humiliated before going to the cross.

However, after the moment of ascension, the relative agreement ends. Who came down to the grave? Was it Mary herself, or with one other women, or two other women? Was the stone rolled away, or wasn't it? Did she speak to one man, two men, an angel, or two angels? Did she tell the apostles? Was Jesus there himself?

At that particular moment, the story breaks down to incoherence. And that is the most unbelievable, supernatural part of the gospel stories. It breaks down there because it is fiction.

Before I get into the whole ressurection discrepancies discussion, I'd like to get a few perspectives clear. First, I notice you seem to accept without question the scholarly concensus of the order the Gospels were written in (Markan priority and all). I certainly don't disagree with this, but I don't neccesarily agree either. I don't need any more explanation on this really, just putting it on the record that I'm sort of neutral to this position (which does make a certain amount of sense, I admit).

However, I am a bit put off by your statements concerning John. What is the date you have for John that makes the argument for his authorship void? I have always assumed that the disciple whom Jesus loved is John writing in the third person, do you have a good argument for another candidate?

While we're on the subject (you did mention it), do you know anything about the argument for the ending of Mark being shorter/long (ie ending at verse 8 or continuing to 9-20)?

You've posted in another forum that you believe John to have come after 70 CE. The concensus among scholars is that it is actually written sometime between 90-110 CE. I don't have any compelling reason to doubt this. But even if we accept your date of 70 CE, that's still approximately 35 years after Jesus' death.

As for John's identity, there are no good arguments for him to be John, and one particularly strong one against. Eleven disciples are named by name in John, and one is simply "the disciple whom he loved." John is among those specifically named. So even if the beloved disciple is the actual writer (an argument itself which is rather weak), there is no reason to suspect that he is John.

I'm not particularly familiar with the Mark ending controversy, but I believe that the suspicion is that the final ending was an embellishment by later editors. That shouldn't be so surprising, really, when you consider the other evidence for tampering with the gospel of Mark, which is most convincing.

Actually, I said 1 John there, but I would apply the same to John. By after 70AD(I refuse the scholarly CE for obvious reasons), I was implying a greater range (anywhere from 70s to 90s). Granted, the upper dates of this range would have required John to be a very old man. Unusual, but I doubt it was unheard of for someone to live that long.

As for your argument about John specifically mentioning himself, I would challenge that statement. To prove your point, show me a mention of John(in the book of John) that doesn't refer to John the Baptist, or that isn't an indirect reference(example "son of Zebedee").

As for Mark, one main scholarly thought is that the alleged addition is a summary of resurrection stories from the other Gospels. That being the case I suppose it is neutral for the purposes of discussing resurrection disrepancies, so we should be able to ignore barring something unexpected.

Oh, and I just realize when I say "John specifically mentioning himself", I am showing quite a bit of bias that I didn't mean to attribute to your argument. Sorry about that, couldn't help myself.

I think we're getting mired in pedantry. I'm not terribly interested in the Mark additions. I think the John's authorship argument can be an interesting one, but that's not really what you came here to discuss, is it? You wanted to say something about the gospels as a whole, didn't you? Let's not lose sight of the forest for tree, as they say.

Sorry if I seem off-track, but I'm trying to anticipate future problems. For instance, I'm very aware that in John's gospel, it mentions the beloved disciple in the resurrection story. I hoped our treatment of that now would save discussion later.

And the "addition" to Mark was relevant because the addition comprises half the resurrection story in Mark.

Maybe we should burn those bridges when we get to them though. If I may say so, last time we discussed the resurrection story, I was rather overwhelmed by discussing a long list of events from four different accounts all in a single post. This time I think it would be better if I took it one event at a time so I am not similarly overwhelmed. A little time to gather my thoughts, and I'll start with the women at the tomb.

I think we can discuss John's resurrection story without getting bogged down over the identity of the mysterious disciple. The extra stuff in Mark isn't that important to any of the points I would raise, either. The story breaks down long before that part comes into play.

So, for the purposes of this debate, I'll give you the Mark extension as genuine, and I'll even let you call the unnamed disciple John. The one thing we will not be able to agree on is the fact that John's gospel is an eyewitness account. Sound reasonable?

Reasonable enough. But I don't think the book of John is an eyewitness account either (Though I believe John to be an eyewitness). If I were to name a genre for the gospels, I would call them kerygmatic(preaching) narratives, but this does not mean I think they are fiction. They are proclamations of the message of Jesus, each with different emphasis, purpose, and audience.

I'll start with the identities of the women mentioned in the beginning of the resurrection story. I said I would start with the women *at the tomb*, but to identify the women, the sections that precede the tomb incident are vital. I'll proceed through the gospels, in the accepted order of when they were written:

-Mark
The first mention of the women is when they are watching the crucifixion from afar (15:40). Listed are Mary Magdalene, Mary (probably the mother of Jesus), and Salome (who we can infer from Mt. 27:56 to be the mother of James and John). The women are mentioned again as witnesses when Joseph puts Jesus in the tomb (15:47), but here Salome is not mentioned. Then all three appear again when they go to anoint the body of Jesus with spices (16:1).

-Matthew
The three women are also in Matthew's Gospel, again in the context of witnessing the crucifixion from afar (27:56). Next, at the burial of Jesus they are mentioned again, and like Mark, Matthew drops Salome from the discussion. Here the women travel to the tomb together like in Mark, but this time Salome is left out again (but she was included as in Mark).

-Luke
Luke doesn't mention anyone specific, just "the women who had followed him from Galilee"(23:49, 23:55 NRSV). Yet again they are referred to three times: watching from a distance, at the burial, and then again going to the tomb.

-John
The women are obviously not important in John's view, there is no mention of them watching the crucifixion, or at the burial, and only briefly is Mary Magdalene mentioned coming to the tomb.

-Conclusion
I have listed the accounts in order of written chronology to show you a pattern. You will notice as I proceeded through the gospels that the mentions of the women get progressively sketchier. This makes perfect sense when you consider that each gospel presupposes knowledge of the one(s) written previously.

Mark is the first to write and gives the most complete account in terms of details. I can gather from reading Mark that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were present at the crucifixion (from afar), the burial, and then going to the tomb with spices. Salome is there with them at the crucifixion and travels to the tomb with them as well.

Matthew almost gives the exact same details except he leaves Salome out when they go to the tomb. Three points here: (1) Salome is not actually mentioned by name, but only as the mother of the sons of Zebedee (James and John). Automatically this tells me that Matthew doesn't think she is all that important to the story. (2) We can already see Matthew is leaving out details at this point, because he cuts out the spices storyline too (which is the motivation for the women traveling to the tomb). (3) Matthew and (probably) his audience is familiar with Mark's Gospel, so they are already familiar with these details (Salome and the spices).

Luke certainly knows about Mark, probably about Matthew, and really the names of the women aren't important to him or his audience. However, just to be certain his audience knows who he's talking about, he uses a phrase that should be familiar to his readers from Matthew and Mark in describing the women, "who had followed him from Galilee" (Luke 23:49, Mark 15:41, Matthew 27:55).

John, writing a good bit later, can safely presuppose all the other gospels, not bother with unnecessary details, and focus entirely on his own theological message. He mentions only Mary Magdalene, who is the obvious choice for a representative of the group of three. This is especially true for John's Gospel because she figures prominently in his other stories (anointing of the feet, *resurrection* of Lazarus).

If we listed the three women by importance it would probably break down like this:

Salome (mother of James and John)
-Least important, only mentioned in Mark and Matthew, but not everywhere in Matthew.

Mary, (probably the mother of Jesus)
-Important because of status above, but she is not very prominent in the gospel stories.
-Mentioned in Matthew and Mark in all three places (crucifixion, burial, tomb).

Mary Magdalene
-Rich enough to afford costly spices (like when she anointed Jesus and traveling to the tomb)
-Prominent in a few stories (like anointing of Jesus and resurrection of Lazarus)
-Mentioned in all accounts where names are given.


Okay, that's about enough on the subject . Discussion?
If not, I'll take up the story again at the journey to the tomb.

Sorry, about the size of the post, but this is one of the reasons why I want to take this discussion slowly. If I don't put it in this much detail, I'll be prone to summarize and gloss over things (as I have done in the past if you recall).

Mary Magdalene is indeed the only common thread. Still, you would think that the omission of an obvious detail like Salome's or the other Mary's presence is a pretty obvious flaw. The purpose of the gospels were to act as seperate, complete accounts of the story. If the writers were presupposing foreknowledge of their predecessors, then why did the Synoptics rehash each other so much? Matthew contains nearly word-for-word repeats of stories in Mark. When Matthew disagrees with Mark, the logical conclusion is that he has a reason for doing so, since his close matching with Mark shows that he had it available to him at the time of his writing.

But please, go on... the story starts to deviate even more as it progresses...

The fact that Matthew doesn't mention Salome, a fairly minor character in the plot of the resurrection story, hardly constitutes a disagreement with Mark. Does the fact that Matthew leaves out the spices excuse mean he is in disagreement with Mark about this too? No way, Matthew is simply leaving out a minor detail that is not essential to the understanding of the story or his message. If he *really* wanted to disagree with Mark, he could have easily done so in a more obvious way.

John stands as a complete account of the life of Jesus without including many of the episodes and sections that are in the other Gospels. Does this mean he is denying that these events ever happened? Likewise, he is perfectly aware what the other gospels say about who is present at the resurrection, and doesn't feel the need to include every detail. Mary Magdelene is the most obvious agent to bring word that Jesus is risen, so that's who he mentions.

Well, enough of this. I will continue as promised with the next part of the story as I have time.

I was just reading this and it reminded me of a discussion i had with my RE teacher in school a few years ago. The basic gist of it was that really...the main reason for the women being mentioned at all was simply to suggest there was a group of common witnesses to the death and ressurection in order to confirm the story (ie that both the body and the risen was actually Jesus, buried where they saw him buried).
This fits in quite nicely with the theory (which I've seen the Colonel mention on more than one occasion on my stumbling through the FFFF) of the drugged wine sponge and the removal of the sleeping Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea. Perhaps the gospel writers needed to write in the extra people to cover their tracks..and then the details lessened as they realised how easy it would be to debunk the faith on the basis of extra historical knowledge of the three involved...hence less details...Unfortunately I have no evidence for this whatsoever..and Its probably quite irrelevant..but what the hell..that's what I'm here for