I really should have written this post years ago, given that this information has been living in my head rent free since 8th grade. I've alluded to it or referenced it many times before on this blog (e.g, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). But I've never made a full post properly explaining it. So here we go.
When I was in 8th grade, our 8th grade Bible teacher did a lesson on all of the contradictions in the resurrection account (*1). He told us that if you examine the different accounts of the resurrection in the Bible, they all contradict eachother in ways that are impossible to harmonize. He told us that the Church had sometimes tried to produce harmonized accounts of the resurrection story, but that none of those accounts worked. (*2)
He then had us open our Bibles, and read the resurrection accounts in each of the 4 different gospels, and pointed out the contradictions between them. And sure enough, there were big contradictions between them that just couldn't be harmonized with each other. It blew my mind at the time, because it was one of the first times that I realized there were big problems with the biblical narrative (*3).
Now, I don't want to get too much into the weeds here discussing every contradictory detail about the resurrection across all 4 gospels. We'd be here all day. (Wikipedia has a nice chart listing some of the main differences, if you wanted to check there.) So let's just compare Matthew and John as an example.
Here is Matthew 28 from the NIV:
1 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then 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.”8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
And here is John 20:
1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
You can see, of course, that they both can't be true. In one version, the women see the angel come down, there's a violent earthquake, they see the stone rolled away, and the angel tells them that Jesus has risen, and the women are filled with joy.
In the second version, Mary Magdalene arrives by herself, she sees that the stone is already gone, and the tomb is empty and (without an angel to tell her what is happening) she assumes that someone has removed Jesus's body, and asks the gardner what he did with the body, before realizing the gardner is Jesus.
In addition to the shock of realizing that the Biblical narrative was contradictory, I remember also being surprised that I had never noticed these contradictions before. Because I had heard both of these stories many times before in Sunday School. I had heard the story about how the angel had come down in front of the tomb to tell the women that Jesus waas resurrected. And I had also heard the story about how Mary Magdalene had found an empty tomb, and then mistaken Jesus for the gardener. And I had never before realized that those two stories contradicted each other. Why had I never realized this before? (*4)
Now, believe it or not, our 8th grade Bible teacher was actually a conservative Christian, and his purpose in teaching us about the contradictions in the resurrection account was not to weaken our faith, but rather to make our faith stronger. In his view, these contradictions proved that the resurrection had to be real.
His logic was as follows:
* He said that eye-witness accounts often contain contradictory details. Whenever there is a car accident, eye witnesses who are questioned afterwards often will remember the incident differently.
* He also said claimed that if accounts are too similar, it invites suspicion. People who are looking to perpetuate a fraud will take care to make sure that their stories are all consistent. He mentioned his background working with juvenile delinquints in the past. Whenever they committed any kind of a crime, the first thing they did was to get together to make sure that they all had their "stories straight" in case they got questioned by the police.
Thus, fact that the gospels all have contradictory stories indicate that the apostles weren't trying to create a fraud, because if they had been, they would surely have met together to get their "stories straight". And so, it proves the truth of the resurrection.
In the 30+ years since this lesson, I have often wondered how representative his thinking was of Christian apologetics in general. He was actually the only Christian I ever heard who wanted to talk about the contradictions in the resurrection account. All the other Christians I've known either don't know about the contradictions in the resurrection account, or would prefer not to talk about them.
(That following Sunday, I brought the subject up with my Sunday School teacher, and mentioned the contradictions in the resurrection account, and how they can't be harmonized. She gave me a blank stare, and then just changed the subject to something else.) (*5)
So, I guess I'm not sure who I'm talking to here, but just for the record, let me go through all the reasons why I've come to believe his argument doesn't make sense.
Let's start with the claim that eye-witness accounts often contain differing information. Fine. I'll accept this for some of the minor details. Maybe after witnessing a high speed car-crash, some of the bystanders might have differing recollections on how fast the cars were going, or who hit who first. "Gee officer, it all happened so fast, I'm not sure if blue car was in the intersection first, or the red car."
But does this work for major details? Can you say, for example, "Gee officer, it all happened so fast, I'm not sure if there was a violent earthquake and an angel came down from heaven and rolled away the stone, or if I came up to the tomb and it was just empty with no one there."
And who are the multiple witnesses in this scenario anyway? If we're assuming the gospels are based on eye-witness testimony (*6), then presumably Matthew and John both are getting their information from Mary Magdelene, right?
But there are even bigger problems. We haven't yet talked about the first appearence of Jesus to the disciples. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus appears to his disciples while they are still in Jerusalem. Some of them doubt he's alive, but Jesus gives them proofs and opens their minds. And then after they believe, Jesus leads them out to Bethany, and ascends to heaven from there.
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.44 He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. 46 He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 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.”50 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
Acts (the companion book to Luke) offers a slightly different account in which Jesus stayed with his disciples for 40 days in Jerusalem.
But in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus told Mary to tell the disciples to meet him at Galilee, and so the surviving 11 disciples went to Galilee, and Jesus appeared to them there. In Matthew, this is obviously the first time Jesus is appearing to his disciples, because some of them are still doubting that he's alive.
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
So again, you can see why you can't just explain this away by assuming confused eye-witnesses. "Gee officer, it all happened so fast, I'm not sure if Jesus appeared to us that night in Jerusalem, and then stayed with usin Jerusalem for 40 days, or if we had to hike all the way out to Galilee to see him for the first time."
So there's that.
Secondly, it struck me even as an 8th grader that my teacher was using backwards logic by assuming that the lack of similarities meant that the Gospel stories had to be true.
Follow me on this:
The logic is that police are more likely to believe an alibi if the story is consistent across multiple people. This is because if the police know that if the perprators all tell different stories, then it is likely that they are lying. The juvenile delinquints know this, therefore they make sure to make their stories consistent.
Therefore consistent stories are unreliable, and contradictory stories are true? I mean, that's kind of backwards, right? The reason criminals take such trouble to get their stories straight is because the police know that consistent stories are more likely to be true than inconsistent ones.
Imagine two policeman are working on the case:
1st policeman: Well, they must be telling the truth.
2nd policeman: What do you mean? Their stories don't match up at all.
1st policeman: Yeah, that proves they were telling the truth. If they were lying, they would have tried to get their stories straight before they came in here.
2nd policeman: But none of the details lined up. They couldn't even agree on what town it took place in. One of them said Jerusalem, the other one said Galilee.
1st policeman: That just proves they must have been telling the truth all along.
And then, there's the synoptic problem. I didn't know this in 8th grade, but it turns out that scholars believe that Matthew and Luke were both copying from Mark, because a number of passages are word for word identical--I explained all about the synoptic problem in this previous post here.
So, if the argument is that different and contradictory accounts are reliable, and similar reports are unreliable, then what to do about all the stories in Matthew, Mark and Luke that are exactly the same?
But wait, you might ask, if Matthew and Luke are both copying from Mark, then why do they have different accounts of Jesus appearing to his disciples after the resurrection?
And the answer is that Mark's Gospel actually originally ended at verse 8 with the angel in the empty tomb, and the women running out. Verses 9-20 were added later.
4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.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. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.]
So, Matthew, Mark and Luke produce similar versions up until the point of the angel in the empty tomb. But because Mark's gospel ends here, Matthew and Luke each had to make up their own separate stories about Jesus appearing to the disciples. So Matthew makes up one story about Jesus appearing to his disciples in Galilee, and Luke makes up a story about Jesus appearing in Jerusalem (*7)
So... what to make of all this?
Bart Ehrman's explanation actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Bart Ehrman points out that our earliest accounts of the resurrection come from Paul. (Scholars believe Paul wrote his letters before the gospels were written.)
Ehrman points out that Paul mentions Jesus appearing to several people, but Paul doesn't know any of the stories that are in the gospels. Paul just mentions that Jesus appeared to people. See 1st Corinthians 15:
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Ehrman also points out that Paul doesn't mention anything about an empty tomb or a stone rolled away. In fact, Paul doesn't mention anything about a tomb at all. Going off of Paul's account, it's not even clear Jesus was buried in a tomb.
Ehrman believes that after Jesus died, Jesus' disciples began to have visions of him. Ehrman points out that this is a fairly common phenomon, that people often have visions of their loved ones after they died. Based on Paul's writings, that Jesus just "appeared" to various people, this seems plausible.
By the time we get to Mark's gospel, which was written in 70 AD, the story has expanded. Now we have an empty tomb.
Matthew and Luke are both copying from Mark, and expanding on Mark, so the story gets expanded yet again. Now we have stories of Jesus appearing to and interacting with his disciples.
And then finally we get John, which scholars believe is the last gospel to be written, in which these stories are even more developed. (*8) (*9)
That makes the most sense to me of anything.
If that doesn't make sense to you, then fair enough. But then, let me know, how do you make sense of the contradictions in the resurrection account?
Footnotes:
(*1) I grew up in the Christian school system, so we studied the Bible as one of our core subjects.
(*2) Some years ago, I linked to an article written by someone making fun of the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (A) attempts to harmonize the 4 different resurrection accounts. After going through the harmonization narrative beat by beat she concludes:
And there you have it. The tomb is a kind of Grand Central Station. Mary Magdalene is an idiot. The disciples need a whole lot of telling. Jesus is a master of disguise. And harmonization is a specially dishonest form of special pleading, but also – well, a bit of a joke.
I've not actually encountered any other attempts at harmonizing the resurrection accounts. If someone knows of something out there, let me know.
(*3) The general view in my religious commmunity was that the first 11 chapters of Genesis might not be literally true, because they were a metaphor--or something. But once we entered into the historical parts of the Bible, I had been taught to believe there were no mistakes in it.
(*4) I had a similar feeling many years later when I learned that there are two contradictory accounts of creation in Genesis: there is the 6 day account in Genesis 1 (in which animals were created before man) and the Adam and Eve creation story in Genesis 2 (in which Adam was created first, and then the animals). I had heard both of these stories so many times, why had I never realized they contradicted each other?
(*5) One of the reasons I've held off on writing this post over the years is that I thought it was silly to write a long rebuttal to something someone said to me once in 8th grade, unless I got more evidence that this is something that was widely believed by more people than just my 8th grade teacher. But, like I said at the top of the post, this lesson has been living rent free in my head for so many years, I suppose I might as well write about it.
As to not knowing how widespread these beliefs are in Christian circles, I suppose it's somewhat on me for not reading more Christian apologetics over the years. If I was more widely read, maybe I'd have more of an idea of what the offical conservative Christian line on this is.
As I mentioned in my review of The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, Lee Strobel dips his toe into the water here and suggests that perhaps the contradictions in the resurrection account might prove the lack of collusion between the disciples. But then, on the very next page, Lee Strobel goes on to also say that properly understood, there are no contradictions in the resurrection account. This is something that is typical of Lee Strobel (as I complained about in my review). He'll often try to advance two contradictory arguments at once. Also, Lee Strobel does absolutely no work to try to prove that the resurrection accounts don't contradict each other. He just claims that they don't. Declaring something without evidence is also something that's very typical of Lee Strobel, as I also complained about in my review.
To be fair, I guess I should acknowledge that there's one other Christian writer I know who dealt with the contradictions in the resurrection story: Peter Enns in The Bible Tells Me So. Peter Enns' book was an attack on the inerrantist position from a liberal Christian perspective, so Peter Enns was very good at pointing out all the contradictions in the Bible. But, in my opinion, Peter Enns was not very good at giving the reader any other alternative framework. It's like, okay, so, all the gospels have contradictory accounts of the resurrection. So what am I supposed to do with this information? Do I still believe in the resurrection now, or what?
(*6) For the record, the gospels are not based on eye-witness testimony, but we'll just pretend they are for the purposes of illustrating why this argument still wouldn't work.
(*7) Technically, scholars don't think Matthew and Luke themselves made up these stories--they believe they were drawing on previous sources. But somebody must have made them up.
(*8) I know longer remember which of Bart Ehrman's books he advances this theory in. I think he's mentioned it a few times, actually, but the Ehrman books that I've read all kind of run together in my memory. It was one of these: The History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon, Did Jesus Exist?, Forged, Jesus, Interrupted or Misquoting Jesus.
(*9) Incidentally, there's a similar thing going on at the beginning of Jesus's life. Neither the letters of Paul, nor the gospel of Mark, mention anything about the birth of Christ, and so both Matthew and Luke come up with their own accounts of how Jesus was born, and both Matthew and Luke create completely different accounts of the birth of Jesus--this was something I wrote about before in a previous post: Historical Problems With the Christmas Story
