The Claims that Christ would
Resurrect From The Dead
The author quotes Wilbur M.
Smith who claims that Jesus predicted his resurrection. Besides Wilbur Smith’s
failure to specify which books have Jesus doing the said prediction, McDowell
fails to make an argument that employs the said predictions in a meaningful
manner. Suffice it to say that if I said I will be abducted by aliens on
Wednesday at noon, and on Wednesday at noon I disappear, my prediction in
itself will not prove that I was abducted by aliens. If a prediction entails an
unexplained or unverifiable phenomenon, the prediction does not in itself lend
veracity to the phenomenon.
McDowell mentions J.N.D.
Anderson narrating the story of an English barrister called Frank Morrison who
was a non-believer who set out to disprove the resurrection but ended up
converting to Christianity. This is a fallacious argument from ignorance.
Anecdotal evidence proves nothing. For example, if I tried disproving a
scientific hypothesis, that would not in itself mean that the hypothesis is
correct.
Bernard Ramm is then quoted as
remarking that Jesus anticipated his death and resurrection and plainly
declared it to his disciples. No materials (Biblical or extra Biblical) are
provided that support this claim.
Then he (Bernard Ramm) adds: “The gospel writers are quite
frank to admit that such predictions really did not penetrate their minds till
the resurrection was a fact (John 20:9)…”
This is a self-contradictory
argument. While the author claims that Jesus made his death and resurrection
clear to the disciples, the Bible indicates that the disciples did not
understand. First of all, neither Matthew nor Luke were witnesses to the
resurrection and so their second, third or fourth-hand testimonies are, at best
hearsay.
It is
worth noting, as Farrel Till, argues in Why they Didn’t Know, (Skeptical
Review, Number Four 1991) that in Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; Mark
8:31, and Luke 9:22 have Jesus telling the disciples that he will be 1)
delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, (2) condemned to death, (3)
delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, (4) scoured, (5) crucified, and (6)
raised on the third day. After their arrival in Jerusalem, the apostles saw
Jesus (1) delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, (2) condemned to
death, (3) delivered to the Gentiles and mocked, (4) scoured, and (5)
crucified. Yet somehow, after personally witnessing these five specific
fulfillments of Jesus’ statement, they didn't expect him to be resurrected.
Why?
One would think that if Jesus
had really told them to expect all of these things, after witnessing the
precise fulfillment of the first five of his predictions, they would have
surely expected at least a possibility of the sixth. So rather than the women
having to run to tell the apostles about the empty tomb they had found, one
would expect that the apostles would have been on the scene themselves
that third-day morning at least waiting, for Jesus would come forth or
resurrect.
But they weren't there
(according to the story). They had to be sought out and told, and even then
they considered the news the women brought to them to be only "idle
talk" (Luke 24:11).
The women were telling them
exactly what Jesus had said would happen, and yet they thought their (the
women’s) words were just idle talk! How could this possibly be?
They just looked into the tomb
and went home, "for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he
must rise from the dead." Is that what we are supposed to believe?
Everyone who knew Jesus believed
he resurrected except his beloved apostles – whom he specifically took aside
and told what would happen. This does not make sense especially when viewed
from Matthew 16:22 which asserts that they understood it would happen and were
outraged; we have Peter telling Jesus the tribulations will not take place:
Matthew 16: 22: Peter took him
aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This
shall never happen to you!"
The author doesn’t address this
apparent conflict. This makes his argument self-subverting and incongruous.
Farrel Till adds: “just about
everyone who had been associated with Jesus knew that he was supposed to be
resurrected except the apostles.”
McDowell then quotes John R. W.
Scott who asserts that Jesus predicted his death and resurrection. A flurry of
Bible quotes then follows for Jesus’ predictions of his resurrection.
All the quotes provided are from
the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Matthew and Luke were not eyewitnesses
and copied what Mark wrote. The Synoptic Problem has been thoroughly rehashed
in scholarly circles and the rampant plagiarism evident in Matthew and Luke
bereaves them of any credibility they earlier had. To quote from Steven Carr in
Were the Gospels
Eyewitness Accounts :
“…Many
episodes in Matthew, Mark, Luke are similar enough that they can be put
together in one book, or 'synopsis', and textual differences compared. As a
result of these textual comparisons, it was noticed that Matthew and Luke
seemed to be written after Mark and to use Mark as a written source. Of the 661
verses in Marks' Gospel, Matthew's Gospel uses about 607 and Luke's Gospel uses
about 360. There are also about 230 verses which are very similar in Matthew
and Luke, but which are not in Mark. Many Biblical scholars argue that, for
these verses, Matthew and Luke must have used another written source, which is
usually called "Q". The existence of Q is disputed, however it is
almost universally agreed that Matthew and Luke knew of, and used, Mark. “
Carr adds:
“But if
Mark was an eyewitness, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke would then be bearing
eyewitness accounts. The traditional Christian view has been that Marks’ Gospel
is an eyewitness account. Eusebius, writing in the 4th century, quoted Papias,
writing in the 2nd century as saying: "Mark, having become Peter's
interpreter, wrote down accurately whatever he remembered of what was said or
done by the Lord, however not in order."”
Carr poses the question:
“Was the
author of Mark's Gospel a companion of Peter and therefore either an
Aramaic-speaking Jew from Palestine, or at least someone who had a good
knowledge of Aramaic, Judaism and Palestine?”
He then proceeds:
“To determine
that, Steven Carr says, it is necessary to look very closely at how Luke and
especially Matthew used Mark's Gospel. Many times, we see Matthew correcting
Mark's blunders about Judaism. Clearly Matthew was a Jew and Mark, despite
Papias' bold assertion, was not very close to the Jerusalem Church. Carr provides the following explanations
that indicate Mark’s non-Jewishness:
·
Comparing Matthew 15:4 with Mark 7:10, Mark represents a
more Gentile attitude in quoting the Old Testament as "Moses said"
rather than "God said." Matthew, a Jew, would never have attributed
the 10 commandments to Moses. It was God who said them, as all Jews will tell
you. Naturally, there are many places in the first five books of the Bible
which have 'And God said', but which are referred to by Jews as the Books of
Moses, but the Ten Commandments are a different case from the rest of the
Pentateuch and attributed directly to God.
·
Mark 5:22: "One of the rulers of the synagogue."
Diaspora synagogues may sometimes have had more than ruler, as at Pisidian
Antioch (Acts 13:15), but Palestinian synagogues normally had only one. Matthew
9:18, drops this phrase.
·
Mark 14:12: On the first day of unleavened bread when
they sacrificed the Passover, confuses Nisan 15 with Nisan 14.
Naturally, Matthew 26:17 drops the phrase "when they sacrificed the
Passover". Was Mark a Jew who did not know about the Passover?
·
Mark 14:13 says that the disciples were to be met by a man
carrying a pitcher of water. Matthew 26:18 drops the idea that a Jewish man
would do a woman's work.
·
Mark 15:42, "When evening was already come, because
it was Friday (paraskeue) that is, the day before the sabbath...”. This means
"either that Friday began with that sunset, and Jesus had died on
Thursday; or else, the evangelist forgot [or did not know] that the Jewish day
began at evening." Matthew 27:57-62 clarifies Mark's confusion over Jewish
days. Interestingly, the NIV tries to translate the problem away by writing for
Mark 15:42 'So as evening approached ", rather than "And
when evening had come ", as the RSV has it.
·
Mark 15:46 says that that same evening Joseph
of Arimathea "bought a linen cloth." Matthew drops the idea of a Jew
buying something on the Sabbath. No Jew could have made that mistake.
·
Mark 1:2 wrongly ascribes Malachi 3:1 to Isaiah. Matthew
3:3 corrects this
·
In Mark 2:7 the teachers of the law complain that Jesus is
forgiving sins and say 'Who can forgive sins but God alone?'. Jews did not
think that. Matthew 9:3 drops the phrase. There is a Dead Sea Scroll called
'The Prayer of Nabonidus'(4Q242) , written and copied by Jews, where it is said
by Nabonidus '... an exorcist pardoned my sins. He was a Jew...’
Jews did
believe that God could give authority to men to forgive sin.
·
Mark 2:26 - Abiathar should be Ahimelech. Matthew 12:1-8
does not repeat the mistake. Incidentally, if Jesus was thinking of 1 Sam.
21:1-8 when he said that David and those who were with him were hungry, then,
in his omniscience, he forgot that David was on the run alone and the story that
David told Ahimelech was a falsehood - David was not on a mission from the king
and he did not have an appointment with any young men.
·
Mark 10:19 misquotes the Ten Commandments and inserts an
extra commandment: "Do not defraud." Matthew 19:18-20 sticks to the
original 10, plus the one that many Rabbis regarded as a summary of the
commandments.
·
Mark 15:34 has Jesus quoting Psalm 22:1 in Aramaic (Eloi).
Had Jesus done this, bystanders could hardly have supposed that he was calling
for Elijah. Jesus must have used Hebrew Eli, as at Matthew 27:46. The NIV tries
to harmonize Matthew and Mark here by using Eloi in both places.
·
Mark 8:10 refers to the "the district of
Dalmanutha." As far as is known, there was no such place in Galilee. (The
difficulty was recognized early because there are many textual variants in the
manuscripts.)
·
Mark 5:1 specifies that the eastern side of the lake of
Galilee is the country of the Gerasenes. This is more than 30 miles from a lake.
This caused a lot of confusion as can by seen by the variety of names in the
texts here. Matthew changed Mark's Gerasenes to Gadarenes in Matthew 8:28.
Gadara was a well-known spa only eight miles from the lake.
·
Mark 6:14-27 repeatedly refers to Herod Antipas as a
"king." Matthew commits this error only once (14:9). The correct
title 'tetrarch' appears in Matthew 14:1, Luke 3:19, Luke 9:7, Acts 13:1, but
not once in Mark's Gospel
·
Mark 6:17 says that Antipas married the wife of his
brother Philip. According to Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews.
18.5.4, she was actually the wife of a different brother.
·
Only Mark 12:42 explains that a lepton, a coin used in
Palestine, was worth half a quadrans. Furthermore, "quadrans" is a
word borrowed from Latin.
·
Mark 10:12 forbids women to divorce their husbands and
remarry. But Jewish law already forbade that! The teaching would have seemed
outlandish to a Jew of Palestine, but was an appropriate expansion for those of
pagan background.
·
At Mark 3:17 and Mark 10:46, he has to explain the most
elementary meanings of Aramaic surnames. This is supposedly from somebody to
whom Aramaic was a mother tongue. Even if Mark is just explaining things to his
readers, it is clear that his readers, being ignorant of elementary Aramaic and
even the currency of Palestine, would have been in no position to check out any
of the things that he wrote.
·
Mark 6:48 uses 'the fourth watch'. The Jews divided the
night into three watches. The Romans divided the night into four watches,
according to the conservative 'New Bible Dictionary'. This is still more
evidence that Mark's Gospel was written for people who would have been familiar
with Roman and not Jewish customs, and so would have found it hard to check the
Gospel stories. “
In short, Mark was not an eyewitness and his account on
Jesus’ life is marred by its extremely mythical nature [calming storms, talking
to demons, drowning 2000 possessed by demons into a lake (Mark 5:13), raising
people from the dead etc], his open ignorance of the culture and the geography
of the region where Jesus supposedly lived make Mark’s gospel unreliable.
It is clear that Mark was of Greek as opposed to Jewish
background and applied platonic concepts, together with midrash (a Jewish
practice of interpreting scripture, expanding its meaning and copying old
scripture to create new scripture) in writing the Gospel according to Mark.
In The
Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Dennis R. MacDonald demonstrates how the Gospel of
Mark could have been composed. He demonstrates how Mark could have borrowed
from the Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey. Among the parallels identified by
Robert J. Rabel in a review of the book are: Odysseus and Jesus were both (sons
of) carpenters and both suffered and endured many tribulations. Each was
surrounded by a band of foolish companions, and each faced threats not only
from a group of murderous usurpers but from dangerous supernatural foes like
Circe and the demoniac in Mark 5:1-20. Both also therefore resorted to secrecy.
Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain (Mark 9:2-8) is said to be based on
Odysseus' appearance to his son Telemachus in Odyssey 16, while his
confrontation with the blind beggar Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52 is modeled on
Odysseus' meeting with Tiresias in Odyssey 11. Odysseus' entry into the city of
the Phaeacians prefigures Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, while Jesus' anointing
by an unnamed woman in Mark: 14-3 owes much to Odysseus' anointing by Eurycleia
in Odyssey. Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane to avoid his execution resembles the
end of Odyssey 10, Odysseus' "last supper" with Circe before sailing
to Hades. Then compared to Iliad, Jesus imitates Achilles in his predictions of
his imminent death, but otherwise he resembles Hector: both meet violent deaths
and have their corpses rescued for burial--by Priam in the Iliad and Joseph of
Arimathea in Mark. Finally, the young man at the tomb on Easter morning in Mark
emulates Elpenor from the Odyssey. Mark's account of the death of John the
Baptist was influenced by Homer's depiction of the death of Agamemnon. Mark
describes two feasts (Mark 6:34-44, Mark 8:1-10) at which Jesus feeds the multitudes in order to signal affiliation
with the two feasts that begin Odyssey 3 and 4. "Hydropatetics" -
finds Jesus walking on the water in imitation of the god Hermes, who flies over
the water in both the Iliad and Odyssey. In brief, the book demonstrates that
the gospel writers felt free to borrow and edit other texts, since at the very
least Matthew and Luke did just that with Mark. They also took ideas from the
Old Testament used midrash to add extra details. It's not unlikely a priori
that these writers also took ideas from pagan traditions, especially given
Paul's special interest in taking Christianity to the pagans. Paul himself said
he wanted to be all things to all people, and he used certain pagan terms to
explain his gospel, such as the Jewish-pagan combination of the "spiritual
body."
The
Gospel of John was written much later compared to the other three Gospels and
as Earl Doherty says “1 John is a document which has been
"assembled" from multiple sources, or was composed over time by
having new elements added to earlier layers, and ideas that have been around
for many years and is
in no way an eyewitness account”. Earl Doherty A Solution to the First Epistle
of John unearths the reasons for the puzzling manner in
which 1 John was written (its composition indicates it was not written by one
author) and The Johannine Community that is behind its
composition.
Alongside all this is the late dating of the
Gospels, the self-contradictory nature of the Gospels (complete lack of
internal consistency), their extreme and parallels with Greco-Roman religions,
the incredible tales (like demons asking Jesus to allow them to go into 2000
pigs which Jesus subsequently drowned, feeding 5000 people on two fish and five
loaves) make them unsuitable as evidence when examining the life of Christ. In addition, eyewitnesses to
events did not write the Gospels themselves. The first Gospel (Mark) was
written around 70 A.D. so what we really have are narratives written 50 to 60
years after the events based on other people’s recollections. Not only that but
the Gospel authors were evangelists not historians. As such they had different
motivations for writing than accurately recording the events that might have
taken place.
More Bible quotes from the
Gospels. Not reliable as evidence because of the reasons given above.
Send
your comments to jaliet_2000@yahoo.com
