RESURRECTION MORNING: WHAT HAPPENED?
ROBERT MEYERS

In a recent issue of the Firm Foundation, a Texas weekly which shapes the thinking of thousands of Church of Christ people, the following series of startling affirmations saw the light of print:

“God’s book is true. It is infallible. It is verbally inspired. There are no errors or mistakes within it. If the reader knows of one, let him produce it . . . When there is a conflict let’s change man’s findings and not God’s revelation.”

One suspects a degree of hysteria behind utterances so self-contradictory as these. The writer asserts that there are no errors, then admits almost immediately that a conflict may be found but must not be acknowledged. This is built-in proof against anyone who, like myself, supposes these statements to go too far. If I present evidence of serious textual difficulties in the Bible they will simply be described as something else, because serious textural difficulties cannot exist.

In other words, if my reason insists that conflicts appear in parallel versions of Biblical incidents, I must step heavily on my reason and shout, “It cannot be so!” If my reason lifts its bloodied head to ask feebly, “Why not?” I promptly smash it again and say, “Because there can’t, that’s all!” The Bible cannot contain conflicts because it cannot contain conflicts. If one seems to appear, I must call it something else.

If the astonishing dogmas quoted from the Firm Foundation were rare in Church of Christ publications and pulpits, they might wisely be ignored. But such blithe pronouncements about the nature of the Bible are commonplace in all but a handful of our journals and they have profound effects upon our masses. Coupled with remarks like one I heard a college Bible department head make to some fifteen hundred students (“There is not an error of any kind in the pages of this sacred book!”), they confirm many Church of Christ people in their tendency to worship a book rather than a Person, and to care more about what a man’s view of that book is than about whether his life reflects the philosophy of Jesus.

It has long seemed to me that we shall simply have to expose our people to some of the textual problems of the Bible so that they will forsake their simplistic approach to it and their complacent conviction that they have adequately mastered those parts of it which need concern anyone. Surely we may do this with our college-age students who are, by this time, beginning to encounter textual analysis in college. It is salutary that they be introduced to some Biblical textual criticism in friendly surroundings lest they decide, when they hear it later from someone hostile, that they have been deceived and something has been kept hidden from them out of fear.

It is extraordinary that so few older, serious Bible students in our religious denomination have ever bothered to put parallel passages under microscopic study so that they might lay a basis for personal conviction as to precisely what the Bible is. For surely unless one knows something significant about what the Bible is, he will continue to have serious difficulties knowing what it means. The way to know what a literary composition is is by the most intensive, unremitting analysis of it. However dry and tedious the task may seem at first, its significance ultimately grips one and it takes on (like pure mathematics) a strange beauty of its own.

I would suggest that teachers spend at least one or two class periods occasionally in which they indicate to adult students what the textual problems may be in such gospel accounts as that of the Limited Commission, or the prediction of Peter’s denial and the fulfillment of that prediction as these two matters are handled by different writers. It occurs to me often that anything which chastens the pulpit-nourished pride of so many of us cannot be a complete waste of time. It is good for some of us to learn that wise and good men have labored long over textual problems and died unsure of how they should resolve them. To put it bluntly, but without malice, there is so very much that we do not know.

I am going to present here one of the most fascinating of all those problems: the account of the resurrection morning as handled by all four gospel writers. I anticipate a variety of responses, ranging from fascinated agreement to aggrieved anger, but my purpose is not merely to shock. I labor under a genuine conviction that it is now time to tell our people what every Bible instructor in every one of our colleges has known already for years.

I have divided the account of the resurrection morning into nine topics so that we may deal minutely with restricted areas. Mark, commonly considered the most primitive of the four, is printed first so that readers may remember to consider this belief. If you wish to be engaged strenuously with what follows, please refer carefully and constantly to the parallel accounts as printed here for your convenience.

1. Testimony as to TIME. Mark says that the women came when the sabbath was past, early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen. Matthew says “toward the dawn”, a phrase which suggests that the sun had not yet risen. Luke’s testimony on this point is generalized, but John says specifically that it was “still dark.” (There is a hint later in his version that Mary may not have recognized Jesus because it was dark, but that she did recognize him when she heard his voice).

We must recognize at the very outset of this analysis that John’s account is so different from the others that we shall have difficulty knowing what things are parallel between him and the three Synoptists. Some defenders of textual inerrancy, stumbling quickly on the obvious contradiction between “when the sun had risen” and “while it was still dark,” have argued that Mary came to the tomb first by herself (as in John), then came later for a second visit with the groups named by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. A careful and honest student will discover, I think, that this explanation will not hold water. For one thing, John appears to slip up when he quotes Mary and has her say “we do not know where they have laid him,” despite the fact that he has said nothing previously of her being in the company of others. This is probably an unintentional but significant proof that John is actually describing the same visit described by the Synoptists.

There are other difficulties in the way of accepting two visits by Mary. I shall mention them as we proceed. The important thing to remember at present is that we have already run headlong into a serious textual crux having to do with what time of day it was when the women came.

2. Testimony as to CHARACTERS involved. Mark lists three: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. Matthew lists Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (probably the mother of James). Luke speaks first of “they” but later identifies them as Mary Magdalene, Joanna (is she the same as Salome? or someone else?), Mary the mother of James, and “other women.” One gets no hint from Mark and Matthew that there were “other women.” But this kind of variant is of slight importance. It merely suggests the kind of differences in presentation which one would expect of men recalling an incident.

3. Testimony as to PURPOSE. Mark says that they went to “anoint him.” Matthew says only that they went “to see the tomb.” Luke says that they were “taking . . . spices,” an obvious hint that they planned to anoint him. John’s gospel says absolutely nothing about the purpose of Mary’s visit; there is no mention of spices or anointing. Again, although the slight variants exist and speak something, quietly at least, about the theory of verbal inspiration, they are not memorably troublesome. One wonders only why Matthew should omit the purpose stated by his fellow Synoptists and suggest instead a different reason.

4. Testimony as to THE STONE. In Mark the women are asking one another who will roll away the large stone for them, but when they arrive they see that it has been rolled back. Nothing is said as to how this happened.

MARK	MATTHEW	LUKE	JOHN
Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Hail!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”	And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, brought spices, so that they might go an anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.	But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.	Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take h:m away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbonil” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them . . . (Thomas doubts. . . 8 days later is satisfied . . . After this, a revelation at the Seat of Tiberias . . .)

Matthew, however, adds at this point a highly colorful narrative. He tells us that there was an earthquake, a descending angel who rolled back the stone and then sat upon it, that his appearance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow, and that he frightened the guards into paralysis. It appears from his account that this exciting event happened either when the women arrived, or immediately before, for the angel tells the women not to be afraid, a request which makes sense only if they have witnessed the event itself or his terrifying radiance.

Luke does not follow Matthew in this story, saying only that the women found the stone rolled away. This is interesting if Luke had Matthew before him when he wrote (as many textual scholars think), since it is more common for writers to elaborate upon stories than it is for them to pare them back again to non-sensational character. One wonders why Luke passed by the opportunity to include so dramatic a story.

In John’s account the stone has been taken from the tomb. No comment is made about Mary’s concern over this, nor about the agency by which it was done.

5. Testimony as to ENTRY. In Mark the women enter the tomb. In Matthew it is impossible to know whether they ever enter or not. They went to “see the tomb,” Matthew tells us, but they were addressed by the angel and departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy. If they went in, Matthew chooses not to tell us about it. In Luke the women enter. In John, Mary does not enter at first, but finally stoops to look “into the tomb.” It is impossible to know certainly whether she stepped inside. (The student should keep in mind constantly that Mary figures in all four stories, yet things are said about her conduct which simply will not permit us to harmonize the four accounts.)

6. Testimony as to SPEAKERS. Although the small variants are beginning to add up to significance, we come now for the first time to really obtrusive ones. The four accounts introduce us to these speakers:

In Matthew, the angel who descended and moved the stone.

In Mark, a young man dressed in a white robe (he is not identified as an angel, we should remember, and white robes were nor uncommon in that day).

In Luke, two men who “stood by” the women “in dazzling apparel” (they are not identified as angels, although the women are frightened and bow low in typical Oriental homage).

In John, “two angels in white,” one sitting at the place where Jesus’ head had been, another where his feet had been.

If Mary was involved in all four of these incidents, whom did she see and hear? Did she meet one angel or two? Did she encounter one young man or two men? Is one of the two angels in John’s account the angel who rolled back the stone in Matthew? If not, did Mary see three angels? But that story isn’t related by John, of course, so we are hardly allowed to frame such a question. The significant point is that it seems impossible to suppose that Mary could have had all the experiences told about her by the four writers. We seem to face here, by any rational method I can imagine, an either-or situation.

It is perhaps a good time now to notice something peculiarly interesting about Mark’s gospel. It is the freest of the four from the miraculous and the supernatural. It says nothing about miraculous agency in rolling away the stone. It does not identify the young man as an angel. And (as we shall shortly see) it says nothing at all about post-resurrection appearances of Christ. (I am omitting from consideration the interesting “additions” to Mark which are often printed after the eighth verse of Chapter 16. They provide fascinating problems of their own, but these lie beyond the province of this short essay.)

Whatever may be the explanation for Mark’s more naturalistic account, we can hardly help reflecting for a moment upon the well-known tendency to include more and more sensational details as a story is circulated. The reader may find it provocative to compare the overall tone of Mark’s account with the overall tone of the others, and then ask himself what the difference may suggest.

7. Testimony as to the MESSAGE. We notice a striking similarity between Mark and Matthew in their account of what the speaker says. Mark’s rather enigmatic “his disciples and Peter” (why this odd separation?) is changed by Matthew. And where as the young man in Mark says “as he told you,” Matthew’s angel says, “Lo, I have told you.” But this pair of divergencies detract hardly at all from the general likeness of the two accounts.

Luke, of course, has two men to deal with and their message is quite different. (It should be remembered that if we try to harmonize our very first problem about TIME by postulating two visits by Mary, we now are faced with a situation in which Mary hears at least three different messages in Mark, Luke, and John! The problem seems to me to become insoluble when we also find that she is represented as having completely opposite reactions to the message in Mark and Matthew.)

If harmonizing these passages means that we must simply squeeze them all together somehow, it appears that things are going to get terribly crowded and hurried. All those differing speakers and messages, plus the fact of completely different reactions, must make the hardiest harmonizer pause. I know from long experience, however, that where there is a will there is a way, an old truism that authors should never forget in their presentation of unpopular views. No matter how carefully one marshals his evidence, he is unlikely to dent the armor of a man who is determined to uphold the theory of verbal inspiration and absolute Biblical infallibility.

An interesting piece of minutiae turns up at this point in our parallel accounts. Notice that Matthew and Mark both mention that Jesus was going before the disciples to Galilee. Luke retains a reference to Galilee, but uses it quite differently. There is no mention of the fact that the disciples will see him there, only that he told them there of his coming death and resurrection.

In John’s account, Mary sees Jesus and Jesus gives her a message. It is not, however, the message which the angel and the young man of Matthew and Mark gave. Jesus says “go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” It is odd that he should not have clarified this comment with some further remark, such as, “I will meet you in Galilee later.”

An astonishing and insurmountable obstacle (it seems to me) appears next in the

8. Testimony as to the WOMEN’S DEPARTURE AND BEHAVIOR. Mark says that they fled and said “nothing to anyone” because of their fear. Matthew says they ran to tell the disciples (they were interrupted by Jesus, but he appears to have sent them on to tell his “brethren to go to Galilee”). How one can reconcile Mark’s “they said nothing to anyone” with Matthew’s account at this point is beyond my power of comprehension. Luke, of course, makes it even clearer. He says “they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.” But how shall we reconcile Matthew and Luke with what Mark says? All I really hope for is that at this point my most reluctant reader may admit that we do have some stubborn textual problems which will not allow us to speak glibly and easily of Biblical inerrancy. Am I wrong to think that we might profit immensely in terms of humility and open-mindedness to others if we could both see and feel (the latter is so important that the former may be meaningless without it) the presence of these difficulties?

In John, Mary goes to the disciples (as she does not in Mark), but her message is different. “I have seen the Lord,” she tells them.

9. Testimony as to the SEQUEL. As stated, there is in Mark no account at all of resurrection appearances. In Matthew, Jesus makes one to the women. Although the angel had said to the women in Matthew that they would see him in Galilee, they meet him instead in Judea, right away, and he then passes the word that the others will see him in Galilee.

In Luke the women tell what they have seen, but the disciples do not believe. Nothing is said of Christ’s appearing to anyone at that time, as nothing is said in Luke of the whole business about his meeting them in Galilee.

In John the Lord appears that very evening (in Judea) among the disciples. Again an interesting problem arises. Matthew had suggested that Jesus said “tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” But in John the brethren see him that very night, not in Galilee, but in Judea. How does one account for this discrepancy? A week later Thomas saw Jesus, too, not in Galilee, but in Judea. Of course, in John’s account there had been nothing said of Galilee appearances, so John is perfectly consistent with himself. But how do we reconcile John’s account with Mark and Matthew?

When one thinks of a kind of dictation theory of inspiration while he puzzled over these varying accounts, he may find it strange that they should so differ as to create such problems. Any power capable of taking over a man’s mind and dictating perfectly accurate details could easily have harmonized the accounts so that none of us later need have been puzzled. It remains for me one of the most insoluble of enigmas that men can comprehend all these things and yet hold to the mechanical, dictation theory of composition.

We have noticed how radically different John’s account is from the others. The business about Peter and John and their foot race, the weeping outside the tomb and Mary’s subsequent dialogue, the initial failure to recognize Jesus and the later chat with him, his strange request that he be not touched since he had not ascended all these things have no counterpart in the other three.

That request of Christ’s that Mary not touch him deserves a passing comment. How are we to reconcile what is said here in John with the remark in Matthew that the women “took hold of his feet” and apparently were not rebuked at all? Or how shall we reconcile his rebuke to Mary with his insisting just a few days later, before his ascension, that Thomas should touch him?

When my friend in the Firm Foundation says that “when there is a conflict let’s change man’s findings and not God’s revelation,” I have some willingness to sympathize with his fears but I have also a question I cannot answer: How do I change my findings? How do I deny my eyes and my reason? And if I wilfully deny them, how can I be sure that I will not soon be led astray by the very blindness and irrationality which I have deliberately cultivated in order to “save” the Bible?

One final comment about whether we can reconcile a few of the discrepancies by assuming two visits by Mary. If she did indeed go twice, these questions occur:

How could the Mary of John’s gospel, who went and told Simon and John, have been the same Mary who in Mark’s gospel “said nothing to anyone?”

How would the Mary who is told in Mark that she will see Jesus in Galilee react when she had already seen him? (Or if John’s visit by Mary is afterwards—impossible when you recall our TIME problem—then the young man’s comment is still fulfilled much sooner than he said it would be.)

There is little point in raising more difficulties about the “double visit” solution. Anyone who cares may raise several more objections to that theory than I have raised here. I think we cannot postulate a double visit without making Mary into a manifest hypocrite at one time or another, and without running into all kinds of problems as we compare the things said to have happened to her.

What then are we left with? It seems to me that the one tremendously significant thing on which all four writers agree is this: Jesus arose. They differ in a multitude of derails, so that we may find it hard to accept a mechanical theory of inspiration, but they agree on the basic fact which all the details are meant to illustrate.

The cardinal item of faith, then, would be the resurrection. A church in one province, with only Mark’s gospel, might be amazed to hear a preacher from a church in another province which had only John’s. But surely they would not have disfellowshipped one another because of the new and variant recitals of what happened on that resurrection morning. The salient feature would be that Jesus did indeed arise.

The preceding is submitted, schematized in a more mechanical way than I have ever seen anyone do it, in the hope that it may provide a wedge for those who would like to diminish the tendency towards bibliolatry in members of the Church of Christ. It is submitted in the hope that it will increase humility in us so far as interpretation problems in general are concerned, and that it will free us to fall in love with and worship a Person instead of expending so many of our energies fiercely defending the infallibility of a book. Once the book assumes its proper proportions, it can be reapproached in exciting ways and yield great dividends without exposing us to some of the great dangers which bibliolatry spawns.—Riverside Church of Christ, 867 Spaulding, Wichita, Kan.