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| Thanks to James Zombie Clarke from Las Vegas. |
The Lord Has Risen Indeed - by Michael Phillips Apr 12, 2009 am - Easter, 2009
Grace Baptist Church
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The most serious thing he brought up was the conflicting reports of the Resurrection. All four Gospel say Mary Magdalene and her friends were the first to see the empty tomb. But just what was it they saw? Matthew says they saw an angel; Mark said they saw a young man; Luke says it was two men they saw; and John says they saw two angels. So, which is it? Angels or men, one or two?
If you read the Bible and apply common sense, you see no conflict at all. Since angels are spirits and spirits are invisible, angels cannot appear to us in their true form, for if they did, we could not see them! Most of the time, therefore, they spoke to humans in a human form. As to the difference in number, it seems only one of the angel/men spoke, and he's the only one Matthew and Mark mention-not because the other one's not there, but because the other one had nothing to say.
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We speak this way all the time. My wife and I invite a family to dinner. We both come up to them, and I say, 'If you're free for dinner on Saturday, come over at six'. The husband might say, 'Michael asked us to dinner'; the wife, 'Michael and Gladys asked us to dinner'; the son would say, 'Gladys invited to dinner'. Who's lying? Where's the contradiction? Nobody would find fault in these discrepancies-unless he wanted to.
Can I straighten out every crooked place in the Bible? Of course not; nobody can do that...
Based on four academic degrees in both Christian and secular, (varying degrees of) conservative and liberal, academic institutions, I agree with Pastor Phillips' explanation for bible difficulties.
Research of biblical manuscript evidence does find variant readings. These are attributed to scribal errors and perhaps in some cases, harmonization and clarification.
From
Bible.org: Daniel B. Wallace has taught Greek and New Testament courses on a graduate school level since 1979. He has a Ph.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary
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Ancient scribes who copied the handwritten texts of the New Testament frequently changed the text intentionally. Although unintentional changes account for the vast majority of textual corruption, intentional alterations also account for thousands of corruptions. In some cases, to be sure, it does seem that the scribes were being malicious. But these instances are few and far between. The majority of the intentional changes to the text were done by scribes who either thought that the text they were copying had errors in it or by scribes who were clarifying the meaning, especially for liturgical reasons.
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Some of the commonest intentional changes involve parallel passages. This is where the passage that the scribe is copying out has a parallel to it of which the scribe is aware. For example, about 90% of the pericopes (or stories) in Mark’s Gospel are found in Matthew. When a scribe was copying Mark, after he had just finished copying Matthew, he would frequently remember the parallel in Matthew and make adjustments to the wording of Mark so that it would conform to the wording of Matthew. This alteration is known as harmonization.
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Scribes also were prone to clarify passages, especially for liturgical reasons.
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Scribes also were prone to clarify what they thought the text meant. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. There could be theological issues involved, or issues of mere orthopraxy (proper conduct in the church).
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Some have attempted this as a primary explanation for the apparent theological changes in the NT, but what they haven’t done is sufficiently anchor a particular reading to a particular time and place in which such a reading would probably arise. Thus, the theological argument must give way to the textual evidence, since the textual variants are capable of being explained by several different factors.
My brief time at the University of Manchester, before I completed MPhil/PhD work at the University of Wales, had me discuss bible and theology with a world-class, Dead Sea Scrolls scholar that told me that the New Testament featured different 'theologies.' Fair enough, writers can present revelation from different perspectives, but in basic agreement with Dr. Wallace, the manuscript evidence and textual variants provide evidence to work through possible theological interpretations. As I did recently:
2 Peter 3: 10
Wallace again
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...we can have a great deal of confidence that the essential message of the original text can be recovered, for there is always a witness to it.
Looking at biblical manuscripts extant, especially New Testament ones, in my case, there are scribal errors and likely scribal harmonization and clarifications at parts. But, biblical theology is logically consistent. It is also without theological or philosophical error, in my view, in the original documents.
This based on a view of divine revelation through human agents.
Primary doctrines, theology (theologies from various biblical writers, prophets, apostles, associates and their scribes) are consistent with the gospel message, and secondary doctrines and theology can be reasoned out and debated with the use of textual variants, when needed.
(Such as with my 2 Peter 3: 10 example)
BAUER, WALTER. (1979) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Translated by Eric H. Wahlstrom, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
MARSHALL, ALFRED (1975)(1996) The Interlinear KJV-NIV, Grand Rapids, Zondervan.
STRONG, J. (1986) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Pickering, Ontario, Welch Publishing Company.
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