Still the Easter Season, so Resurrection Narrative thoughts

Hard not to think about what is going on in Scripture in respect of history when Christmas rolls around, and then Easter. The Gospels do differ!

Christmas: Mark and John opt out od details re birth of Jesus. Matthew and Luke unite on Mary, conception by Holy Spirit, Joseph as husband of Mary, birth in Bethlehem, notable visitors. Nazareth as place of upbringing of Jesus. Pretty much everything else differs. Why? Is it different perspectives (Matthew sees things through Joseph's eyes, Luke through Mary's)? Is it differences in historical details, Matthew and Luke each in touch with different versions of the history? If so, what is contradictory and what is complementary? Some great difficulties to explain such as Nazareth being a place from which the Holy Family comes to get to Bethlehem (Luke) and to which the Holy Family flees, via Egypt (Matthew). Are differences theological? History combined with fables - common history to Matthew and Luke with different fables, all to make differing theological points?

Easter is a bit more complicated because, aside from the four gospels (none opting out on the resurrection this time), there is Paul's handed down account in 1 Corinthians 15. And where the four gospels have some things in common, they all differ from 1 Corinthians in several respects.

The four gospels have in common that women discover the empty tomb (Matthew, Mark and Luke: women plural; John: a woman singular (but a named woman who is part of the group in each of the other gospels).) Paul mentions no women explicitly - perhaps women are implied by his mentioning a group of 500 people seeing the risen Jesus. Nor does Paul mention the empty tomb explicitly but it seems reasonable to conclude that he does think the tomb was emptied by the raising of Jesus from the dead. We might note that all four gospels ascribe the tomb's provenance as associated with Joseph of Arimathea.

The four gospels also have in common appearances of the risen Jesus to disciples: in Jerusalem (Matthew, Luke, John); in Galilee by implication (Mark); in Galilee (Matthew, John); not in Galilee (Luke, who mentions Galilee but in a strange way, putting these words in an angel's mouth, contrary to what Luke would have read in his Markan source, or, even, if used, his Matthean source: "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee," (24:6).) It is as though, Luke, who has a strong attachment to Jerusalem as the locus of critical action in the Jesus movement, cannot omit Galilee as a reference in the resurrection narrative he tells, but also cannot have any resurrection appearance further away from Jerusalem than Emmaus, seven miles away.

Putting the four gospels together, they focus on places, events, and encounters: Jesus is buried in a tomb, women go after the Sabbath to visit the tomb, and discover it is empty. Messages are given to them by an angel or angels. Appearances of the risen Jesus subsequently take place, or are predicted to take place: to the women, to disciples among the Eleven and to disciples not among the Eleven.

By contrast Paul's narrated history concerns encounters: Jesus appeared to both key leaders among the disciples, to groups of people and, last of all, also and in a similar way, to Paul himself.

Is there a competition going on? Do the gospels (all almost certainly written after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians) seek to put Paul right? Are the accounts complementary? All good questions but perhaps the thing to look for (similarly to Matthew and Mark and their birth and infancy narratives of Jesus) is this: what are the four gospel writers and Paul trying to convey theologically to us about the way they tell the history of the resurrection?

Let's face it: each account has an oddity or three in their reports to us. 

If Mark is first gospel account, then in 16:1-8, he narrates no appearances. Obviously there were appearances (see Paul in 1 Corinthians; try to explain why Mark would write his gospel if there were no appearances). 

Matthew has "colour" no one else has (earthquake, soldiers guarding the tomb) and seems to be at pains to rule out the possible explanation the tomb was empty because the body was stolen. 

Luke has the Emmaus story not found elsewhere, omits, as we saw above, reference to appearances in Galilee, and, perhaps most odd of all, tells a story in Luke 24 which could all have taken place in one long day and then, in Acts 1, tells us the same story as far as appearances go too place over 40 days. Luke seems to be at pains (similar to John) to verify that the risen Jesus has a new material body (whatever else was new, different, amazing about it), that could eat and drink as per human normality

John cuts the group of women down to one woman, Mary Magdalene; has the Doubting Thomas scene no one else has; and gives us a wonderful fishing trip in Galilee, omitted from all other accounts. John's risen Jesus gives final teaching and a commissioning to his disciples in keeping with the Johannine Jesus, and somewhat different to the commissionings in Matthew and Luke, and particularly different when we compare the "Johannine Pentecost" with the "Lukan Pentecost."

What Paul reports misses, as we noted above, any direct reference to women being the first witnesses to the resurrection, and lays out a sequence of appearances to disciples difficult to square with the sequences given in any of the four gospels, through for all five accounts, Peter is important!

In the end, in 2024, as I reflect on these things, I have been struck by the core details of the gospels' narrative: early on that Sunday morning, one or more women went to the tomb in which Jesus had been buried, and discovered the tomb was empty. Subsequently Jesus appeared to disciples, female and male, in Jerusalem, its surrounds, and in Galilee.