>>TILL
>>
>>I think that my comments about the way Matthew
>>would necessarily have been interpreted by first-century Christians who had
>>access only to his gospel account is a point that you should address. It
>>very definitely affects the legitimacy of Wenham's and others' attempts to
>>remove Mary Magdalene immediately from the scene before she had time to
hear
>>the angel's message. What is your reaction to that? Specifically what do
>>you find in the text of Matthew that would justify this approach to the
Mary
>>Magdalene problem? I'm interested in having someone point to specific
>>statements in Matthew's text that would have made first-century Christians
>>who knew only Matthew's gospel understand that Mary M left immediately
after
>>finding the tomb open. If you wish, you can save this message and bounce
it
>>onto errancy with your response after you have subscribed.
MATT
>>
>>First, I think that we can both clearly see that there is no specific
>>statement
>>in Matthew's text that points to Mary Magdalene leaving before the women
>>encountered the angels.
TILL Good, then we have a point of agreement that provides us with a place to begin discussions. My argument is that if Matthew said nothing in his narrative to suggest that Mary M left the tomb before the women encountered the angels, then his readers [who probably never had access to any of the other gospels] would not have thought that she did leave. If she did leave, as Wenham, you, and practically every other inerrantist claims, then you must say that the omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit guided Matthew to write his narrative in such a way that no one reading it at the time of its authorship would have understood that Mary M "immediately jumped to the conclusion that the body had been stolen" and "dashed off to tell Peter and John" (as Wenham postulates). If such really did happened, as far as I am concerned Matthew's failure to mention it is within itself sufficient to destroy credibility in the doctrine of verbal inspiration, because one is required to believe that an omniscient, omnipotent deity could not inspire a coherent narrative that would give its readers a clear understanding of what had happened.
Let me ask you a question. If you had been the writer of this narrative and if you had known that Mary Magdalene immediately left the scene and ran to find Peter and John, would you have included that information in your narrative? If not, why not?
MATT PERMAN
However, this does not mean that Matthew's Gospel does not allow for this movement by Mary Magdalene.
TILL I believe you are wrong, and in order to show why I think you are wrong, I'm going to quote again the first section of Matthew's narrative.
Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, MARY MAGDALENE and THE OTHER MARY came 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 from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. But the angel answered and said to THE WOMEN, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you." So THEY went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. And as THEY went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met THEM, saying, `Rejoice!' So THEY came and held Him by the 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" (Matt. 28:1-10, NKJV).
As I have pointed out numerous times, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were the ONLY women that Matthew mentioned in his narrative; therefore, when verse 5 says that the angel spoke to THE WOMEN, he had to mean that the angel spoke to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Thus, there would have been no way for first-century readers who had access only to Matthew's narrative to understand that "the women" excluded Mary M and referred instead to the other Mary and other women who were with her. To argue otherwise would be to say that Matthew's readers could have known about the other women without ever seeing in the narrative any reference at all to them. That is a completely illogical position to take. Therefore, on the basis of the names that Matthew specified and the way that he used the expression "the women," I say that Matthew's narrative makes no allowance at all for Mary Magdalene's movement away from the area of the tomb before the angel had spoken to "the women."
Furthermore, the usage of the third person plural pronouns "they" and "them," which I have emphasized in uppercase letters above, require, by all recognized rules of grammar governing pronoun-antecedent reference and agreement, that Mary Magdalene be present while the angel was speaking. Notice that the angel spoke to "the women" (v:5) after which Matthew uses THEY and THEM, the only possible antecedent of which would be "the women."
So since Matthew had mentioned no other women but Mary M and the other Mary, how could Matthew's readers (who knew nothing about other gospel narratives) have possibly known--indeed how could they even have suspected--that the third person plural pronouns referred to any others but Mary M and the other Mary? The answer is that they couldn't have. If you still contend otherwise, please cite the rule of literary interpretation and the rules of pronoun-antecedent reference that would justify your position.
On these grounds, which I consider reasonable and sound, I must insist that there is nothing at all in Matthew's narrative that allows the movement of Mary M that Wenham and you claim. If no such grounds are there, then there was no possible way for early readers of Matthew to know that Mary M bolted and ran from the tomb before she saw the angel (if indeed she did). This would make the omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit a bungling writer whom I would have failed in my freshman composition classes if he could write no better than that. I simply can't imagine how anyone can suppose that such flawed writing as your and Wenham's theory requires could possibly have been verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity.
MATT PERMAN Your appeal to the way that first century Christians would have understood Matthew's report is faulty because the contradictions must be within the texts themselves, and not between someone's interpretation and one of the [other]
texts. So a possible interpretation by early Christians of Mary Magdalene being present through all of the events in Matthew would not constitute a contradiction in the text, only among interpretations.
TILL I think you have misunderstood my argument. I have never said that there are contradictions within Matthew's narrative. I have simply said that Matthew's narrative gives no basis at all for all of the postulations that inerrantists have formulated in order to resolve inconsistencies and contradictions when all of the narratives are considered together. Hence, if Mary Magdalene actually did leave the scene immediately and run to find Peter and John, then Matthew was guilty of an error that is just as serious as contradictions within his narrative would have been (if they were there). That error would be the inability to write (under the guidance and direction of an omniscient, omnipotent deity) a coherent narrative. The incoherent points arise in that Matthew's way of telling the story led his readers to believe that "the women" were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and the pronouns "they" and "them" referred to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, but if Mary wasn't even there, then she couldn't have been one of "the women" that Matthew said the angel spoke to, and she couldn't have been one of the "they" and "them" that the pronouns referred to. Matthew's readers, however, would have assumed that she was one of "the women" and one of the "they" and "them." That would constitute mistakes and errors just as serious as internal contradictions and inconsistencies.
MATT PERMAN Second, how do you know how the early Christians would have interpreted it?
There is good evidence that it is likely that a large part of the early church, even those who only had one Gospel, knew a much wider spectrum of the events of Jesus' life than only those recorded in the Gospel that they would have possessed. Perhaps the early Christians who had only Matthew would have still been fully aware of the full scope of the events and recognized that Matthew was not intending to give a complete, detailed record. So, for your argument to hold, you need to give better reason for the early Church's understanding of the events surrounding the resurrection other than the fact that they might not have had all of the Gospels. And, even if you could show this, that would still not prove any contradiction, because no statement in Matthew denies something affirmed in another Gospel, or affirms,something denied in another Gospel. You need to point out contradictions in the texts themselves, not in any speculative, possible interpretations.
TILL Well, of course, this is simply a speculative solution that you are offering.
If you have evidence that the people Matthew addressed his narrative to knew all of these other things, then you should present it. A hypothesis is simply a "possible" solution, but it proves nothing until the truth of the hypothesis is established. So if you can show that your hypothesis is true, I'm willing (and I'm sure others on the list are also) to consider your evidence.
Let me explain why I doubt that your hypothesis is true. If all of these other things were so widely know by Matthew's audience, then surely he himself would have known about them, because we have reason to believe that "Matthew" wrote for people living in the same geographical area that he did.
If they knew all of these things, then why didn't Matthew know them? We can certainly know that an omniscient, omnipotent deity would have known every little minute detail about the story, so why didn't this deity direct Matthew to include all of these other things? The fact that he didn't and the fact that Mark, Luke, and John told the story radically differently is strong reason to believe that an omniscient, omnipotent deity had nothing to do with the authorship of any of the books. If he had, readers would find no inconsistencies at all as they went from narrative to narrative. If not, why not?
MATT PERMAN
>> Now, the text of Matthew, since it does not deny that Mary Magdalene
>>left, can at the very least allow for this supplementation by John (if John
>>really does teach that she left before the first group of angels appeared).
TILL If the "supplementation" by John represents the reality of what actually happened, then Matthew committed a grave error by not including this information himself, because his way of telling the story left his readers with a picture that did not fit reality. So the problem that I hope you will confront is your need to explain why an omniscient, omnipotent deity could not have done a better job of verbal inspiration than this.
MATT PERMAN
>>Wenham does a good job of discussing the valid approach, called harmonistic
>>exegesis, that would lead to this conclusion on pages 127 and 128 of his
>>book, which I would refer you to.
TILL Well, of course, you surely understand by now that I disagree. Wenham's "harmonistic exegesis" relies so much on unproven hypotheses (indeed on hypotheses that he many times didn't even try to prove) that it can't at all be considered "valid." I have, of course, read pages 127 and 128, and I must disagree with his approach to "harmonistic exegesis," because it works on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant (a question that should be proven and not begged). The idea is that each account is to "throw light on the intended meaning of the other[s]," but this hypothesis completely excludes the distinct possibility that four writers working independently of one another would have "intended meanings" that were in direct conflict with the "intended meanings" of the others. The latter possibility is, in fact, far more probable than the other, and we have tons of literature in existence to prove that different writers working independently of one another on the same historical subjects will be inconsistent in the telling of their versions of the story. Why should we believe that the writers of the gospel narratives were any different? If you say, "Well, they were inspired," then you are begging a question that you need to prove.
MATT PERMAN
>> We should also note that it is highly possible that you are misjudging
>>Matthews intentions. I don't think that he is intending to write a
>>comprehensive, point by point analysis of what happened, but simply wishing
>>to bring out some of the main events which don't necesarily require him to
>>explain all of the complicated movements of the women on that first
morning. It
>>could be for simplicity's sake that he omits Mary's movement before the
angels
>>appeared. And it's highly possible that his readers would have been aware
>of this, since they were closer to the events and lived in the time period
of
>his writing and so would have been more familiar with his intentions than we
would.
TILL Well, of course, if I have misjudged Matthew's intention, it is your task to show me how I have done so. I have analyzed his narrative primarily from a linguistic and grammatic point of view to show how that someone reading only his narrative would have necessarily understood it. So if such an understanding failed to include key points like some of the details mentioned in the other narratives, this would be, as I have said, a mistake just as serious as internal inconsistency in his narrative. If this isn't a valid point, please explain why it isn't.
MATT PERMAN
>> Finally, I think that we also should keep in mind that it just may be
>>entirely possible to harmonize the accounts without Mary Magdalene leaving
>>before the angels.
TILL Some have attempted to do so. Gleason Archer made such an attempt in his *Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties,* but I found his attempt to be just as unsatisfactory as yours and Wenham's. If you think it can be done, I would like to see your attempt.