Easter Morning

Ed Tyler etyler@truman.edu
Thu, 17 Dec 1998 12:33:23 -0600 (00913941203, 3.0.5.32.19981217123323.00a10740@pop.truman.edu) 

At 09:48 AM 12/17/98 -0800, Brian Malcolm wrote:

>snip

>>Ray says nobody in his right mind would ever consider any dawn to be

>"dark",

>>no matter what the weather conditions are,

>

>snip

>

>Ed

>

>Shakespeare, Henry James, John Milton, Henry Fielding, and just about every

>other great author in English were whackos, I guess.

>

>Poobah

>This is pure sophistry; of course in English there could be a "dark morn" or

>a "dark sunrise" but that doesn't win you any points in the real debate,

>because that's not what John's text implies:

>

>"The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene *early, when it was yet

>dark,* unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the

>sepulchre." (Jn20:1, KJV, *My emphasis*)

>

>The combination of "early", plus "yet dark", has a clear interpretation.  It

>is always *possible* that the author meant something else, but then he isn't

>a very good writer, is he? 


Ed

The clear interpretation is that it was light enough for the woman to see
the stone taken away, but early enough that one would still say it's
"dark."  These would be the conditions associated with sunrise.

Poohbah

And if you consider the text divinely inspired,

>we have to ask why a perfect God could inspire such imperfect prose.


Ed

Obviously the text isn't divinely inspired, because the accounts of the
woman's or women's visit to the tomb are contradictory in many aspects.
This issue of dark simpy happens to be one of the few in which they aren't
contradictory, unless one assumes an unusually narrow semantic range for
the word "dark."  Why one would want to assume such a narrow range in this
argument is frankly beyond me, since there are plenty of legitimate
contradictions in the texts.

Poobah

>

>Your interpretation would be valid if the text said:

>"They went to the tomb early after that dark sunrise; a foul gloom hung in

>the air"

>

>But it doesn't.  If I told you "I got up early and it was still dark out," I

>don't think you would assume I meant it was overcast, regardless of whether

>I was Milton or the Bard.

>


Ed

But if you said "I got up early and it was still dark out, but it was light
enough that I could see that a stone had been moved" (which would be the
proper analog to the text) I'd assume that it must be about sunrise,
wouldn't I?