"Original" Easter Challenge

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JOHN B
This is from Dan Barker's "Losing Faith in Faith", Ch. 24.  The last part of
the file was corrupted, so I only included the first part here.  I think this
was available on the Freedom From Religion Foundation website.  I'll check and
try to provide the whole thing later along with the URL.  This is probably not
the "original" Easter Challenge.  Some of the people on this list would know
more about this issue than I do.  (Not that we need a "canonical" version.)  I
have edited for purposes of removing HTML junk.

-----

Leave No Stone Unturned

Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist -- Chapter 24

An Easter Challenge For Christians

I HAVE AN EASTER challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell
me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward
request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day
that their most important doctrine was born.

Believers should eagerly take up this challenge, since without the
resurrection, there is no Christianity. Paul wrote, "And if Christ be not
risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we
are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he
raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." (I
Corinthians 15:14-15)

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four
Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28,
Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny
version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in
a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate
accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the
resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who
said what, when; and where these things happened.

Since the gospels do not always give precise times of day, it is permissible
to make educated guesses. The narrative does not have to pretend to present a
perfect picture--it only needs to give at least one plausible account of all
of the facts. Additional explanation of the narrative may be set apart in
parentheses.  _The important condition to the challenge, however, is that not
one single biblical detail be omitted._ Fair enough?

I have tried this challenge myself. I failed. An Assembly of God minister whom
I was debating a couple of years ago on a Florida radio show loudly proclaimed
over the air that he would send me the narrative in a few days. I am still
waiting. After my debate at the University of Wisconsin, "Jesus of Nazareth:
Messiah or Myth," a Lutheran graduate student told me he accepted the
challenge and would be contacting me in about a week. I have never heard from
him. Both of these people, and others, agreed that the request was reasonable
and crucial. Maybe they are slow readers.

Many bible stories are given only once or twice, and are therefore hard to
confirm. The author of Matthew, for example, was the only one to mention that
at the crucifixion dead people emerged from the graves of Jerusalem, walking
around showing themselves to everyone--an amazing event that could hardly
escape the notice of the other Gospel writers, or any other historians of the
period. But though the silence of others might weaken the likelihood of a
story, it does not disprove it. Disconfirmation comes with contradictions.

Thomas Paine tackled this matter two hundred years ago in _The Age of Reason_,
stumbling across dozens of New Testament discrepancies:


"I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted," he wrote, "first,
that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be
true, because the parts may agree and the whole may be false; secondly, that
the _disagreement_ of the parts of a story proves _the whole cannot be true_."


Since Easter is told by five different writers, it gives one of the best
chances to confirm or disconfirm the account. Christians should welcome the
opportunity.

One of the first problems I found is in Matthew 28:2, after two women arrived
at the tomb: "And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the
Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door,
and sat upon it." (Let's ignore the fact that no other writer mentioned this
"great earthquake.") This story says that the stone was rolled away after the
women arrived, in their presence.

Yet Mark's Gospel says it happened _before_ the women arrived: "And they said
among themselves, Who shall roll away the stone from the door of the
sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for
it was very great."

Luke writes: "And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre." John
agrees. No earthquake, no rolling stone. It is a three-to-one vote: Matthew
loses. (Or else the other three are wrong.) The event cannot have happened
both before and after they arrived.

Some bible defenders assert that Matthew 28:2 was intended to be understood in
the past perfect, showing what had happened before the women arrived. But the
entire passage is in the aorist (past) tense, and it reads, in context, like a
simple chronological account. Matthew 28:2 begins, "And, behold," not "For,
behold." If this verse can be so easily shuffled around, then what is to keep
us from putting the flood before the ark, or the crucifixion before the
nativity?

Another glaring problem is the fact that in Matthew the first post-
resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples happened on a mountain in
Galilee (not in Jerusalem, as most Christians believe), as predicted by the
angel sitting on the newly moved rock: "And go quickly, and tell his disciples
that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee;
there shall ye see him." This must have been of supreme importance, since this
was _the_ message of God via the angel(s) at the tomb. Jesus had even
predicted this himself sixty hours earlier, during the Last Supper (Matthew
26:32).

After receiving this angelic message, "Then the eleven disciples went away
into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they
saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted." (Matthew 28:16-17) Reading
this at face value, and in context, it is clear that Matthew intends this to
have been the _first_ appearance. Otherwise, if Jesus had been seen before
this time, why did some doubt?

Mark agrees with Matthew's account of the angel's Galilee message, but gives a
different story about the first appearance. Luke and John give different angel
messages and then radically contradict Matthew. Luke shows the first
appearance on the road to Emmaus and then in a room in Jerusalem. John says it
happened later than evening in a room, minus Thomas. These angel messages,
locations, and travels during the day are impossible to reconcile.

Believers sometimes use the analogy of the five blind men examining an
elephant, all coming away with a different definition: tree trunk (leg), rope
(tail), hose (trunk), wall (side), and fabric (ear). People who use this
argument forget that each of the blind men was _wrong_: an elephant is not a
rope or a tree. You can put the five parts together to arrive at a
noncontradictory aggregate of the entire animal. This hasn't been done with
the resurrection.

Another analogy sometimes used by apologists is comparing the resurrection
contradictions to differing accounts given by witnesses of an auto accident.
If one witness said the vehicle was green and the other said it was blue, that
could be accounted for by different angles, lighting, perception, or
definitions of words. The important thing, they claim, is that they do agree
on the basic story--there was an accident, there _was_ a resurrection.

I am not a fundamentalist inerrantist. I'm not demanding that the evangelists
must have been expert, infallible witnesses. (None of them claims to have been
at the tomb itself, anyway.) But what if one person said the auto accident
happened in Chicago and the other said it happened in Milwaukee? At least one
of these witnesses has serious problems with the truth.

Luke says the post-resurrection appearance happened in Jerusalem, but Matthew
says it happened in Galilee, _sixty to one hundred miles away_! Could they all
have traveled 150 miles that day, by foot, trudging up to Galilee for the
first appearance, then back to Jerusalem for the evening meal? There is no
mention of any horses, but twelve well-conditioned thoroughbreds racing at
breakneck speed, as the crow flies, would need about five hours for the trip,
without a rest. And during this madcap scenario, could Jesus have found time
for a leisurely stroll to Emmaus, accepting, "toward evening," an invitation
to dinner? Something is very wrong here.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, none of these contradictions
prove that the resurrection did <em>not</em> happen, but they do throw
considerable doubt on the reliability of the supposed witnesses. Some of them
were wrong. Maybe they were all wrong.

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