From the Errancy discussion list, 8-26-95:
Till
Roger Eisinger has sent me personal messages about an inconsistency in the resurrection narratives that I believe I posted on this list. Since it pertains directly to the purpose of the list, I am going to post our exchanges here for everyone's consideration. The problem I presented was the one about inconsistencies in Matthew's and John's depiction of Mary Magdalene on resurrection morning. Matthew's narrative has Mary M hearing an angel say that Jesus had risen, but John's had her believing that the body had been stolen. My position is that these are irreconcilable inconsistencies.
I think that some of the difficulties in trying to reconcile those
two gospel accounts can be avoided by considering the possibility that
neither Matthew, Mark or Luke bothered to record the portion of the
resurrection story that the writer of John relates in John, Chapter 20 vs
1-10. In John's account, Mary Magdalene approached the tomb two times.
The first time, she sees only that the stone is rolled away.
Till
This is a common "explanation" that inerrantists use to explain the discrepancy in Matthew's and John's depiction of Mary Magdalene on resurrection morning, but it just won't work. You said that Mary Magdalene approached the tomb twice in John's account, and the first time she saw only that the stone had been rolled away. Well, that couldn't have been all that she saw, because if she did not look inside, then she couldn't very well have known that the body was gone. That, however, is just a minor problem in your explanation, because Matthew said that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb on the first day of the week, 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" (28:2). So Matthew's Mary M didn't just go to the tomb and find it empty as John's Mary M did; she saw the angel remove the stone. The narrative went on to say, "But the angel answered and said unto THE WOMEN..." (V: 5). I asked you to state who these women were, but you didn't do it, so will you do it now: who were these women that the angel spoke to? You have to say Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, because they are the only two women identified in Matthew's narrative. So what did the angel say 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" (verses 5-6). If Mary Magdalene learned that the body was gone, it would have had to have been at this moment, wouldn't it, when the angel invited THE WOMEN to see where the body had lain? If so, she discovered that the body was gone within the context of an angel's telling her and the other Mary that Jesus was gone because he had risen, as he had said he would.
