In a previous article, I responded to a YouTube video by Biblical scholar Dan McClellan, on alleged discrepancies between the resurrection accounts. Dan McClellan has now published a rebuttal to my article. McClellan’s rejoinder maintains the same condescending tone I lamented previously as unbecoming of scholarly discourse. Such rhetorical posturing might score points with casual readers, or those who already agree with you. But it distracts from the real task of engaging ideas in an intellectually serious way. If one wants to reach across the aisle to those who do not already see things the way you do, using patronizing language is not going to be likely to make them believe you are a serious interlocutor worthy of engagement, much less sway them to change their mind. If one insists on employing such tones, one bears the burden of substantiating their dismissiveness with careful and well-reasoned argumentation that reveals that one has really engaged in a serious manner with the subject matter. As we shall see throughout the course of this rejoinder, McClellan has not met this burden. His tone may suggest confidence, but his failure to engage seriously with the subject leaves the impression of bluster rather than substance.
The Nature of Apologetics
In my previous essay, I had noted that the high reliability of the gospels and Acts is the conclusion of our argument rather than the premise. In response to this, McClellan remarks,
I have no doubt that McLatchie believes this to be true, but unless he can demonstrate that his “careful and extensive study of the data” occurred prior to any personal commitment to the doctrines or the community of his faith, his declaration of pure objectivity rings hollow. Everyone’s perceptions of themselves, the world around them, and their place in it are filtered through interpretive lenses that are overwhelmingly curated by our experiences and our social and ideological identities, and almost unilaterally without our awareness, much less our approval. …
We all have biases. We can either openly acknowledge and then confront them, or we can just pretend they don’t exist. McLatchie seems to prefer the latter route.
I do not know from whence comes McClellan’s understanding that I believe myself to be free of cognitive bias. I certainly am not. I do, however, strive, as much as I can, to minimize those biases and to exemplify a scout (rather than soldier) mindset — see my essay here on what this is and how one can better model scout mindset. Indeed, the first step towards good critical thinking is identifying and recognizing one’s own biases. It is just nonsense, however, to claim that my beliefs can only be truly based on my careful study of the data if this said investigation occurred prior to my coming to believe the Christian doctrines. I came to believe all kinds of things before I looked into the evidence for them — for example, the spherical nature of the earth, the heliocentric model of the solar system, the existence of the dinosaurs, etc. For a child, it is rationally responsible to believe the information you are given by your parents. This becomes less rational as one grows older and cognitively develops. But sometimes those beliefs that we first acquired from our parents turn out to be well supported. If Christianity were false, I would want to know. I have no interest in dedicating my life to a delusion. But the more I have dug into the scholarship, the more persuaded I have become that the preponderance of evidence comes down very heavily on the side of Christianity. I also, however, recognize, that there is some evidence on the other side of the balance as well, the foremost of which is the problem of evil. Does McClellan acknowledge any evidence on the side of Christianity? If so, I would be interested to know what this is. Ironically, the name of Dan McClellan’s own podcast, “Data Over Dogma,” implies that he himself is dispassionate, free of cognitive bias, and the rest of us mortals are subject to dogma and motivated reasoning.
McClellan claims that,
The reality is that apologetics by its very nature presupposes the conclusions for which it argues, and McLatchie openly identifies as an apologist. In other words, the high reliability of the Gospels and Acts is precisely the premise of the argument, but it’s rhetorically useful to assert that it’s not, so it seems to me that’s precisely what McLatchie is doing (more on that below).
No, this is really not what apologetics is at all. Apologetics, derived from the Greek word ἀπολογία, is an ideologically-neutral term that simply refers to the process of laying out a public defense of your position. McClellan is doing apologetics in his article for the conclusion that there are contradictions between the resurrection narratives in the gospels. This does not mean that he necessarily began from that conclusion and then sought out evidence to justify it. I presume, in fact, that McClellan would be quite offended if I asserted that to be the case (and rightly so). So why does he make such an uncharitable assumption about those with whom he disagrees? Surely the very fact that I believe there is evidence against Christianity (as well as evidence for it) undermines McClellan’s assertion. Again, see my essay on why apologists need a scout mindset. There are even examples in the gospels where I maintain that a minor discrepancy is the best explanation of a variation between accounts. For example, I am not satisfied by any attempt at harmonizing the account of the centurion — did he come to Jesus himself or send elders of the Jews (Mt 8:5-13; Lk 7:1-10)? Note that, in Matthew’s account, Jesus’ instructions to the centurion are given in the singular (Ὕπαγε, ὡς ἐπίστευσας γενηθήτω σοι). This seems to me to be a strong candidate for an actual error, most probably on the part of Matthew, which arose from a miscommunication or misunderstanding. Minor errors like this, however, get swamped by the numerous specific instances where the gospels and Acts can be historically corroborated. Not only are the points of confirmation much more numerous, but it is a lot easier to get things wrong than it is to get them right. Moreover, there is always the possibility that we are missing a crucial piece of information that would harmonize the texts. The discrepancies, therefore, are less evidentially forceful in disconfirming the thesis of reliability than are the points of specific corroboration in confirming it.
I do not, as McClellan asserts, presume the reliability of the gospels a priori. Rather, I and other scholars have argued for this conclusion at length (for example, see this recent essay wherein I document various points of historical confirmation of Luke-Acts). Once this has been incorporated into our background information, it justifies a charitable approach to apparent discrepancies where the author is prima facie given the benefit of the doubt. The same thing may be said of a trusted friend. If you have ample evidence to believe that a particular friend is highly trustworthy, this ought to incline you to give your friend an initial benefit of the doubt. I propose that we approach ancient sources in the same way. I am not, by the way, making a special exemption from my usual historical standards for the gospels. I believe harmonization is a responsible approach to all ancient history, including when our sources carry no religious significance.
Hume Revisited
In my previous article, I noted that David Hume’s objection to justified belief in miracles was satisfactorily addressed by Hume’s own contemporaries, including such thinkers as William Paley, George Campbell, and John Douglas. One point I had highlighted, which is emphasized by Paley, is that the primary purpose for which miracles are wrought in Scripture is to vindicate a divine messenger. But for them to function in that capacity, and grab our attention, they have to recognizably stand out from the way nature normally behaves. If they did not deviate from the routine course of nature, they would not serve an evidential function. If one in every, say, hundred million people were spontaneously rising from the dead, we would conclude that Jesus must be one of those lucky one in a hundred million people. The fact that miracles do, in fact, stand out against the regular natural backdrop, therefore, cannot be taken as a serious rejoinder to the hypothesis under review, since the hypothesis predicts that very observation.
McClellan responds,
While I would quibble with the notion miracles exist entirely and exclusively to vindicate divine messengers, if that claim is accepted, then miracles only function as such to those who actually witness them, since that vindication is a function of the actual experience of that miracle. Once the miracle is transmitted through someone else’s reporting, the miracle becomes the message, which itself stands in need of vindication. The strength of the miracle as vindication is subordinate to the reliability of the messenger.
This paragraph evinces a naive understanding of the theory of knowledge (epistemology), particularly when it comes to the evidential value of testimony. If we can link the testimony to purported eyewitnesses, then we can evaluate the credibility of the report in terms of three broad (and mutually exhaustive) explanatory categories — namely, the claimant(s) is/are lying, sincerely mistaken, or else the content of the testimony is true. In the case of the resurrection, the context of the claim (in particular, the willingness of the apostles to endure dangers, hardships and persecutions on account of their testimony) renders it unlikely that they were lying. Moreover, the content of the claim (in particular, its multisensory and intersubjective nature) makes it quite unlikely that they were sincerely mistaken. Therefore, the best explanation is that the content of the claim is true. A similar argument can be made in the case of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, together with Paul’s miracles recounted in Acts. Of course, one’s background beliefs will affect one’s assignment of the prior probability of a miracle claim. However, the strength of the case for Christianity is that there are multiple independent arguments that point convergently and univocally in the direction of Christianity — the case for Jesus’ resurrection, other credibly attested New Testament miracles (e.g. the resurrection of Lazarus, miracles of the apostles in Acts, etc), the conversion of Paul, the Christological Trilemma, Messianic prophecy, and modern miracles). Each of these arguments is quite compelling in its own right. Taken in aggregate, I consider them to be essentially decisive.
McClellan continues,
It was actually a central part of Paley’s argument that we needed to rely on the historical reliability of these accounts because of the integrity of the evangelists and their willingness to die for their testimony. Such arguments are no longer considered particularly strong by scholars, since scholars generally agree that the Gospels do not represent eye-witness testimony (which itself has been shown by decades and decades of research to be quite problematic).
I, of course, dispute McClellan’s contention that the gospels do not represent eyewitness testimony. But it would take us too far afield to lay out that case in detail here and respond to all of the counter points. For a strong argument that the gospel of John represents the testimony of an eyewitness, I would recommend beginning with The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage, by Lydia McGrew. Another good treatment of this subject is The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel, by Craig Blomberg. A strong case for Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel is also given by Brooke Foss Westcott in his commentary, The Gospel According to St. John (see in particular the first chapter). For a short introduction to the case for Luke-Acts being composed by a travelling companion of the apostle Paul and someone who faithfully represented the testimony of the apostles, see my essay here. For a more detailed case, see Colin Hemer’s book, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, or William Paley’s book, Horae Paulinae, or, the Truth of the Scripture History of St. Paul Evinced. For a more popular-level treatment, I recommend Jefferson White’s book, Evidence and Paul’s Journeys — An Historical Investigation into the Travels of the Apostle Paul. A couple of good popular-level introductions to the evidence for the gospels representing the testimony of eyewitnesses are Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels (Lydia McGrew) and Can We Trust the Gospels? (Peter J. Williams). I also lay out the case for the traditional authorship of the four gospels in this essay.
McClellan continues,
Additionally, the notion that if miracles are real, we should expect them to violate natural law, is not actual evidence that miracles are real, it’s just an attempt to gin up the expectation that the data should be exactly as we find them, effectively exempting miracles from falsification via the methods of critical enquiry. But there’s a side-effect of this rhetorical prophylaxis. If we should expect miracles to conflict with the methods of critical enquiry, then any claimed miracles that conflict with those methods becomes exempt from them. All miracles are equally likely and equally unfalsifiable.
I should clarify here that I do not believe that miracles “violate natural law.” I define miracles similarly to the atheist philosopher John Mackie, who wrote that “The laws of nature, we must say, describe the ways in which the world-including, of course, human beings-works when left to itself, when not interfered with. A miracle occurs when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it.” [1] Defined in this way, a miracle does not violate natural law since the laws of nature were only ever intended to describe what happens when nature is left to itself — not when it isn’t.
But be that as it may. McClellan has thoroughly misunderstood the argument against Hume’s objection to justified belief in miracles. I certainly did not argue that the fact that we should expect that miracles deviate from the routine course of nature is “actual evidence that miracles are real” (of course, the falsity of the hypothesis also predicts this same observation as well, and so one would expect the Bayes Factor to be relatively close to 1). Rather, it is simply a caution against employing a frequentist approach (or an argument from natural law) to assess the prior probability of God performing a miracle, like the resurrection, in order to vindicate Jesus’ Messianic identity. We need to appeal to other factors to get a handle on the relative prior probability of Jesus’ resurrection. Since there are several strong lines of argument (listed previously), independent of the resurrection, which suggest that Jesus is who he claimed to be, this provides reason to think that God plausibly has motivation to raise Jesus from the dead. This is a vital consideration when assessing the prior probability of the resurrection.
To draw a comparison from particle physics, epistemologist Timothy McGrew has given the following example. According to one proposed theory in nuclear physics, spontaneous proton decay occurs, though it is such a rare event that no instances have ever been observed. In order to test this theory, scientists set up sensitive detectors in underground water tanks and leave them there for decades in order to determine whether spontaneous proton decay in fact occurs. But the mere fact that the great many protons so far observed have not decayed does not entail we should always, in accounting for the data, prefer alternative explanations to the hypothesis that spontaneous proton decay has taken place. But if we are permitted to conclude, on the basis of sufficient evidence, that something unprecedented has happened in the physical sciences, then should we not also be able to do the same thing in a religious context? Furthermore, the rarity or unprecedented nature of an event should not be the only, or even the primary means by which we assess the prior probability of said event. As in the case of spontaneous proton decay, there may be theoretical considerations that inform our background knowledge and therefore increase the event’s prior probability. The hypothesis of spontaneous proton decay, despite its having never been observed, is not a wild guess, but rather has a theoretical underpinning. Likewise with the resurrection, the idea that Jesus rose from the dead, even before consideration of the direct evidence, is not some wild guess without any relevant background considerations. Rather, it is made plausible by other background considerations, as enumerated above.
McClellan goes on,
When it comes to miracles that McLatchie hasn’t already chosen to accept, of course, this is unacceptable. In 2012, he published a blog post that ruminated on a run-in with some Mormon missionaries who countered his objections that Mormon truth claims were thoroughly precluded by archaeological and other data by telling him he need only pray for confirmation from God. This wouldn’t do for McLatchie, who insisted any positive outcome from such a prayer would just be the placebo effect. He continued, “By framing their worldview in this untestable – non-falsifiable – manner, they essentially remove it from the intellectual chopping block.” His post concluded, “it is my contention that faith . . . ought to be justified by evidence. Without such an epistemology, I can see no way to differentiate truth from falsehood.”
So it seems whether or not a claim to miracles belongs on the intellectual chopping block or should be exempt from it comes down to whether or not McLatchie has already chosen to accept that claim to miracles. If he has, demands for empirical data that support the probability of those claims are just misguided attempts to resurrect Hume. If he hasn’t, he makes precisely those demands.
No, this is not true at all. My acceptance or rejection of any particular miracle claim is thoroughly driven by evidence. I could be, in principle, persuaded of the miracles alleged by Mormonism (or, for that matter, those of any other religion) if the evidence was comparable to the case for the Christian miracles. If, for example, the book of Mormon could be credibly demonstrated to be of ancient origin, this would certainly command my attention (particularly since Joseph Smith was purportedly translating from Reformed Egyptian, a language unknown even to the present day among Egyptologists — indeed, it would be most impressive if Joseph Smith had even been able to decipher standard Egyptian hieroglyphs). If, however, the contents of the book of Mormon originated in the mind of Joseph Smith (and so is a nineteenth century production), we should expect that the book of Mormon would be full of historical anachronisms and unverifiable archaeologically — as, indeed, it is.
For a good comparison of the resurrection to miracles alleged in other religious traditions, in the context of laying out a set of religiously neutral criteria for evaluating such claims, I would recommend John Douglas’ book, The Criterion (here is a PDF). For a summary (and expansion) on Douglas’ criteria, I refer readers to Erik Manning’s article here. See also Tim McGrew’s debate with Zachary Moore on whether it can be rational to believe in miracles (available here).
Discrepancies Alleged in the Resurrection Accounts
I now turn to McClellan’s defense of his contention that the resurrection accounts in the gospels contradict one another.
The Number and Posture of the Angels
Regarding the question of whether there was one angel or two, I had previously addressed this by arguing that Matthew and Mark spotlight the angel who spoke and simply omit mention of the other. Moreover, though McClellan emphasizes that, in Mark, the angel is said to be “sitting” (Mk 16:5), whereas in Luke the two angels are said to be standing (Lk 24:4), there is nothing implausible about one or both angels changing their position in the course of the events. McClellan responds:
I cannot take seriously the notion this is a plausible defense. This is the very climax of the narratives of the Gospels, and this argument basically requires that the narrators be reliably accurate but also profoundly incompetent. If two women enter a tomb expecting to find the recently deceased body of their beloved Messiah, and instead find two supernatural beings in the tomb with them, a narrator should mention that there were two of them. One divine visitor is definitely noteworthy, but two divine visitors is significantly more noteworthy. The argument that one is not necessarily exclusive of two carried to its logical end would mean that two is not necessarily exclusive of any other number above two, and that any time someone reports seeing a single anything, we could plausibly insist they saw any number of iterations of that thing. None of the Gospels insist there was only one figure because the Gospel authors wouldn’t have a reason to go out of their way to deny the presence of more than one figure unless there was a competing narrative. A narrator who mentions only one divine being even though they knew there were two divine beings is being profoundly negligent. McLatchie says, “Matthew and Mark simply spotlight the angel who spoke and omit mention of the other, who presumably did not speak,” but Luke explicitly says both of them spoke, since the verb eipan is a third person plural verb that means “they said.”
McClellan correctly observes that εἶπαν in Luke 24:5 is a third-person plural verb (i.e., “they said”). But this does not need to imply that both spoke the same words simultaneously. Rather, a more reasonable reading would be that one of the angels spoke, thereby representing the two of them. Even if the other angel also said something, it is not at all implausible that Matthew and Mark chose to spotlight the more prominent of the two angels. None of the texts asserts that there was εἷς ἄγγελος (“one angel”), which would be more emphatic. McClellan asserts that my reading of Matthew and Mark would allow any number to be substituted in any report. But this misses the point, which is that the author’s mention of one individual does not exclude others unless explicitly indicated. I would advise caution against the rigid rule of first impressions. This is when one locks in place their first impression when reading a text, and does not allow that first impression to be revised in view of supplementary sources. If one were to read only Matthew or Mark, one would reasonably come away with an initial impression that there was one angel. But when we have a separate account, by a credible author, that indicates that there was, in fact, another angel as well, we need to be prepared to revise our initial impression, and let the second source clarify and illuminate the first. This is good historical methodology, whether one is dealing with religious Scripture or otherwise.
McClellan continues,
The content of their speech is also quite distinct. Mark has the young man say, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. he has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. . . .” Meanwhile, Luke has the two of them say, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. . . .” They didn’t say both things exactly as each author reports, so at least one of the accounts of their speech is wrong.
This is a ridiculous point. No scholar believes that the gospels are reporting speeches with tape-recorder precision. Rather, the gospels give us recognizable paraphrase of what was said. Moreover, we need not assume that recorded speeches are complete. There is therefore no contradiction between these two texts.
McClellan goes on:
That brings us to their posture. Mark says “they saw a young man sitting on the right side.” This means that at the moment they saw the young man, he was sitting. Luke says that they didn’t see Jesus’s body in the tomb and were perplexed by this, when suddenly (the author uses idou, a deictic narrative particle that is frequently translated “behold” or “look” and draws attention to what follows) there were two men standing by them. The verb for “standing” used here means “to stand at or near a specific place,” and BDAG explains that it often includes a “connotation of suddenness” (listing this passage as an example of that sense). The women were immediately terrified. The narrative cannot plausibly be read to indicate the two women saw either of the men sitting first, only to have one or both of them rise to stand beside them. Mark says the young man was sitting when they saw him. Luke says there were suddenly two men standing beside them as they were perplexed by the absence of Jesus’s body. The narrators are either bafflingly incompetent – in which case one or both of their stories are inaccurate – or they’re just telling different stories.
McClellan’s reading here seems to me to be overly rigid. In Mark, the women enter the tomb and see a young man “sitting” (καθήμενον) on the right side. In Luke, the women are perplexed, and “behold” (ἰδού), two men stood by them (ἐπέστησαν). The verb ἐφίστημι, though sometimes conveying the idea of suddenness, can also simply mean “to come up to” or “stand by,” and it does not exclude prior sitting. It is not at all implausible that the angels were initially seated and that, as the women approached, the angels stood up and came near them. Once again, McClellan is guilty of the rigid rule of first impressions.
McClellan remarks,
Just these two issues of number and posture in just these two Gospels of Mark and Luke cannot be plausibly reconciled. Could you argue it’s not impossible that these two narratives are both accurate accounts of the same actual historical event? Sure, it’s not impossible, but McLatchie’s claim was that we err on the side of harmonization where it’s plausible, and in this case, it’s just not plausible. But because McLatchie is dogmatically committed to the harmonization of the Gospels, though, his judgment is going to be skewed and he’s going to feel that it’s perfectly plausible. This is your brain on dogmatism.
As discussed above, I disagree with McClellan’s historical intuitions. I take issue, once again, with McClellan’s claim that I am “dogmatically committed to the harmonization of the Gospels.” This is not true. I am, rather, committed to good historiographical methodology, which includes the practice of harmonization. As noted above, there are instances where I believe harmonization fails. I simply do not believe this is the case for any of the examples discussed by McClellan in his video.
McClellan continues,
McLatchie next takes issue with my identification of apologetics as primarily being concerned with performing conviction and confidence for a non-expert audience that already agrees and just needs to be made to feel validated in that belief (and so doesn’t need a particularly strong or even legitimate argument). For McLatchie, apologetics “done properly, is what one engages in after the results of a fair and balanced open-ended inquiry are in and the time has come to articulate your conclusions, and the justification of those conclusions, to the scholarly community and wider public.” I have no doubt that’s how McLatchie envisions apologetics, but if that’s what it is when done properly, no one’s ever done it properly.
McClellan is, of course, welcome to disagree with the conclusions arrived at by me and other scholars. But to assert that I am not engaging in good faith and that I began by assuming my conclusions a priori is the height of hubris. Apparently McClellan has difficulty accepting that one may have investigated the evidence carefully and arrived at a conclusion that is different from the one he has himself reached. Moreover, as indicated previously, apologetics is an ideologically-neutral term that simply refers to the practice of defending your position, regardless of the merits of the arguments adduced in support of your conclusion(s).
McClellan goes on:
Now, McLatchie disagrees with my assertion that the Gospel of Matthew describes the women seeing the angel descending and opening the tomb. He insists that kai idou just means “and behold,” and shouldn’t be understood to indicate a sudden event witnessed by the women. He further argues that the aorist participle katabas should be interpreted as a pluperfect and translated “an angel of the Lord had descended.”
It is a fact that καὶ ἰδοὺ means “and behold.” This is simply a narrative device used throughout Biblical Greek to draw attention to what follows in the text. Moreover, the main verb of the sentence, “there was a great earthquake,” is in the aorist indicative (ἐγένετο). The aorist can indeed be used in a pluperfect sense to describe background events (e.g. see Matthew 14:3 for an example of this usage). I would suggest translating verse 2 as follows: “There had been a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord having descended, approached, and rolled away the stone, was sitting on it.”
McClellan continues,
It’s certainly plausible that the story explains that there was an earthquake that result of an angel descending and rolling open the tomb and sat on the stone, only to have the women approach while the angel was sitting on the stone, but in addition to the fact that this interpretation leaves some problems of its own, it cannot plausibly be reconciled with Mark and Luke.
To begin, the women were introduced prior to the events that resulted in the earthquake. If they did not witness the angel descending, then who was the eyewitness who saw it and then reported it to the author of Matthew? If the author of Matthew is telling the story as it was reported to them by eyewitnesses, the angel’s descent will have had to have been witnessed by somebody who reported it to the women so it could be passed on to the author of Matthew.
We do not know for sure how Matthew knew about the descent of the angel. It may have been from something said later by one or more of the guards themselves. Indeed, Matthew apparently had other sources of information concerning them (Mt 28:11-15). McClellan further remarks:
Additionally, there is a narrative purpose to the women witnessing the stone being rolled away. If they come upon the already open tomb with unconscious guards, an angel, and a missing body, somebody could have plausibly absconded with Jesus’s corpse. By having the women witness the opening of the tomb that is already empty and was under supervision until that opening, there is no other explanation for the absence of Jesus’s body than the resurrection.
But Matthew anticipates and refutes the “stolen body” theory explicitly in 28:11–15, where the Jewish leaders bribe the guards to spread that very claim. If Matthew’s intention was to make clear that the body was not stolen from the tomb, he already did so by directly addressing and refuting the theft rumor.
McClellan continues,
McLatchie denies that the account requires the women encounter the angel outside the tomb, but I don’t see a plausible alternative. The angel who is sitting (imperfect aspect, meaning ongoing action) on the stone and speaking to the women cannot be inside the tomb. McLatchie’s account must have the women obliviously walk right past the divine being with an appearance like lightning and clothing as white as snow sitting on the stone outside the tomb, walk into the tomb to the place where Jesus’s body had been laid, then have the angel hop down and join the women in the tomb to tell them not to be afraid and then to come and see the place where Jesus’s body had been laid. That’s entirely neglecting what is actually in the narrative in order to read multiple things absent from the narrative into the narrative between the lines. This is not a plausible harmonization.
This only follows if the women encountered the angel while he was sitting on the stone. But Matthew does not explicitly state this. I take verses 2-4 to be background to the women’s encounter with the angel in verse 5-7. The text does not indicate where the angel was when the women encountered him. While the imperfect ἐκάθητο describes what the angel was doing at the time of the earthquake, it does not necessarily mean that the angel remained seated when the women arrived.
Purchasing Spices
Regarding the question of whether there is a contradiction pertaining to the preparation of the spices, McClellan comments,
Next, McLatchie takes issue with my observation that the preparation of the spices is contradictory between the different accounts. He starts of [sic] by insisting Luke 23:56 doesn’t necessarily mean the spices were prepared before the sabbath, but this is a ridiculous argument. The verse follows after an explanation that the women went to the tomb and saw how his body was laid, then continues, “and returning, they prepared spices and ointments. And on the Sabbath they rested, according to the commandment.” The narrative progression makes quite clear they prepared the spices prior to the Sabbath, as all commentators agree.
I am inclined to agree with McClellan that this represents a less natural reading, and the way one would be disposed to take Luke 23:56 is that the spices were prepared before the Sabbath. It could be that Luke did not know for sure whether the spices were prepared before or after the Sabbath and so he left it somewhat ambiguous. John Wenham also floats the possibility of an achronological narration, though he too favors the other interpretation: “Luke does not actually say that the women prepared the ointments before the sabbath rest, though without evidence to the contrary that is how one would naturally take it. But Mark is quite explicit that they waited till sundown, ‘when the Sabbath was past’ and the shops were open once more. It would contradict nothing explicitly said by Luke if we were to infer that the preparation of the spices and ointments to which he refers did in fact take place after their purchase on Saturday evening; it would simply negate an impression.” [2] Nonetheless, like Wenham, I am inclined to favor the alternative interpretation, which McClellan goes on to address next:
Acknowledging that one might reasonably understand this to be the intended progression of events, McLatchie insists the texts can be harmonized by just imagining that Joanna already had spices at her house that she prepared at home prior to the Sabbath, while the two Marys and Salome purchased them after dawn. The author of Mark only ever mentions the two Marys and Salome, though. They don’t identify anyone else joining up with these three women to visit the tomb. Luke also mentions all the women who went to the tomb taking “the spices that they had prepared.” There’s no mention of anyone else who showed up with spices they had just purchased. While this is not an impossible harmonization, it certainly isn’t a plausible one, and it continues to indict the Gospel authors as incompetent and negligent storytellers.
Again, McClellan is guilty of employing the rigid rule of first impressions. When two otherwise reliable sources overlap concerning an event, it is good historical methodology to allow the texts to illuminate and clarify one another. Here is what John Wenham writes on this harmonization [3]:
Wealthy Jewesses were accustomed to spend large sums on perfumes and ointments and it is quite possible that Joanna and Susanna were able to prepare their share of the burial ointments from their own resources on Friday evening without having recourse to the Saturday market. In that case Luke’s is a straightforward account written from Joanna’s point of view, whereas Mark’s is an account written from the point of view of the other three women who spent their sabbath in John’s house. Peter, it will be remembered, had taken refuge there after his denials and was still there on Sunday morning, so Mark is giving us his mentor’s point of view. Peter doubtless recalled how Salome had come back on Friday morning, supporting the Lord’s mother, and how at nightfall Mary Magdalene and Mary, wife of Clopas, had joined them as the sabbath began.
[…] Mark is quite explicit that the three women bought spices — they did not have the ingredients for the ointments in their possession like the wealthy Joanna.
My historical intuitions differ from those of McClellan — I do not consider this to be an implausible harmonization at all.
Had the Sun Risen or Was It Still Dark?
McClellan reprises his objection that the gospels contradict on whether it was still dark or the sun had risen when the women went to the tomb. Previously, I had noted that the expression used by Luke is ὄρθρου βαθέως, literally meaning “deep dawn.” It refers to the very early hours of the morning. This is rendered “early dawn” by the ESV. Thus, it is not at all implausible to think that at early dawn it would still be somewhat dark. McClellan notes that, in Mark 16:2, it is said that “the sun had risen.” But the earlier part of verse 2 indicates, in accord with Luke’s account, that it was “very early on the first day of the week.” Moreover, the verb ἀνατέλλω can be used of the earliest rays of the sun, not necessarily full daylight. For instance, in Luke 1:78, Zechariah says, ἡμᾶς ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους (“the sunrise shall visit us from on high”). Clearly, this alludes to the light from the sun beginning to appear. Since this reading of Mark 16:2b accords with the language of Luke, and is also consistent with Mark 16:2a, I am inclined to favor this rendering.
John vs the Synoptic Accounts of the Resurrection
McClellan remarks,
Regarding the fact that the account in John wildly diverges from the Synoptic account, McLatchie insists that there is no contradiction, since the two sets of texts are describing entirely “separate and independent events.” I don’t think this is remotely plausible, in no small part because John’s account quite explicitly has Mary come upon an open tomb all by herself and then run and get Peter and John before ever encountering any angel, which flatly contradicts the Synoptic accounts, which all have Mary Magdalene encountering the open tomb for the first time with other women and then encountering at least one angel before leaving. But I’d be happy to see McLatchie attempt to demonstrate otherwise by constructing a plausible sequence of events that incorporates every verse of the four different accounts.
One may indeed come away with the first impression from John 20:1 that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb on her own. However, the verse that immediately follows suggests otherwise: “So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know (οὐκ οἴδαμεν) where they have laid him.’” The verb οἴδαμεν here is in the first person plural. This implies that she is, in fact, representing a larger group, which is consistent with the other gospels. Presumably she left the larger group of women prior to their encounter with the two angels and risen Jesus.
A Poor Showing from Dan McClellan
McClellan has again failed to provide a strong support for his contention that the resurrection narratives in the gospels contradict one another. I would invite McClellan to consider engaging with the extensive case that I and others have presented for the historical reportage view of the gospels and Acts, and to do so with a more scholarly and charitable demeanor to that exemplified in his blog and videos. To this point, McClellan has shown no command of, or familiarity with, any of the various arguments that have been adduced for the high reliability of the New Testament sources.
Notes
1. John L. Mackie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (Kindle Locations 305-307). Kindle Edition.
2. John Wenham, Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Accounts in Conflict? (Wipf and Stock, 2005), 68.
3. Ibid., 68-69.