Those who read Turkel's article, linked to above in the title, will see that he didn't even try to meet the challenge. He simply cut and pasted unsupported assertions from books written in support of the resurrection claim, tacked on his own unsupported assertions, and called this showing that there are no contradictions or inconsistencies in the narratives, but by evading Barker's challenge, Turkel accomplished nothing but to arouse deep suspicions that he knows that the challenge cannot be met.

I am now going to eviscerate Turkel's "evisceration" of Barker's challenge. In so doing, I will follow my usual custom of replying to him point by point. The Turkel and Till headers below will enable readers to follow who has said what.

Turkel:
The infamous "Easter Challenge" of Dan Barker -- otherwise known as "Fill Danny's Wastebasket" -- has been popping around for years, and I passed on addressing it for a while to see if any enterprising critic could tell us why differences in the Gospel accounts should be any more problematic or unresolvable than those found in four bios of Abraham Lincoln done by professional historians.

Till:
If I were a kid in Sunday school again and this were a question asked by the teacher, I would be bouncing in my seat and snapping my fingers for recognition to answer this question. Professional historians, who wrote biographies of Abraham Lincoln, would not have been inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent "Holy Spirit" whom Jesus had sent to "guide them into all truth" (John 16:13); hence, differences, inconsistencies, and contradictions in their biographies would not be at all unusual. However, four different authors, writing under the "inspiration" of an omniscient, omnipotent deity, should be expected to write four biographies of the [snicker, snicker] "son of God" without contradicting themselves.

There, that wasn't hard at all to answer, was it? One would think that at least now and then someone who cranks out as much hackwork as Robert "No Links" Turkel would accidentally have a logical thought, but, of course, when one is trying to prove inerrancy in a book riddled with fantastic tales, he has to throw logic out the window and resort to fantasy himself to "explain" discrepancies that anyone but a desperate religionist would agree are discrepancies.

As I noted above, Turkel's article didn't even attempt to meet Barker's Easter challenge, but if Turkel had just posted a narrative that met the challenge, that would have been much more impressive than the sarcastic references to "Danny" and "Danny's wastebasket" and the rationalizations about paper shortages, oral traditions, ma besay-il excuses, and such like. For pity's sake, if Barker's challenge is so devoid of merit, why doesn't Turkel or someone just sit down and write a coherent narrative that meets the challenge? They don't do this, of course, because it can't be done, but they just can't admit that. It would be too damaging to the smug facade of confidence in biblical inerrancy that they try to maintain in the presence of their choir members, who know about as much about the Bible as I know about nuclear physics, so they try to discredit the challenge by ridiculing it instead of just showing how easy it is to write such a narrative.

Turkel:
I may as well have been talking to the Berlin Wall; the only response in those years has been from Ebon, who had little to offer other than blowing his nose.

Till:
Blowing his nose? This is typical Turkel vintage. It appeals to choir members who thrive on Turkel's sarcasm, but it doesn't tell anything at all about what Ebon said by way of response. I guess that Turkel is never going to change. He seems to think that if he says that a skeptic blew his nose or snorted or mumbled or blubbered or sputtered this or that, this will automatically prove the skeptic wrong and save him the time of taking whatever points the skeptic may have presented and actually trying to show that the points were wrong.

Unfortunately, Turkel's choir members lap up this kind of "apologetics" and cheer him on. These, of course, are the gullible ones who have bought all of the nonsense they were taught in church as they were growing up without even once critically evaluating claims about a talking snake, a talking donkey, a sea that parted so that three million "chosen ones" could cross on dry land, a prophet who raised a widow's son from the dead, an axe head that floated in water, a dead man who "revived" and stood on his feet when his body touched the bones of a prophet who had been buried on the same site, three men walking unharmed in a fiery furnace whose heat had killed the men who had thrown them into the flames, etc., etc., etc. He is welcome to everyone who uncritically accepts yarns like these. After all, of what value would such gullible people be to those of us who try to infuse a little sanity into a world filled with religious lunacy?

Turkel:
Since this is the case, we'll now take a closer look at harmonizing the rez narratives, using some of the relevant principles we have outlined in material found here,.

Till:
Good luck! Apologists far more capable than Turkel have tried to "harmonize" the resurrection narratives and have failed.

Turkel:
Enterprising Skeptics (if any exist!) who wish to respond must deal with all of the data we have provided and respond in light of the various cultural and literary factors we have outlined.

Till:
Modesty prevents me from calling myself an "enterprising skeptic," but if an enterprising skeptic is one who can rip to shreds the "explanations" of would-be "apologists" like Robert "No Links" Turkel, then I can lay claim to being an enterprising skeptic. I have hung him out to dry now more times than I can remember. This rebuttal will be just one more time that I have shot his "solutions" to biblical discrepancies full of holes.

When I read Turkel's comment above, I wondered why enterprising skeptics (and there are many of them) would have to deal with "all of the data we [meaning Turkel] have provided." When has Turkel ever replied to all of the data that has been presented to him in articles that he "answers"? He is notorious for quoting his opponents selectively and hopping, skipping, and jumping over that which he cannot reply to. I have personally posted on this site scores of rebuttal arguments that Turkel has never replied to, even though he wrote articles that purported to "reply" to mine. By his logic, I should be entitled to say that if he wishes to respond to me, he must "deal with all the data" I have provided in my articles from which he very selectively quoted and then pretended that he had "answered" me. Later on, I will quote material in Matthew's resurrection narrative that Turkel flagrantly evaded when I presented it to him in another discussion, and I predict that if he tries to reply to this article, he won't even come close to "dealing" with all of the data that I will be presenting here.

Turkel:
Not all are relevant to the rez narratives,

Till:
For once, Turkel has said something I can agree with. Much of his "data" is not relevant, but in keeping with my custom, I will reply to all of it point by point. Don't expect him to reciprocate if he should ever "answer" this. He will skip what he knows he has no sensible answers to and will justify the omissions by talking about "fluff" or "irrelvant distractions" or "superfluous commentary."

Turkel:
but we may begin by summarizing those that we will be making use of:

The major factor to recall is that which we have described here. The Gospel writers did not have unlimited paper and ink at their disposal; this was expensive stuff, and anyone who wants to question this point need to explain why it is not relevant. The rez narratives were at the end of their works, so they were constrained to be as succinct as possible in their reportage -- more than they would be for any other part of their narrative.

TillL
Ah, yes, the old "paper-shortage" quibble. I replied to this in my article "The Paper Shortage" and showed that it is about the silliest apologetic quibble I have ever heard. I invite readers to click the reference above and read this article. They will find example after example of lengthy and tedious repetitions about trivial matters that the omniscient one "inspired" in a time of scarce and expensive scroll materials. Turkel expects us to believe that Yahweh "inspired" such tedious repetitions as these but somehow just couldn't scrounge up enough writing materials for his chosen authors to give full and complete accounts of the resurrection of the "savior-god," which every person forever after would have to believe in order to be "saved."

To see just how incapable Turkel is of defending his "paper-shortage" nonsense, I urge readers to click the link above to my article "The Paper Shortage" and then after reading it, click this link to his article "The Intelligence Shortage" which is his idea of a "reply" to "The Paper Shortage." Compare the two articles and notice just how much Turkel skipped. He made no attempt, for example, to reply to the section in which I analyzed biblical passages pertaining to "inspiration" to show that if the Bible is indeed "the word of God," it would necessarily be a work that was produced in accordance with the principles of "inspiration" taught in the passages that I quoted and explicated. This would mean that the inspired ones were not writing what they thought or "selected" or remembered or had learned from "oral traditions" but what the "Holy Spirit" had directed them to write. Turkel cannot answer this argument and so he skipped it, as he has done before, and tried to camouflage his evasion under tirades of insults, sarcasm, and derision

Anyone who compares my article to Turkel's "reply" and then continues to believe that a "paper shortage" is a sensible explanation for discrepancies and inconsistencies in the resurrection narrative deserves to wallow in his ignorant belief in ancient superstitions and myths.

Turkel:
Also relevant is the point of "who knew what, when". The same exact knowledge could certainly have not been accessible to each and every Gospel writer.

Till:
The same article cited above addressed this quibble too. Presumably, all of the gospel writers were "inspired" by the same omniscient, omnipotent entity, so why wouldn't the "same exact knowledge" have been accessible to all of them? The Bible is filled with claims of events and information that the writers couldn't possibly have known from firsthand experiences. How, for example, did "Moses" know what had happened on the six days of creation? How did he know about all of the exploits of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis? How did "Moses" know what was said in the conversions between Balaam and Balak, which took place when Moses wasn't present? How did biblical writers know many things they recorded about events and conversations that happened when they were not present?

If a skeptic asked a biblical inerrantist these questions, the inerrantist would say that the writers could have known these things through "oral traditions" or divine inspiration, but however they may have received the information, it is reliable, because they wrote by inspiration of "God." Yet when biblicists encounter inconsistencies of the type found in the resurrection narratives, they try to explain these by saying that the gospel writers didn't all have the "same exact knowledge." They can't have it both ways. If inspiration enabled "Moses" or "Daniel" or other biblical writers to know things that they could not have otherwise known, then consistency demands that they admit that the same divine inspiration should have enabled all four gospel writers to have "the same exact knowledge."

I have learned not to be surprised at whatever biblical ignorance Turkel may demonstrate in an article. The apostle Paul, for example, assured the Galatians that the gospel he preached "was not after man," for he had neither received it from man nor was taught it by man but had received it "through revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:11-12). Paul received his gospel through revelation of Jesus Christ, but Turkel apparently expects us to think that when the gospel writers came to something that they had no firsthand knowledge of, they were forced to wing it and do the best they could. That is the kind of nonsense that this guy continually resorts to in order to find "unity" in the Bible. The apostle Paul also told the Corinthians that "the word of wisdom" and "the word of knowledge" were two of the spiritual "gifts" that the Holy Spirit had imparted to them (1 Cor. 12:7-8). The "Spirit" could impart gifts of wisdom and knowledge to members of the Corinthian church, but the same "Spirit" could not enable the gospel authors to know everything necessary in order to write coherent, consistent accounts of a resurrection that all people from then to the end of time would have to believe in order to be "saved." Is that what Turkel expects us to believe? And does he expect us to believe that a god who could speak the universe into existence, part the Red Sea, rain manna down from heaven, stop the mouths of lions, etc., etc., etc., somehow just couldn't manage to supply his chosen writers with enough scroll materials for them to write complete accounts of the resurrection?

I will say again that anyone who is gullible enough to swallow such nonsense as this deserves to wallow in ignorance.

Turkel:
A second factor is the one we relate here about precision writing in the ancient East. Abraham Rihbany in The Syrian Christ [108ff] writes of Easterners who offer what we call "misstatements" which "are more often the result of indifference than the deliberate purpose to deceive.["] One of his besetting sins is his ma besay-il -- it does not matter. He sees no essential difference between nine o'clock and half after nine, or whether a conversation took place on the housetop or in the house. The main thing is to know the substance of what happened, with as many of the supporting details as can be conveniently remembered.

Till:
As can be conveniently remembered? My comments above show the absurdity of this, because if an omniscient, omnipotent deity were indeed "inspiring" the gospel writers, they should have been able to remember everything and to know everything necessary in order to write coherent, consistent accounts of an event that all people forever after would have to believe in order to be "saved." If not, why not?

As for Rihbany's it-does-not-matter theory, Turkel's take on this can be read in his article "Precisely the Opposite" where he lapped up everything that Rihbany said about this so-called ma besay-il theory, as if Rihbany had been directly, inspired by the Holy Spirit to spare no amount of paper in telling the world what the Bible really meant. Those who are interested in seeing Rihbany's theory debunked may go to my rebuttal article "It Doesn't Matter?" to see all the holes that I punched into this theory. In addition to showing that an inconsistentency does not become a consistency just because the people of the time didn't consider it an inconsistency or didn't care that it was an inconsistency, I showed that early Jewish leaders were very concerned about inconsistencies in their biblical texts and worked just as hard as their modern counterparts (John Haley, R. A. Torrey, William Arndt, Gleason Archer, and such like) to "explain" that the Bible doesn't mean what it plainly says. What I said in this section and the scholarly references that I included are too long to quote here, but I will include at least one quotation, which is from The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 1, to show that responsible scholarship recognizes that the it-doesn't-matter nonsense that Turkel tries to peddle to his readers is without merit. Please notice the parts emphasized in bold print, which show that scholars recognize that concerns about textual inconsistencies in the Bible date as far back as the time when "sacred texts" were first compiled into "inspired scriptures."

The exegesis of the primitive Christian Church was a direct and unself-conscious continuation of the type of exegesis practised by ancient Judaism in its later period. This Jewish exegesis had a number of traditional methods and characteristics which can all be recognised without difficulty when they are reproduced in early Christian exegesis, and some of them can be identified in the New Testament itself. The most important function performed by exegesis in ancient Judaism was the interpretation of the Law (Torah). The rabbinic schools set themselves the task of making the large collection of legal enactments, sagas, myths, stories, histories and cult material, which we call the Pentateuch, into a code of law capable of covering the whole life, inner as well as outer, cult as well as conduct, of communities of Jews living under quite different circumstances and in a much later age. In order to achieve this formidable task, they found it necessary to produce a complex and flexible technique of exegesis. Inconsistencies in the biblical text had to be explained away; errors, redundancies, absurdities, or anything shocking, indecent or unworthy of divine inspiration had to be removed. Every verse was regarded as potentially independent of others and capable of interpretation without any reference to its context. It was necessary largely to ignore the historical background. Rules were made whereby the natural, historical sense of any text could be evaded, and sometimes a quite unnatural, symbolic sense could be read in. A cautious, Torah-directed form of allegory was born. Several examples of it can be found in the New Testament (R. P. C. Hanson, "Biblical Exegesis in the Early Church," The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 1, p. 412, emphasis added).

This commentary on ancient Jewish and early Christian exegetical methods tells us that nothing has changed from then to now, because we have all seen both professional and would-be apologists (like Robert "No Links" Turkel) make up rules by which the natural, historical senses of biblical texts are evaded in order to explain away obvious meanings that prove embarrassing to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Those who are interested in seeing more on this subject should read my article cited above. There is enough material here to bury Turkel's it-doesn’t-matter "apologetics" so deep that he will never be able to dig it up again.

Turkel:
This is important to remember when it comes to minor varying details, as is this one:

The oral nature of the original material, as we describe here.

Till:
The article that Turkel linked to above is essentially summarized below, so I don't need to say much about it here except to note that Turkel likes to talk about "oral traditions," as if biblical inconsistencies that resulted from oral transmission of stories or traditions were somehow not inconsistencies. It seems then that Turkel's problem is that he just doesn't know what an error is. An error is an error, and it doesn't matter how long the "oral tradition" was passed along until it was written down or how much the oralist may have thought that what he was saying was right, if he said something that was incorrect or inconsistent, he transmitted an error. If King Yohamel in reality had three daughters and no sons, then the oralists who had said generation after generation that he had had three sons and no daughters were flat out wrong, no matter how much they may have thought that they were transmitting facts. The matter is that simple, and anyone who can see through cellophane should be able to understand it. Furthermore, the fact that those who wrote biblical books were presumably "inspired" by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would most certainly make inconsistencies inexcusable to everyone except an inerrantist who has allowed his allegiance to an untenable belief blind him to common-sense reality. In the first place, why would a person writing by "inspiration" of an omniscient, omnipotent entity even need to rely on oral tradition? The fact is that divine inspiration, as taught in the Bible, logically necessitated inerrancy, because the words written were not the words that the writers "conveniently" remembered or chose but were the words given to them by the Holy Spirit. It is a ridiculous belief, of course, but, nevertheless, it is what the Bible teaches. In my article "It Doesn't Matter?" and the three-part series just linked to above, I both quoted and explicated the biblical passages that teach this view of "inspiration," so let Turkel rant all that he wants to about "wooden and mechanical" views of inspiration. The Bible says what it says about the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit, and it does not say that the Holy Spirit left the writers to "choose" whatever details they could "conveniently remember" or limited the writers because of the scarcity and expense of scroll materials. These are excuses manufactured by would-be "apologists" like Turkel to dupe the gullible into believing that mistakes and discrepancies in the Bible are ultimately due to the way that the Holy Spirit "inspired" his chosen writers. As the quotation above from The Cambridge History of the Bible noted, such "apologetics" as these are nothing but a continuation of ancient "exegetical" methods that evade "the natural, historical sense" of disputed biblical texts for no other reason but to "explain away" errors, discrepancies, absurdities, and anything else deemed inconsistent with divine inspiration.

Turkel:
Variations in oral tradition in no way contradicts the idea of inerrancy.

Till:
In the first place (as I just showed above), oral tradition cannot be an excuse for "variations" in the biblical text, because the writers were presumably "inspired" by an omniscient, omnipotent deity. Jesus told his disciples that when they were brought before kings, what they said would not be them speaking but the "Spirit" of the father speaking through them (Mt. 10:19-20; Luke 12:12), and the apostle Paul claimed that the gospel that he preached was not taught to him by man but was given to him by revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:11-12). According to Luke, Paul once told an audience that what had been written in Isaiah 6:9-10 had been spoken by the Holy Spirit through Isaiah the prophet. "Peter" claimed that no prophecy of scripture had ever come by the will of man but that "men spoke from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20-21). That, very briefly, is what the Bible itself teaches about the process of inspiration by which the gospel was preached and the Bible was written, but those wanting more information about the biblical doctrine of inspiration can access my article "It Doesn't Matter?" where I analyzed these passages and others in more detail.

Turkel, of course, will say that I am wrong, that the biblical writers relied on oral traditions and their own initiative to "choose" what details to include or exclude. As surprising as this may be to Turkel, I happen to agree with him. I think that in reality the biblical writers were relying on oral tradition and their own initiatives, because the books of the Bible were no more "inspired of God" than was the iliad or the Qur'an or the Zoroastrian Avesta. However, if one is going to pretend to be an "apologist" who thinks that the Bible is "the inspired word of God," he should be prepared to accept the logical consequences of that claim and try to defend the Bible accordingly. Turkel and his "new apologetics" ilk won't dare do that, because they are too aware of the poundings that the traditional apologists like John Haley, Gleason Archer. and Norman Geisler have taken. Thus, they talk a lot about "oral traditions" and what the writers did and didn't know and what details the writers "chose" to include and exclude, etc., etc., etc. Over time, their adherents are going to see this view of inspiration take a pounding even more severe than that suffered by the traditionalists. The inerrantist view of the Bible is at least based on the logical consequences of divine inspiration; the excuse-making view that Turkel espouses is based on illogical rationalizations.

As for Turkel's claim that variations "in no way contradict the idea of inerrancy," that would depend upon what the variations are. Variations that involve only the inclusion or exclusion of details may very well not contradict the idea of inerrancy, but variations that involve rank inconsistencies do contradict the idea of inerrancy, because, as I said above, an error is an error, regardless of whatever good intentions the transmitters of the traditions may have had. If "oral tradition" A, for example, says that King Yohamel had three daughters and no sons but "oral tradition" B said that King Yohamel had three sons and no daughters, that is an inconsistency. All the talk in the world about "nuances" and "idioms" in Semitic languages or customs in ancient Near Eastern cultures cannot make it not be an inconsistency. As we will see, the same is true of some of the inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives that Turkel so smugly thought that he had "explained."

Turkel:
The idea of inspiration as wooden and mechanical in all cases is something that the Scriptures never demand.

Till:
As I showed above, this is not so. It is Turkel’s anything-goes idea of inspiration that is not taught in the Bible. As noted above, Jesus told his disciples that when they were brought before kings, they should take no thought about what they should say, because they would not be speaking but the Holy Spirit would be speaking through them. I pointed out that the apostle Paul said that he had not been taught by men the gospel that he preached but that it had been given to him through revelation of Jesus Christ. He also said that specific words written by Isaiah had actually been spoken through him by the Holy Spirit. How much more "wooden" and "mechanical" could a view of "inspiration" be? I will link readers again to my article "It Doesn't Matter?" and my three-part series on traditional inerrancy and invite them to read in much more detail what the Bible really teaches about the process of inspiration. I will also borrow an expression from Turkel and tell him to bang his head on the passages explicated in these articles and then call an ambulance.

Meanwhile, I will challenge him to bless us with an article in which he quotes biblical passages that teach his view of inspiration. Where, for example, does the Bible say that "God's" chosen writers were left to their own devices to decide which details to include and which to exclude? Where does the Bible say "God" inspired his chosen writers to leave out details because scroll materials were scarce and expensive in those days? Where does the Bible say that the writers chosen by God to record "his word" were not to be concerned with details because inconsistencies just wouldn't matter to the readers of that time?

These are all "ideas of inspiration" that Turkel preaches over and over, but I have yet to see him quote a single scripture in support of them. Don't expect him to begin quoting now, because his "ideas of inspiration" just are not taught in the Bible.

Turkel:
Nor is there any indication that such variations were considered "erroneous" by the ancients, under whose paradigms we are compelled to work here.

Till:
I invite readers again to access my article "It Doesn't Matter?" and the the three-part series on inerrancy to see clear evidence that this too is not so. In particular please notice the last half of the article, where I discussed discrepancies in the book of Ezekiel that almost kept Jewish leaders from accepting this as part of their "canon." Notice in particular the story of Rabbi Hananiah ben Hezekiah's retreat to his room with 300 jars of oil, where he worked over an extended period of time to resolve the troubling inconsistencies in Ezekiel. Yes, the Jews had their Robert Turkels in those days too, and the fact that they did is clear evidence that Turkel's it-doesn't-matter theory is wrong.

For the sake of argument, let's just assume that the "ancients" didn't consider any variations in the scriptures to be "erroneous." So what? What would this prove except that the "ancients" had no clear concepts of logic? As I have said, an error is an error, so no one can make an error not be an error by just considering it not to be "erroneous." Ancients, for example, thought that the earth was flat. That was an erroneous belief, and the fact that people in ancient times did not consider references to a flat earth not to be erroneous did not make sure references true. That is so obvious that it doesn't require any further comment.

Turkel:
Skeptics must show that such variations were considered problematic by ancient commentators, not merely foist their own 21st-century literary values upon the text.

Till:
No, skeptics don't have to show that "such variations were considered problematic by ancient commentators." All they must do is show that in accordance with recognized laws of logic, the variations were indeed problematic. The fact that people in biblical times may not have recognized discrepancies would in no way make a logical discrepancy or a factual error not be a mistake. According to Turkel, if an ancient culture didn't realize that the earth was spherically shaped, then any references to a flat earth would not have been discrepancies because the people at that time thought that the earth was flat, but that premise is too ridiculous to deserve serious comment. Truth and error are always independent of what people think or believe or want. If there is no God, for example, than all references that have ever been made to "God" as if he were an actual existent are factual errors even though such references were probably made with sincere belief that they were true. As for whether "ancient commentators" considered variations in their sacred literature "problematic," if Turkel will read my article cited above, he will see some examples of biblical passages that "ancient commentators" obviously thought were problematic. I suspect that they so considered them in accordance with their own values and not those of the 21st century.

Turkel talks almost incessantly about ancient Near Eastern culture, customs, nuances, idioms, literary values, etc., as if he is academically and linguistically qualified to speak with any semblance of authority on these issues. This theme song of his has come to be a sort of catch-all rationalization for any kind of discrepancy in the biblical text. However, no amount of "culture, customs, nuances, idioms, and literary values" can make an error not be an error. As in the case of the flat-earth belief referred to above, if the culture, nuances, idioms, etc. of an ancient society led a writer to say that the earth was flat, that was an error, regardless of whether the people of that time considered it an error. This is so obvious that I can't believe that I am actually wasting time trying to reason with someone who would seriously claim that errors are not errors if they reflect the culture, customs, nuances, idioms, and literary values of the time. According to this idiotic theory, ancient writers who spoke of the existence of gods like Zeus, Thor, Vishnu, and Ahura-Mazda as if they were actual existents did not report anything erroneous because the people of that time did not consider such references to be erroneous.

My academic profession involved linguistics, and I am bilingual from having spent five years in a foreign country, so I would be the last person to deny that ethnic culture, values, idioms, and such like are embedded in the literatures of ancient societies. I have no doubt at all that meanings that were originally conveyed in Hebraic or Grecian culture and idioms elude readers who are not familiar with those languages and the cultures in which they thrived. However, meaning and truth are two different things. Nuances, idioms, culture, etc. may be useful in determining what an ancient text meant, but truth is independent of linguistic pecularities. If the culture, customs, and linguistic peculiarities of a society led any of its writers to say things that were contrary to reality, then they made errors regardless of what the general opinions of the time may have been. The earth is spherically shaped, so there is nothing embedded in language, customs, and cuilture that could ever make claims of a flat earth be true. If Turkel can't understand this, he needs more help than I could ever give him.

Besides all this, Turkel and his like-minded cohorts who constantly chant mantras about ancient Near Eastern culture and language forget one very important point: the Bible is alleged to be the inspired word of an omniscient, omnipotent deity. The premise of those who preach this belief is that "God" selected a people from all other tribes and nations of the earth to be his "chosen ones" through whom he would send a savior to redeem the world from their sins. This savior came, died on the cross, and was resurrected from the dead, and forever afterwards "salvation" would depend on believing that this "son of God" did all this. Those who don’t believe it will be condemned to hell throughout all eternity. If all this talk about a savior-god is true, then it behooved the deity who "inspired" writers to tell the story of this great plan of redemption to record it in a way that would transcend all lingustic idioms and pecularities so that everyone, regardless of ethnic origin, would be able to understand it. If Turkel's god couldn't do this, then he must not have been omniscient and omnipotent, so why should I or anyone else be concerned about spending years and years trying to become familiar with the languages, idioms, and nuances that were used to tell this story? There are enough hardships and struggles in life without adding this kind of burden to them.

Turkel:
Albert Lord, in his essay entitled "The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature" which appears in The Relationships Among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, remarks generally upon oral traditional narratives as having "textual fluidity", such that they are "constantly being repeated without concern for word-for-word retelling of a set, established text." [37] [sic]

Till:
Turkel has here resorted to what is probably his favorite logical fallacy. He finds a writer who says something that he agrees with, and so he quotes it as if the opinion of the quoted author is sufficient to settle whatever matter is in dispute. I could quote all day long authors who disagree with any religious position that Turkel wants to take, but that would prove only that the quoted authors disagree with Turkel. The quotations would not prove that Turkel's position is wrong. In the same way, all of his quotations do not prove that he is right

Even if what Alfred Lord said were true, so what? As I have now pointed out to Turkel umpteen times, the Bible is allegedly the "inspired, inerrant word of God." If this is true, then those who were slected to write the books in the Bible had no need of oral traditions, because they would have had the advantage of an omniscient, omnipotent deity who was guiding them as they wrote. Just as the apostle Paul had not received the gospel that he preached from men but had received it by revelation from Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:11-12) and just as the apostles who were brought before kings and rulers spoke not their own words but what the Holy Spirit was speaking through them (Matt. 10:20) and just as what was written in Isaiah 6:9-10 had actually been "spoken" by the Holy Spirit and not by the prophet who wrote it (Acts 28:25-27), so the "inspired" writers who recorded the gospels and epistles of the New Testament would have had no need for oral traditions. To say that those who wrote the New Testament relied on oral traditions and what they had personally experienced themselves is to reduce it to just another collection of writings that have no more authority than anything else that was so written. The reason why Turkel and his like-minded cohorts posit such foolishness as this as "explanations" for biblical inconsistencies is that they clearly recognize that the Bible is riddled with such problem passages, so they have to grab any straw in sight to try to explain why the inconsistencies are there.

I will remind readers again that what the Bible clearly teaches about the nature of "inspiration" is discussed in detail in my article "It Doesn't Matter?" and the three-part series on inerrancy, all of which I recommend to those who want to see what the Bible itself teaches about this process and not what Turkel arbitrarily posits as rationalizations for the obvious inconsistencies and discrepancies in the Bible. It wouldn't hurt Turkel to read the article too.

Turkel:
One may compare the material in the link and note differences which are very much like those in the Gospels -- with no place to claim "error" or "contradiction" between them as the substantial message remains the same.

Till:
There is no place to claim error or contradiction when "the essential message remains the same"? This is another example of the foolishness that inerrantists will resort to in order to evade the problem of inconsistencies and discrepancies in biblical parallel accounts. To show the absolute idiocy of Turkel's position, let's suppose that we had four ancient documents that claimed that a man named Yabel changed a goat into a camel. All of them clearly claim that Yabel performed this remarkable deed, but one of them said that he performed the miracle in Beersheba, another said that he did it in Jericho, another one said that he did it in Jerusalem, and the fourth one said that Joppa was where the miracle was performed. Two of the accounts said that Yabel was an old man, "advanced in years," but the two others said that he was a young boy. One of the accounts said that the goat was black, one of them said that the goat was white, one said that the goat was brown, and the fourth one said that the goat was spotted. Two of the documents said that the goat was a male, and the other two said that it was a female. One of the documents said that the camel that resulted from the miracle had two humps, and three of them said that the camel had just one hump. Now according to Turkel, there would be no "errors" or "inconsistencies" in these documents because "the substantial message" was the same in all three, i., e., Yabel had changed the goat into a camel. Anyone who can see through a ladder, however, can see the craziness of the claim that the "substantial message" in these three documents would keep any of the variations mentioned above from being errors or inconsistencies. Turkel's position is so idiotic that it warrants no further comment, because inconsistencies in documents reporting the same "substantial message" are inconsistencies no matter how clear that "substantial message" may be. If Turkel can't see that, he is badly in need of a common-sense transplant.

Furthermore, the very nature of the "substantial message" would be reason enough not to believe the documents. In all of humanity's empirical experience, no one has ever seen a goat transformed into a camel, so that within itself is sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the "substantial message" in the documents. However, when all of the inconsistencies mentioned above are added to the absuridity of the "substantial message," only a person hopelessly gullible could believe that the documents had reported an actual historical event.

My point is clear enough that any rational person should understand it. The "substantial message" of the resurrection narratives is such that only the very gullible can buy it. The inconsistencies in the different narratives just make them all the more unbelievable.

Turkel:
This will be a minor factor: John's Gospel we see as having been written as a sort of supplement to Mark. Hence we expect John to report things that Mark does not, purposely, in order to fill gaps, only touching the Markan narrative at points essential to telling the story.

Till:
Oh, so we see John's gospel as having been written as "a sort of supplement to Mark," do we? Well, I assume that everyone noticed that Turkel offered absolutely nothing to support this. He simply, in typical fashion, asserted it, but that is nothing new. About 90% of what Turkel posts on his website is unsupported assertion.

Now if Turkel had said that the gospels of Matthew and Luke were written as a sort of supplement to Mark, he wouldn't have gotten much disagreement from me, because it is rather obvious that both of these gospels sought to correct what the writers saw as problems in Mark's account. That opinion is so widespead in mainstream biblical scholarship that it hardly warrants additional comment, but if Turkel disagrees, I will be glad to play his game of citing authors who have this view of Matthew and Luke.

To see the gospel of John as "a sort of supplement to Mark" is to see something that Turkel needs to support. Of course, supporting assertions is something that Turkel rarely even tries to do. One might say that he is "support challenged," a handicap that will destroy the credibility of a would-be apologist, except in the eyes of those with profound desires and/or needs to believe in the incredible. Some do believe that "John" knew of "Mark's" gospel, but the gospel of John is so radically different from Mark and the other synoptics that a more mainstream view of this book is that it was written to be a gospel that presented the "spiritual" nature of Jesus more than his human nature, which had been depicted in the synoptics. The author at times was very explicit in stating this purpose.

John 20:30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

To the synoptic writers, Jesus was the "son of man." In the first verse of his gospel, "Mark" referred to Jesus as the "son of God" (1:1), although several early manuscripts of Mark omit this phrase, and his disciples on a couple of occasions so referred to him when they had been impressed with his signs (Matt. 14:33; 16:16). The Jesus of the synoptics was also called the "son of God" by Satan (Matt. 4:3,6; Luke 4:3,9) and by demons (Matt. 8:29; Mark 3:11; 5:7; Luke 4:41), and his enemies in questioning him or commenting about him would cynically ask if or say that he was the "son of God" (Matt. 26:63; 27:40-43,54; Luke 22:70); otherwise, Jesus was the "son of man" to Mark and the other synoptic writers. To John, who did occasionally refer to Jesus as the "son of man" (1:51; 3:13; 6:27), he was primarily the "son of God" (3:18; 5:25; 9:35; 10:36; 11:4,27; etc.), so if Turkel wants to say that John's gospel "supplemented" Mark's in the sense that he "filled in the gap" that Mark left pertaining to the spiritual side of the "son of man," I wouldn't disagree with him, but it seems a stretch to assert that John's Gospel was written as "a sort of supplement to Mark" in order to "fill in the gaps" that Mark left. In the first place, why should there be any gaps at all, significant enough to require "filling in," in a narrative that was inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity? Turkel doesn't like anyone to ask this question, but it is a very relevant one that deserves an answer. However, don't expect Turkel to answer it or even mention it beyond hurling his usual insults and sarcasm.

Until Turkel supports his assertion that "John" was written to "fill in the gaps" left by Mark, there is really nothing more here for me to reply to.

Turkel:
And with that, we'll proceed with two caveats:

1. Mark 16:9-20 is excluded for reasons we outline here.

Till:
This is a link to Turkel's article "The End of Mark," in which he used his favorite ploy of quoting assertions from authors who agree with him and then leaving the assertions unsupported. I had originally copied all but the Christadelphian part of this article and replied to each of Turkel's cut-and-pasted assertions point by point, but the result was an article too long, so I cut that section and put it into "Problems in the Ending of the Gospel of Mark." Readers who access this article will see that I replied to it thoroughly and showed that there is no substance to the points that he copied from authors, who like him, will go to any extreme to try to find unity in the Bible.

Turkel:

2. 1 Cor. 15, despite Danny's challenge, is not to be included, though it could be. Cor. 15 is a creedal statement meant to emphasize that the leading people of the church saw the resurrected Jesus. It is therefore stylized for a purpose and need not be force-fitted into the narrative accounts.

Till:
There seems to be no end to the quibbles that Turkel will resort to in order to try to prove that the Bible didn't mean what it clearly says. He will argue that if the people of that time didn't care whether a writer was correct in what he had written, then the inconsistency or contradiction wasn't really a discrepancy. He will argue that if a writer didn't personally witness an event that he wrote about, then any inconsistencies in his account would not really be inconsistencies. He will argue that if a writer was relying on oral tradition, then any discrepancy in what he wrote would not really be a discrepancy. He will argue that if a writer lacked enough scroll space to tell all of the necessary details in a story, then that would not really be a mistake. Now he is claiming that incorrect information in a "creedal statement" wouldn't be a discrepancy. I would like to have him explain to us why incorrect information in a creed would not be a mistake.

For that matter, I would like for him to explain why 1 Corinthians 15 is a "creedal statement." I know that some have taken this position, but I would like to see Mr. Robert "Know It All" Turkel explain to us just why this chapter is only a "creedal statement." Is the whole chapter a "creedal statement"? If not, then what part is? Where does the "creedal statement" begin, and where does it end?

I know, of course, what part he is talking about, so I will ask him to tell us which of the following statements are true [or false].

1. Christ died for our sins. True or false?

2. Christ was buried. True or false?

3. Christ was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. True or false?

Here's a question for bonus points. If number 3 is true, then please quote for us the scriptures that said that the Messiah would be raised on the third day.

4. After he was raised, Christ appeared to Cephas. True or false?

5. Then Christ appeared to the twelve. True or false?

6. Then Christ appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time. True or false?

Here are some more questions for bonus points. When did Jesus appear to these 500? Where did he appear to these 500? What were the names of any three of these 500?

7. Then Christ appeared to James. True or false?

8. Last of all, Christ appeared to Paul. True or false?

Now here is Turkel's dilemma. If he says that any of these statements are false, then he will be found arguing with his own inspired, inerrant word of God. If he says that all of the statements are true, then he will blow to pieces his claim that 1 Corinthians 15 should not be included in Baker's Easter Challenge, because it was written in the form of a "creedal statement."

Turkel:

Matt. 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

Mark 16:1-2 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.

Luke 24:1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

John 20:1 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.

The first verses bring a hail of questions, all of which are fairly simple to answer, espcially [sic] in light of the principles outlined above:

What time did they go? The times are read as, "as it began to dawn," "very early in the morning," (twice), and "when it was yet dark". All of these are subjective readings that are fully capable of describing the pre-dawn twilight just before the sun peeks over the horizon. In an era before precision clocks for all but the wealthy, this is hardly an issue -- and at worst an example of Rihbany's ma besay-il.

Till:
Well, Turkel fudged a bit in quoting how "the times are read," because the first one [from Matthew 28] actually read, "In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week." Now surely Turkel knows that the Sabbath began at sundown and ended at sundown, so maybe he can explain to us how the women could have gone to the tomb "at the end of the Sabbath" as it was "beginning to dawn toward the first day of the week." If the text had said, "At the end of the sabbath, as the sun was setting toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the tomb," there would be no problem, but that isn't what it says. Otherwise, Turkel may be surprised to learn that I don't consider the time of day to be a problem major enough to talk about beyond noting one other troublesome matter. I grew up on a farm, so I know that daylight actually comes well before the sun is rising, so I have to wonder how it could still have been dark when John's Mary went to the tomb if the sun (according to Mark) "was risen" when she went to the tomb. There were many mornings in my farm experiences when I was driving a tractor in the field before sunrise without the need of headlights.

As I said above, I don't consider the time of day to be a problem major enough to talk about, especially when there are more serious problems in the narratives, which I will be getting to soon, but it does strike me as rather strange that the omniscient, omnipotent "Holy Spirit" inspired all four of the gospel writers, yet he seemed unable to guide them to state the time of day precisely enough to have avoided all the controversy over this point. Turkel could have forever settled the question of what time of day the women went to the tomb by just meeting Barker's challenge to write a time-of-day narrative that would have coherently and consistently included what was said on this subject by each of the gospel writers. Had he done that, maybe he would have come up with something like the following.

On the first day of the week, while it was yet dark [John], Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, the mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and certain other women went to the tomb at early dawn [Luke] when the sun was risen [Mark] and beginning to dawn toward the first day of the week [Matthew].

I am sure that if Turkel harmonized the time-of-day problem in this way, which would include everything said in the four gospels on this point, no one would ever wonder how it could have been still dark after the sun had risen or how the sun could have been dawning toward a day that began at sunset or how it could have been early dawn while it was still dark. I suspect that Turkel didn't try to write a coherent time-of-day paragraph that would have included everything said by all gospel writers on this topic precisely because he could see the inconsistencies on this point. Obviously, the time of day in the narratives is a problem, but as I said earlier, I don't consider it a problem major enough to spend time wrangling about when there are greater inconsistencies to focus on in the narratives. I will soon be presenting an inconsistency that Turkel has already bobbed and weaved and ducked and dodged his way around but has never been able to explain except to say, "ma besay-il" [It doesn't matter].

As for the ma besay-il apologetic theory that Turkel referred to above. I have already shot this full of holes above and in my article "It Doesn't Matter?" so it isn't necessary for me to shoot it down again here.

Turkel:
Who went? We have Mary Mag and the other Mary; we have those two plus Salome; we have those two plus Joanna and unnamed "others"; we have Mary Mag, though obviously not alone (v. 2, "we" do not know...) No one list excludes any other; none speaks of these being the only persons to travel to the tomb. We note the common Skeptical response that we cannot thereby exclude little green men from Mars either; but the difference again is whether the presence of other female disciples is in any sense an issue or an improbability. It isn't.

Till:
Turkel may be surprised to hear me say that variations in the naming of the women who went to the tomb would not be a discrepancy either, because omissions aren't necessarily contradictions. If newspaper reporter A wrote that Smith and Jones were present when a bank was robbed and reporter B wrote that Smith, Jones, and Brown were present at the robbery, the omission of Brown by reporter A could not be considered an error. However, a salient observation is in order here. The very nature of the resurrection claim was such that very strong evidence was needed to substantiate it. I have already noted above that the apostle Paul went all out in 1 Corinthians 15 to name witnesses to the resurrected Jesus in hopes of convincing skeptical Corinthians that this event had happened. It seems strange, then, that the omniscient, omnipotent "Holy Spirit" would have directed Matthew, Mark, and John to omit the names of some who had witnessed the empty tomb and the announcement by the angel(s) that Jesus had risen. This was a case where "the more, the merrier" would certainly have applied. If at least six women and probably more were on the scene, as Luke indicated (24:10), then why did the "Holy Spirit" direct John to mention only one and Matthew two and Mark three? The omissions certainly didn't make sense in records of a resurrection that everyone who would ever live thereafter would have to believe in order to be "saved." As I have pointed out already, the very nature of the "essential message" of the resurrection narratives was such that extraordinarily good evidence was needed to support it, so why on earth would someone straddled with the task of trying to make the resurrection seem plausible have left out the names of 33% to 85% of those who had presumably seen the resurrected Jesus?

So let Turkel argue that there was no problem in the variations concerning what women were present at the tomb that morning. He still would have to give a sensible explanation for why the omni-max one would have "inspired" his chosen ones to omit information that would have strengthened the credibility of the resurrection narratives (if it is at all possible for credibility to be found in narratives that claim that a dead man returned to life).

Turkel:
Anointing the dead was considered women's work; a composite party is not at all unlikely.

Till:
I isolated this final sentence in Turkel's paragraph above so that I could make a point that I don't often see mentioned by those who point out inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives. According to Mark and Luke, the women came to the tomb in order to anoint the body of Jesus with spices, but why would they have done that? According to Luke 23:55, the women followed Joseph of Arimathaea and saw both the tomb and how the body was laid.

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid.

Now if this is an inerrant statement and if John's account is also inerrant, then these women saw Joseph and Nicodemus bind the body of Jesus with "about a hundred pounds" of spices.

John 19:38 After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. ³⁹ Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰ They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.

Now if the women had seen Joseph and Nicodemus wrap the body of Jesus with a hundred pounds of spices, why would they have brought additional spices two--yes, two--days later to anoint the body again?

Inerrantists like Turkel, who see explanations for biblical discrepancies in ancient cultural customs, idioms, linguistic nuances, oral variations, etc., etc., etc. will see no problem here, and I will admit that this is not a verifiable discrepancy. I suppose it is possible that women who saw a body being wrapped with a hundred pounds of spices, for some reason known only to them, could have thought that it would be a good idea to bring more spices two days later, but anyone with one eye and half sense should be able to see that this is unlikely. It is more likely that Mark and Luke, who said nothing about spices with which Joseph and Nicodemus had wrapped the body, knew nothing about this aspect of the burial legend, and so they added an element here that "John" had put into the burial story two days earlier. With all of the other inconsistencies, contradictions, discrepancies, and such like that riddle the Bible, this problem should at the very least give critical readers pause to consider the plausibility of the resurrection claim.

Turkel:
So why the differing lists? It may become repetitive, but it may as well be: ma besay-il. It doesn't matter.

Till:
There is no "may be" about this. I shot this ma besay-il quibble down above and in my article "It Doesn’t Matter?" which readers can access to see that this is just a desperation attempt to "explain" obvious discrepancies in the Bible. As I have now explained several times, the very nature of the claim that a dead man returned to life would require extraordinarily strong supporting evidence, so if there were as many as six people (as Mark and Luke combined claimed) who found the tomb empty and heard angels announce that the man had risen from the dead, common sense should tell anyone writing an account of this event to be as inclusive as possible in naming the witnesses. The fact that one writer named only one witness, another named only two, another only three, etc. is sufficient reason to doubt the accuracy of their reports, especially since the "essential message" of their narratives was the extremely unlikely claim that a dead man had returned to life.

The omission of witnesses, then, if not an error, would have been a serious flaw in the writing skills of those who were reporting the events on resurrection morning, and this would be more than sufficient reason to doubt that an omniscient, omnipotent deity had anything to do with "inspiring" writers who could write reports no better than these. If Turkel can't see this, he has allowed his religious allegiance to blind him to obvious reality.

Turkel:
Each writer chose women representative of the party, based perhaps on their own knowledge or on that of their audience.

Till:
And Turkel knows this how? As I have repeatedly pointed out, all of the gospel writers were allegedly inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent entity, so the "knowledge" of each writer should have been equal. Whatever Mark knew, Matthew, Luke, and John would have known, and whatever Matthew knew, Mark, Luke, and John would have known, and so on, because they were all "inspired" by the same omniscient entity. If not, why not? Let Turkel answer this question, and simply saying that it is a "wooden" or "mechanical" view of inspiration is not an answer. It is a dodge.

As for Turkel's claim that "(e)ach writer chose women representative of the party," what the hell does this even mean? Turkel didn't bother to explain. He just said it, probably because he thought his readers would think that it sounded impressive. If, however, he wants to impress critically minded readers, he will have to explain some things. Why would Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have thought that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were "representative of the party," but Mark, writing under the influence of the same omniscient entity, have thought that Salome was also "representative of the party," and so on? Turkel didn't bother to explain, and the reason why he didn't is that he undoubtedly knows that he is doing nothing but shoveling apologetic bullshit that doesn't do a thing to resove inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives. He also knows that he can get away with it, because he knows that he is writing for an audience with a desperate desire to believe that the Bible is the "inspired, inerrant word of God."

Turkel:
Mary Mag appears in all four accounts; this suggests her prominence in the tradition and makes it difficult for any rez account to leave her out.

Till:
Mary Mag's prominence in the tradition? So we have now come to the old this-writer-"chose"-to-tell-thus-and-so-and-that-writer-"chose"-to-tell-this-and-that quibble. As I have repeatedly shown in my replies to Turkel's apologetic quibbles, writers who were inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would not have been speaking on their own but rather speaking what the omni-max one was guiding them to report. Hence, they would not have exercised options to "choose" this and to exclude that. What they wrote would have been decided by the entity that was inspiring them.

My article linked immediately above clearly shows that the Bible teaches this view of "inspiration." Turkel tries to deny what the Bible teaches on this subject by hurling sarcastic comments about "wooden" and "mechanical" views of inspiration, but if the influence of the "inspiring" entity did not override any personal choices that the writers made in the selection of details, then in what sense is the Bible the "word of God." If, for example, Mark wrote what Mark chose to select, then the gospel of Mark would not be "the word of God" but the word of Mark. If not, why not?

I have another question that Turkel can evade if he should decide to "reply" to this rebuttal of his article. If the "inspiration" of the omniscient, omnipotent "Holy Spirit" did not so guide and direct the writers that what they wrote was truth, then what was the purpose of inspiration? Was the "Holy Spirit" just wasting his time exercising an influence called "inspiration" that accomplished nothing more than what they writers could have accomplished on their own through reliance on oral traditions and their own personal experiences and choices?

These are questions that Turkel won't want to answer, but they get to the heart of an issue that he needs to address. If the Bible is indeed "the word of God," as biblical inerrantists claim, then it can be the word of God only if it is the word of God and not the word of Isaiah or Jeremiah or John or Mark or the apostle Paul, so it is time for Turkel to address this issue. If the gospel of Mark contains only what Mark knew from his own personal experiences or familiarity with "oral traditions" and included by choices that he himself made, then what was the purpose of divine "inspiration"?

Turkel claimed above that Mary Magdalene appeared in all four gospel accounts, because her "prominence in the tradition" made it difficult to leave her out, but I would like for Turkel to explain to us why anyone who had been present on this occasion would not have been prominent enough to have made it difficult to leave out. In other words, exactly why would Mary Magdalene's presence at the tomb have made her any more "prominent" than Joanna's presence would have made her? After all, Joanna was probably the same Joanna mentioned with Mary Magdalene in Luke 8:2-3. If so, she was the wife of Herod's steward, a position that should have given her more prominence than Mary Magdalene. If prominence, then, was a criterion that gospel writers used to "decide" whom to include in their resurrection narratives, Joanna should have been mentioned in all of them.

Of course, Turkel isn't going to tell us why one witness to a resurrection would have been more "prominent" than another witness anymore than he tried to meet Barker's Easter Challenge. He won't meet it because there is no sensible explanation that he can give for the omission of anyone who had been a witness to the claim of an angel(s) that a dead man had been resurrected. If a spacecraft landed in the field behind my home and five people were with me to witness the debarking of an alien being, who announced that he had come to warn that an asteriod 500 kilometers in diameter was on course to strike the earth and that I and those with me should go tell our leaders that this would happen in two years, I would be an idiot if I reported the event and mentioned only myself as a witness to the encounter. I would also be an idiot if I mentioned only myself and one other of the six as witnesses. If six people witnessed an extraordinary encounter like this, a report of it would carry far more weight if all six instead of just one or two witnesses were nameed in the report. That is so common sensical that even Turkel should be able to see it.

Turkel:
Matthew has little room to spare;

Till:
Oh, no, not the "paper-shortage" quibble again! Those who think that there is any merit at all to this claim should access "The Paper Shortage" to see this quibble completely dismantled.

Turkel:
he obviously needed to deovte [sic] time to the "stolen body" claim

Till:
Oh, really? Well, Mark didn't see any need to "deovote" [sic] time to the stolen body claim, and neither did Luke. Since Mark's gospel was much shorter than Matthew's, then surely Matthew wasn't running out of space in a time of scarce and expensive scroll materials, so if the "stolen-body" claim was so important, why didn't he include this claim in his gospel. Luke's gospel also runs shorter than Matthew's, so if this claim was so all-important why didn't Luke squeeze it in too?"

Oh, I forgot. Mark and Luke didn't include this because they "chose" not to do it. They had other purposes to achieve. We have all heard this bullshit before, and it is bullshit. Would-be apologists resort to it for no other reason than to quibble their way around glaring problems in the resurrection narratives. They know the problems are there, so all they can do is reach for any straw in sight that they can use to pull the wool over the eyes of their sheep.

Let's just take a look at how flimsy an excuse Turkel is resorting to when he claims that Matthew mentioned only Mary Magdalene and the other Mary because he "had little room to spare." Turkel drags out this quibble as if Matthew would have run out of space on his scroll if he had included in his narrative the names of just two other women. Let's juxtapose Matthew 28:1 with a rewritten version that includes the other women.

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, Salome, Joanna, and other women went to see the tomb.

To include the other alleged witnesses would have required only five more words, and Turkel expects reasonable people to believe that Matthew didn't mention the other women because he just couldn't spare the space. The gullible may buy that, but critically minded people will recognize a desperate quibble when they see one.

Turkel:
and also wanted to close with the great commission.

Till:
So putting five more words into his narrative would have made it necessary for Matthew to leave out the great commission. Is that what Turkel expects us to believe?

Turkel:
That left him almost no room for detailed rez appearances or for special cameos like the one John gave Mary Mag. His report is by necessity short and to the point and he has no space for a detailed listing of who was where, and when.

Till:
Here is another example of the kind of bullshit that Turkel shovels out to his uncritical sycophants. Turkel doesn't know what was in "Matthew's" mind when he was writing this gospel, so how can he possibly know that Matthew purposely truncated the list of women who went to the tomb and then omitted details in his account of the resurrection so that he would have room to include the great commission? Did "Matthew" write right up to the very end of his scroll? Turkel doesn't know, so he doesn't know how much space may have been left at the end when "Matthew" closed his gospel.

Aside from this, there is a fact that I have already established: if the gospel writers were indeed "inspired" by the omniscient, omnipotent "Holy Spirit," then they were not the ones deciding what to include and what to exclude. That decision was being made for them; otherwise, there would have been no logical purpose at all for the "Holy Spirit" to have "inspired" them.

Turkel:
It is therefore absurd to demand that he meet the precision-demands of Western literature which has no such constraints.

Till:
As I have explained umpteen times in my replies to Turkel's Tektonic nonsense, the New Testament was presumably written as a guide to heaven for all people who would ever live from the time of its authorship until the [snicker, snicker] day of judgment. So-called "salvation" was going to depend on believing that a dead man returned to life, so if an omnibenevolent deity was going to make such a requirement of people, he would have had an obligation to give sufficient evidence to make the resurrection story as credible as possible, but we don't find credibility in the gospel accounts of the resurrection. Instead, we find ambiguity, vagueness, inconsistency, and outright contradiction. I will be addressing these flaws in the resurrection narratives soon, but for now I want to comment on the absurdity of the "apologetics" of those like Turkel who engage in endless excuse- making for these flaws. John omitted this and that, because he was relying on oral traditions and didn't know about details that were included in the synoptic gospels. Matthew didn't list all of the women who went to the tomb, because he needed to devote space to the "stolen-body" claim and the great commission. Mark didn't...."

Well, you get the picture. All such rationalizations as these are nothing but desperate speculations intended to dupe the gullible into believing that there were good reasons for the inconsistencies in the resurrection accounts. Without being a mind-reading psychic with the ability to project himself over 1900 years into the past, Turkel couldn't possibly know why Matthew included and excluded certain details from his narrative, and neither could he know the same about Mark, Luke, and John. He is shoveling bullshit intended for no other purpose than to dupe the already gullible.

I said that I would be calling attention to more important inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives, and it is now time to do that. The character of Mary Magdalene as she was presented by Matthew is completely incompatible with the Mary Magdalene in "John's" gospel. This discrepancy has already been presented to Turkel in "The Mary Magdalene Problem," which I wrote in reply to Turkel's "Tomb Visitor Checklist," which he has since removed from his website and replaced with the article I am now answering. I also presented the Mary Magdalene problem on The Theology Web, and Turkel ran from it like a rabbit bolting from a pack of hound dogs. To save time, I will requote the part of this article that Turkel could not and never will be able to resolve. I will begin the quotation where I was replying to Turkel's claim that Matthew made no error with reference to his omission of Salome, just as long as he didn't say that she was never there.

Till:
Yes, as long as Matthew didn't say that Salome was never there, no error exists, but that is not to say that a lot of stupidity didn't exist on the part of the writer and the omniscient one who inspired him to leave out the names of some who were on the scene. This would be as idiotic as a man accused of murder knowing that he was miles away from the scene of the crime at the time in the presence of several people, but he gave the police only one or two names of those who were with him.

So where are we now? We are in agreement that even though serious questions about the competence of the gospel writers and the omniscient deity who presumably inspired them are raised by the omission of "witnesses" in some of the narratives, technically there is no error, but this problem is very minor compared to other discrepancies in the resurrection narratives. Diehard inerrantists--which seem to include Turkel--claim that there are no inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives, but to find "harmony" in the various NT passages that refer to the resurrection, they must resort to outrageous speculation and how-it-could-have-been scenarios. The most troublesome inconsistency in the resurrection accounts is what I call the Mary Magdalene problem. It has sent many would-be apologists scurrying for cover with announcements that they have so many obligations and responsibilities that they must regrettably leave the forum. When confronted with the Mary Magdalene problem, some don't even bother to offer excuses; they just leave whatever forum they are in. Turkel has his own choir loft, of course, and I predict that he will keep this issue there, where he can selectively quote his opposition, but he will not link his readers to an article like this so that they can evaluate in full context his opposition's argument.

The Mary Magdalene problem is simple. Mary M was presented in the synoptic gospels as having seen an angel or angels at the tomb, and heard him or them announce the resurrection of Jesus, after which she actually encountered Jesus and worshiped him as she was running from the tomb to tell the disciples what had happened. In John's gospel, however, Mary Magdalene is presented as having found the tomb empty, after which she ran to Peter and the disciple "whom Jesus loved" and told them that the body had been stolen. So the problem is why Mary would have told the disciples that the body had been stolen if she had seen and heard everything that the synoptic gospels claim that she saw and heard.

To save time, I am going to post a rebuttal of the most commonly used "explanation" of this problem so that we can get to the heart of it much quicker. (Readers who have been with me on alt.bible.errancy and the ii_errancy list will recognize that this is an adapted version of a posting that I have sent to Errancy many times, but no one has yet given a sensible explanation of the problem.) Many inerrantists contend that Mary Magdalene simply panicked when she saw the empty tomb and ran to Peter before she had heard the angel(s) announce that Jesus had risen. This "explanation," however, is completely incompatible with Matthew's gospel account. Let's look at it first, and then I will explain why the explanation is incompatible with what "Matthew" clearly said.

Matthew 28:1 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. ² 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. ³ His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. ⁴ And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel answered and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. ⁷ 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." ⁸ So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me."

I have emphasized in bold print certain words to call attention to them. They will establish that Matthew intended for his readers to understand that Mary Magdalene didn't just hear the angel announce that Jesus had been raised from the dead but that she also saw him and touched him after she had run from the tomb. To establish this, let's notice that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are the only two women mentioned in Matthew's version. The fact that Mark and Luke may have mentioned other women has nothing to do with the obvious fact that Matthew mentioned only two women: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Therefore, "THE WOMEN" in verse 5 to whom the angel said that Jesus had risen must have necessarily included Mary Magdalene; otherwise, Matthew's text is incoherent and would not have conveyed an accurate picture of what had happened to early Christians who may have lived and died having had access only to this one gospel account. I assume that inerrantists are willing to admit that the NT in bound volumes didn't exist until many years after the gospels were written, so a reader of Matthew very likely would have been unable to consult Mark, Luke, and John to see if they shed any "additional light" on what had happened. If nothing else, Christians living at the time Matthew's gospel was completed could not have had access to Luke and John, since (as most biblical scholars agree) they were written after Matthew. Therefore, the picture they formed in their minds after reading Matthew's gospel could not have included anything that was written in gospels that came after Matthew's.

Besides this, there are linguistic factors that inerrantists must consider. All rules of literary interpretation that I ever heard of (and I studied a lot of literature on the subject when I was teaching college English) would require readers to understand that "THE WOMEN" in verse 5 of Matthew's text were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. No other assumptions can be made, since Matthew did not himself specify that any other women were with the two Marys. In other words, whether Mark and Luke mentioned up to five other women or 500 other women is immaterial to what Matthew's narrative said. If he mentioned only two women, then "the women" in his narrative grammatically had to be Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Hence, any plural pronouns like "they" and "them" that obviously referred back to "the women" had to be references to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. By necessity, then, the grammar of Matthew's narrative requires readers to understand what whatever "they" did in this narrative or whatever happened to or was said to "them" were things done by or to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.

The rules of pronoun-antecedent agreement will, therefore, require readers to understand that the antecedent of the pronouns they and them (emphasized in bold print) is "THE WOMEN." Since "THE WOMEN" by grammatical necessity had to be Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the antecedents of they and them are indirectly (by necessity) Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.

It is a rule of literary interpretation that the substitution of antecedents for the pronouns in a text will not alter the meaning of the text but will, if anything, help clarify its meaning. With that in mind, I will now take Matthew's text quoted above and present it with the antecedents substituted for the pronouns they and them when they made obvious references to "the women." Readers should keep in mind that where Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (in bold print) appear, the pronouns they or them appeared in the actual text.

Matthew 28:1 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. ² 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. ³ His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. ⁴ And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel answered and said to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. ⁷ 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." ⁸ So Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. ⁹ And as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, saying, "Rejoice!" So Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me."

It is clearly evident that Matthew meant for his readers to understand that Mary Magdalene heard an angel announce that Jesus had risen and that she ran from the tomb with great joy after hearing this and that she met Jesus and touched him after she had run from the tomb. So my question to Turkel and his inerrantist cohorts who think that there are no inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives is a simple one: If Mary Magdalene had been told by an angel that Jesus had risen and if she had even seen Jesus and touched him after leaving the tomb, why did she go tell Peter that the body of Jesus had been stolen?

Some inerrantists use the two-visits theory to explain the inconsistencies in Mathew's and John's narratives. They argue that John's narrative told of a first visit that Mary M made to the tomb while it was yet dark, at which time she encountered an empty tomb and ran to tell Peter and John that the body had been stolen, whereas the synoptic narratives told of a second visit that Mary M made to the tomb "when the sun was risen." I do hope that Turkel will try to present this as a solution to the Mary Magdalene problem.

As Dirty Harry would say, make my day, Turkel, and present this as your solution.

I will express another wish. On The Theology Web a professor of Greek at a fundamentalist college tried to argue that the use of the aorist tense [edramon] for the verb ran in verse 8 conveyed a "completed action" and therefore made the running to tell the disciples a different event from the one in the next verse, where they [Mary Magdalene and the other Mary] met Jesus. I think I know a quibble when I see one, so I e-mailed several professors of Greek at seminaries and Bible colleges to get their opinion on this interpretation. To my surprise, most of them answered, and not a one agreed with this quibble. If Turkel chooses to answer this article, I hope that he will appropriate this aorist quibble so that I can quote the opinions of those who teach Greek even at fundamentalist institutions.

Turkel:
Why did they go? John does not specify and needs no consideration; Luke and Mark agree that it was for burial issues, leaving only Matt's "see the sepulchre" claim. The reason for the difference: To polemically stand, again, against that controlling "stolen body" apologetic.

Till:
Let's see now; John didn't specify why the women had come to the tomb, and so his gospel needs no consideration of this question. Matthew's gospel doesn't specify either, but his account does need consideration. Why do Turkel's choir members let him get away with such inconsistency as this? I can think of no answer to that question except that his average reader just doesn't have the critical skills to see the inconsistencies and absurdities in Turkel's "solutions" to biblical discrepancies.

And just why did Matthew not state the reason why the women had come to the tomb? Well, it seems that he had to leave this information out so that he could "polemically stand again against the controlling stolen-body apologetic." Why, everyone should realize that. You see, if he had added this information, he wouldn't have had enough space in a time of scarce and expensive scroll materials to take his polemic stand against the "stolen-body apologetic." To see this, all we have to do is juxtapose a verse containing the reason for the trip to the tomb with the way that Matthew wrote it [without that information]. I will quote Matthew 28:1 and then rewrite it with bold-print emphasis of the words needed to include a statement about the reason for the trip to the tomb.

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb with spices to anoint the body.

The rewritten version has five whole words more than the actual version written by "Matthew," so I think anyone could see that if these five additional words had been put into the text, "Matthew's" whole plan would have been thrown into chaos. We should all be thankful that we have someone like Turkel, who apparently can see into the past and read the minds of biblical writers, to tell us what each one was thinking as he wrote his part of "the word of God." After all, Turkel is fulfilling prophecy whenever he explains to the simple masses what the Bible means. Readers who don't know that he thinks this can click here to see that he does have this vaunted opinion of his exegetical skills. Uh, oh, I used the wrong word here, I should have said that he has this vaunted opinion of his eisegetical skills, because such stuff as what he is saying about why Matthew or Mark or Luke or John said thus and so but didn't say this and that can be called nothing more exact than pure eisegesis, i. e., reading into biblical texts what is not actually there.

Turkel:
To note that they came to do burial work is to allow an inroad for the charge of a stolen body.

Till:
Why? Well, apparently because Turkel said so, and all that Turkel's choir members need is for him to say something, and they swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

Anyway, just look at what Turkel is saying here. The omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit "inspired" Mark and Luke to say that the women went to the tomb to anoint it with spices, but if giving out this information would give enemies of the fledging Christ myth occasion to accuse the women of having gone to the tomb to steal the body, then why would the Holy Spirit have inspired these two gospel writers to include this information? The fact that the omniscient one (according to Bible believers) did inspire these two to report the intention to anoint the body must mean that the omni one didn't share Turkel's opinion about this, so those gullible enough to believe that the Bible was "inspired" have a choice: they can believe what the omniscient, omnipotent one thought about this, or they can believe what Turkel thinks.

Let Turkel tell us why reporting that the women had come to do "burial work" would not have given readers of Mark or Luke "an inroad for the charge of a stolen body," but if Matthew had reported this, it would have given readers of his gospel such an inroad.

Doesn't Turkel ever think before he writes?

Turkel:
In contrast Matthew tells just enough to not give [sic] that charge meat -- while still not contradicting the other Gospels. He could hardly do otherwise.

Till:
Oh, I see. Mark and Luke could and did do otherwise, but if Matthew had done otherwise, it would have undermined completely the credibility of the resurrection claim. People who read Matthew's account would say, "Aha, the women went to the tomb with spices, so they actually stole the body," but no one reading Mark or Luke would have thought this.

Does Turkel ever think before he writes?

Turkel:
In the high context of the ancient world, it would have been recognized that (being that this was primarily women's work) they could be going to the tomb for no other purpose than to perform burial services. "Seeing" tombs for observation purposes was a pointless exercise.

Till:
Well, gee, whiz, if everyone in this "high context" society that Turkel likes to jaw about would have known anyway that the women were "going to the tomb for no other purpose than to perform burial services, then what did Matthew accomplish by not specifically mentioning that they were going to anoint the body? The "high-context" minds reading this account would have thought, "Aha, women went to the tomb, so they were going to anoint the body, and that means that they probably stole the body."

Does Turkel ever really fool anyone with bullshit like this?

Turkel speaks of high- and low-context societies as if these distinctions have been established with scientific certainty, but anyone who takes the time to research this subject will see, first of all, that it is a controversial theory. It is also a cultural theory that applies primarily to oral communication, as noted in the following observation about the primary differences in high- and low-context cultures.

High context cultures place high importance on contextual factors such as tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions and movement such as the Arab countries, Japan, and Southern Europe. Low–context cultures place high values on words and expect detailed and explicit information from a speaker such as Switzerland, United States and Australia.

Notice that nothing at all was said about written communication, and that is because even people in low-context cultures cannot determine precise meaning in vaguely written messages. Unless one can see gestures, facial expressions, and body movements, and hear tone of voice, he can't very well determine precise meaning unless the words in the message are clear and precise. The exception to this, of course, would be situations in which a written text is presenting information that is so commonly known to both the writer and his audience that explanations are not needed. If an American writer said, "We must remember Pearl Harbor," or, "We must remember the Alamo," the significance of Pearl Harbor and the Alamo are so deeply ingrained in our culture that it would be unnecessary for the writer to explain what there is about Pearl Harbor or the Alamo that we should remember. People in our culture would understand the meaning of the statements without needing additional clarifications.

In this sense, all cultures will have some high-context characteristics, just as all cultures will have some low-context characteristics, and anyone who researches this subject will see that it is really impossible to pigeonhole neatly a culture and say that it is a low- or high-context culture. This is a major flaw in Turkel's "high-context" explanations of biblical discrepancies. When he encounters a biblical discrepancy that results from obviously inadequate details or information, he will toss this into his high-context pigeonhole and claim that the high-context culture of ancient Israel would not have considered this an ambiguity. In so doing, he fails to recognize that if the Bible is indeed "the word of God," then it wasn't written for just the people living in biblical times but for all people who would ever live thereafter. If this were the case, then it would have been incumbent on an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omni-everything deity to have his "inspired ones" write with an awareness that they were writing for an audience much, much broader than the tiny Israelite nation. Anyone who has ever taken a freshman composition course should know that one of the primary principles of writing is that the one writing should be aware at all times of his audience. It seems strange that divinely inspired biblical writers seemed not to know this very fundamental principle of writing.

Turkel, of course, belongs to the any-explanation-will-do school of "apologetics." If an explanation will eliminate a discrepancy, then to hell with whether it is sensible or logical. The only thing that matters is that a discrepancy has been "explained," and if that explanation was obtained at the expense of common sense, who cares? The important thing is to maintain at least a semblance of inerrancy in "the word of God."

The failure of Turkel's high-context appeals can be seen by examining situations in the Bible where detailed explanations were given, but some people in this allegedly high-context culture still didn't understand them. Turkel claims, for example, that when Matthew said that the women went to the tomb early on the first day of the week, the high-context readers of that time would have understood that they were going to anoint the body with spices, even though the text didn't explicitly say that this was their reason for going, so how does this claim compare to situations where explicit details were given, but those who heard them still didn't understand?

King David would be an example of this. After his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba had resulted in the murder of Bathsheba's husband Uriah the Hittite and the birth of a bastard son, Yahweh sent Nathan the prophet to reprimand David. Nathan told David the following story.

2 Samuel 12:1 (A)nd Yahweh sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, "There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had very many flocks and herds; ³ but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. ⁴ Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him."

If there is anything at all to Turkel's constant patter about the high-context culture of ancient Israel, David would have recognized Nathan's point immediately, but the rest of the text tells us otherwise.

5 Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, "As Yahweh lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; ⁶ he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity."

So David didn't understand what Nathan was saying, and not until Nathan told him directly did David get the point.

7 Nathan said to David, "You are the man! Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; ⁸ I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. ⁹ Why have you despised the word of Yahweh, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

According to Turkel, David lived in a high-context culture, in which detailed explanations were not needed, but David didn't understand Nathan until he was told explicitly what he had done wrong.

David undoubtedly reminds some readers of the disciples of Jesus, who didn't understand the parables of Jesus until they were explained to them (Matt. 13:36). Both Mary and Joseph grew up in this high-context culture that Turkel raves about, but at times they showed incredible density about things that they should have easily understood. Mary, for example, received a visit from the angel Gabriel, who told her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and she would conceive "the son of God" (Luke 1:35-36). Having been told by Gabriel that her kinswoman Elisabeth had conceived in her old age, Mary visited Elisabeth, who "lifted up her voice" and declared by the Holy Spirit that Mary and the fruit of her womb were blessed (Luke 1:41-42). Joseph had been told by an angel that Mary had conceived a child by the Holy Spirit, which had come to pass to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through Isaiah the prophet (Matt. 1:20-23). All of this had happened to a couple living ina high-context society, yet when their son Jesus unknowingly stayed behind in Jerusalem when his parents left to return to Nazareth and they had found him after a three-day search, they didn't understand Jesus when he said, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house" (Luke 2:49-50).

I could fill an entire page with examples of what seemed like the incredible density of people who lived in Turkel's "high-context" society, but I will conclude with just one other example.

Mark 9:30 They [Jesus and his disciples] went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." ³² But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Incredible! Jesus explicitly told his disciples that he would be killed and that three days after he was killed, he would rise again, and his disciples didn't understand what he meant. If someone today said that he would be killed and would rise again after three days, although people probably wouldn't believe him, they would know what he meant, but the disciples of Jesus didn't understand an explicitly stated prediction that he would rise again three days after he had been killed.

I could go on with other examples, but these are sufficient to show that there is no merit to Turkel's claim that people in biblical times didn't need to hear a lot of details because they were living in a "high-context" culture. This is just another example of Turkel's any-explanation-will-do "apologetics."

Only one other comment is needed here. Readers can scroll up midway in this article to see where I showed that the inspired, inerrant gospel of John said that Joseph of Aramathaea and Nicodemus wrapped the body of Jesus in "about one hundred pounds" of spices (John 19:39)and that the inspired, inerrant gospel of Luke said that the women followed Joseph and saw "how [the] body was laid" (Luke 23:55). They saw all of this, yet Mark and Luke had the women taking spices with them to the tomb in order to anoint the body. As I said above, Turkel can certainly argue that it is no error to say that they women were going to take even more spices to anoint the body, but common sense should tell more critical readers that John was working from a tradition that was different from the one that Mark and Luke relied on, and so this is a more likely explanation for the variant views about when the body was anointed with spices.

Turkel:

Matt. 28:2 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. ³ His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: ⁴ And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

Matthew's insertion here is clearly dischronologized, a matter of topical arrangement, as was know [sic] to be used in ancient literature and is even used to some extent today.

Till:
Notice that Turkel doesn't say that Matthew's insertion here "may have been" or "could have been" dischronologized. He flatly asserted that it was "clearly dischronologized." Did he analyze the text to show us linguistic reasons why readers should think that this text was not written in chronological sequence? Of course, he didn't; he just asserted that it was. It just isn't Turkel's style to support his assertions, and I honestly believe that he lacks the linguistic competence to do such analyses. To his credit, however, he is astute enough to know that the kind of audience that he writes for doesn't want to be bothered with supporting details or lingusitic analyses. They just want to be told what they want to hear, and Turkel gladly accommodates them.

He said that topical arrangement [topical sequence] "is even used to some extent today," and I would disagree with him only in that his use of "some extent" suggests that topical sequence is in our time a relatively rare method of organizing one's material. It is, in fact, a quite common sequential method. Practically all college writing courses teach units on topical sequence. Turkel, however, failed to mention one important thing: competent writers will always make their sequential arrangements, whether chronological, topical, cause-effect, etc., obvious to readers by easily recognized sequential markers within the text. If, for example, Matthew had really intended his statement about the earthquake to be "dischronologized," he would have written the first two verses of chapter 28 as I have rewritten them below.

28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. ² And, behold, there had been a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord had descended from heaven, and had come and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.

The use of the past perfect tense in the verb forms (emphasized in bold print) clearly communicate that the earthquake had taken place before Mary M and the other Mary came to the tomb. When there are two or more past actions in a passage, the one(s) that happened first should be stated in the past perfect [pluperfect]. Hence, if one wrote that the two Marys came to the tomb and upon arriving saw that there had been an earthquake and that the stone had been rolled away, there would be no doubt that the report of the earthquake was out of normal chronological order and had actually happened before the women arrived at the tomb.

I said above that competent writers will use appropriate chronological markers to let readers know when events are being reported out of order. If the "Holy Spirit" had been a little more linguistically astute, he would have inspired "Matthew" to write the two verses above so that chronological markers would have combined with verb tenses to make the "dischronologized" order so clear that no one would have misunderstood it.

1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. ² And before they arrived, there had been a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord had descended from heaven, and had come and rolled back the stone from the door, and had sat upon it.

Turkel, of course, will ridicule everything I said and probably accuse me of being upset because God didn't kiss my "patoot," but one thing he will not do is explain to us why someone "inspired" by an omniscient, omnipotent deity should not have been able to communicate time sequences with a bit more precision than what Turkel is claiming for Matthew in 28:2. After all, it isn't as if Matthew didn't at times do the very thing that I described above and use the perfect tense to indicate the earlier of two or more actions. Consider the following example in which I have emphasized in bold print the first or earliest action and underlined the actions that happened after the first.

Matthew 1:24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife; 25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

Joseph did... and took unto him his wife, but before Joseph did this, the angel had bidden him to do so; hence, the first of the actions in terms of when the actions occurred was properly stated in past perfect tense. Likewise, Joseph "knew" his wife, but he did not "know" her until she had brought forth her firstborn son. The bringing forth of the son had happened before Joseph "knew" Mary; hence, the bringing forth was stated in past perfect form.

Here are more examples that show that Matthew knew how to use the perfect tense to show what events had happened first. Notice that the actions in bold print always happened before the underlined actions.

Matthew 2:1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, ² Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. 3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

Herod was troubled, but he was not troubled until he had heard "these things." He demanded of the chief priests where Christ should be born, but he did not demand this of them until he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes together. This is a very simple principle of verb tenses. If there are two or more past actions in a passage, whichever action happened first should be stated in the past perfect. Matthew obviously understood that principle as I will show by quoting without comment other examples in his gospel.

Matthew 2:7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.... ⁹ When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.... ¹¹ And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

Matthew 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. ² And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.

Matthew 4:12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee....

Matthew 7:28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine....

Matthew 10:1 And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

Matthew 11:1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities. ² Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, ³ And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?

I could quote other examples, but these are sufficient to show that "Matthew" understood how to use proper verb tenses to show which actions had occurred first in a narrative. The fact that he did not use this method in 28:2 to indicate that the earthquake had already happened before the women arrived at the tomb is sufficient to show that Turkel's assertion that the "insertion" about the earthquake was "clearly dischronologized" is without merit, but there is even more textual evidence that "Matthew" did not intend readers to understand that the earthquake had happened before the women arrived at the tomb.

That evidence is what I will call the idou factor. Anyone who has done much reading at all in the Bible will know that behold was frequently used in the narration of events. The word in Greek was idou, a demonstrative particle [a short, indeclinable part of speech] for which there is no exact equivalent in English, although it was usually translated with behold or lo or look. Arndt & Gingrich said that it was used to introduce something new, "which calls for special attention" (1957, p. 371). If we examine texts in which Matthew used this particle, we will see that he did not use it as a device to introduce "dischronologized" information but to introduce new information or events in chronological sequence.

Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. ¹⁹ Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. ²⁰ But while he thought on these things, behold [idou], the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

No one reading this passage would think that the angel had appeared to Joseph before, he was considering putting Mary away privately. Indeed, the text says that the angel appeared to Joseph while he was thinking on these things. Hence, idou was not used to introduce something that had happened before Joseph was thinking about putting Mary away. It was used to introduce an important new event, i. e., the sudden, unexpected appearance of the angel, which had happened in chronological order: (1) Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant, (2) Joseph was considering putting her away privately, and (3) the angel appeared to Joseph at that time.

Matthew 2:13 And when they [the wise men] were departed, behold [idou], the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. ¹⁴ When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt....

In this passage, we see again how idou, as Arndt & Gingrich explained, introduced an important new event and did so in chronological sequence. The angel did not appear to Joseph before the wise men had departed. The wise men left, and then the angel appeared to Joseph. The examples that I will quote below follow the same pattern. Events happen, and then in chronological sequence, idou introduced what "Matthew" thought were important new events.

Matthew 9:32 As they [the blind men whom Jesus had healed] went out, behold [idou], they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil.

Matthew 17:5 While he [Peter] yet spake, behold [idou], a bright cloud overshadowed them....

Inerrantists who use the "dischronologized" argument to try to explain the inconsistency in Matthew 28:2 will quibble that the examples I have quoted contain chronological markers like when or while or as to denote the time of the events introduced by idou. They had happened while Joseph was thinking about putting Mary away or when the wise men had departed, etc. Inerrantists will quibble that there is no such chronological marker in Matthew 28:1, but they are wrong. In this passage, idou was preceded by kai, a conjunction that meant and, which was commonly used in Greek to string together events in chronological order. To see this, all we need to do is look at some kai idou examples in Matthew's gospel.

Matthew 27:50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. ⁵¹ And, behold [kai idou] the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent....

Does Turkel or any other inerrantist quibbler seriously think that the veil of the temple had rent in twain before Jesus had "yielded up the ghost"? The obvious intention was to communicate that the events happened in chronological sequence. Jesus first "yielded up the ghost," and then the veil in the temple was rent in twain. "Matthew" was simply using the conjunction kai in the same way that English speakers use its equivalent and to tie events together in chronological order. If someone saw the sentence, "John Smith went to town and saw an automobile accident," who would think that the accident was seen before Smith went to town?

Matthew 4:11 Then the devil leaveth him [Jesus], and, behold [kai idou], angels came and ministered unto him.

Does Turkel think that "Matthew's" reference to the angels was "clearly dischonologized" and that the angels had ministered to Jesus before the devil left him?

Here are some other examples where "Matthew" used kai with idou with the clear intention of denoting chronological sequence.

Matthew 9:1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city. ² And, behold [kai idou], they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. ³ And, behold [kai idou], certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.

No one reading this would think that the man sick of palsy was brought to Jesus before he had entered the ship, passed over, and come into his own city. The conjunction kai [and] denoted a chronological sequence, and idou was used with it to introduce what "Matthew" thought was an important new event. Neither would anyone think that the accusation of the scribes that Jesus was blaspheming had preceded the healing of the sick man.

I will now quote other examples without comment, because in each case it is obvious that the conjunction kai [and] was used to indicate that an event was following in chronological sequences the one mentioned before it, and idou was used with it to indicate that it was a new event [happening in chronological sequence].

Matthew 15:21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. ²² And, behold [kai idou], a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.