Roger Hutchinson returns to our pages with a question: "How many women went to the tomb?" Before addressing the points he made in a labored attempt to show that the resurrection narratives are consistent concerning the number of women who went to the tomb on resurrection morning, I want to answer his question. How many women went to the tomb? Not nearly enough to make the stories convincing.
The problem for Hutchinson and every other defender of the resurrection is not just the inconsistencies in the story but the very nature of the claim itself. They are claiming that a man died, literally, and that he was revivified after lying stone-cold dead in his tomb for two days. Such a claim is so extraordinary that no rational person can believe it without good solid evidence. So whether one woman or two women or four or five or six went to the tomb and found it empty and later claimed that they saw this dead man alive again is not good solid evidence, especially when the testimony of these women exists only in the form of hearsay evidence. If, for example, we should be told by someone who was not present when it allegedly happened that five or six people had had direct contacts with alien beings in a flying saucer, would we be willing to accept hearsay testimony that such an extraordinary event had actually occurred? The claim is so exceptional that only the very gullible and credulous would be willing to believe it.
Briefly, this is the real problem that confronts Roger Hutchinson and all who would expect us to buy the story of their resurrected savior. They must show us strong evidence that this extraordinary event really happened, and the mere resolution of discrepancies in the accounts of how many women went to the tomb is not enough to do it.
Hutchinson, nevertheless, has chosen to address this rather minor issue, so I will follow him where he has led us. He has, in effect, gambled everything on an old fundamentalist quibble that argues that if there were three or four or more, then there was one. Here is an example of how it works. Mark (10:46-52) and Luke (18:35-43) claimed that Jesus healed a blind beggar at Jericho, but Matthew (20:29-34) said that Jesus healed two blind men at Jericho. When this is presented to inerrantists, they will brush it aside with, "Well, if there were two, then there was one, and Mark and Luke just chose to tell about one of them." So in the case of the resurrection stories, they argue that there is no inconsistency in the number of women who went to the tomb. Matthew mentioned two women: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary; John mentioned only Mary Magdalene. Mark mentioned three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome; and Luke mentioned at least five: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and "other women." The inerrantist argument is that if there were five, then there were three; if there were three, then there were two; if there were two, then there was one. Their conclusion is that there is no contradiction.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Hutchinson used this same argument. "If we read in the newspaper that the president visited Bosnia," he said, "we do not understand that he went alone," but the fallacy of false analogy is inherent in this example. Anyone who knows anything at all about the presidency of the United States knows that wherever the president goes, he is always accompanied by an entourage of advisors, translators, secretaries, secret service agents, etc. The presence of other people, then, is necessarily implied when one refers to a trip that the president made. Let's suppose, however, that someone should say that Farrell Till went to Huntsville, Alabama, last June. How many would know if I had gone alone or if other people had accompanied me? The fact is that I traveled alone. There is nothing in the statement that implies in any way that other people went with me, so anyone who heard this statement would probably assume that I made the trip alone. This example is more analogous to the resurrection stories than is Hutchinson's example of the president's trip to Bosnia. I know nothing in the New Testament that would necessarily imply that wherever Mary Magdalene went, she was always accompanied by someone else.
Even Hutchinson understands the difference between a reference to the president and a reference to just an ordinary person, because he went on to say, "Although not stated, we know that the president does not travel alone but that he travels with staff and secret service agents." He then said that Mark, in the same way, "draws our attention to certain women," but this is a resort to the fallacy of false analogy, because "certain women" who lived two thousand years ago are not the president of a modern country. People today know that the constant threat of terrorism and assassination makes it necessary for traveling presidents and prime ministers to be protected by body guards and to be accompanied by staff members to assist them with work that they couldn't possibly do by themselves. That certainly wasn't true of three women who decided to go to a cemetery two thousand years ago. Had Mark been the only one to write a gospel account, no one today would have any reason even to suspect that more than three women had gone to the tomb. If Matthew had been the only gospel account, no one would have suspected that more than two women had gone to the tomb, and, of course, if John's account had been the only one ever written, everyone would think that only Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb. That is the hard reality of this matter, and no amount of twisting and distorting and speculating can change that fact.
When biblicists say that Matthew "chose" to focus on just two women but Mark "chose" to focus on three, this is apologetic sophistry gone to seed, because it ignores a central point of their inerrancy doctrine. The Bible is inerrant, they argue, because it was verbally inspired of God, and God cannot make errors. Very well, if there is any truth to this inspiration claim, it would be improper to argue that Mark "chose" to do such and so, whereas Matthew "chose" to do otherwise, because if they were both verbally inspired by the same omniscient, omnipotent deity to tell the same story, there would be no reason why, in the case of the resurrection accounts, this deity would have Matthew "focus" on just two women but would have Mark focus on three. The fact is that there is nothing in Matthew's, Mark's, or Luke's accounts that would give readers any reason to suspect that special attention was being given to any of the women they mention. Matthew mentioned Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, and Mark included these same two plus Salome. However, Mark mentioned not a single thing that Salome did that made his "focus" on the story such that it was necessary to include her in the list of women that went to the tomb. The same is true of Luke's account. He included Joanna, who wasn't mentioned in either Matthew or Mark, but he said nothing about Joanna beyond the mere listing of her name to give any indication that his slant to the story made it essential to include Joanna. I defy Mr. Hutchinson to show us anything attributed to Salome and Joanna that made it imperative for Mark and Luke to mention these two women whom Matthew omitted from his account.
I suspect that Hutchinson recognized this problem, because he said this of Matthew's "choice" to mention just two women:
Here is another case of a Christian apologist leaning over backwards to try to explain away a glaring problem in the biblical text. Matthew just wanted to make sure he satisfied the biblical law that two witnesses would be needed to establish the truth of a claim. Hence, he chose to mention only two women. Well, let's just take a look at the scriptures that Hutchinson cited.
2 Corinthians 13:1, "This will be the third time I am coming to you. `By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.'"
We see that both of these texts state that two or three witnesses were necessary to establish the truth of a statement. Both of these passages were referring to the Old Testament law that said, "One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established" (Dt. 19:15). This principle is also alluded to in 1Timothy 5:19 and Hebrews 10:28, both of which mention the need of two or three witnesses to establish truth.
In this respect, we see that Mark, who mentioned three women, came closer to fulfilling the requirements of this law than did Matthew. If Matthew was indeed trying to respect this law, why did he "focus" on just two women if he knew that as many as three had gone to the tomb? The fact is that Mr. Hutchinson is merely grasping straws again to try to find some way to explain problems in a text that he believes is inerrant. Anyone with common sense would know that exceptional claims, like the resurrection of a dead man, need exceptional proof, so if there are four or five witnesses to such an event, who would try to convince others that the event really happened by intentionally failing to mention some of those who were present when it happened? Let's apply this to the claim of an encounter with alien beings. If five people were on the scene when a flying saucer landed and alien beings disembarked, what rational person, trying to convince others that this had happened, would cite only one person as a witness or two persons as witnesses if he knew that five people had actually been on the scene?
In the matter of witnesses to extraordinary events, we can say that the more the better is definitely an important factor. What prosecutor would rather have just one eyewitness to testify in a criminal trial rather than five or six? Even the apostle Paul recognized the importance of this principle, because in his famous defense of the resurrection, he listed those who had seen the resurrected Jesus individually and in small groups and included a claim that "five hundred brethren" had also seen him (1 Cor. 15:6). If Roger Hutchinson had written this passage, I suppose he would have mentioned only two people who had seen Jesus after his resurrection and would have considered that sufficient to establish his case.
There is just no logic to Hutchinson's apologetic effort to
make sense
of this discrepancy in the resurrection narratives. If five women were
on the scene when the events recorded in the resurrection narratives
allegedly
happened, any rational writer trying to convince the world that the
exceptional
events claimed in those narratives had actually happened would surely
have
mentioned all five of the witnesses. That the four writers were all
just
uninspired men writing from the perspective of different traditions and
legends is a much more logical explanation of this discrepancy.
