* irenic *

Jesus [26] The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (12)

Continuing our summary/review of Tom Wright and Marcus Borg's discussion...
For other articles in this series visit
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/section/jc1.htm.

More from Tom Wright:

'Turning to the gospels, we find all the puzzles of which readers have been
aware for centuries (not simply with the rise of modern scholarship). The
stories of Easter morning in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20 are
notoriously difficult to harmonize. We shall never be sure how many women
went in what order to the tomb, at what point two or more male disciples
went as well, how many angels they all saw, where or in what order the
appearances of Jesus took place. But... it is precisely this imprecision,
coupled with the breathless quality of the narratives, that gives them not
only their unique flavour, but also their particular value. Despite the
scorn of some, lawyers and judges have regularly declared that this is
precisely the state of the evidence they find in a great many cases: this is
what eyewitness testimony looks and sounds like. And in such cases *the
surface discrepancies do not mean that nothing happened; rather, they mean
that the witnesses have not been in collusion'* (emphasis Wright's) (pp.
121-2).

More tomorrow...

--
Shalom! Rowland Croucher

"If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary to separate them
from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil
cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy
a piece of his own heart?" Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ - 17,400 articles; 4000 jokes/funnies