Atheist Statement #4

     "All four gospels have contradicting resurrection accounts. The gospels are mythical narratives and are not historical texts nor eyewitness accounts."  Hmm! And how were these conclusions reached? Is there any logical proof or witnesses to back up this statement? Well, I could keep asking questions, but I prefer to give the answers I have researched, pondered and, yes, prayed about, so....

     Let's start with the first sentence about "contradicting resurrection accounts". As many times as I have read and studied the different accounts of the resurrection in the gospels I have never found anything contradictory between them although each may focus on a different aspect of the resurrection. In fact, completely reading all four gospels and what they are about will definitely show you different accounts of things and even sometimes the same thing written a bit differently. Does that make them mythical narratives? Let us consider this in a modern sense. Let's say that 8 of us are all witnesses of a bank robbery! When we give our statements to the police are the statements all going to be word for word exact? Are we all going to see the same thing? Totally not possible! And why is that? Because each one of us will focus on some aspect of the incident because of our personality, our mental, emotional, physical and social state at the time, and so on. Even one person reading the same book several times will pick up on different things for those same reasons! But back to the bank robbery! Perhaps one person focuses on the clothing the robbers wear, another on the make and model of the car they get away in, another the make of guns, and, maybe, someone was even quick enough to get the license. All of us naturally focus on different things because that is the way we are. We may even disagree on the color of their clothes, but that doesn't mean they didn't wear any or that the incident is mythical because we all don't agree. 

     Another point to be considered is that the writers of the gospels were all different men with different life experiences and writing to the people they felt most compfortable writing to. Anyone who has traveled or lived in another country knows you would have to explain things differently to them than to someone you grew up with. So just a quick overview: Matthew was Jewish and he wrote mainly to persuade his own people, the Jews, that Jesus was the promised Messiah and he cited several Old Testament prophecies and emphasized Jesus' royal lineage as the Son of David. Mark appeals to the Gentile audience, emphasizing more the doings than the sayings of Jesus. He sometimes will explain things that non-Jewish people might need help understanding. Luke writes a polished literary account  because he was an educated physician. He dwells extensively on Jesus' teachings and doings. He is more favorable to the Gentiles as he writes AND he gives more stories involving women than the other gospels do. John, as one of Christ's head apostles, writes to members of the Church who already have the basic information. So each gospel writer writes according to who he is and who he is writing to. That is totally logical and normal, even for today's writers!

     Now let's focus a bit on the second sentence. How is the conclusion of mythical narrative reached and not historical text reached? Is it because there are no pictures to go along with the writing of the gospels to verify it? If that is how the conclusion was reached then every bit of history of this world BEFORE there were pictures to back it up are also mythical narratives and not historical text such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Christopher Columbus, the Roman empire, and....., well, you get the idea.

     Last point was  no "eyewitness accounts"! Sorry, there are many eye witness acounts. The gospels are written by people and about people that spent their lives with Jesus Christ. There are others in other books that have seen Him as well before AND after His resurrection. There is the written record of eyewitnesses in the New Testament, in the Book of Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith saw Him and God the Father in the spring of 1820. So there are enough witnesses to stand up in a court of law, since to convict someone only requires 2 witnesses. 

     NOW, the big question about this goes along with the previous  discussion: If a person is not going to accept written historical books as truth then how can they accept all of the witnesses that saw the resurrected Christ!?   The evidence is there written down and waiting for a person to read them with open hearts and minds so they can see and feel the truth of those written accounts! BUT it is up to us and our desire to really know!!