Problems in John's Account of the Resurrection Appearances

[rakovsky]

(1) How many disciples did Jesus show himself to on Day 1 of the Resurrection: 10, 11, or 12?
In Luke 24:33-40, “the eleven” disciples saw Jesus on Day 1 of the Resurrection. It says eleven disciples, not twelve, because Judas had already separated himself from them by openly betraying Jesus or killed himself (Matt 27).

John 20 explains that Jesus showed himself to the disciples on Day 1 of the Resurrection, but that Thomas wasn’t there on Day 1, so after eight days Jesus showed Himself to them together with Thomas. This means that Jesus only showed Himself to 10 disciples on Day 1, and then Judas on Day 2.

Paul writes in 1 Cor 15:5 that after Jesus’ resurrection, He showed Himself to “the twelve”.

The best way I can think to harmonize these is to think that when they talk about “the twelve” or “the eleven”, they simply mean that the inner group of Jesus’ apostles was there and they don’t mean that exactly eleven or twelve apostles were so gathered.

Of course, this raises the question of how many apostles were actually gathered if it doesn’t mean an exact number. Perhaps if even fewer apostles saw Jesus appear the gospel’s original narrator would still state that “the eleven” saw Him. This is worth considering, since these were the two times when the largest number of apostles saw a clearly physical appearance by Jesus.
**
(2) Why didn’t Mary recognize Jesus in John 20:14?**
(“And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.”)

When the two apostles met Jesus on the road to Emmaus they didn’t recognize Him. And when seven of them met Jesus by the sea of Galilee, they were afraid to even ask Him if He were Jesus. The fact that the apostles repeatedly didn’t recognize Him have given rise to proposals that sometimes they were mistaking a stranger or imposter for Jesus.

Another possible explanation for the confusion is the Christian idea that Jesus is in or can be other people in a spiritual way. That is, they met other people who they reinterpreted as being Jesus. (eg. the Church as Jesus’ body, Jesus’ spirit filling people, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” Gal. 2:20, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.” Mat 25:40)
**
(3) Why does it say that the disciples dared not ask Jesus if He were Jesus in John 21:12**:
Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.

This was already the third time Jesus had appeared and Peter treated the stranger as if He were Jesus, so why would they be afraid to ask Him His identity?

 

[JerryZ]

Well Jesus resuscitated not with an earthly body but with a glorious one, albeit it did have the signs of HIS crucifixion, the “stigmata”.

Now then we must also take in account the psychological aspects of the Apostles.

Not even 24 hours had passed since they had witnessed their Rabbi horribly tortured and killed in the most cruent way possible.
Is it difficult to believe that they would block from their conscious a fact that contradicted all their collective experiential world?
I mean is it a stretch that a dead person appears to you and you know because you saw how that person died, in other words there is no doubt in your mind that this is not possible!
Their eyes are saying one thing their brains goes… Oh NO, NO, this is not real!
Dead people do not come back to life smiling like nothing happened!

Also we are told that Mary, the mother of Jesus was with them, could it be she was counted as present among them, even though as many know, women counted little in the times of Jesus.
It is for these reasons that I am willing to cut some slack to the apostles.
The important thing is that all who remained after Judas departed them remained with the Lord.

…

 

[COPLAND_3]

For a complete comparison of all 4 Gospels with great explanations I highly recommend this book amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1511608129/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1436281292&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&keywords=John+Litteral&dpPl=1&dpID=51imXWcXzHL&ref=plSrch

 

[zz912]

1. Luke is very brief with his info on the appearances of Jesus, so he may have simply omitted that part of the story for brevity’s sake. Jesus did appear to the group of Apostles, although Thomas was not among them the first time, and He did appear to them with Thomas among them. So all the Apostles had witnessed His appearance directly.

Or an explanation could be that Luke simply didn’t know about Thomas not being there. Luke interviewed many people for his information, and the person telling him could have left that part of the story out.

1. Mary’s explanation could be that her grief was quite consuming and she didn’t really look very hard at the man who was present. She could have simply assumed that it wasn’t Jesus because she saw Him killed. Or Jesus may not have been facing her at first in their conversation.
2. The other way to read that passage is that they KNEW it was Jesus, and did not need to ask who it was.

 

[rakovsky]

Well Jesus resuscitated not with an earthly body but with a glorious one, albeit it did have the signs of HIS crucifixion, the “stigmata”.

It was an earthly body in that the body had been and remained real flesh, but in a glorified state. That is because in Luke 24 Jesus showed them he had flesh and was not a “ghost”.

Now then we must also take in account the psychological aspects of the Apostles.

Not even 24 hours had passed since they had witnessed their Rabbi horribly tortured and killed in the most cruent way possible.
Is it difficult to believe that they would block from their conscious a fact that contradicted all their collective experiential world?

They need not have seen his meeting them initially as something contradicting all experience. They could think that he miraculously survived. Belief in ghosts was and is common, and people recognize their dead relatives when they allege to have seen them, even though it’s an unexpected apparition.

I mean is it a stretch that a dead person appears to you and you know because you saw how that person died, in other words there is no doubt in your mind that this is not possible!
Their eyes are saying one thing their brains goes… Oh NO, NO, this is not real!
Dead people do not come back to life smiling like nothing happened!

OK, they would have that reaction because they recognized the person as someone who died and concluded that it wasn’t real.
However, in the case of Mary meeting Jesus, she thought that a real person, the gardner, was there, but did not recognize him as Jesus.

Typically people don’t have trouble recognizing their loved ones when they meet them after an apparent death, and they instead either conclude that they are seeing a ghost or that the person has survived miraculously.

In the case of the disciples by they sea, they did allegedly recognize and know that the person was Jesus, but for some reason didn’t “dare” to ask Him.

Also we are told that Mary, the mother of Jesus was with them, could it be she was counted as present among them, even though as many know, women counted little in the times of Jesus.

Where does it say that Mary was with them at the moment Jesus appeared to them as a group?
In Luke 24, it says “the eleven” saw Jesus, and in 1 Cor, Paul says that “the twelve” saw Him. Women were never listed in the set members of the 12 apostles or the 11 apostles. The Bible repeatedly gave lists of who belonged to those “11” or “12 apostles”.

It is for these reasons that I am willing to cut some slack to the apostles.
The important thing is that all who remained after Judas departed them remained with the Lord.
…

I am not sure that we know this. We are relying on a much later church tradition to think that. Even in the Bible it says that the apostles were sent far away. So a new Christian in the 1st century Jerusalem could try to find out from the other 9 apostles (minus Peter, James, John) if they actually saw Jesus physically and are still believers in that, but then he might be told that they are out missionizing far away and so he can’t question them.

 

[rakovsky]

For a complete comparison of all 4 Gospels with great explanations I highly recommend this book amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1511608129/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1436281292&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&keywords=John+Litteral&dpPl=1&dpID=51imXWcXzHL&ref=plSrch

Is there anything like that online for free?

Or if you have the book, can you check t see if it answers these questions?

 

[rakovsky]

1. Luke is very brief with his info on the appearances of Jesus, so he may have simply omitted that part of the story for brevity’s sake. Jesus did appear to the group of Apostles, although Thomas was not among them the first time, and He did appear to them with Thomas among them. So all the Apostles had witnessed His appearance directly.

Hello, ZZ.

Even if Luke is omitting the story of only 10 apostles being there on Day 1, he is still giving a misleading depiction when he says that the 11 were there. The problem is that if things are just left out for convenience, it opens up a question of how much more has been left out and if the omitted material could actually give a much different picture.

Maybe for convenience he left out if all 10 gathered there actually experienced Jesus physically, or some of them didn’t see anything.

You are concluding that all apostles witnessed the appearance directly, but if Luke and the gospels are taking shortcuts when they say 11 or 12 apostles saw him, then maybe even that 11 or 12 number is a shortcut overall. Maybe just 9 apostles saw them and it’s omitted that it wasn’t all apostles for convenience.

Or an explanation could be that Luke simply didn’t know about Thomas not being there. Luke interviewed many people for his information, and the person telling him could have left that part of the story out.

But then it’s a problem in the transmission, and only know about the contradiction because we are fortunate to have John’s gospel to notice it. And it raises the question of how many more inaccuracies or simplications there are in the transmission, particularly ones that we don’t have explained with other gospel writings sufficiently.

1. Mary’s explanation could be that her grief was quite consuming and she didn’t really look very hard at the man who was present. She could have simply assumed that it wasn’t Jesus because she saw Him killed. Or Jesus may not have been facing her at first in their conversation.

Yes, that makes sense. Thanks. Although it doesn’t specify that it’s the reason.

1. The other way to read that passage is that they KNEW it was Jesus, and did not need to ask who it was.

Except that it wasn’t just that asking was unnecessary, but rather that they didn’t “dare” to ask. For some reason they were afraid to ask. Like maybe it was not actually Jesus and the stranger would realize that they were delusional mentally.

All that happened is that someone told them how to catch a great number of fish by accident and they thought it was Jesus, and then allegedly this person had a special conversation, maybe privately, with Peter, telling him “feed my sheep”, but otherwise not really proving that he was actually Jesus, I think.

 

[zz912]

Hello, ZZ.

Even if Luke is omitting the story of only 10 apostles being there on Day 1, he is still giving a misleading depiction when he says that the 11 were there. The problem is that if things are just left out for convenience, it opens up a question of how much more has been left out and if the omitted material could actually give a much different picture.

Maybe for convenience he left out if all 10 gathered there actually experienced Jesus physically, or some of them didn’t see anything.

You are concluding that all apostles witnessed the appearance directly, but if Luke and the gospels are taking shortcuts when they say 11 or 12 apostles saw him, then maybe even that 11 or 12 number is a shortcut overall. Maybe just 9 apostles saw them and it’s omitted that it wasn’t all apostles for convenience.

But then it’s a problem in the transmission, and only know about the contradiction because we are fortunate to have John’s gospel to notice it. And it raises the question of how many more inaccuracies or simplications there are in the transmission, particularly ones that we don’t have explained with other gospel writings sufficiently.

But all 11 did experience Jesus physically. Thomas just later in a separate incident, but they all did. So there is no error or change of truth.

And we have 4 different tellings of the story to give a different perspective, so we can get a very good idea of how things happened.

 

[Achilles6129]

(1) How many disciples did Jesus show himself to on Day 1 of the Resurrection: 10, 11, or 12?
In Luke 24:33-40, “the eleven” disciples saw Jesus on Day 1 of the Resurrection. It says eleven disciples, not twelve, because Judas had already separated himself from them by openly betraying Jesus or killed himself (Matt 27).

John 20 explains that Jesus showed himself to the disciples on Day 1 of the Resurrection, but that Thomas wasn’t there on Day 1, so after eight days Jesus showed Himself to them together with Thomas. This means that Jesus only showed Himself to 10 disciples on Day 1, and then Judas on Day 2.

Paul writes in 1 Cor 15:5 that after Jesus’ resurrection, He showed Himself to “the twelve”.

The best way I can think to harmonize these is to think that when they talk about “the twelve” or “the eleven”, they simply mean that the inner group of Jesus’ apostles was there and they don’t mean that exactly eleven or twelve apostles were so gathered.

Of course, this raises the question of how many apostles were actually gathered if it doesn’t mean an exact number. Perhaps if even fewer apostles saw Jesus appear the gospel’s original narrator would still state that “the eleven” saw Him. This is worth considering, since these were the two times when the largest number of apostles saw a clearly physical appearance by Jesus.

I’ll answer the first part of your question.

Scripture does not record the exact movement/coming/going of everyone at all times. Read the passage in Luke 24 carefully:

“33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” 35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. 36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”” Lu. 24:33-36 (NIV)

Simply put, Thomas got up and went somewhere while they were still talking about these things. Christ appears to the rest of the disciples though Thomas is not there.

"“24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.” Jn. 20:24 (NIV)

“26** A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them**. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”” Jn. 20:26 (NIV)

Now look at Paul’s statement:

" 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,** and then to the Twelve." 1 Cor. 15:5 (NIV)

“The Twelve” includes Matthias who replaced Judas Iscariot when he fell. Paul is simply counting Matthias as the twelfth apostle, which is what he eventually became.**