Dr Paul Allen

John Oates This is a follow-up to a question about supposed contradictions in Mark 16 about Mary Magdalene and the resurrection accounts. I establish that all the gospels agree Mary Magdalene was the first to see that the resurrection had happened.) I agree that every account aside from the Mark account states that Mary M was one of the first, if not the first, to see the empty tomb. However, the scribe that writes the ending of Mark states that she was the first to see Jesus, whereas if you read the other gospels, it seems highly unlikely that she was the first to see Jesus. In John, she is one of the first women to see the empty tomb, so she runs to Peter and the rest of the disciples and tells them that the body is not there and she doesn’t know where it’s at.  Luke states that all the women, including Mary M, told the disciples that the tomb was empty. And in Matthew says that as the women were running back, they saw Jesus.  I assume that the women who were running back do...

One of the greatest archeological discoveries of all time was made in 1922 when Howard Carter located the 2000-year-old, undisturbed tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. On the brow of King Tut’s burial mask was an engraving of a cobra whose task was to defend the Pharaoh’s spirit for eternity. Superstitious people feared it was bad luck to disturb the dead, and they took the cobra as a warning. This omen was ignored by the excavators until hours after the discovery when Carter’s pet canary was killed and eaten by a live cobra. Instantly rumors began to emerge that the tomb was cursed. The media gleefully lapped this up. And novelist Marie Corelli stirred the journalistic pot by declaring publicly that there would be dire consequences for disturbing Tut’s rest.  The watching world waited eagerly for any sign of “dire consequences.” Sure enough, less than two weeks later one of the lead archeologists, Lord Carnarvon, received a mosquito bite that he nicked while shaving. It became ...

ANGELICO, Fra Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb Fresco, 189 x 164 cm Convento di San Marco, Florence (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Matthew 27:62–66  It is important to know how secure Jesus ’ grave was from outside influences. The tighter the security, the less likely the body could have been tampered with. Archaeologists have been able to determine from excavations of first-century sites how Jesus’ tomb was probably constructed. There was likely a slanted groove that led down to a low entrance and a large disk-shaped stone was rolled down this groove and lodged into place across the door. A smaller stone was then used to secure the disk. Although it would be easy to roll this big disk down the groove, it would take several men to roll the stone back up in order to reopen the tomb. In short, it was quite secure. In addition to the physical weight of the rock at the tomb’s entrance, guards stood watch around the tomb. In fact, Matthew reports that when the guards repo...