What does making a music video have to do with the resurrection? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A week or two ago I was driving through our town and heard a news story in the morning. Two rappers had been out on a public bridge for cars to drive across making a music video when they got hit by a driver. The driver was not charged with anything since the performers should not have been in the middle of the road. I do not think there were any deaths involved and the rappers were charged for creating a disturbance of sorts.
So I’m hearing this story and thinking in some ways it’s kind of amusing. There are a couple of people making fools of themselves out in the middle of the street and fate kind of happens to them. Hopefully, they have learned their lesson and they won’t do it anymore.
Later on still, I was driving and I heard more of the story. It turns out I was wrong about what was going on in my mind’s eye. I had pictured two guys out in the road making a disturbance when a car comes through and doesn’t have time to stop. Apparently, I had it wrong, but I think it was justifiable based on how the story was described.
As it turns out, there was a group of people in the middle of the road. I am not sure how many, but only two of them were hit. This wasn’t just a couple of guys then, but a whole entourage. Listening to the earlier story, I would have been sure it was a couple of guys only because that’s all that were mentioned.
What does this have to do with the resurrection? In the resurrection stories, we often hear differences on how many women or angels were present. The authors can mention different numbers. They can do this while knowing more were present. In John 20, Mary Magdalene is seen going alone to the tomb, but when she gets to the disciples to tell them about the body being gone, she uses the word we saying that “We don’t know where they put him.”
It’s my personal theory that each Gospel writer mentioned the women who were his sources for the story and/or were still alive to talk about the story. Of course, it could also be just at times highlighting the ones who did something, such as the case of the angels at the tomb. If only one speaks, that is the one focused on. In his research, Mike Licona calls this spotlighting.
We still do this today in many of our own accounts and I would contend that the original news story I heard was doing just that. The whole group didn’t need to be talked about because they weren’t relevant in the mind of the reporter to what took place. The two stories do not contradict, but rather they complement one another and one brings out fully what happened more. The same goes for the resurrection accounts.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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