Dorian_french :
The argument doesn’t actually establish a contradiction. You’re reasoning from the disciples’ expectations to what Jesus must have previously told them, and those aren’t the same thing. Mark explicitly says Jesus predicted His resurrection. In Mark 9:31–32, Jesus tells the disciples that He will be killed and rise again, and Mark immediately tells us that they did not understand what He was saying. So the text itself gives us the distinction you’re overlooking: they could hear the prediction without comprehending it. Then in Mark 16, the women go to the tomb expecting to find Jesus’ body. That proves they expected Jesus to remain dead. It doesn’t prove Jesus never predicted His resurrection. Your argument korra is “They didn’t expect the resurrection, therefore Jesus never predicted the resurrection.” But that’s a non sequitur. A person’s failure to understand, believe, or remember a prediction doesn’t demonstrate that the prediction was never made. And notice something else: Mark repeatedly portrays the disciples misunderstanding Jesus. They misunderstand His predictions about His suffering, they resist the idea of His death, and they repeatedly fail to grasp what He is telling them. Their confusion isn’t an isolated problem introduced at the resurrection; it’s part of Mark’s characterization of the disciples throughout the narrative.
Also, I’m not going to make the mistake of depending entirely on Mark 16:9–20. There is a genuine textual-critical question concerning the longer ending of Mark. But here’s the important point: even if we remove verses 9–20 entirely, your objection still fails. Mark 8–10 already contains Jesus’ predictions of His death and resurrection, while Mark 16:1–8 merely shows that His followers did not expect those predictions to be fulfilled. So the real question isn’t, “Why didn’t they expect Him to rise?” The real question is, “Why assume that their failure to expect the resurrection proves that Jesus never predicted it?” That conclusion doesn’t follow from the evidence. If you want to argue that the resurrection predictions were invented after Jesus’ death, then you need to demonstrate that historically.
2026-09-09 09:37:41