CHAPTER 9:
THE INCONSISTENCIES
We need not therefore worry about inconsistencies in the circumstantial details of the Gospel resurrection. The case for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t depend on such details. All four Gospels attest to the key, basic facts; many more details can be supplied by adding facts that are documented in three out of four.
Minor discrepancies in the resurrection narratives don’t affect our case here; in fact, historians expect to find inconsistencies even in the most reliable sources. No historian simply throws out a source because it has inconsistencies; otherwise, we’d have to be skeptical about all secular, historical narratives that also contain such inconsistencies. The result would be a wholly unreasonable historical skepticism.
Moreover, in the case of the Gospels, the inconsistencies aren’t even within a single source; they’re between independent sources. But obviously, it doesn’t follow from an inconsistency between two independent sources that both sources are wrong; at worst, one is wrong if they can’t be harmonized.
The remaining issue, then, is how the three established facts I’ve stated are best explained.