TedM wrote:It seems to me that a person who is not a historian but who is nonetheless intending to write historical facts is more prone to errors, slip ups, and omissions, than a person who has set out to write a fictional account having theological great importance. It therefore seems more likely to me that the former would have omitted anything that explains WHY other women would have known about the empty tomb than the latter. In the case of the former the explanation would simply be that he knew the story that Mary wasn't the only one who knew about the empty tomb. But in the case of the latter the the writer IMO is being more deliberate - he intentionally only focused on Mary being at the tomb and on Mary running to tell the disciples and on Mary running back with them and on Mary being the first to see Jesus. Because of this it seems a less likely omission for him to not explain why other women knew about the missing tomb. How can he focus so much on Mary - have in mind another sequence of events where the other women also discover the missing tomb - and not include ANYTHING about that in his story? It seems less likely to me. If it wasn't important enough to explain, then why would have have included it? With the 'factual' account there is a better reason - he knew or heard other women saw or knew about the empty tomb before the disciples did. With the 'fictional' account the only reason is that he forgot to follow through on a fabricated account in his mind.
It's an intriguing idea, but I'm a little confused about it because the author "knew the story that Mary wasn't the only one who knew about the empty tomb" either way, unless we subscribe to the priority of John or its ignorance of the synoptics.
What makes us actually believe that this kind of error is "less likely" when intertextuality is the cause for someone who is a "fictional account" writer rather than a "historical facts" writer? What makes the problem "go away" when the person is trying to relate historical facts? It seems like the same problem; the narrative has a hole (or "seems to").
The above is really for the sake of entertaining the argument, though...
(1) I have my own reasons to believe that the author of the Gospel of John is
not writing a "fictional account having great theological importance." So it's not my position. I don't know if my view of the author differs from yours, but that's not my view of the author(s) of GJohn.
(2) I do not agree that there is a narrative hole here (that we can show). I think we wouldn't detect one without the synoptics side by side. On its own, the reader of the GJohn would make sense of it.
The "we" here has a previous reference in the Gospel of John. It's just not the one you're expecting, based on the synoptics.
The "we" has a reference back to the description of the women together at the cross:
25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
You can disagree with the author's choice to write this way. If it doesn't make sense according to the standards being set on the author, perhaps it made sense to the author in another way, using different expectations of the author's intent. I see at least one way it could have made sense to the author.
The author could have assumed that the disciples would have wanted to know more than whether Mary Magdalene was personally ignorant or whether the other women might have known something. Just because Mary went alone, doesn't mean that the other women could not have known anything, notwithstanding that they didn't go with Mary. In the terms of the story, it is the statement that this isn't personal ignorance (and the state of ignorance of the disciples regarding the sequence of events) that would make someone want to use the "we," or that would make an author assume that they would. (At least, this is one possibility.)
I'm not really trying to be persuasive about that explanation. If you think it's just a goof, that's fine too.
(Sidenote - The Gospel of John and 1 John has several other instances of "we" speech that might be interesting, for those wanting to explore these ideas further.)
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown