Women at the cross: Why the inconsistencies?

[TedM]

At the cross:
GMARK: Mary Mag, Mary mother of James & Joses, Salome, others unnamed from Galilee
15:40 There were also some women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less and Joses, and Salome. 41 When He was in Galilee, they used to follow Him and minister to Him; and there were many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.

GMATTHEW: Mary Mag, Mary mother of James & Joseph, unnamed mother of sons of Zebedee - ie James and John, others unnamed from Galilee
27:55 Many women were there looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee while ministering to Him. 56 Among them was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

GLUKE:23:49 unnamed at first, but later: Mary Mag, Joanna, Mary mother of James, 'the other women'
And all His acquaintances and the women who accompanied Him from Galilee were standing at a distance, seeing these things...
55 Now the women who had come with Him out of Galilee followed, and saw the tomb and how His body was laid. 56 Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes.
24:1 they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared....10 Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles.

GJOHN: his mother (Mary, not mentioned by name - John never does), his aunt Mary - wife of Clopas, and Mary Mag
19:25 Therefore the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

NOTE: ALL 4 mention 3 specific women, but NONE of them mention the same 3 women by name.
Number of different women: - 4 or 5: Mary Mag, Mary (mother of James), Salome, Joanna, (john implies a 3rd Mary - mother of Jesus)

IF THE CRUCIFIXION NEVER REALLY OCCURRED - WHY SUCH DIFFERENCES?: If Mark started this story and he mentions all 3 by name, why didn't any of the other 3 gospel writers simply match the names? Since Mark mentioned Salome, why didn't Luke or Matthew too? Why did they both mention a different 3rd women? Why is Luke the only one to mention Joanna? And why is GJohn the only source that clearly states that Jesus' mother was there - but then doesn't even mention her name? Why do they each use different relationships to describe who the women were (ie GMark says "mother of James and Joses", Matthew says "mother of the sons of Zebedee", Luke says "mother of James", " John says "wife of Clopas"? IF they were trying to flesh out who from either a fictional story or a group that they just THINK existed, WHY, and why did they do it so poorly?

Note, I'm not looking to solve the question of who was who. I'm trying to understand how we can get such differences if in fact there was no historical crucifixion in the first place?

[Peter Kirby]

Please state your initial hypothesis explaining the inconsistencies. What does the crucifixion have to do with the question, in your mind?

(The post and the statement -- "I'm trying to understand how we can get such differences if in fact there was no historical crucifixion in the first place?" -- implies that a historical crucifixion tells us a reason why there are these inconsistencies.)

[spin]

To support Peter's response,

I'm trying to understand how we can get such differences if in fact there was no historical crucifixion in the first place?

How does the crucifixion being real or not influence how we can get such differences?

[outhouse]

WHY SUCH DIFFERENCES?:

Different communities creating pseudohistory they believed was true, but information decades old that grew accretions with time. All from another culture of people with a different language.

[outhouse]

if in fact there was no historical crucifixion in the first place?

What if it did happen? Nothing changes. No one has ever been able to explain the origins of Christianity without it. Every last person who tried has failed terribly.

[TedM]

Please state your initial hypothesis explaining the inconsistencies. What does the crucifixion have to do with the question, in your mind?

(The post and the statement -- "I'm trying to understand how we can get such differences if in fact there was no historical crucifixion in the first place?" -- implies that a historical crucifixion tells us a reason why there are these inconsistencies.)

Ok, I don't exactly have a well-formed hypothesis, but I find the inconsistencies intuitively to be less likely with fabricated accounts.

Who, writing fiction, would give a damn who the women were? This isn't a case where you have a Hercules with other powerful gods as his relatives. First it is women. Low status. Second, nothing extraordinary is said about a single one of them. So, the need for a community to take an initial outline of a story and remove and replace and interject new characters that nobody seems to care about makes little sense to me. All the confusion about which Mary was which, and which James was which, etc.. seems to me to be more likely to be a result of people trying to recreate and pass along what little information they could recall but since there were many Mary's and many James' it was prone to normal human error.

But in the case of fiction, if you already have someone out there - Mark perhaps? - who has taken the thin outline of a story and fleshed it out and put some names to it - names of people who were fairly unimportant to his story - ie Mary, mother of James and Joses, and Salome - why would another writer remove and replace some of those characters? They aren't important enough to do so. Same thing with oral traditions that may started up only after Mark wrote his book. If suddenly you have HISTORY when you didn't have it before about something very important then there is no need to replace nobody figures with other nobody figures. But if you are actually trying to reconstruct the origins of your religion by carrying on what little tradition might exist some 50 years later then it makes a lot more sense that names would be changed and substituted, and misunderstood.

My hypothesis is that the strange inconsistencies make a lot more sense if the account of the crucifixion is based on reality than a made up story because the characters involved that were CHANGED were so terribly unimportant. There was no theological purpose. But, if these accounts were based on real oral traditions and hearsay that go back to actual happenings, they make sense. More sense, at least, to me.

[davidbrainerd]

IF THE CRUCIFIXION NEVER REALLY OCCURRED - WHY SUCH DIFFERENCES?:

Mohammed tells the story of Moses like 30 times in the Koran. And there are plenty of inconsistrncies between his various tellings. (Not to mention the inconsistencies between the Koranic versionS of the story and the Biblical version.) Do these inconsistencies prove the historicity of the Exodus? (If I wanted to prove historicity, I'd certainly not go this route.)

There are also inconsistencies in the various Superman reboots. Why sometimes is Krypton destroyed by earthquakes? Sometimes by Brainiac? Sometimes Supergirl is from Krypton, sometimes from the neighboring planet or moon Argo. Sometimes General Zod is a friend of Jor El, sometimes an Enemy. Sometimes Jor El knows Kal El will have super powers on earth, sometimes not. Sometimes the S logo is derived from a Kryptonian symbol, sometimes Ma Kent comes up with it from scratch to represent Superman. Sometimes Lex Luthor is bald due to a lab fire, sometimes he shaves his head, sometimes its due to exposure to the meteor shower, sometimes no reason is given. Sometimes Pete is white, sometimes he's black.

Batman: sometimes Robin wears pants, sometimes not.....

In other words, variations in different tellings of a story are not proof of anything except that there are variations in different tellings of a story.

[TedM]

Your example re Moses is internal inconsistency of one person. That's not the case here.

Your second example - everybody knows Superman and Supergirl aren't real. But they are important. Again, completely different from the case here where the characters that changed have no real importance to the story, but they do have importance to those who would want to perpetuate a brand new history. There is no good reason for different people to substitute names if they didn't think the names they were substituting were accurate. IOW the only reason I see for it is the desire to be accurate, as best as they knew how.

This seems very different than the kinds of examples you have given.

IF THE CRUCIFIXION NEVER REALLY OCCURRED - WHY SUCH DIFFERENCES?:

Mohammed tells the story of Moses like 30 times in the Koran. And there are plenty of inconsistrncies between his various tellings. (Not to mention the inconsistencies between the Koranic versionS of the story and the Biblical version.) Do these inconsistencies prove the historicity of the Exodus? (If I wanted to prove historicity, I'd certainly not go this route.)

There are also inconsistencies in the various Superman reboots. Why sometimes is Krypton destroyed by earthquakes? Sometimes by Brainiac? Sometimes Supergirl is from Krypton, sometimes from the neighboring planet or moon Argo. Sometimes General Zod is a friend of Jor El, sometimes an Enemy. Sometimes Jor El knows Kal El will have super powers on earth, sometimes not. Sometimes the S logo is derived from a Kryptonian symbol, sometimes Ma Kent comes up with it from scratch to represent Superman. Sometimes Lex Luthor is bald due to a lab fire, sometimes he shaves his head, sometimes its due to exposure to the meteor shower, sometimes no reason is given. Sometimes Pete is white, sometimes he's black.

In other words, variations in different tellings of a story are not proof of anything except that there are variations in different tellings of a story.

[outhouse]

Who, writing fiction, would give a damn who the women were?

.

If it was fiction they would copy word for word, instead we have separate communities telling you what was important to them

[davidbrainerd]

Your second example - everybody knows Superman and Supergirl aren't real. But they are important. Again, completely different from the case here where the characters that changed have no real importance to the story, but they do have importance to those who would want to perpetuate a brand new history.

A better example then is the main detective(s) who is/are charged with taking Batman down for being a vigilante or who has/have a personal agenda to do so. Detective Bullock (Italian male) in Batman the Animated Series from the 90s, and Detectives Bennet (black male) and Yin (Asian female) in The Batman in the early 2000s. Why change from one detective with a personal agenda to two detectives, one of whom is gungho (the female) and the other is reluctant by by the book?