did the story of Jesus develop over time is there proof right there in the New Testament a common argument among skeptics is the Gospels represent a pattern of development they show from the letters of Paul to the Gospel of John the story of Jesus developed from private visions to a full-blown physical resurrection complete with detailed miracles the argument is given by skeptic Dan Parker and it usually goes something like this the earliest account of Jesus resurrection is given to us by Paul in 1st Corinthians 15 and it is very simple however once the first gospel came along it added to the story making it more complex and as the later Gospels came along they made the tale more fantastic for example they added more miracles as time progressed first corinthians just lists appearances with no miracles and doesn't state they were even physical appearances the Gospels change this and add extraordinary events mark adds one extraordinary event of the tomb in the angel but no physical Jesus appearing Matthew comes along and says there was four extraordinary events and Jesus appeared physically but no one touched him to confirm it Luke increases the list of miracles to five and as more detail to say Jesus was physical and John makes the list eight and adds even more detail to show Jesus was bodily raised thus we can see how the story of Jesus developed over time with more miracles and transform from private visions to full-blown physical encounters this is what we would call the development theory which states the story of Jesus developed over time with each writer building on the previous if this is true like skeptics say then we should see development in all aspects as each gospel came along we should expect development across the various themes of the Gospels because it doesn't make sense why later interpolators should only make the resurrection account more glamorous but not other divine elements like Jesus's miracles however there is a problem X atheist David would order replied to Dan barker amiss commonly-used argument and demonstrates that although it may sound plausible on the surface if you actually read the New Testament you will see it quickly falls apart I resent woods argument here along with some of my own criticisms the first problem with the development theory is it assumes first Corinthians 15 is a gospel and it assumes Paul is actually saying the appearances of Jesus were only private vision this would be to take Paul out of context first the list of appearances includes times when they were group appearances which means they were unlikely to be thought of as private visions of Jesus in more likely external appearances multiple people could see also to assume Paul was saying the appearances of Jesus or private vision is to ignore the immediate context of first Corinthians 15 where Paul says over and over Jesus was resurrected skeptics typically just want to read this section of the chapter and ignore this part where Paul gives detailed arguments Christians will one day resurrect in bodily form just like Jesus did and this Greek word for resurrection Paul uses over and over means a physical return to life not a spiritual passing into a disembodied existence anytime the word is used in the first century among Jewish writings if they apply it to death or a body it means a physical return to life I deal with these things in more detail in my series on the resurrection specifically in parts 2 3 and 6 there is no reason to think Paul was talking about private visions in the first part of this chapter the other issue is 1st Corinthians is not a gospel nor is Paul intending to give a resurrection narrative get skeptics like Barker want us to notice how simple the early resurrection accounted but that is not what it is nor was it intended to be one Paul is here refuting a position among the Corinthians that there will be no general resurrection of the Dead for all Christians he gives them a list of witnesses who sell Christ after he rose from the grave to refute this position he is not writing an account of how Jesus was resurrected and the events that unfolded rounded one might as well say the Vietnam War developed over time just because the Vietnam Memorial only includes the names of the men who died there and no detail accounts of what happened it was never the intent of the Memorial to give an account of all that happened just like with Paul's letter it doesn't mean Paul was unaware of the resurrection narrative or didn't accept that it happened but skeptics try to say the Greek word used in the Creed shows Paul was only talking about spiritual vision since this Greek word is only used for seeing or having a spiritual vision but this is false in Luke connects the same Greek word is used for when Luke claims Jesus physically appeared after his death Paul uses it elsewhere just after he says Jesus was manifested in the flesh more importantly the word is used eighty five times in the Greek Septuagint forty-six of those times it is used for saying God or his glory appeared to someone the remaining thirty nine times it is used to refer to people appearing or presenting themselves before God or material objects being seen by people or people appearing in non visionary or ordinary ways before someone else NT Wright says the classical background does not give much more help the passive of the verb is not found in Homer in the usage elsewhere more or less mirrors what we have in the Septuagint it is in fact impossible to build a theory of what people thought Jesus's resurrection appearance is consistent ie whether they were objective subjective or whatever those terms themselves with their many philosophical overtones are not particularly helpful on this word alone the word is quite consistent with people having non-objective visions it is equally consistent with them seeing someone in the ordinary course of human affairs this understanding of the Greek word who also makes sense whether it is used in first Corinthians 15 since it is used to designate group appearances which means they would be external for multiple people to see not private internal visions so this would be more plausible that Paul believed Jesus physically appeared to a group of 100 in the 12 rather than 500 each having a private vision simultaneously the other issue with the development theory is it ignores the fact that although marks finished his gospel after Paul wrote first Corinthians scholars accept the last few chapters known as the passion narrative were probably written in the 40s this means Mark's resurrection narrative predates Paul and this would not mean Mark was a later development on Paul's list of witnesses March passion narrative was first followed then by Paul and then the later Gospels this theory also ignores Mark's intent his gospel was meant to be a short sermon for Gentiles in Rome not a more exhaustive account like Matthew Luke or John so we should expect to see mark leave out more this doesn't somehow prove the events in the other Gospels were not known in the 40s when Mark was writing his passion narrative also despite what Barker says there is a resurrection in mark Jesus predicted three times and the angel the empty tomb confirms that has happened and that an appearance is about to take place mark clearly believes Jesus has physically resurrected and believes he did appear to the disciples otherwise why would he report the predictions the empty tomb and that an appearance was about to happen right after the tomb was found so this would mean mark reports two extraordinary events and going on this why do we conclude there are no extraordinary events in Paul's letters he clearly believed in the resurrection enlists five separate appearances as well this means Paul lists seven miracles Matthew lists for Luke lists five and John specifically lists seven since he does not include the Ascension like Barker assumes so it doesn't make sense to say it started with Paul and developed up to John since the order would go from seven to four five to seven since mark is actually the earliest one could still claim that it started with mark and developed after that but we don't see each author making the story more complex we see them listing different things entirely at certain times and at other times simplifying what mark so this is why the development theory suffers from a fallacy of neglect of negative instances this is where one picks data to confirm their theory while ignoring other pieces of data that would work against their theory so we are told the development theory is true because the number of miracles in angels of the tune increases from mark to the other accounts but if the development theory is true we should expect to see development happening in all places not just the parts we cherry pick we will leave Paul out since as we said he did not write a gospel but comparing mark to the other Gospels we can see the development theory only works when we select certain aspects and cherry-pick let's remember the resurrection narratives actually come with crucifixion narratives so we should expect the number of miracles to increase also in the crucifixion narrative but this doesn't happen John records no miracles during the crucifixion mark and luke record the darkness and the temple curtain ripping in Matthew lists for miraculous events so when it comes to the crucifixion this changes the order from John to Mark and Luke and then Matthew being the most developed but it doesn't stop there because remember these narratives are part of entire Gospels which lists miracles during Jesus's life and ministry but John only lists 7 mark records about 20 and Matthew records about 22 in Luke at 21 how about the number of women at a tomb well John only names 1 Matthew names - mark lists 3 and Luke lists 3 plus others so this would put the order from john to matthew mark and then loop being the most developed so we don't see the development theory working here either if the story was evolving we should see each one building off the other and adding more and more complexity while retaining the stories from the previous Gospels but we don't see that we actually see material independent to each gospel in complexity in different areas for example mark gives us more details for some of the stories of Jesus that Matthew and Luke only brush over if there was evolution happening we should see Matthew and Luke adding the stories of Mark not reducing the content so really mark seems to develop certain stories about Jesus not the other way around and then we should see John is the most complex but we see he lists the least amount of miracles and supernatural events at the crucifixion and during his gospel plus he barely mentions material from the Synoptics how could he be developing the story if he doesn't mention much of what the other three wrote so I propose another theory the aspect theory each Gospels reporting the account of the ministering and death of Jesus from their own individual aspects because they all have their own personalities purposes writing styles and different audiences they will record things differently someone will add complexity to a certain aspect for specific reasons and others will focus on other aspects for other reasons certain things will stick out on their minds and they will list different witnesses based on who they talk to and sometimes they will leave out certain events another one reported because they want to save space or something else so if the development theory is true we should see each author making it more and more complex as they came along and this should be done in almost every aspect what we should not see is for authors who seem to be building on one another in one way but then vice versa on another subject but that is in fact what we see which means it is more likely they are reporting about the same event just from different aspects and the development theory is just an attempt to cherry-pick the data to form a hypothesis which is easily debunked once we look at the facts the aspect theory works far better and fits with all the data does it can account for all the Gospels or actually written