The Fourth Commandment

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

Both occurred on the same day but both did not occur the same time on the same day. If both occurred the same time on the same day then that would call for the present tense participle as you say. However, it is Aorist participle because it is a prior action to the appearance but both on the same day.

GE:
NOTHING in or about or of the Aorist guarantees or demands or even SUGGESTS the time-expiry-limit "on the same day", Dr Walter. Jesus eight days later appeared this VERY SAME 'ANASTAS'- "The Risen One" of Mk16:9; and for forty days, this VERY SAME 'ANASTAS'- "The Risen One" of Mk16:9; and ascended into the air this VERY SAME 'ANASTAS'- "The Risen One" of Mk16:9.

 

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

………The only lie was that they were asleep. They were witnesses of the earthquake, the angels, the rock being rolled away. They were as "dead" men because they were frightened to death. ……………

GE:
Indeed, “The only lie was that they were asleep” because they actually were “like dead” unconscious.

Therefore the guard could not have been “witnesses of the earthquake, the angels, the rock being rolled away”. So the question arises precisely at what moment or stage in the sequence of events were the guard struck unconscious : before, or after, “the earthquake, the angels, the rock being rolled away”?

Here is Matthew’s description,
“Suddenly (at the same time as) there was a great earthquake….” That – the “SUDDEN, GREAT, earthquake” – already, could have struck the guard unconscious, “They were as "dead" men because they were frightened to death.” The earthquake was enough; the angel could not frighten them more than they already were— “frightened to death”.

However…. Matthew continues,
“There was a great earthquake BECAUSE the angel of the Lord descended from heaven.” So already it actually was the ANGEL that was the cause of all the consternation, and therefore, of the guard’s ‘fear’! At the occurrence of the great earthquake, the guards were in fact “frightened to death” by the ANGEL! The earthquake began BEFORE or AS the angel descended. Then already the guards were frightened clean out, and unconscious “like dead”! They knew nothing further or earlier, really, and certainly NOTHING, of “the angels, the rock being rolled away”. By the way, it was only one angel.

What is more, is that Matthew continues, “because an angel of the Lord DESCENDING out of nowhere (out of heaven), and APPROACHING, rolled away the stone.” The angel rolled the stone away BEFORE he was even seen, from somewhere out of heaven, and before the guard could know what hit them. Like the boxer’s fist that plants the knock-out comes from nowhere and cannot even be seen or remembered. So, JOB DONE, the angel “sat upon the stone”.

Things happened too fast for words. Matthew the dramatist, needs to use a parenthesis. He ‘graphically’, describes that which had had happened, further. Verses 3-4 give detail of past things; not of in time next, things. Matthew supplies the particulars for the reader’s convenience which the angel gave to the women for their convenience: “His (the angel’s) appearance (his ‘descending’ or “approach”, rather than his ‘face’) was like lightning, and the array (the ‘decoration’ of his appearance) white as snow”— like the gleam of the lightning flash all about is white as snow. The guard at no stage or moment was able to distinguish an angel; it was blinding whiteness round about, so that they, “convulsing like a dying person were struck down of immense SHOCK”, rather than prolonged ‘fear’.

The guard could not discern the features of an angel at all; it is Matthew who recorded that it was an angel— NOT THE GUARD! And it is not even Matthew who gives this additional information on the circumstances of the Resurrection. The women told him. And neither were the women the source of Matthew’s information about the angel and the guards, because all these things, “the angel informed the women and told them” about --- every little bit of knowledge about the angel of the Lord and his appearance at the occurrence of the great earthquake “Sabbath’s”, and the guard.

When one read Matthew 28:1-5, ignore the full stop after verse 4 and the capital letter word “And”, and read verses 1 to 5 in one breath. That was how Matthew told the story which “the angel explained to the women….”

 

[DHK]

Due to the length of this thread being over 30 pages it will have to be closed.