The title should be, ‘Biblical Accounts Don’t Even Agree.’

Short answer- NO.

A more nuanced answer is based on a number of things such as the biblical account being accurate & whether one believes this/these account(s). While the body was supposedly not still in the tomb after the resurrection this does not mean that his physical body was restored & sent to heaven. Even the Bible’s own accounts of this event differ considerably.

Christian biblical scholars have had considerable issues for centuries w/ this resurrection account as well as many other bible stories that are presented as fact.

In ‘Jesus for the Non-Religious‘ former Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong discusses this. It was nearly 100 years after Jesus‘ death that it was written about that he resurrected physically. Paul & Mark don’t discuss this. Matthew is ambivalent about 2 resurrection scenarios. Luke & John, the last 2 books to be composed discuss this physical resurrection scenario. The new physical resurrection scenario takes shape from 100 years after Jesus death. (pg. 119) If Jesus’ physical resurrection actually occurred why wasn’t it written about until almost a century after his death.

Spong points our substantial inconsistencies. Paul never seems to have heard of a tomb in the garden where Jesus was supposedly buried. (pg. 119) The burial procedure Jesus was supposedly accorded was considerably different than how the Romans ‘buried’ those crucified in shallow mass graves. Paul makes no mention of the group of women who supposedly went to the tomb. Mark has 3 women, Matthew 2, Luke 5 or 6, & John 1. Further disagreement amongst the Bible’s own authors is about whether the women see the risen Jesus on Easter morning w/ Mark & Luke saying no & Matthew & John saying yes. (pg. 120) Many more such examples are in this section.

A partial analysis of Spong’s states, ‘The resurrection language of the gospels is literal nonsense. Earthquakes do not announce earthly events. Angels do not invade time, space and history to roll back a stone, to make historic resurrection announcement. A resuscitated Jesus does not walk out of his tomb in some physical form that can eat, drink, walk, talk, teach and expound on scriptures. ... All of these things are interpretive tales employed in the process of human explanation in which a life-changing inner experience was enabled to be communicated in the language of history by the use of external symbols. That is what liturgy is.’

Spong further explains how the resurrection experience is a joyous representation of the idea that we aren’t contained by death, not a literal event.

All of the resurrection stories are developed from Mark’s gospel where the women simply stare into an empty tomb. ‘Mark ... never describes an appearance of the risen Jesus. Matthew says appeared out of heaven.‘ Spong interprets these ‘sightings’ as more of a revelatory encounter, a second sight such as a vision, not ‘the language of physical sight and literal history.’ (pg. 123)

‘Over history the resurrection stories of the various gospels have flowed together in the common mind until their differences have become totally blurred and their content blened into a kink of harmony that a careful reading of these texts will not sustain.’ (pg. 125&6)

Luke develops the resurrection story into the one of a physical body. When Jesus first appears to the disciples they think he is a ghost, so he invites them to touch him, then Jesus asks for food which he eats. This creating Jesus as coming back into physicality presents Luke w/ some problems, so he crafts the departure in the first chapter of Acts where Jesus rises in the air w/ 2 white robed men. This also predicts his second coming.

This isn’t Spong’s notes, but mine. If Jesus is supposed to have come back to inhabiting a real physical body, then this was the second coming & a return would be the 3rd coming (if one believes in this).

Back to Spong. “Clearly the story of the ascension is not history.‘ ‘When we search for Hebrew antecedents of the story of Jesus‘ ascension our attention is drawn once again to the familiar cycle of the Elijah-Elisha stories. Elijah also ascended into heaven.‘ ‘We are not reading history; we are watching the gospel writer paint a portrait drawn from the Hebrew scriptures, designed to present the Jesus experience as an invitation into oneness with God; and in that portrait he uses the only language he has available, the magnificent language of his religious tradition.‘ ... ‘To literalize Easter, both the story of the resurrection and the story of the ascension, has become the defining heresy of traditional Protestant and Catholic Christianity. That transforming mystery has given way to propositional truths that no twenty-first-century mind can still embrace.

The Jesus story, including the narrative of the resurrection, is an invitation to journey beyone human limits, beyond human boundaries, into the realm of that experience we call God, who is not above the sky, but rather is found in the depths of life. To enter the Christian story we must have our eyes opened to see things beyond the limits of sight, ... .’ (pg. 127&8)
...
‘All of these narrative details were the creation of a community of people who individually and corporately had an experience that they believed was of God in the human life of one Jesus of Nazareth. Their way of explaining their experience has now run its course. It makes assumptions we cannot make. ... Traditional Christians have committed the fatal error of identifying the truth of the Jesus experience with the literalness of their explanations of that experience. That never works. ... Our task is to separate the eternal experience from the time-bound and time-warped explanations.’

Spong’s work is about how Christianity MUST move past presenting its Bible stories as literal history if it is to survive as a religion & move to the much more powerful use of these stories as religious allegories that represent useful ideas.

Stating Spong’s views isn’t an endorsement of Christianity, but recognizing that Spong’s cumulation of centuries of Christian scholars’ work is useful in examining this religion’s primary document, the Bible. Spong’s analysis is meaningful as he is a proponent of Christianity.
My POV is that any religion that teaches that people are born inherently flawed, needing to be saved by an external deity is very problematic.

Literal Interpretation Of The Bible By Christian Scholars- http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...d=1#post233061