Quotations
"Jesus lived on in the hearts of
followers… but he did not physically rise from the dead. Taken down from
the cross, his body was probably buried in a shallow grave — and may have
been eaten by dogs."
Newsweek, April 4, 1994
Trying To Get Around The Resurrection
We have seen that, while Jesus' life,
claims, and miraculous ministry set him far apart from all other human
beings, it is his resurrection more than anything else that stamps him
as the one and only Son of God. But, precisely because it sets Jesus apart
as unique and requires an affirmation of the supernatural within history,
it cannot be allowed by scholars with a commitment to naturalism. It must,
therefore, be explained away.
For the last two hundred years naturalistic
scholars have attempted to accomplish this by proposing a number of theories.
Some have argued that Jesus never really died. He simply looked dead and
then revived while in the tomb. Others have argued that the disciples stole
Jesus' body and made the story of his resurrection up. Others have argued
that the disciples were simply hallucinating when they thought they saw
Jesus. While still others have argued that the idea of the resurrection
was simply a myth that evolved over time among Jesus' followers.
Variations on these theories, especially
the last one, are still advocated by various naturalistic scholars today.
But no theory, past or present, has received anything like the attention
J. D. Crossan's theory is now receiving. According to Crossan, Jesus died
by crucifixion as a common criminal and his corpse received the treatment
common criminals received in the ancient Roman world. If it was buried
at all, Crossan argues, it would have been in a shallow mass grave. And,
in all probability, it was then quickly dug up and eaten by the wild dogs
that hovered around such burial sites.
According to Crossan, the original
followers of Jesus "knew almost nothing whatsoever about the details of
his crucifixion, death, or burial." [ 1 ] The Gospel accounts of Jesus' death,
burial, and resurrection, therefore, are entirely fabricated. Jesus' followers
simply could not accept that their master had gone the way of common criminals,
and thus they began to recreate history in their own minds.
For example, the story of Jesus being
buried in the wealthy tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of
the powerful council of the Sanhedrin, is entirely a figment of Mark's
imagination, according to Crossan. Mark had to invent someone who would
have a) wanted to see Jesus buried properly (hence he is portrayed as a
believer); and b) had access to Pilate to make a special request for how
a crucified body would be disposed of (hence he is portrayed as an influential
member of the Sanhedrin).
The stories of Jesus' resurrection
appearances, according to Crossan, are equally fictitious. As Crossan says
in TIME, they are the result of "latter-day wishful thinking" on the part
of Christians. [ 2 ] Christians made up history the way they wished it had
gone, instead of the way it actually occurred.
Could The Early Christians Have Made
This Story Up?
Now there are a number of serious
problems with Crossan's theory, and all theories like it. For starters,
the very idea that any group of people (let alone first century Jews) could
so thoroughly recreate recent history out of thin air and then make themselves
believe it, is extremely difficult to accept. On Crossan's theory, none
of the initial followers of Jesus believed he rose from the dead. Then,
a few decades later, all of his followers believe it. Is this really credible?
Ask yourself, are large groups of people ever prone to this sort of intense,
self-delusional fabricating -- to the extent that they'd completely recreate
recent history? Insane individuals, maybe. But large groups of ordinary
people? Impossible!
And are we really to believe that
there were not at least some psychologically balanced people within this
first century group who would have protested against this novel fabrication?
Wouldn't someone have pointed out that their group never used to talk about
Jesus' supposed resurrection? Wouldn't someone have pointed out that this
story simply was not true? Indeed, wouldn't all of the original disciples
have done this, if in fact the resurrection hadn't occurred?
And even if (for the sake of argument)
no one within the movement would have done this, wouldn't there be many
outside this group who would have been more than happy to point this out?
We know, after all, that there were a great many people in high places
who were strongly opposed to the Christian movement from the start. Couldn't
these opponents have very easily blown apart the whole thing -- which they
wanted to do -- by simply exposing the fact that this message about the resurrection
is a tall tale that even the Christians themselves hadn't believed until
recently? But this objection was never raised!
What is more, couldn't these opponents
have easily falsified this "new" Christian story? Consider that these Christians
were talking about events that transpired only a few decades ago (many
of their opponents were around then), and not so very far away (Jerusalem).
Consider further that these authors were dropping some pretty heavyweight
names in their (supposedly) fictitious accounts like Pilot, a governor,
Ciaphus, a high priest, and Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin.
Couldn't these opponents, therefore, have easily disproved these accounts?
Of course they could have, and would
have, if the story had been made up, as Crossan argues. But it clearly
wasn't, so they obviously couldn't.
Finally, Crossan's proposal becomes
even less plausible when we consider that the Gospels weren't the first
documents to claim that Jesus rose. We find the apostle Paul saying the
same thing -- and talking about it as though it were an already established
Christian teaching -- some ten to twenty years before the Gospels were even
written (I Cor. 15:1-8)! If maintaining that a significant group of Jews
rewrote history and believed it forty years after the fact is difficult,
holding that they did so well before 50 A.D. is virtually impossible.
Joseph of Arimathea
Many of the details of Crossan's
conjecture are also problematic. For example, one has to seriously question
the plausibility of the suggestion that Mark simply made up the figure
of Joseph of Arimathea. Why this particular name? Why this particular insignificant
village? And, as I intimated above, if Mark was going to fabricate a person,
would he have him be such an overtly public figure as one of the seventy-one
leaders who served on the Sanhedrin? This is altogether unlikely.
Knowledge about who served on the
Sanhedrin was common in Jewish circles, so fabricating such a person would
make exposing his narrative as a lie very easy to do. It would be no different
than someone today trying to circulate an incredible story about a member
of our Supreme Court a few decades ago. Such a story could easily be falsified.
Looking At All The Evidence
As insurmountable as these difficulties
are, these problems are not the main problem with Crossan's theory. The
major problem with Crossan's conjecture, and all conjectures like it, is
that it simply flies directly in the face of the evidence. The evidence
for the historicity of the resurrection, if examined without foregone conclusions
about what could and could not have happened, is extremely good. In other
words, if you don't start with the assumption that the evidence is all
lying, you find that the evidence is remarkably compelling. Indeed, many
historians and New Testament scholars who are not committed to strictly
naturalistic presuppositions (viz. who do not believe the resurrection
is impossible) have argued that the historical evidence for the resurrection
is at least as strong as what we have for any other documented event in
ancient history.
Now, I personally have never found
the case for the resurrection covered in the popular media, though I have
found the views of scholars who deny it covered quite thoroughly. In the
interest of being fully informed on the subject, then, we need to have
at least an overview of this side of the story as well. [ 3 ] I shall, therefore,
briefly review two groups of arguments that establish the historicity of
the resurrection. The first is taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians,
the second from the four Gospel accounts.
1 Corinthians 15 And The Resurrection
In his letter to the Corinthian Church,
Paul mentions that, after having been "buried" for three days, Christ appeared
to Peter, the Twelve, to "more than five hundred of the brothers ... most
of whom are still living," to James, then to all the apostles, and finally
to Paul himself (I Cor. 15:3-8). There are four arguments that arise from
this passage that render the conclusion that this report is based on historical
fact -- the fact of the resurrection -- unavoidable.
Could the Resurrection be a Myth?
This letter is written a mere twenty
years after Jesus had died. That is, by customary historical standards,
very close to the event. This itself rules out the possibility that the
story of Jesus' resurrection was a complete myth, for myths take long periods
of time to develop, even in environments which are conducive to them. But
in this case we're dealing with an orthodox Jew (Paul) who is advocating
something that is antithetical to his foundational Jewish beliefs. If Paul
were to invent a myth, this would not have been it!
While most Jews believed there would
be a general resurrection of the dead on the judgment day, they had no
concept of one man rising all by himself. And they certainly were not predisposed
towards seeing this, or any other miracle, as verifying that this man was
somehow the embodiment of God! But this is precisely what Paul is teaching!
Hence, wherever Paul got the notion that Jesus Christ is proven to be the
Son of God by rising from the dead (Rom. 1:3-4), he didn't get it as a
myth that just naturally evolved in his orthodox Jewish mind.
The Antiquity of 1 Corinthians
15
Paul incidentally mentions that he
had "received" and "passed on" this information. These terms, all scholars
recognize, were the standard terms used within Judaism for the handing
down of sacred authoritative tradition. It was, therefore, not to be tampered
with. Jews were very strict about this. (We'll discuss this point further
in the next chapter).
Scholars are also in agreement that
this passage has a rhythmic credal structure to it which confirms that
this was authoritative sacred information Paul was passing on. Indeed,
the Corinthians themselves had already previously received it, which is
why Paul says "I passed on to you" rather than "I'm now passing onto you."
The point of all of this is that
this material Paul is giving here is not only early -- within twenty years
of the event -- it is very early! In twenty years it had already become part
of the established creed of the Church! It has to therefore significantly
pre-date Paul's writing. Paul himself doesn't tell us when he "received"
this tradition, but it certainly must have been by the time he finished
his fifteen day visit with Peter and James three years after his conversion
(Gal. 1:18-19). And this pushes this credal material back to within a few
years after Jesus death.
This forces on us a very interesting
question. If this report of the empty tomb and resurrection appearances
isn't rooted solidly in history, what explains this report? If, in fact,
Jesus never rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, how is one
to explain the indisputable fact that, almost immediately after his death,
his followers thought Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them? There
is no easy question to this answer.
Could Paul Have Made This Report
Up?
Some liberal scholars have attempted
to avoid the historical implications of Paul's report here by arguing that
Paul simply made up the report and perhaps intentionally structured to
make it look like he was passing on traditional material. Paul, in other
words, was simply being deceptive. Mack and Crossan argue along these lines.
In response, one has to first ask
why Paul would do this. He has absolutely no motive to lie. Mack and Crossan
try to maintain that Paul was here trying to establish his apostolic authority,
but aside from the fact that Paul here looks like he's minimizing his authority -- he
says he is "the least of all the apostles" and does "not even deserve to
be called an apostle" (I Cor. 15:9) -- the presumed motive explains nothing
about the actual content of the report.
What is more, Paul here says that
if this report he's passing on is not true, he and the others who are preaching
it are "false witnesses about God" (I Cor. 15:15), a sin which for Jews
was equivalent to blasphemy. So, even if Paul had had a motive to lie,
its highly doubtful that he would have been capable of lying about this.
Certainly everything else we learn about Paul from his letters shows him
to be a sincere, self-sacrificing, godly man, hardly the type who would
go about intentionally blaspheming.
But most significantly, the fact
that most of these eyewitnesses Paul mentions in this report were still
alive and well known in the early Church when Paul passed on this report
completely rules out the possibility that we are here dealing with deception.
If, as Crossan, Mack, and several others suggest, Paul and his congregations
were alone among the early Christians in thinking that Jesus rose from
the dead, one wonders what on earth he was thinking when he started dropping
names like Peter and James in his report. And one wonders why he would
invite his audience to cross-check his report that more than five hundred
saw Christ at the same time (which is what Paul is doing when he adds,
"most of whom are still alive").
One also has to wonder how this supposed
major difference between Paul and the other Church leaders was missed when
Paul met with them on at least two occasions (Gal. 1:18-19, 2:1-10). On
this latter occasion Paul went up to Jerusalem for the expressed purpose
of making sure his teaching was the same as other Church leaders, and they
end up giving him "the right hand of fellowship" (2:9). Such a situation
is unthinkable if, as these scholars contend, these other church leaders
didn't yet believe in the resurrection!
Not only this, but everything we
know about the early Church indicates that it wasn't only Paul who traveled
far and wide in his missionary endeavors. From both Paul's letters and
from the book of Acts, we get the picture that most of the early Church
leaders traveled far and wide among the various Christian congregations
(e.g. I Cor. 1:12, 9:5). The early Church, in other words, was networked
together in a rather tight fashion. Hence, the conjecture of Crossan, Mack,
and others that Paul and his congregations held to a very different view
of Jesus than the other followers of Jesus, and that they alone believed
in the resurrection, must be judged as being utterly untenable.
This again poses an interesting,
and very important, question for us: If the tomb of Jesus wasn't in fact
empty, and if Jesus hadn't in fact risen from the dead, what explains the
fact that right after his death we find all of his followers sincerely
thinking his tomb was empty and believing that he rose from the dead -- and
willing to lay their lives on the line for this conviction!?
Could It All Be Mass Hallucination?
One might, of course, argue that
Paul's report is genuine: the people he reports seeing Jesus did see something
they thought was Jesus. But, in fact, it was simply a case of mass hallucination.
A number of liberal scholars today lean in this direction. Unfortunately
for this theory, however, both I Corinthians 15 and the Gospel accounts
completely rule out this avenue of escape.
The sheer diversity of witnesses
that Paul mentions, and the diverse times Christ appeared to them, rules
out the possibility that we are dealing here with some sort of mass hallucination.
The fact that Paul mentions Christ "being buried" (which assumes he became
"un-buried") also rules out hallucination, for it means that Jesus' tomb
was empty. The hallucination theory doesn't even address this. Even if
the disciples were hallucinating, wouldn't someone (at least their opponents!)
have thought of checking out his tomb?
And, finally, the Gospel accounts
portray the risen Lord in terms that render the hallucination theory impossible.
Among other things, Jesus in these accounts is portrayed as being distinctly
recognizable to his followers. He is seen as being, in some sense, physically
present to his followers. And he is said to have spent a good amount of
time, on a number of occasions, fellowshipping with, and even eating with,
his followers. This is hardly what you'd expect from a hallucination!
So the question that needs to again
be asked is this: How do we explain the fact that all of these people who
knew the real historical Jesus (Peter, James [his brother!], the apostles,
and the five hundred) believed his tomb was empty and believed they repeatedly
saw the resurrected Lord in a physical way? One explanation which easily
accounts for all the evidence is to simply admit that, as a matter of fact,
Jesus rose from the dead, left his tomb, and appeared to these people just
as the report says.
If this explanation is thrown out,
however, what other one explanation is one to embrace? It's all myth? Not
enough time, and wrong culture.. Paul was deceptive? No motive, and totally
out of character. Mass hallucination? Too many people, too many appearances,
and an empty tomb. Eaten by wild dogs? How does this explain anything?!
The evidence for this miracle of
all miracles, we see, is stubborn. It will not easily be explained away.
This is not good news to the scholar committed to exclusively naturalistic
explanations. And when we consider the evidence for the resurrection from
the Gospels, the news for them gets significantly worse.
The Gospel Accounts of the Resurrection
We frequently read about contemporary
scholars who dismiss out of hand the Gospels as legendary, and who therefore
dismiss out of hand their accounts that Jesus rose from the dead. To be
truly informed, however, you need to know that there is another side to
this story. Many scholars find many reasons for maintaining, on a strictly
historical basis, the integrity and accuracy of these accounts. While I
shall address the issue of the over all trustworthiness of the Gospels
in the next chapter, I will conclude this chapter by examining the reasons
why many scholars find their resurrection accounts to be solidly rooted
in actual history.
The Independence of the Five Accounts
In history, as in a court of law,
the more witnesses you have for an event, the more certain can be your
knowledge of that event. For most events in history we have to rely on
single sources, and usually these sources are quite far removed from the
event being reported. Most of our knowledge about Alexander the Great,
for example, comes from a single source written some four hundred years
after his life.
Still, since people do not usually
systematically lie, historians are inclined to trust such sources. Did
they not do this our ancient history books would be a great deal thinner.
We'd have to claim to know very little about most of the major figures
in ancient history. In those rare instances when we find more than one
source of information, and in those even rarer instances when these various
sources are close to the events they are reporting, historians generally
have a field day.
Which makes the liberals' skepticism
regarding the resurrection puzzling, or perhaps suspicious. For here we
have an almost unparalleled collection of diverse witnesses writing very
close to the event they are recording. We've already examined the testimony
of Paul and found it forceful. But we need to now consider that, on top
of this, we have the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are,
even on a liberal dating, writing relatively close to the event -- forty
or fifty years at the outside. And they are all writing independent of
one another.
Scholars, both liberal and conservative,
frequently argue that Matthew and Luke used Mark's Gospel when they composed
there own, for significant portions of their Gospels parallel Mark's in
an almost verbatim fashion. This may or may not be correct. But what's
important to realize is that this theory, even if it is correct, has absolutely
no bearing on our estimation of their various resurrection accounts. For
on this score, as all scholars recognize, the various authors have almost
nothing in common!
Not only this, but each of these
accounts differ significantly from Paul's account which we examined above.
According to Crossan, Mack, and others, the followers of Jesus outside
of Paul's congregations didn't believe in the resurrection until around
the 70s A.D. when (according to their dating) the Gospel accounts begin
to be written. And, they further argue, this reveals that the view of the
resurrection held by Paul's congregations was influencing these other congregations.
But if this were the case, wouldn't you expect the Gospel accounts to follow,
at least in outline, Paul's account? But they don't! They are clearly not
only independent of one another: they are quite independent from Paul as
well.
What each of these accounts, including
Paul's, do have in common is their claim that Jesus left his tomb after
being dead for two nights and a day and then appeared to various disciples
at various times and places. If we stick with standard historical criteria,
this claim, coming from five accounts that obviously did not borrow from
one another, and written this close to the event, must be taken very seriously.
Do The Resurrection Accounts Contradict
Each Other?
In fact, so obvious are the differences
between the resurrection accounts that at this point many liberal scholars
seize upon a different tactic to discredit these accounts and argue that
they can't be believed because they are contradictory. In his book, The
Case Against Christianity, for example, Michael Martin says:
In Matthew, when Mary Magdalene
and the other Mary arrived toward dawn at the tomb there is a rock in front
of it ... In Mark, the women arrive at the tomb at sunrise and the stone
had been rolled back ... In Matthew, an angel is sitting on the rock outside
the tomb ... in Mark a youth is inside the tomb ... In Luke, two men are inside ... In
Matthew, the women present at the tomb are Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary ... In Mark, the women present at the tomb are the two Marys and Salome ... In
Luke, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women
are present ... According to John, only Mary Magdalene came to the tomb when
it was still dark, thus contradicting the three other Gospels. [ 4 ]
For this reason, Martin concludes, the
Gospel accounts of Jesus rising from the dead cannot be trusted.
Now these frequently cited discrepancies
have been accounted for numerous times throughout Church history (which
makes one wonder why they keep being put forth as if they were "new" discoveries).
If you read Matthew closely, for example, you will see that he simply does
not say that the tomb was still enclosed when the women arrived. He does
not, therefore, contradict the other accounts which report that the stone
was already rolled away when the women arrived. As to the supposedly different
times the women went to the tomb, one is hard pressed to make a hard and
fast distinction between the twilight of dawn and early sunrise. Trying
to make a significant contradiction out of such a minor difference is a
tactic of desperation.
As for the different locations and
varying number of the angels reported, no author ever denies what another
affirms. The accounts are different, but not contradictory. And, in fact,
the differences between the accounts are exactly what one should expect
from a story that is being retold from the different perspectives of the
people present. So too with the slightly different list of names of the
women present at the tomb. No author denies what another affirms, and none
of the authors claims to provide an exhaustive list. Indeed, John's account
which mentions only Mary Magdalene visiting the tomb presupposes that there
were other women present. For when she reports to the disciples what has
occurred, she mistakenly conjectures, "They have taken the Lord out of
the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him" (Jn. 20:2, emphasis
added)! The first person plural indicates that there were other women present
with Mary, though John has chosen to focus his narrative only on her. In
any case, Martin is simply wrong when he claims that "according to John
only Mary Magdalene went to the tomb." John never says that.
These supposed discrepancies, then,
are no greater than what you'd expect to find surrounding an event witnessed
by a number of different people and reported from a number of different
perspectives. Think of the numerous, apparently conflicting, eyewitnesses
accounts we have on the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- and this event
was recorded on camera! The accounts of this tragic event are perhaps difficult
to harmonize, but no one thinks of conjecturing on this basis that perhaps
J. F. K. wasn't assassinated at all!
Yet, this is exactly what certain
liberal New Testament critics do to the Gospels' resurrection accounts.
Because there are apparently conflicting reports (which, after all, aren't
very difficult to harmonize), they want to assume that what they are reporting
didn't happen. One suspects that if the reports didn't conflict with each
other, these scholars would arrive at the exact same conclusion -- on the
basis that the various testimonies aren't independent! In any case, this
skeptical approach cannot be said to constitute unbiased historical investigation.
The most significant thing about
the supposed discrepancies of the Gospels is what they tell us about these
four accounts: namely, that they are all independent of one another. And
this makes what they have in common all the more credible. For, as was
said, each account agrees on the central facts that the tomb of Jesus was
empty and, with the possible exception of Mark, that Jesus appeared to
certain disciples at various times and places. [ 5 ] And all of this agreed
upon material, we see, is in basic accord with what Paul reports about
Jesus some ten to twenty years earlier.
It is not, then, just one story of
Jesus' resurrection that has to be explain away as fabrication. It is five.
And if, as we have already seen, it is difficult to believe that one version
of this story could have been concocted and believed by a group of people
who previously knew it wasn't true, what are we to make of any theory that
would require us to believe that this happened on five occasions?
The Presence of Women
There are many other considerations
that lend credibility to the Bible's four Gospel accounts of the resurrection.
Perhaps the most surprising of these is the fact that all the accounts
agree that it was women who first found the tomb empty. This may mean little
to us in our day, but in first century Jewish society women were, quite
frankly, regarded as being incurable talebearers. They weren't in most
circumstances even allowed to testify in court!
No wonder, then, that the male disciples
didn't believe them when the women first brought them their report that
the tomb was empty (Lk. 24: 11). No wonder, also, that Paul does not include
women in his list of people the Lord appeared (I Cor. 15). Since this report
was originally circulated in a Jewish environment before it was passed
on to Paul, as we've seen, the women's testimony would have been seen as
being irrelevant, if not damaging, to the report. Hence they are deleted
from the earliest church creed about the event.
This inculcated sexism may (and should)
aggravate us today. But the effect it has on the Gospel accounts which
do include women -- as playing a central role in the whole story -- is to greatly
increase their credibility. If the Gospel stories were fabricated, as certain
scholars in the media today suggest, the last thing these fabricators would
want to put in their story would be that it was women who first discovered
that the tomb of Jesus was empty, and (in the case of Matthew and John)
that it was to women that Jesus first appeared! The fact that they did
report it this way, therefore, strongly implies that these accounts are
not fabrications. The only motive these various authors could have had
for telling their story like they did is because that was how the story
actually unfolded.
Other Indications of Historical
Reliability
There are a host of other interesting
features about the Gospels' resurrection accounts that, in the mind of
many scholars, further substantiates their reliability. Some of these are
the following:
-
The Gospel accounts are full of incidental
detail that does not contribute to the over all story line. Such detail
is generally considered by historians (and lawyers) to be evidence of an
eyewitness account (or at least an account that is informed by an eyewitness).
John, for example, mentions that he outran Peter when they raced to the
tomb and that he "bent over and looked in" and saw "strips of linen lying
there" as well as a burial cloth "folded up by itself, separate from the
linen," but he did not himself go in. Then, he adds, Peter arrived and
went into the tomb (Jn. 20: 4-8). Now there is no clear reason why these
details are added to the narrative: they add absolutely nothing to the
point of the whole story. Indeed, they are rather unexpected. Who, after
all, would have intentionally fabricated an account that suggested that
Jesus was raised in the nude? Their presence in the account can only be
because, as a matter of fact, that was just how the event occurred.
-
John's incidental reference to having
to "bend over" to look inside the tomb is interesting for another reason
as well. The only kinds of tombs in the Greco-Roman world that required
bending over to enter were acrosolia or bench tombs which were rare in
the ancient world, being reserved for wealthy prominent people. This squares
precisely with the Gospels' accounts that Jesus occupied a tomb purchased
by a wealthy and prominent member of the Sanhedrin. It's also worth noting
that archaeologists have discovered several other acrosolia tombs near
the traditional site of Jesus' tomb.
-
All of the Gospel accounts are remarkable
restrained, sober, and realistic. One has only to compare them to legendary
writings of the time -- including apocryphal accounts of the resurrection
that would arise in the next few centuries -- to prove for themselves that
these accounts are of a very different sort.
-
There is no attempt in these accounts
to "theologize" the resurrection event. That is to say, these accounts
simply report what happened but do not take the time to try to explain
much. For example, in John's account Mary Magdalene tries to embrace Jesus
after the resurrection. Jesus, however, tells her, "Do not hold on to me,
for I have not yet returned to the Father" (Jn. 20:17). This is an unexpected
and odd reaction on the part of Jesus that is simply left unexplained.
Fabricated accounts, and later legendary accounts, leave nothing unexplained.
-
Relatedly, these accounts lack many
features that one would expect if they were simply legendary accounts.
When legendary accounts are written, they customarily go out of their way
to answer the question, "How do you know this is true?" For example, in
the third century work entitled The Protevangelium of James, the author
is concerned to portray Mary as a virgin after she gives birth to Christ.
So, conveniently enough, there is a midwife present who delivers Christ
and testifies to this fact. And, conveniently enough, there is another
woman present who physically checks Mary and confirms the midwife's story!
What's more, shortly thereafter, Joseph sees all of creation stand still
momentarily -- birds freeze in mid-air, brooks stop flowing, etc. -- to further
confirm the point of the story. Such is the stuff that legends are made
out of.
But the Gospel's lack such obvious (and
outrageous) apologetic motifs. If they were apologetic legends, we might
perhaps expect some confirming word of Joseph of Arimathea, some mention
of a thorough investigation of the tomb and the surrounding area, some
story of the guards being converted, or some cosmic sign from heaven verifying
the whole thing. Instead, our accounts have women (!) finding an empty
tomb, and in a state of confusion and fear, telling this to Jesus' cowardly
male followers who are just as puzzled by the whole thing. And then we
have Matthew's totally unexpected admonition that some, even after seeing
the resurrected Lord, still doubted (Matt. 28:17)! And (typically) he doesn't
tell us why they doubted. This hardly helps "sell" the whole story, if
"selling" a story they made up rather than reporting a story that actually
occurred was what these authors were up to.
The Heart of the Issue
Getting around the historical evidence
for the resurrection, we see, is no easy matter. The conjectural, complex,
and highly improbable nature of those theories that try to do so simply
confirms this fact. Were these five accounts about any other event that
didn't require suspending our judgments about what can and cannot happen
in the natural world, no historian would ever doubt them. Rarely, if ever,
is the available data about a ancient historical event so numerous, so
close to the event, and so replete with internal evidence of reliability.
And this simply confirms, once again,
our previous point that the basis for denying the resurrection, and the
uniqueness of Christ in general, is not historical evidence. It is, rather,
a preconceived and highly arbitrary assumption about the nature of the
world. If you rule out the possibility that the Paul and the Gospels are
telling the truth from the start, then of course you have to come up with
another explanation. But you must do so in spite of, not because of, the
historical evidence. Get rid of this assumption, and the evidence can be
allowed to speak for itself.
When an ordinary person first reads
in their newspaper or learns from the T.V. of a chorus of reputable liberal
scholars who have "discovered" that the resurrection is a fable, they can
easily be impressed. "Surely there must be some new hard and fast evidence
they are going on," they may think. Once all the facts are in, however,
the chorus doesn't sound nearly as impressive.
Endnotes
- J. D. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), p. 145. [ Go Back ]
- J. D. Crossan, Time, January 10, 1994. [ Go Back ]
- For more in depth treatments of the resurrection, see W.
Craig, The Son Rises (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981), G. Habermas,
The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984),
G. Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975). And for a refutation of Crossan and Mack's explanation for the resurrection, see G. Boyd, Cynic Sage or Son of God? (Wheaton IL: Bridgepoint, 1995), ch. 13. [ Go Back ]
- M. Martin, The Case Against Christianity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), pp. 78-79. [ Go Back ]
- The ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:9-20) which records
Jesus' appearance to the disciples, is disputed. [ Go Back ]
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