Allison D.C. - Explaining The Resurrection. Conflicting Convictions (JSHJ 2005)

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
http://jhj.sagepub.com Explaining the Resurrection: Conflicting Convictions

Dale C. Allison, Jr Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2005; 3; 117 DOI: 10.1177/1476869005060235 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jhj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/2/117
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EXPLAINING THE RESURRECTION: CONFLICTING CONVICTIONS

Dale C. Allison, Jr
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Vol. 3.2 pp. 117-133 DOI: 10.1177/1476869005060235 2005 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi http://JSHJ.sagepub.com
ABSTRACT Although explanations for the earliest Christian proclamation of Jesus resurrection vary, certain standard arguments appear again and again. The present article introduces those explanations and those arguments as well as the essays in this theme issue of JSHJ, with a view to clarifying what they add to the traditional discussion.
Key words: burial of Jesus, resurrection of Jesus, empty tomb, realized eschatology, visions of Jesus, David Byran, James Crossley, Craig Evans, Michael Goulder, Gary Habermas, Larry Hurtado, N.T. Wright
Before the Enlightenment, there were two evaluations of the Christian claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, each the competing antithesis of the other. On the one side were Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians, who regarded the New Testament accounts of Jesus resurrection as inspired truth and so assumed them to be historically accurate down to their details. On the other side were the Jewish detractors of the Christian churches, who typically held that the proclamation of Jesus resurrection was the upshot of either a mistake or a fraud. Already Mt. 28.11-15 has Jewish opponents claim that the disciples came and pirated the body. Things began to change about three hundred years ago, when rationalism commenced to replace Christianity as the central ideology in the West, at least among the intellectual elite. This rationalism had no place for miracles, understood as the violation of natural law. So there was certainly no place for the greatest Christian miracle of all, the resurrection of Jesus. That event, many came to think, must be a myth, must belong not to the real world but solely to the religious imagination. For the last three hundred years or so, then, there has been no dearth of rival and unconventional responses to the question, What really lay behind the earliest announcement of Jesus resurrection? The countless books and articles dedicated to this subject have not, despite their manifold differences, produced a plethora of truly disparate answers to this
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question. Indeed, almost all of the elucidations of belief in Jesus resurrection can, for convenience, be slotted into one of the following categories.1 (1) There is rst of all the conventional Christian conviction. Tom Wright, whose book on the resurrection is the object of much of the discussion in these pages of JSHJ, is the most prominent recent example of this.2 He has defended both the reality of the empty tomb and the objectivity of the appearances, and indeed urged that though mathematical-style proof is impossible, the literal resurrection of Jesus provides far and away the best explanation for the preponderance of the data.3 Wright is convinced that
neither the empty tomb by itselfnor the appearances by themselves, could have generated the early Christian belief. The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy. Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would have been classied as visions or hallucinations, which were well enough known in the ancient world.4
So the historian should posit not only that the disciples believed that they saw Jesus, but also that his tomb was known to be empty. (2) Others have thought that belief in Jesus resurrection rests ultimately upon some mundane circumstance attending his burial or connected with his tomb that pre-scientic Christians, more credulous than disinterested, misinterpreted. Is it not more reasonable to think that there was some faulty observation or misinterpretation than that a dead man became undead? Perhaps Jewish authorities removed the body and quietly disposed of it because they did not want it venerated.5 Or maybe it was a gardener who did this, for reasons forever unknown.6 Others have offered that the women went to the wrong tomb,7 or that Joseph of Arimathea kept Jesus body in his family tomb for a day and then moved it to its nal resting place, a circumstance which evidently never came to anyones attention.8 Whatever the reason, when the tomb was found vacated,
1. In addition to what follows, see the more detailed review in Dale C. Allison, Jr, Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005), pp. 191-213. 2. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003). See also his essay in this edition of JSHJ. 3. Wright, Resurrection, p. 720. 4. Wright, Resurrection, p. 686. 5. So D. Gerald Bostock, Do We Need an Empty Tomb?, ExpTim 105 (1994), pp. 201204. He argues that the leaders then spread the rumor that the disciples had stolen the body. 6. Tertullian, Spec. 30 (CSEL, 20; ed. A. Reifferscheid and G. Wissowa, p. 29), knows opponents who claim that Jesus was removed by a gardener so that his lettuces would not be trampled by the pious crowds visiting the site! 7. So famously Kirsopp Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London: Williams & Norgate, 1907), pp. 241-52. 8. The original presentation of this thesis appears to be anonymous, Versuch ber die Auferstehung Jesu, Bibliothek fr Kritik und Exegese des Neuen Testaments und lteste Kirchengeschcihte 2 (1799), pp. 537-51.
Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection
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belief in the resurrection was born. Subsequent hallucinations conrmed the conviction. Another conjecture is that the crucied Jesus never really gave up the ghost.9 In Mk 15.44-45, Pilate wonders that Jesus is so soon dead. Maybe, then, he was not dead. Perhaps he revived in the cool air of the tomb to make his exit, and later his unoccupied sepulcher was discovered, or perchance he ran into some people who naively mistook him to be returned from the dead. (3) Much more popular, at least in recent times, has been a third approach, which is represented in a couple of essays herein. This holds that it was not knowledge of the empty tomb that begot hallucinations but hallucinations that begot the ction of the empty tomb. Maybe a grieving Peter conjured the face of Jesus, which the uncritical, superstitious disciple sincerely thought real. A sort of mass hysteria, the product of emotional contagion, followed, with others, victims of their over-luxuriant imaginations, also claiming to see Jesus, although he was nothing but a gment of their optical delusion. The matter might not be much different than a Bigfoot scare: once there is one report, another may follow, and then another and another, although we may well doubt the veracity of what is related.10 Another parallel would be some of the episodes involving sightings of the Virgin Mary. The Roman Catholic Church has condemned many of the less sober reports of the Blessed Mother as arising from prodigal hysteria. Maybe it was the same with Jesus followers. Fantasy got mixed up with reality; collective delusion took over. The story of the empty tomb, which is not found in Paul, can then be a late legend, a pure postulate of the faith fabricated by credulous visionaries.11 (4) A fourth hypothesis, promoted today by next to nobody, involves not self-delusion but the deliberate deception of others. H.S. Reimarus (16941768) endorsed the polemic in Mt. 28.11-15 and surmised that some of Jesus followers secretly stole his body by night.12 They did not want the crucixion to put them out of a business they enjoyed and from which they proted. So they
9. See Karl Heinrich Georg Venturini, Natrliche Geschichte des grossen Propheten von Nazareth (4 vols.; Bethlehem [Copenhagen]: Schubothe, 2nd edn, 1806), IV, pp. 169-312; and M. and T.A. Lloyd Davies, Resurrection or Resuscitation?, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 25.2 (1991), pp. 167-70. 10. The comparison of Jesus resurrection with sightings of Bigfoot appears in Michael Goulder, The Baseless Fabric of a Vision, in Gavin dCosta (ed.), Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), pp. 48-61; idem, Did Jesus of Nazareth Rise from the Dead?, in Stephen Barton and Graham Stanton (eds.), Resurrection: Essays in Honour of Leslie Houlden (London: SPCK, 1994), pp. 58-68. 11. See esp. Maurice Goguel, The Birth of Christianity (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953), pp. 29-86. 12. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Reimarus: Fragments (ed. Charles H. Talbert; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), pp. 199, 248-58.
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conspired to steal their masters corpse, which allowed them to proclaim the resurrection and his impending second coming. (5) Some have offered that, while the story of the empty tomb is legendary, the visions were veridical: the disciples did encounter a triumphant, post-mortem Jesus who sought to communicate with them. This was the view of C. J. Cadoux, who wrote that the least difcult explanation of these appearances seems to me to regard them as real manifestations given to his followers by Jesus himself, not by means of the presence of his physical body resuscitated from the empty tomb, but by way of those strange processes sufciently attested to us by psychical research, but as yet very imperfectly understood.13 Hans Grass came to a similar conclusion, although he preferred the idiom of theology to that of psychical research. According to Grass, the tomb was not emptied, but God did grant the disciples visions of the victorious Jesus who, upon bodily death, had entered into the divine life.14 (6) The rival accounts introduced so far all focus on events following the crucixion. A sixth approach begins earlier. Rudolf Pesch found traces of a tradition of a dying and rising prophet in Mk 6.14-16; Rev. 11.7-12, and some later sources and argued that this tradition was known to the disciples, who regarded Jesus as Gods eschatological prophet. So when, in the event, he suffered and died, his faithful followers naturally postulated Gods vindication of their leader. Their faith, established before Good Friday, eventually produced the legends of Easter. The tomb was not empty, and all the appearance stories in the gospels are late. Pesch further contended that the unelaborated ptheusually translated as he appearedof 1 Cor. 15.3-8 need not refer to visionary experiences: it is rather part of a formula of legitimation. Resurrection faith came neither from visionsthere need not have been anynor from discovery of an empty tomb that is legendbut from the continuing conviction that if Gods eschatological prophet died to salutary effect, he must also be exalted to God.15 Pesch is not alone in urging that belief in the resurrection was more a continuation of pre-Easter faith in the historical Jesus than the product of peculiar
13. C.J. Cadoux, The Life of Jesus (West Drayton, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1948), p. 165. 14. Hans Grass, Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2nd edn, 1962). 15. Rudolf Pesch, Zur Entstehung des Glaubens an die Auferstehung Jesu, Theologische Quartalschrift 153 (1973), pp. 201-28. Pesch, whose proposal received much critical discussion in Germany in the 1970s, later changed his mind and offered a different hypothesis; see Zur Entstehung des Glaubens an die Auferstehung Jesu: Ein neuer Versuch, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie 30 (1983), pp. 73-98.
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events after the crucixion.16 Stephen Patterson also represents this point of view when he writes that
the presupposition for any claim about resurrection is not appearance stories, empty tombs, and the like. Resurrection, as vindication, presupposes only that a righteous person has been killed in faithfulness to a divine cause. In a dissident Jewish context, this is all one needs. The followers of Jesus could have said God raised Jesus from the dead on the day he died, and probably did.17
(7) It did not, once upon a time, require much effort to run across mythological proposals, according to which there was no resurrection because there was no historical Jesus: the tale of his rising was modeled on myths of dying and rising gods. Few forward this account of things today,18 and no responsible scholar can nd any truth in it. As Jesus of Nazareth was not a myth, this is an explanation that explains nothing.19 (8) A last option I introduce not because it is representative but because it is, on the contrary, novel and so may stand for the several truly idiosyncratic hypotheses that have failed to garner respect or support. According to the Roman Catholic John Michael Perry, Jesus soul did in fact triumph over death, and he was able to communicate this to the disciples through veridical visions.20 His body, being unnecessary for life in the world to come, rotted in the tomb. In Jesus time and place, however, most Jews mistakenly believed that survival required a body, so for the disciples to embrace the truth of Jesus victory over death, God had to arrange things so that the tomb would be void. God did this by hurrying up the natural processes of decay. The body remained where Joseph of Arimathea laid it, but its disintegration was so rapid that, when the tomb was entered shortly after Jesus interment, it appeared that its occupant had vanished. So far then for the various alternatives. What sorts of arguments have scholars mustered to promote one over another? With regard to the appearance stories,
16. See esp. Peter Fielder, Vorsterliche Vorgaben fr den Osterglauben, and Ingo Broer, Seid stets bereit, jedem Rede und Antwort zu stehen, der nach der Hoffnung fragt, die euch erfllt (1 Pet 3,15): Das leere Grab und die Erscheinungen Jesu im Lichte der historischen Kritik, in Ingo Broer and Jrgen Werbick (eds.), Der Herr ist wahrhaft auferstanden (Lk 24.34): Biblische und systematische Beitrge zur Entstehung des Osterglaubens (SBS, 134; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1988), pp. 9-28 and 29-62 respectively. 17. Stephen J. Patterson, Why did Christians say: God raised Jesus from the Dead?, Forum 10 (1994), p. 142. 18. Yet note Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light (New York: Walker & Co., 2005). 19. On the whole subject of dying and rising gods, including their relationship to early Christianity, see Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: Dying and Rising Gods in the Ancient Near East (ConBOT, 50; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001). 20. John Michael Perry, Exploring the Identity and Mission of Jesus (Kansas City, KS: Sheed & Ward, 1996), pp. 176-213.
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those who regard them as subjective or hallucinatory typically make three major points: (1) people do often see things that are not there; (2) critical analysis demonstrates that the relevant stories in the gospels are almost certainly late; (3) social psychology, without recourse to Providence, can explain both the onset of Peters vision of Jesus and the successive, similar experiences of others. Those who, to the contrary, believe that the data take us elsewhere, often observe the following: (1) it would be much easier to think in terms of hallucination if only one person had been involved; it is harder when, as was the case with the ostensible appearances of Jesus, many people are reported to have seen something, or rather someone; (2) collective sightings, such as the appearance(s) to the twelve, are particularly hard to dismiss as purely subjective; (3) both Paul and James were not adherents of Jesus when they had their experiences. As for the story of the empty tomb, those who argue that it is a legendary consequence of the visions commonly forward these arguments: While there are relevant stories in all four canonical gospels, those in Matthew and Luke are widely thought to depend, in whole or in part, upon Mark. If one is persuaded that John also rests upon one or more synoptics, it is possible to contend that our only source for the empty tomb is Mark: everything else could have grown out of his account. Mark, according to most contemporary experts, probably ended with this: So they went out and ed from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid (16.8). Some, including Michael Goulder in the following pages, have thought that they said nothing to anyone is a sign that the entire episode was invented at a late date. The words explain why no one hitherto knew the tale. The canonical accounts of Easter morning are fantastic. They feature not only an angel or angels but also a dead man coming back to life. Matthew, for good measure, adds an earthquake. While 1 Cor. 15.4 speaks of Jesus burial, it says nothing about Joseph of Arimathea, nor does Paul anywhere else refer to an empty tomb. Evidently the apostle did not know anything about Jesus grave; and if he did not know about it, then surely no one else before him did either. The story of the empty tomb almost certainly, it follows, originated after Paul. If some Christians had, through visionary encounters with a postmortem Jesus, come to believe in his resurrection and exaltation, and if they had a physicalist view of resurrection, they could have inferred at some point that his body was in heaven and so his tomb empty. They could have reasoned like this without fear of contradiction if the location of his burial or disposal were unknown, or if too
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much time had passed since Jesus death. Are not the ction-creating capacities of the early Christians on display in Mt. 27.51-53, in the tall tale about tombs being opened and the bodies of ancient worthies exiting to promenade around Jerusalem? One can compile a host of obviously ctional stories about empty tombs or disappearing bodies. Legend tells us about Enochs rapture (Gen. 5.24; Heb. 11.5), Moses mysterious disappearance (Josephus, Ant. 9.28), Elijahs ascent to heaven (2 Kgs 2.11-12, 15-18), the vain search for the remains of Jobs children (T. Job 39.140.6), the assumptions of Ezra and Baruch (4 Ezra 14.48 v.l.; 2 Bar. 76.1-5), the resurrection of the two witnesses in Revelation 11, the failure to nd the body of John the Baptists father (Prot. Jas. 24.3), the disappearance of the corpse of the thief who asked Jesus to remember him in his kingdom (Narratio Jos. 4.1), the missing remains of John the Beloved (Acts John 115 v.l. ed. M. Bonnet, p. 215), and the bodily ascension of Mary the mother of Jesus. Graeco-Roman analogies also exist: the missing bones of Heracles (Diodorus Siculus 4.38.4-5), the rapture of Troas, lord of the Trojans (Homer, Il. 20.234-35), the failure to nd Aeneas body (Dionysius Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 1.64), the disappearance of Romulus (Ovid, Met. 14.805-851; Plutarch, Romulus 27.728.3), the miraculous exit of Empedocles (Diogenes Laertius 8.67-69), the departure of Aristeas of Proconnesus (Herodotus 4.1415), the translation of Cleomedes of Astypalaea (Pausanias 6.9.6-9), and the various rumors about Apollonius (Philostratus, Vit. Ap. 8.30; cf. 8.31: no one can say where Apollonius is buried).
Some of these arguments, especially the last two, are fairly strong. The other point of view, however, also has its observations to make, not all of which are devoid of real force. One runs across the following assertions most frequently: According to Mt. 28.11-15, the Jewish authorities put out the rumor that the disciples robbed the tomb. From this we learn that anti-Christian propaganda concurred that the tomb was empty. The disagreement concerned only on how it came to be so. Early Christians did not venerate Jesus tomb. This is remarkable given the Jewish piety surrounding the graves of saints. The fact is best explained on the supposition that Jesus remains were known not to be there. The old confession in 1 Corinthians 15.3ff. implies an empty tomb. The sequence is burial followed by resurrection. If this creates any image in the minds eye, surely it is of a tomb rst being lled and then being emptied. The early Christians could not have preached Jesus resurrection in
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Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Jerusalem unless his tomb was known to be opened and vacant. Would opponents have let the troublesome sectarians get away with their outrageous and offensive claim, a claim which had God overturning the verdict of the Sanhedrin, if it could readily have been falsied? Surely enemies of the faith would have displayed the body if they could have found it. Mark 16.1-8 exhibits little if any scriptural intertextuality, a fact all the more striking considering how heavily Marks passion narrative depends upon the Bible. The verses are also theologically undeveloped. They do not remark on Jesus resurrection being the dawning of a new age or inaugurating the general resurrection. They say nothing at all about Jesus descent to the underworld or his ascent to heaven. They fail to recount the resurrection itself or to inform us about the nature of Jesus risen body. And the passage lacks christological titles and themes. Marks nal pericope also does not explicitly defend itself; apologetical interests remain unfolded. Were Mark 16.1-8 a free Christian ction, would it not be more theologically interesting or apologetically useful? Visions of the risen Jesus, without belief in his empty tomb, might have given rise to the claim that he had ascended to heaven or that God had vindicated him, but not to the claim that God had raised him from the dead. Talk about resurrection was, in rst-century Jerusalem, talk about bodies and bones. Other than an empty tomb, then, what would have moved early Christians to conceive of Jesus vindication precisely as resurrection? It is unexpected that, in all four canonical gospels, women make the initial discovery of the opened sepulcher. If Christians had made up the incident altogether, uninformed by any historical memory, surely they would have seen to it that some additional, more convincing witnesses were on the scene from the beginning. 1 Cor. 15.3-8 is discreetly silent about the womens role because their testimony, in a rst-century context, would have been not an asset but a liability.
I shall, in these pages, refrain from evaluating the sundry arguments just introduced.21 I wish rather to review the essays that follow in order to see just what they have to contribute to the traditional discussion. The short article of Gary Habermas, a well-known conservative Christian apologist, attempts a survey in order to answer the question in its title: Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying?
21. Interested readers may consult my Resurrecting Jesus, pp. 229-350, for an extensive analysis.
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He espies at least seven recent trends: (1) There is a limited surge in naturalistic explanations to the historicity of Jesus resurrection. (2) A strong majority of critical scholars supports the historicity of the empty tomb, and the favorite argument on its behalf is the presence of women as initial witnesses. (3) 1 Cor. 15.3ff., which passes on a tradition scholars typically trace to the thirties is the the most critically respected witness for the historicity of Jesus resurrection. (4) Many quarry Acts for pertinent primitive materials. (5) An increasing number of recent scholars has been balancing the two aspects of Pauls phrase spiritual body. By this Habermas seems to mean that, according to most, Paul himself believed in Jesus bodily resurrection. (6) Contemporary scholars generally recognize that multiple [theological] truths follow from the death and resurrection of Jesus. (7) The near unanimous consent of critics is that the rst followers of Jesus truly believed that they had seen the risen Jesus, however we explain the fact. I must confess myself incurably incurious regarding surveys of this sort. I am always much less interested in counting noses than in reviewing argumentsand especially in a case such as this. For, as Habermas himself acknowledges, ideology plays such an important role in the scholars conclusions. One suspects that, typically, most such conclusions are largely known in advance. But laying to the side my own and perhaps idiosyncratic prejudices regarding the value of surveys of academic opinion, I suppose that there is some justice in all of Habermass generalizations. I do nonetheless wonder whether they would not equally hold for the years 195075, or even for 192550. Do they really distinguish the present moment from earlier times, that is, truly highlight anything distinctive about contemporary research? I am unsure. For instance, I wonder about Habermass emphasis on the widespread scholarly agreement that the disciples really had experiences that they construed as encounters with the risen Jesus. Christians of various stripes have always believed this, and I am under the impression that, since David Friedrich Strauss, most skeptical scholars have also had no qualms about attributing visions to the rst resurrection witnesses. So I am uncertain why Habermas espies here the single most crucial development in recent resurrection studies. Has there ever been a time when a signicant number of critical scholars did not believe that some early Christians thought themselves to have seen the risen Jesus? If Habermass contribution is a survey of scholarship that aims to be almost comprehensive in scope, the scope of Evanss essay is by contrast narrow. He connes himself to a single topic, that being the canonical story of Jesus burial at the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, which he argues is almost certainly historical. Jewish sources, including Philo and Josephus, reect a desire to bury the dead, even enemies, properly. This was in part, Evans contends, because of Deut. 21.22-23, which was commonly understood to prohibit unburied corpses from deling the land. The extant evidence, moreover, indicates that, during peacetime,
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Romans typically permitted the Jews to observe their burial customs, even in the case of an executed criminal. As for the gospel accounts themselves, they are, on Evanss view, consistent with what we otherwise know of Roman practice from both literary and archaeological sources; and the story of women observing Jesus burial and later returning to the spot commends itself as likely. The women were not apologetically useful, and it is otherwise hard to explain the presence of such obscure individuals in such an important story. Finally, although some have argued that, as archaeology has recovered the remains of only one crucied man, we should infer that victims of crucixion were rarely buried, Evans instead contends (a) that we would not know about even the one set of remains except that a nail was stuck in a knot in the beam and could not be removed; (b) that the skeletal remains of crucixion victims who were tied up instead of nailed would show signs of how they died; (c) the surviving skeletons are from the better-constructed tombs and so not from the lower classes, from whom most of the executed came; and (d) most of the rst-century Jews who were crucied perished during 6670, during the war with Rome, and their corpses would not have been buried. Evans, in my judgment, makes a reasonably strong case. That Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish council, buried the crucied Jesus of Nazareth is plausible; indeed, I agree that it is, more than that, probable.22 The implications for the debate concerning the tradition that Jesus tomb was empty are considerable, although Evans himself leaves them unfolded. If one were to conclude, against Evans, that the story of Jesus burial is a ction, then one would almost inevitably also suppose that the story of the empty tomb is a legend, for the latter seems to presuppose the former, or a story very much like it. As one scholar has said, it does appear that the historicity of the empty tomb story is dependent to large extent on the historicity of the burial story.23 In other words, afrmation of the empty tomb requires that there be some history in Mk 15.4247, which is why Evanss essay is so important for the debate in these pages. Passing next to the essay of James Crossley, it is, unlike that of Evans, a direct rejoinder to Tom Wrights big book on the resurrection. Wright has vigorously argued that belief in Jesus resurrection presupposes not only appearances of the post-mortem Jesus but also an unlled tomb. Crossley, to the contrary, believes that visions alone, which need no supernatural explanation, fostered such belief. After Jesus was martyred, his followers had hallucinations of him that they, because of their Jewish context, interpreted in terms of resurrection; and once this conviction was in place, someone invented the story
22. Cf. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, pp. 352-63, and see further now the informed study of Jodi Magness, Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James, JBL 124 (2005), pp. 121-54. 23. So John Barclay, The Resurrection in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship, in dCosta (ed.), Resurrection Reconsidered, p. 23.
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of the empty tomb. We may think Mark himself the culprit, because the silence of the women (16.8) implies that the story was not generally known before him. Crossley, underlining that ancient Jews and Christians were quite capable of creating ctional narratives, then attempts to dismantle the standard arguments for the historicity of the empty tomb. My own conviction is that Crossley is justied in chastening Wright for not paying more heed to cross-cultural visions, especially visions that come to people while they are mourning the dead, and nothing in Wrights present contribution makes me think otherwise.24 Context certainly is decisive for interpretation: the meaning of a vision is determined by the mental world of the percipient(s). Crossley is further on target in urging that it was quite possible for early Christians to tell tall tales about Jesus, and that there are indeed some tall tales in the canonical accounts of Jesus denouement. Who would scorn anyone for refusing to receive the isolated testimony of Mt. 27.51-53, with its background in Ezek. 37 and Zech. 14.4-5, as sober history? That an earthquake opened the tombs of some long-dead saints, who then awoke from their collective slumber, entered Jerusalem, and appeared to manyall of which is attested solely by a document coming from perhaps sixty years after the alleged eventsdoes not clearly commend itself as solemn fact to the sober-minded historian. I nd Wrights hesitation on this one (in his book, Resurrection) hard to fathom. Mt. 27.51-53 is a religious yarn spawned by the same source that gave us the legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus and other transparent ctionsthe human imagination. It may communicate theology; it does not preserve history. Despite my agreement on these several matters, I am left with some critical questions. I remain unclear why, on Crossleys reading, Jesus vindication was conceptualized precisely as resurrection. Here Wrights remains largely persuasive, and his comeback in his essay below is to the point. Why did not Peter and his fellow believers proclaim, in a manner reminiscent of Jubilees 23.31, that while Jesus bones rested for now in the earth, his spirit was exalted in heaven? Or why did they not speak about Jesus the way the Testament of Job, without using the language of resurrection, speaks about its heroJobs soul was taken to heaven immediately after his death while his body was prepared for burial? Given the anthropological dualism abroad at the time,25 why did the disciples not interpret Jesus death as his martyrdom, the visions as proof of the exaltation of his soul or spirit, and keep their hopes rmly xed upon the coming consummation, when the dead, including Jesus, would be resurrected? I am also less than sanguine with Crossleys wholesale dismissal of the story of the empty tomb. To show that there are legendary elements in the accounts is
24. See further Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, pp. 269-99. 25. Robert H. Gundry, Sma in Biblical Theology, with Emphasis upon Pauline Anthropology (SBLMS, 29; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
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not to discredit those accounts utterly. Legend can be parasitic upon memory. Myths about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy abound, but Kennedy was in fact shot by somebody. In the present instance, Crossley has not, to my satisfaction, established that the supernaturally charged narratives in the New Testament cannot descend from a concrete discovery. In constructing his case, Crossley admits that the intertextual barrenness of Mk 16.1-8 seems, at rst glance, unexpected. He then suggests that a possible reason for the lack of scriptural reference in the resurrection narratives was that such knowledge was not a prerequisite for scripturally ignorant Gentile believers who only had to believe in this central aspect of early Christian belief. Perhaps I misunderstand Crossley but, as Wright retorts, does this not leave unexplained the abundance of intertextuality in Marks passion narrative? Why does Mark bombard his Gentile audience with scriptural allusions in chs. 1415 but then feel constrained to let up when he gets to the resurrection? Another concern with Crossley arises because he, like others before him, explains the presence of the women at the tomb by urging that the disciples had ed, so the women are at the grave on Easter Sunday by default.26 It is, however, the hallmark of legends to sin against established facts. Why should Mark 16.1-8 be more conscientious? Why not bring Peter and other important male gures on stage despite what really happened? Crossley, after all, argues at length that ction often trumps fact. Luke and John reveal that Christian traditionwhich surely from the start was aware of the polemical opportunity outsiders could nd in the womens witness27did not need to interpret the ight of the disciples as an immediate
26. Although Crossley credits this proposal to Goulder, it already appears in Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 274. 27. Commentators down through the ages have regularly shown their unease. John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John (2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), p. 247, in commenting on Jn 20.1, cites 1 Cor. 1.27 (God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the worldto reduce to nothing the things that are) and offers that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in order to ll the disciples with shame, for they deserved not only to have women for their teachers, but even oxen and asses. Again, when expounding 20.17, he stresses that Marys role as witness is an extraordinary occurrence, an example of God displaying power through weak and contemptible vessels. Such prejudice did not commence with Calvin. According to Origen, C. Cels. 2.59 (ed. M. Marcovich, p. 131), the pagan polemicist Celsus derided the testimony to the empty tomb as deriving from a half-frantic woman. Even Lk. 24.22-23 (Some women of our group astounded uswhen they did not nd his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive) reects the reluctance to believe the testimony of women; cf. Gos. Mary 17.16-22; LAB 9.10; 42.5. Nothing similar is said about refusal to believe what the male disciples say, although it is no less unbelievable. See further Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans,
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exit from Jerusalem, which excluded their participation in the discovery of the empty tomb. Indeed, Lk. 23.49 (all his acquaintancesstood at a distance) and Jn 19.26-27 (the disciple whom Jesus loved standing beside her) place disciples at the crucixion. And even if tradition believed that the disciples were not around on Easter mornyet Mk 16.7 implies that they had not yet set out for Galileeone fails to see why Christian storytellers would have created a legend with Mary Magdalene at the tomb instead of a tale in which the disciples, if gone to Galilee, immediately return, perhaps right after the appearance to Peter, to nd the tomb empty in Jerusalem. Or why not a story in which Joseph of Arimathea or, as the Gospel of Peter in fact has it, important Jewish ofcials visit the sepulcher or see the risen Jesus and so learn the truth? Like Crossleys essay, that of Michael Goulder is a direct response to Tom Wright. And again like Crossley, Goulder maintains that belief in the resurrection of Jesus can be safely attributed to visions that do not require supernatural inspiration. Goulder has argued his opinion before.28 In the present contribution, he emphasizes that there is nothing unusual in Christians afrming that Jesus rose from the dead because Judaism well knew about the continuing life of heroes in heaven; that, if we read between the lines of 1 Corinthians 15, we learn that some Christians in Jerusalem held a more spiritual understanding of resurrection than did Paul; and, nally, that the narrative accounts of the resurrection are so riddled with inconsistencies that they cannot be believed: their memory is nil. The tomb, if there was one, was not empty. Goulders essay is provocative because, among other reasons, Paul is more commonly portrayed as a Hellenist who moved Christianity away from its Palestinian roots whereas here it is Paul who was the faithful Pharisee with his literal understanding of resurrection in contrast to certain Christians in Jerusalem, who perhaps under the inuence of Philo had a more spiritual take on things. Whether so much can be divined in 1 Corinthians 15 is clearly open for debate. The nature of the opposition that Paul is combating is notoriously difcult to discern. I leave it to others to decide whether Goulder has nally made everything clear with his hypothesis, which Wright sees no reason to take seriously, and which is not yet at any rate a staple of the commentaries. One assertion, however, I do wish to appraise. This is Goulders comment that Wrights attempts to evade the problem of the womens silence are profoundly unconvincing. Goulder is persuaded that 16.8, Marks ending, more
2002), pp. 268-77. The gospels come from a world in which Christian writers could condently speak of old wives tales (1 Tim. 4.7) and silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3.6-7). Cf. Josephus, Ant. 4.219: From women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their sex. 28. Goulder, The Baseless Fabric of a Vision, pp. 48-61; idem, Did Jesus of Nazareth Rise from the Dead?, pp. 58-68.
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than hints at the lateness of the story. Yet what other logion or story in the canonical Jesus tradition justies its recent appearance by pretending that people kept quiet about it? Furthermore, we really do not know beyond all doubt that Mark ended at 16.8;29 and even if we did, they said nothing to anyone immediately trails not a command to proclaim the empty tomb but the angels imperative to tell the disciples about Jesus going before them to Galilee; so the womens failure is more closely connected to the latter than to the former. How does Goulders reading account for this? Beyond this, readers of Mark naturally presume, because of the prophecy in 14.28, that Jesus did in fact meet the disciples in Galilee. Near to hand, then, is the inference that the angel must, after all, have gotten his message through to the disciples via the women. One understands Wrights assertion that Mark cannot mean that the women never said anything to anyone; otherwise nobody would ever have known that anything at all had happened; he must therefore mean that the women to begin with said nothing to anyone, but that later they did spill the beans. One may compare Mk 1.44, where Jesus tells a leper whom he has healed to say nothing to anyone and yet adds this: Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded. Clearly, and despite the unqualied command, say nothing to anyone, the one-time leper, now returned to normal, will have to explain himself to those running the temple. Thus just as 1.44 must mean say nothing to anyone (except the priest), so too can 16.8 plausibly mean said nothing to anyone (except his disciples). In line with this, Matthew clearly read Mark so that the message entrusted to the women gets to the men without noticeable delay (cf. 28.16 with 28.7 and 28.10). In sum, at least one of Goulders arguments for the lateness of Mk 16.1-8 is not free of snags. Turning to the article of Bryan, I nd that much of it is concerned more with resurrection in Judaism in general than with the resurrection of Jesus in particular. Bryans rst goal is to offer several corrections to some of Wrights generalities about Jewish beliefs concerning life beyond or after death. The broader subject is important for our narrower subject insofar as it may indirectly instruct us as to what the earliest Christians meant when they proclaimed that God had raised Jesus from the deadalthough what matters above all, given the diversity among ancient Jews, is precisely what the eschatological expectations of Jesus and his disciples were prior to the crucixion, for that was the immediate background for the most primitive kerygma. Bryan does not, however, tackle this challenging problem of pre-Easter expectations, which would involve a critical sifting of the synoptic sources. He rather, toward the end of his essay, turns to the subject of exalted gures in Judaism and argues that the early Christian conviction about Jesus resurrection
29. 2003). See N. Clayton Croy, The Mutilation of Marks Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
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has stronger parallels than Wright has allowed. Byran calls our attention to traditions about the transformations and heavenly exaltations of Enoch, Noah, Moses, and Elijah. The step from these to what we nd in early Christology is not, or so it is implied, large. Bryan says that it is specious to complain that the legends about these gures do not use the language of resurrection. I hesitate to concur. His parallels come with differences, and these last remain to give one pause. (a) Whereas Jesus was crucied and died, the relevant traditions about Enoch, Noah, Moses, and Elijah are about people who were taken up without dying. Bryans observations elide this distinction a bit, but they do not eliminate it. (b) It is, one might argue with some conviction, easier to create traditions about legendary gures from days gone by than about somebody who has been dead for just a few days; and the proclamation of Jesus resurrection, there is reason to believe, goes back to the very rst week after the crucixion.30 Wright, in his response, is justied in insisting upon this point. (c) Given that the language of exaltation rather than resurrection is associated with Enoch, Noah, Moses, and Elijah, is it not reasonable to posit that traditions about exalted gures played their role in primitive Christology, but only after the onset of belief in Jesus resurrection, however this last was derived? Much less critical of Wright than those preceding him is Hurtado. In fact, Hurtado raises no objections to Wrights claim that the tomb was empty or that the disciples really saw the risen Jesus. His attention lies elsewhere. One complaint he lodges is whether Wrights characterization of Pauls use of resurrection language as sometimes metaphorical is adequate. The apostle, according to Hurtado, instead thought that Jesus resurrection-life/power really was already owing in and through believers, though the effects were provisionally limited. Here, it may be, Wright has been misunderstood, as he argues in his rejoinder. Hurtado also faults Wright for troubling himself too little over the genesis of early cultic devotion to Jesus, and he attributes this shortcoming to a failure to pay sufcient attention to religious experience. But
30. Quite a few texts assert that Jesus resurrection took place on the third day (Mt. 16.21; 17.23; 20.19; Lk. 9.22; 13.32; 18.33; 24.7, 46; Acts 10.40; 1 Cor. 15.4) or after three days (Mt. 27.63; Mk 8.31; 9.31; 10.34). We do not know whether this specication originally meant a little while (cf. Acts 25.1; 28.7, 12, 17; Josephus, Ant. 8.408) or alluded to Hos. 6.2 (cf. Tertullian, Adv. Jud. 13.23 [ed. H. Trnkle, p. 36]) or recalled a motif of divine deliverance coming on or after three days or was offered as proof that Jesus was really dead (cf. Jn 11.17, 39) or whether it goes back to something that he himself said, something close enough to what seemingly happened as to be appropriated, or has yet some other explanation. Whatever the truth, Christians almost certainly found three-day language tting because they believed that very little time elapsed between Jesus crucixion and Gods vindication of him. This is some reason to suppose the gospels correct when they represent Easter faith as emerging very soon, indeed within a week, after the crucixion.
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whether Hurtados convictions on this matter are really so far from Wrights is not at all obvious (and Wright himself has doubts; see his essay below). For me, however, Hurtados most intriguing query, to which Wright does not react, is his last: Has Wright adequately handled the diversity of beliefs about resurrection in early Christianity?. Here Hurtado refers to Hymenaeus and Philetus who, according to 2 Tim. 2.17-18, believed that the resurrection is past; and he seeks to link this to the possibility that some in Corinth had a radically realized eschatology. This suggestion quickly turns into a large and very complex topic. One also needs to consider (a) the Markan and Matthean passion narratives, which creatively mirror certain prophecies contained in the preceding eschatological discourses and so portray Jesus end as though it were in some sense the end of age;31 (b) the meaning and origin of Mt. 27.51-53, which reports resurrections besides that of Jesus; and (c) the possible implications of Rom. 1.3-4, which appears to take up traditional material and speaks of the resurrection of the dead32 rather than of his [Jesus] resurrection from the dead. Although we really have no way of knowing exactly what Hymenaeus and Philetus believed, there are a few hints that the conviction attributed to themthe resurrection is past alreadymay have grown out of a widespread and presumably ancient brand of realized eschatology. For myself, this remains a fascinating topic for further investigation. The contribution of Tom Wright is a spirited reply to his critics that does not back down from any important position he took earlier: all of his major assertions are, notwithstanding all criticism, still in place. As I have, in the preceding pages, often noted where I agree with his answers to his critics and where I do not, I shall say no more on that score. Instead I would like to end by expressing two long-held convictions, which the following essays have not undone. First, the data are often much more ambiguous than many, including Wright I believe, would like to admit. I am not persuaded by anyones effort to establish that the traditional Christian confession of Jesus bodily resurrection is somehow, in Wrights words, an inference to the best explanation.33 Yet at the same time I am equally not persuaded by Crossleys afrmation in this journal that we can show that exactly the opposite is in fact the case. If historical reasoning cannot verify the orthodox version of events, it likewise cannot falsify them. That something happened, miraculous or not, does not entail our ability to show that it happened, and in the present case, and as these essays demonstrate, there is
31. See Dale C. Allison, Jr, The End of the Ages has Come: An Early Interpretation of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 26-50. 32. Ex anastases nekrn; anastasis nekrn was a standard term for the general resurrection of the dead: Mt. 22.31; Lk. 20.35; Acts 4.2; 17.32; 23.6; 24.21; 26.23; 1 Cor. 15.12, 13, 21, 42; Heb. 6.2; Did. 16.6; etc. 33. Wright, Resurrection, p. 718; cf. pp. 8, 10, 686, 717.
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spacious room for doubt, debate, and speculation. It should not take Barthian theology to recognize the distressing limits of historians and historical reason. We should be modest about our abilities. Robust condence in our historicalcritical conclusions is out of place. Secondly, and to observe the obvious, peoples arguments regarding the origins of Christianity are unavoidably driven by large assumptions about the nature of the world, assumptions that cannot often if ever be the upshot of historical investigation. Goulders preference for a naturalistic explanation of Jesus resurrection did not grow out of his study of the ancient Christian materials but was rather brought to them. Similarly, Wrights passionate belief in the traditional Christian confession was not the result of his historical researches but rather an article of faith that has informed his scholarly work from its inception. This is why he can appropriately quote Wittgensteins remark that love believes the resurrection. So the historical questions quickly become questions about ones world-view, which is another topic altogether.

Allison D.C. - Explaining The Resurrection. Conflicting Convictions (JSHJ 2005)

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Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

http://jhj.sagepub.com Explaining the Resurrection: Conflicting Convictions

EXPLAINING THE RESURRECTION: CONFLICTING CONVICTIONS

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Allison, Jr Explaining the Resurrection

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