Thinking Christian

I continue my survey of historical evidences for Jesus’ resurrection with an outline of evidences for the empty tomb. This is part of a continuing set of cumulative evidences, not intended to be complete in itself but to be read as part of the series on Evidences for the Resurrection. I am using William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith as my source again.

Craig lists six “lines of evidence” supporting the historicity of the empty tomb:

1. The historical reliability of the story of Jesus’ burial
2. Multiple, early, independent attestation of the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb
3. The use of the phrase “the first day of the week” in a way that reflects ancient tradition
4. The simplicity of the way Mark presents the story: it lacks legendary or theological development
5. The account of the tomb’s being discovered by women
6. The earliest Jewish polemic, which suggests the empty tomb

I can’t (and shouldn’t!) re-write all of Craig’s support for each of these. I will just summarize a few significant points, beginning with this overall observation: the manner in which Craig and other current apologists approach these issues is historical, not faith-driven. There are historical reasons to consider each of these lines of evidence to be valid.

Concerning the multiple, early independent attestation of the stories of the burial of Christ, and of the empty tomb being discovered, we have already discussed the most contentious issue: the independence of the sources. In Craig there is much more by way of demonstration of the probable independence of the accounts, specifically on this issue. Whether one views the various Gospel accounts as having come from oral tradition, from other prior sources, or from the authors’ own experiences and recollections, the woven pattern of varying details indicates they did not draw all of their information from a single source, and they did not collude with each other to craft a single narrative of deceit.

The point regarding the “first day of the week” requires knowledge of the original languages. Craig points out that it is awkward Greek, but if the Greek is back-translated into Aramaic, the language used in Jerusalem at the time, the resulting phrase is perfectly natural and reflective of Jewish tradition (the term “Sabbath” is used). This suggests that the phrase was first used in Aramaic, which implies that it was used early.

Mark’s simple account of the resurrection is not what one would expect of a fable developing long after the events.

The discovery of the tomb by women is quite remarkable. The social status of women in both Judaic and Greco-Roman culture at the time was lower than most of us could even conceive (more here, mp3 file). They had the social status of children at every age. They were not allowed to give testimony in court; they had no credibility as witnesses. If the early church had been trying to create a believable story at some later date, it is highly unlikely they would have made women the discoverers of the empty tomb, or the first witnesses of the risen Jesus. The most credible explanation for their being recorded as the first witnesses is that it was true.

The Jews who wanted to deny the resurrection spread a tale that the disciples stole the body (Matthew 28:11-15, especially the latter part of verse 15). How did they try to put an end to claims of the resurrection? It would have been simple to say, “These followers of Jesus are nut-cases.” If Jesus’ body were still in the tomb their rebuttals would have been easier still! Obviously there was a reason they did not use that answer: anyone could have checked and seen whether it was true or not.

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We’re on a continuing path here. The fact of Jesus’ empty tomb does not prove the fact of his resurrection, but it contributes to a historical case that I will keep adding to as I continue this series.

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The events surrounding the first Easter are not all as hotly disputed nor are they as much in doubt as some think. In a comment on the Independent Attestation thread earlier in this series, Dave noted that the historical tide on NT scholarship is turning. John A. T. Robinson is one example of a scholar who had been skeptical of early dates for the NT documents, but who by the force of evidence came to conclude that all of them were produced between AD 50 and 70.

He represents a growing stream. Whereas once it was considered scholarly consensus that we could know little to nothing about the life of Christ, and especially his death and the events following, now that consensus is shattered. The well-known Jesus Seminar, for example, is now considered old-school and generally disregarded among serious scholars.

This is not to say that everyone believes that Jesus rose from the grave by the power of God. William Lane Craig points out in Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics that we can distinguish two kinds of questions: what can we know historically about the events of those several weeks, and what do those events mean?

Craig demonstrates the new historical consensus by pointing to skeptics who agree to the reality of many of the events recorded in the New Testament. The already-mentioned John A.T. Robinson (1919-1983) is one of those: though a bishop, he was of the liberal, secularizing camp; hardly an evangelical apologist.

Bart Ehrman has detailed his skepticism in many publications, yet in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (published by Oxford University Press in 1999), he acknowledges,

Historians … have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.

The source from which I obtained that quote is Craig’s book, already mentioned (page 350). Note that word “soon.” Craig later writes (p. 351),

Indeed, Ehrman himself, after expressing initial skepticism concerning some of these facts, came to regard them all as historically well founded.

The facts in question here are Jesus’ burial in a tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea, the finding of the empty tomb by women on the third day, and that some of Jesus’ actual disciples claimed to have seen him alive after that.

In fact most New Testament critics, including John A.T. Robinson, now accept that Jesus was executed by the Romans and buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb. Craig quantifies this by referring (pp. 370-371) to Gary Habermas’s study of “over 2,200 publications on the resurrection in English, French and German since 1975,” in which

Habermas found that 75% of scholars accepted the historicity of the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb. The evidence is so compelling that even a number of Jewish scholars … have declared themselves convinced on the basis of the evidence that the tomb was empty.”

Then there were the appearances of Christ to his disciples. The skeptical scholar Gerd Lüdemann, would hardly accept that Jesus made genuine resurrection appearances, yet still he wrote,

It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.

The late University of Chicago redaction critic (i.e., NT skeptic) Norman Perrin wrote,

The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear on which they are based.

(The prior two quotes are taken from Craig, p. 381.)

And no one doubts that the Christian faith originated in Jerusalem in the first century. Rodney Stark showed (as Dave has already noted) that it had spread to at least thirteen cities by AD 100.

My first three posts in this series have explored how that last fact — the origination of Christianity in the specific form it took — relates to the claims of the resurrection. A large portion of the discussion in response was of the form, “but we don’t really know what happened, do we?” The answer to that is an unqualified, qualified yes. Let me explain. We do know for sure that Jesus lived, died, and was buried in a grave provided by Joseph of Arimathea. We know for sure that the grave was found empty by several women on the following Sunday, and that several of Jesus’ disciples had experiences that they took to be the risen Christ appearing to them. We know for sure that within a few decades Christianity had spread to at least twelve cities outside Jerusalem. Those are facts that historians regard to be true, with little or no qualification.

What do these facts mean? That’s where the dispute still continues.

In future posts I intend to follow Craig and other authors in detailing how it is that we know these things so confidently, based on sound historical methods. I am not a historian myself (neither are those who have said, “we don’t really know what happened”) but the explanations for these things are transparent. They have convinced skeptics.

Do I expect this to convince skeptics here that the resurrection genuinely happened? That’s not the topic right now. Only after we recognize that the above-mentioned events really happened will we turn to the question, “Is the resurrection the best explanation for them?” We will consider various alternate explanations for them at that time. For now, I am hoping simply to put to rest the canard, long since rejected among serious scholars, that we are operating in the dark. We do know at least some of what happened, and we know it with a high degree of confidence.

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It seems that some skeptics who complain about the lack of independent attestation for the resurrection have set up the rules this way. (I originally wrote this as a comment and have promoted it now to a blog post for wider discussion.)

These seem to be the criteria:

1. The source must be an early document, contemporary with the alleged events, from someone who had reason to know whether the alleged events actually happened.
2. It must affirm that the alleged events really happened, for otherwise it would not be attestation.
3. It must be written by someone who is known not to be a believer, for otherwise it wouldn’t be independent; obviously Christians had an axe to grind, and their witness is tainted by their motivations.
4. Therefore (from 2 and 3) it must be a document that says the events happened, written by someone who says the events did not happen.

Further, and in contrast, let us take the case of a document that affirms the events happened, written by someone who actually agrees with what he wrote in that document. From 3, we conclude that this testimony is tainted and cannot be trusted. Therefore regardless of the quality, date, authorship, or even the actual truth value of that document, it is inadmissible. No document that affirms that Jesus rose from the dead can be admitted into the discussion, because the one who wrote it obviously believes it happened. To rely on early believers’ testimony regarding the resurrection is circular reasoning, because, after all, they were believers!

Thus only the only acceptable testimony affirming the resurrection is that which comes from someone who denies the resurrection.

Are these the rules under which we are supposed to operate ?

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N.T. Wright is an historian of the first century who is convinced the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened in history. I have not had opportunity to read his massive The Resurrection of the Son of God. In his shorter — yet provocative — The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, however, he presents a compact set of reasons for accepting the resurrection as an historical event.

Wright stands in a long series of scholars who have addressed the historicity of the resurrection. “What we have lacked,” though, according to Wright, “has been a serious historical treatment of the subject from a writer firmly anchored within the history of Judaism of the first century.” He does not mean that as an absolute statement: he goes on to present two notable exceptions. His point is that skeptical treatments of the resurrection have been unanchored. They “have tended to be atomistic, to break the tradition down into its earliest hypothetical fragments; like much tradition-historical research they end with as many puzzles as they had at the start.” (Both quotes from p. 129.)

But the inquiry must be based in the real circumstances of the times. Wright says (p. 126),

There is no form of early Christianity known to us—though there are some that have been invented by ingenious scholars—that does not affirm at its heart that after Jesus’ shameful death God raised him to life again. Already by the time of Paul, our earliest written witness, the resurrection of Jesus is not just a single, detached article of faith. It is woven into the very structure of Christian life and thought, informing (among other things) baptism, justification, ethics adn the future hope both for humans and for the cosmos.

In particular, the resurrection is the answer given by all of early Christianity to the question … why did Christianity arise, and why did it take the shape it did? The early Christians themselves reply: we exist because of Jesus’ resurrection.

The resurrection was not a late addition tacked on to the Christian movement to give it some religious or motivational credibility. It was at the core of the earliest affirmations.

Did it really happen? How can we be confident it did? Wright’s answer makes reference to themes he has been discussing throughout the book, so my synopsis here will necessarily be lacking, but I hope I can convey the gist of it. In essence he says that early Christianity without the resurrection is an historical puzzle far more perplexing than any mystery presented by the resurrection itself could be.

Early Christianity was, he writes, a kingdom-of-God movement, a resurrection movement, and a Messianic movement. From our distance these seem commonplace assertions, and if we try we can easily imagine coming up with a set of religious fables to support such thinking. This is why Wright emphasizes the historical setting so strongly, though; for these ways of thinking, in the forms they appeared in early Christianity, were completely foreign to the culture in which Christianity arose.

Jesus in his earthly ministry led what Wright calls a counter-Temple movement. I cannot go into that in detail, but I can at least mention just how counter-cultural that was within a strong and proud Jewish Temple tradition. It would be like a strong and charismatic leader conducting an anti-Constitution movement in America; only more so, because Jesus set himself up as the replacement for Temple religion.

But early Christianity, as a kingdom-of-God movement, was not just counter-Temple, it was counter-Empire. Wright says, “When Paul said ‘Jesus is Lord,’ it is clear that he meant that Caesar was not.” This was not a counter-Empire movement resembling Jewish expectations in any way. Jesus died at the hands of the Romans, who continued to rule over Judea. (By AD 70 they had destroyed the Jews’ holy city of Jerusalem.)

If you had said to some first-century Jews “the kingdom of God is here” and had explained yourself by speaking of a new spiritual experience, a new sense of forgiveness, an exciting reordering of your private religious interiority, they might well have said that they were glad you had had this experience, but why did you refer to it as the kingdom of God?

Finally with respect to the kingdom of God statements in early Christianity, Wright says,

We must as historians postulate a reason to account for this group of first-century Jews who had cherished these [political/military] kingdom-expectations, saying that their expectations had been fulfilled, though not in the way they had imagined. The early Christians themselves with one voice say that the reasons was the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

And that leads us to the second pertinent aspect of early Christianity toward which Wright points: it was a resurrection movement, with a view of resurrection utterly unlike that which had been thought of before. I will go into that in more detail in a future post. Wright’s case for the resurrection is cumulative, and I have presented only a portion of it, but enough for now.

Before ending here, though, and at the risk of starting two different conversations at once, I want to connect this topic to a previous one: who was Jesus, and what was his central message? I have asked that question of visitors here. This now is my condensed answer: he was (and is) the Son of God, the Messiah, the clearest and fullest revelation of God in all of history, the second Person of the Trinity, and thus God in the flesh. His central message, spoken 51 times in the Gospel of Luke alone, was the Kingdom of God: what it is, what it means that God is King, how we can enter into the experience of his kingdom, what it means if we stand outside it in rebellion, and his own position enthroned at the right hand of God the Father.

It was not then, and is not yet, a political kingdom, yet it is a living and loving reality for those who will accept God as king.

Early Christianity recognized it as such. They knew Jesus as King, even after Jesus’ death. Only the resurrection can adequately explain this extraordinary belief.

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The resurrection of Jesus was not a late developing myth of the second- or third-generation Church:

Craig Blomberg reports at Primetime Jesus on some new scholarly research that indicates that belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection was a very early belief of the new Christian church contrary to claims by liberal scholars and the Jesus Seminar that this belief emerged quite late and is therefore suspect as fact:

[Link: Stand to Reason Blog: Jesus' Resurrection an Early Belief]

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Daniel Dennett, one of the four most prominent “New Atheists,” is no proponent of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The hallucination theory to explain Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances is no longer held by many scholars. Nevertheless there are exceptions to this, including Gerd Lüdemann (detailed further here). In Consciousness Explained, however, Dennett says on page 7,

Another conclusion it seems we can draw from this is that strong hallucinations are simply impossible! By a strong hallucination I mean a hallucination of an apparently concrete and persisting three-dimensional object in the real world—as contrasted to flashes, geometric distortions, auras, afterimages, fleeting phantom-limb experiences, and other anomalous sensations. A strong hallucination would be, say, a ghost that talked back, that permitted you to touch it, that resisted with a sense of solidity, that cast a shadow, that was visible from any angle so that you might walk around it and see what its back looked like.

(See the full argument here; go to page one if it doesn’t open directly there) Based on Dennett’s analysis, then, hallucinations cannot explain the events in Matthew 28:9-10, Luke 24:13-48, John 20:24-28, or John 21:4-19.

See Gary Habermas for more on hallucination theories.

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They thought they had Jesus figured out, and they also thought they had him under control. Not so:

He [Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor] entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:9-11)

Pilate thought he had authority, and that only by his command would Jesus fate be determined. But the authority lay elsewhere. A few hours earlier Jesus had held back a follower who had tried to use force on his behalf:

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:52-54)

The power lay not with Pilate, nor with the religious leaders or the crowd who pushed the governor to execute Jesus. The power lay with God, who had the whole circumstance planned out and prophesied long before.

There is yet another irony of which I was reminded at church this morning. It’s in Luke 24:13-34. Jesus, just risen from the dead, is talking with two people about the events of the weekend. They do not recognize him immediately in his resurrection body. So he asks them what’s been going on. They reply,

“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?”

It reminds me of a story, probably true, of two English gentleman having a dispute over some topic. One of them suggested they settle it by consulting the Encyclopedia Britannica. The second one pulled it off the shelf, read the entry, and said, “Well, according to this, apparently you’re right.” And the first one said, “Yes, well, that’s what I thought I wrote there.”

Jesus must have been enjoying a similar kind of playful smile inside when he said, “What things?” They thought he was the one person who didn’t know what happened; he was the one who really did know! Read the rest of the story, though, and you’ll see that he didn’t move into gloating over his knowledge as our encyclopedia author. He taught them instead, in a way that connected deeply with their hearts.

The lesson again is not to try to outwit or outpower God. We are on his turf and meet him only on his terms–terms that are good and loving, for our life and freedom, and sometimes even with a sense of humor besides!

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