CHAPTER 8:
CONVICTION OF
THE PROMISED MESSIAH
Jews had no conception whatsoever of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal. Messiah was supposed to be a triumphant figure who would command the respect of Jew and Gentile alike, and who would establish the throne of David in Jerusalem. Yet Jesus’ disciples held deeply a conviction that he was the promised Messiah—a Messiah who failed to deliver and to reign; was defeated, humiliated, and slain by his enemies; and was a contradiction in terms. Nowhere do ancient Jewish texts speak of this sort of “Messiah.” So it’s difficult to exaggerate, therefore, what a catastrophe Jesus’ crucifixion would have been for the disciples. It wasn’t just that their beloved teacher was gone; rather, Jesus’ death on the cross meant the crushing defeat of any hopes they had entertained that he was the Messiah.
How is it, then, that the Jesus movement continued? The disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus reversed the catastrophe of the crucifixion. Since God had raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus was seen to be Messiah after all.
Therefore, Peter proclaims in Acts 2:23, 36: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. . . . Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” It was on the basis of belief in his resurrection that the disciples could believe that Jesus was, indeed, the Messiah.
It’s not surprising, then, that the belief in Jesus’ resurrection was universal in the early church. The tradition that Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 15:3—7, which defines the Gospel as the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ, shows that this understanding of the Gospel goes all the way back to the very beginning of the church in Jerusalem.
The Belief of the Resurrection Itself
Thus, the origin of the Christian movement hinges on the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. But now the obvious question cannot be avoided: How do we explain the origin of that belief? As R. H. Fuller says, even the most skeptical critic must posit some mysterious X to get the movement going.14 But the question is: What was that X?
Summary
Before moving forward, let’s review all three of our main points:
• First, we saw that numerous lines of historical evidence prove that the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers.
• Second, we saw that several lines of historical evidence establish that on numerous occasions and in different places various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
• And finally, third, we saw that the very origin of the Christian faith depends on the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.
These three great, independently established facts represent the majority view of New Testament critics today. The only point of serious disagreement would be on the physical nature of the resurrection appearances. But the state of current scholarship strongly supports the three facts as I have stated them. These are not merely the conclusions of conservative or evangelical scholars; these are the conclusions of mainstream, New Testament criticism. As we saw, three-quarters of scholars who have written on the subject accept the fact of the empty tomb; virtually no one today denies that the earliest disciples experienced post-mortem appearances of Jesus; and far and away, most scholars agree that the earliest disciples at least believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead. It’s the critic who would deny these facts that today finds himself on the defensive.