CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD?
Why seek ye the living among the dead? (Luke 24:5 KJV)
As a part of my doctoral studies in Munich I sat in on various lectures and seminars given by Prof. Dr. Pannenberg. One morning he surprised us by announcing that we had a guest lecturer, a Canadian Jewish scholar named Pinchas Lapide, who now taught in Tel Aviv. When Pannenberg announced that Professor Lapide’s topic that morning was to be the resurrection of Jesus, a feeling of resignation swept over me. I figured we were about to be served up the same old Quatsch that is tirelessly repeated by liberal theologians in Germany: The story of the empty tomb is a late legend, Paul didn’t believe in a physical resurrection body, the resurrection appearance stories in the gospels are the product of an anti-docetic apologetic, blah, blah, blah. But as Lapide lectured, to my growing astonishment, he was not toeing the party line but defending historically Jesus’ messianic claims, the credibility of the empty tomb narrative, and so on. When at the end of his lecture he announced that he therefore concluded that the best explanation of the evidence was that the God of Israel raised Jesus from the dead, I nearly fell off my chair! Nothing so illustrates the historical credibility of Jesus’ resurrection as the fact that this Jewish scholar was convinced on the basis of the evidence that his God, the God of Israel whom he worshipped, had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.
In this chapter I want to summarize the crucial elements in a historical case for Jesus’ resurrection, so that you can share it with anyone who asks you why you believe in the biblical God. A historical case for Jesus’ resurrection will involve two steps: first, determining what is the evidence to be explained and, second, inferring which explanation of the evidence is the best explanation.
It seems to me that the evidence can be summed up in three independently established facts: (1) Jesus’ empty tomb, (2) Jesus’ appearances alive after His death, and (3) the origin of the disciples’ belief in His resurrection. Furthermore, I think that the best explanation of these three facts is “God raised Jesus from the dead.” I’ll call this the resurrection hypothesis. The significance or meaning of Jesus’ resurrection will be given by the context in which it occurs: It comes as God’s vindication of Jesus’ radical personal claims for which He was condemned as a blasphemer.
Let’s look first at the evidence to be explained and then at the best explanation of that evidence.
The Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection
If the three facts mentioned above—the empty tomb, the postmortem appearances, and the origin of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection—can be established, and if no plausible, natural explanation can account for them as well as the resurrection hypothesis, then we’re justified in inferring Jesus’ resurrection as the best explanation of the facts. So let’s examine the evidence supporting each of these three facts.
The Fact of Jesus’ Empty Tomb
Here I’ll summarize five lines of evidence supporting the fact that the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of His women followers on the Sunday after His crucifixion.
The Evidence of Jesus’ Burial
First, the historical reliability of the story of Jesus’ burial supports the empty tomb. Now you might ask, how does the fact of Jesus’ burial prove that His tomb was found empty? The answer is this: If the burial story is basically accurate, then the location of Jesus’ tomb was known in Jerusalem to both Jew and Christian alike, since both were present when Jesus was laid in the tomb. But in that case, the tomb must have been empty when the disciples began to preach that Jesus was risen.
Why? First, the disciples could not have believed in Jesus’ resurrection if His corpse still lay in the tomb. It would have been wholly un-Jewish, not to say stupid, to believe that a man was raised from the dead when his body was known to be still in the grave. Second, even if the disciples had preached Jesus’ resurrection despite His occupied tomb, scarcely anybody else would have believed them. One of the most remarkable facts about the early Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection was that it flourished in the very city where Jesus had been publicly crucified. So long as the people of Jerusalem thought that Jesus’ body was in the tomb, few would have been prepared to believe such nonsense as that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And third, even if they had so believed, the Jewish authorities would have exposed the whole affair simply by pointing to Jesus’ tomb or perhaps even exhuming the body as decisive proof that Jesus had not been raised.
To suggest, as some critics have said, that the Jewish authorities didn’t take this business about Jesus’ being risen as anything more than a minor nuisance not worth dealing with is fantastic and contrary to the evidence. They were deeply concerned about squelching the budding Christian movement (think of their hiring Saul of Tarsus to persecute Jewish Christians!). They would certainly have checked out the tomb.
Even if the remains in the tomb were no longer recognizable, the burden of proof would have been upon anyone who said that these were not Jesus’ remains. But no such dispute over the identification of Jesus’ corpse ever seems to have taken place. As we’ll see, the dispute between Jewish non-Christians and Jewish Christians lay elsewhere.
Thus, if the story of Jesus’ burial is historical, then it’s a very short inference to the fact of the empty tomb. For that reason, critics who deny the empty tomb feel compelled to argue against the burial. Unfortunately for them, Jesus’ burial in the tomb is one of the best-established facts about Jesus. Space doesn’t permit me to go into all the details of the evidence for the burial. But let me just mention a couple of points:
1. Jesus’ burial is reported in extremely early, independent sources. The account of Jesus’ burial in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea is part of Mark’s source material for the passion story (the story of Jesus’ suffering and death). Mark is the earliest of the four gospels, so this is a very early source, which most scholars think is based on eyewitness testimony.
Moreover, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 quotes an old Christian tradition that he had received from the earliest disciples. Paul probably received this tradition no later than his visit to Jerusalem in AD 36 (Gal. 1:18), if not earlier in Damascus. It therefore goes back to within the first five years after Jesus’ death in AD 30. The tradition is a summary of the early Christian preaching and may have been used in Christian instruction. Its form would have made it suitable for memorization. Here’s what it says:
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
and
that he was buried,
and
that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
and
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
Notice that the second line of this tradition refers to Jesus’ burial.
But, we might wonder, was the burial mentioned in Paul’s tradition the same event as the burial by Joseph of Arimathea? The answer to that question is made clear by a comparison of the four-line formula passed on by Paul with the gospel narratives on the one hand and the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles on the other:
1 Cor. 15:3–5
Acts 13:28–31
Mark 15:37—16:7
Christ died …
Though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed.
And Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
he was buried …
They took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.
Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth and laid it in a tomb.
he was raised …
But God raised him from the dead …
“He has been raised, he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”
he appeared …
… and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people.
“But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.”
This remarkable correspondence of independent traditions is convincing proof that Paul’s four-line formula is a summary or outline of the basic events of Jesus’ passion and resurrection, including His burial in the tomb. We thus have evidence from some of the earliest, independent sources in the New Testament for the burial of Jesus in the tomb.
But that’s not all! Further independent testimony to Jesus’ burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John. The differences between Mark’s account of the burial and those of Matthew and Luke suggest that they had sources other than Mark alone. Moreover, we have another independent source for the burial in John’s gospel. Finally, we have the early sermons in the book of Acts, which probably preserve the early preaching of the apostles. These sermons also mention Jesus’ interment in a tomb. Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus’ burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.
2. As a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention. Joseph is described as a rich man, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a sort of Jewish high court, made up of seventy of the leading men of Judaism, which presided in Jerusalem. There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish Sanhedrists. In Christian eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. The sermons in Acts, for example, go so far as to say that the Jewish leaders crucified Jesus (Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10)! Given his status as a Sanhedrist, Joseph is the last person you’d expect to care properly for Jesus. Thus, Jesus’ burial by Joseph is very probable, since it would be almost inexplicable why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus.
For these and other reasons, most New Testament critics agree that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”[1] But if this conclusion is correct, then, as I’ve explained, it’s very difficult to deny the fact of the empty tomb.
The Independent Reports of the Empty Tomb
The second line of evidence regarding the empty tomb is this: The discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb is independently reported in very early sources. Mark’s passion source probably didn’t end with Jesus’ burial but with the women’s discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb. For the burial story and the empty tomb story are really one story, forming a smooth, continuous narrative. They’re linked by grammatical and linguistic ties. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the early Christians would have circulated a story of Jesus’ passion ending in His burial. The passion story is incomplete without victory at the end. Hence, Mark’s source probably included and may have ended with the discovery of the empty tomb.
We’ve seen that in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 Paul quotes from an extremely early tradition that refers to Christ’s burial and resurrection. Although the empty tomb is not explicitly mentioned, a comparison of the four-line formula with the gospel narratives on the one hand and the sermons in Acts on the other reveals that the third line is, in fact, a summary of the empty tomb story.
Moreover, two further features of Paul’s tradition imply the empty tomb. First, the expression “he was buried,” followed by the expression “he was raised” implies the empty tomb. The idea that a man could be buried and then be raised from the dead and yet his body still remain in the grave is a peculiarly modern notion! For first-century Jews there would have been no question but that the tomb of Jesus would have been empty. Therefore, when the tradition states that Christ “was buried and he was raised,” it automatically implies that an empty tomb was left behind. Given the early date and origin of this tradition, its drafters could not have believed such a thing were the tomb not empty.
Second, the expression “on the third day” implies the empty tomb. Very briefly summarized, since no one actually saw Jesus rise from the dead, why did the early disciples proclaim that He had been raised “on the third day”? Why not the seventh day? The most likely answer is that it was on the third day that the women discovered the tomb of Jesus empty; and so naturally, the resurrection itself came to be dated on that day.
We have, then, extraordinarily early, independent evidence for the fact of Jesus’ empty tomb. The discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb cannot be written off as a later, legendary development.
But there’s more! For once again there are good reasons to discern independent sources for the empty tomb in the other gospels and Acts. Matthew is clearly working with an independent source, for he includes the story of the guard at the tomb, which is unique to his gospel. Moreover, his comment about how the rumor that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body “is still told among Jews to this day” (Matt. 28:15) shows that Matthew is responding to prior tradition. Luke also has an independent source, for he tells the story, not found in Mark, of two disciples visiting the tomb to verify the women’s report that the tomb was vacant. The story can’t be regarded as Luke’s creation, since the incident is independently reported in John. And, again, given John’s independence of the other three gospels, we have yet another independent report of the empty tomb. Finally, in the sermons in the book of Acts, we again have indirect references to the empty tomb. For example, Peter draws the sharp contrast, David “died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day,” but “this Jesus God raised up” (Acts 2:29–32; compare 13:36–37).
Historians think they’ve hit historical pay dirt when they have two independent accounts of the same event. But in the case of the empty tomb we have no less than six, and some of these are among the earliest materials to be found in the New Testament.
The Simplicity of Mark’s Account
The third line of evidence for the empty tomb is that Mark’s story is simple and lacks legendary development. Like the burial account, Mark’s account of the empty tomb is remarkably simple and unembellished by theological motifs likely to characterize a later legendary account. For example, the resurrection itself is not witnessed or described, and there’s no reflection on Jesus’ triumph over sin and death, no use of divine titles, no quotation of fulfilled prophecy, no description of the risen Lord. It’s very different from a Christian fictional creation—just compare how the resurrection is portrayed in modern passion plays!
To appreciate how restrained Mark’s narrative is, you only have to read the account in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, which describes Jesus’ triumphant exit from the tomb as a gigantic figure whose head reaches above the clouds, supported by giant angels, followed by a talking cross, heralded by a voice from heaven, and all witnessed by a Roman guard, the Jewish leaders, and a multitude of spectators! This is how real legends look: They’re colored by theological and apologetical developments. By contrast, Mark’s account is stark in its simplicity.
Flavius Josephus (AD 37–100) was born into a Jewish priestly family as Joseph ben Mattathias. He became a military commander of Jewish forces in Galilee during the Jewish Revolt of AD 66, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Trapped in a cave by Roman forces, Josephus persuaded his men that they draw lots and kill each other successively, the last man committing suicide. But as the last one left alive, Josephus promptly surrendered to the Romans and joined their cause. After the war he became a Roman citizen and adopted his Roman name. His principal works are a history of the Jewish Revolt and a history of the Jewish people entitled Antiquities of the Jews. In this latter work he mentions Jesus of Nazareth twice, as well as Jesus’ brother James, John the Baptist, Caiaphas, Pilate, and other persons mentioned in the gospels.
The Women’s Discovery
Fourth, the tomb was probably discovered empty by women. In order to grasp this point, we need to understand two things about the place of women in Jewish society.
First, women were not regarded as credible witnesses. This attitude toward the testimony of women is evident in the Jewish historian Josephus’s description of the rules for admissible testimony: “Let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” (Antiquities IV.8.15). No such regulation is to be found in the Bible. It is rather a reflection of the patriarchal society of first-century Judaism.
Second, women occupied a low rung on the Jewish social ladder. Compared to men, women were second-class citizens. Consider these rabbinical texts: “Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women!” (Sotah 19a) and again: “Happy is he whose children are male, but unhappy is he whose children are female!” (Kiddushin 82b). The daily prayer of every Jewish man included the blessing, “Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman” (Berachos 60b).
So, given their low social status and inability to serve as legal witnesses, it’s quite amazing that it is women who are the discoverers of and principal witnesses to the empty tomb! If the empty tomb story were a legend, then the male disciples would have been made to be the ones who discover the empty tomb. The fact that women, whose testimony was deemed worthless, were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb can only be plausibly explained if, like it or not, they actually were the discoverers of the empty tomb, and the gospels faithfully record what for them was a very embarrassing fact.
The Earliest Jewish Response
Finally, the earliest Jewish response to the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection presupposes the empty tomb. In Matthew’s gospel we find an attempt to refute the earliest Jewish response to the Christian proclamation of the resurrection:
While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. (Matt. 28:11–15 RSV)
Now our interest isn’t so much in Matthew’s story of the guard at the tomb as in his incidental remark at the end, “This story has been spread among the Jews to this day.” This remark reveals that the author was concerned to refute a widespread Jewish explanation of the resurrection.
TALK ABOUT IT
If you were to talk with a non-Christian friend about this evidence for the empty tomb, how do you think he or she would respond?
Now what were unbelieving Jews saying in response to the disciples’ proclamation that Jesus was risen? That these men were full of new wine? That Jesus’ body still lay in the tomb in the garden? No. They were saying, “The disciples stole away His body.” Think about that. “The disciples stole away His body.” The Jewish authorities did not deny the empty tomb but instead entangled themselves in a hopeless series of absurdities trying to explain it away. In other words, the Jewish claim that the disciples had stolen the body presupposes that the body was missing.
Taken together, these five lines of evidence constitute a powerful case that Jesus’ tomb was, indeed, found empty on the first day of the week by a group of His women followers. As a historical fact, this seems to be well established. According to Jacob Kremer, a New Testament critic who has specialized in the study of the resurrection: “By far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb.”[2] In fact, in a survey of over 2,200 publications on the resurrection in English, French, and German since 1975, Gary Habermas found that 75 percent of scholars accepted the historicity of the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb.[3] The evidence is so compelling that even a number of Jewish scholars, such as Pinchas Lapide and Geza Vermes, have declared themselves convinced on the basis of the evidence that Jesus’ tomb was found empty. But there is even more to come.
The Fact of Jesus’ Postmortem Appearances
In 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, Paul writes:
For I delivered to you what I also received:
… that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he was buried,
and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (author’s translation)
This is a truly remarkable claim. We have here an indisputably authentic letter of a man personally acquainted with the first disciples, and he reports that they actually saw Jesus alive after His death. More than that, he says that he himself also saw an appearance of Jesus. What are we to make of this claim? Did Jesus really appear to people alive after His death?
To answer this question, let’s first consider the evidence for the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Once again, space won’t allow me to examine in detail all the evidence for Jesus’ postmortem appearances. But I’d like to look at three main lines of evidence.
Paul’s List of Eyewitnesses
First, Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such appearances occurred. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives a list of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Let’s look briefly at each appearance to see whether it’s plausible that such an event actually took place.
1. Appearance to Peter. We have no story in the gospels telling of Jesus’ appearance to Peter. But the appearance is mentioned here in the old Christian tradition quoted by Paul, which originated in the Jerusalem church, and it’s vouched for by the apostle Paul himself. As we know from Galatians 1:18, Paul spent about two weeks with Peter in Jerusalem three years after his conversion on the Damascus road. So Paul knew personally whether Peter claimed to have had such an experience or not. In addition to this, the appearance to Peter is mentioned in another old Christian tradition found in Luke 24:34: “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” That Luke is passing on a prior tradition here is evident from the awkward way in which it is inserted into his story of the appearance to the Emmaus disciples. So although we have no story of the appearance to Peter, it is quite well founded historically. As a result, virtually all New Testament critics agree that Peter saw an appearance of Jesus alive from the dead.
2. Appearance to the Twelve. Undoubtedly, the group referred to here is that original group of twelve disciples who had been chosen by Jesus during His ministry—minus, of course, Judas, whose absence didn’t affect the formal title of the group. This is the best-attested resurrection appearance of Jesus. It, too, is included in the very early traditional formula that Paul cites, and Paul himself had contact with members of the Twelve. Moreover, we have independent stories of this appearance in Luke 24:36–42 and John 20:19–20. Undoubtedly, the most notable feature of these appearance stories is the physical demonstrations of Jesus’ showing His wounds and eating before the disciples. The purpose of the physical demonstrations is to show two things: first, that Jesus was raised physically; and second, that He was the same Jesus who had been crucified. There can be little doubt that such an appearance occurred, for it is attested in the old Christian tradition, vouched for by Paul, who had personal contact with the Twelve, and is independently described by both Luke and John.
3. Appearance to five hundred brethren. The third appearance comes as somewhat of a shock: “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time”! This is surprising, since we have no mention whatsoever of this appearance elsewhere in the New Testament. This might make us rather skeptical about this appearance, but Paul himself apparently had personal contact with these people, since he knew that some had died. This is seen in Paul’s parenthetical comment, “most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” Why does Paul add this remark? The great New Testament scholar of Cambridge University, C. H. Dodd, replies, “There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact that most of the 500 are still alive, unless Paul is saying, in effect, ‘The witnesses are there to be questioned.’”[4] Notice, Paul could never have said this if the event had not occurred. He could not have challenged people to talk to the witnesses if the event had never taken place and there were no witnesses. But evidently there were witnesses to this event, and Paul knew that some of them had died in the meantime. Therefore, the event must have taken place.
I think that this appearance is not related in the gospels because it probably took place in Galilee. As one pieces together the various resurrection appearances in the gospels, it seems that they occurred first in Jerusalem, then in Galilee, and then in Jerusalem again. The appearance to the five hundred would have to be out of doors, perhaps on a hillside near a Galilean village. In Galilee thousands had gathered to hear Jesus teach during His ministry. Since the gospels focus their attention on the appearances in Jerusalem, we don’t have any story of this appearance to the five hundred. An intriguing possibility is that this was the appearance predicted by the angel at the tomb and described by Matthew (28:16–17).
4. Appearance to James. The next appearance is one of the most amazing of all: Jesus appeared to James, His younger brother. What makes this amazing is that apparently neither James nor any of Jesus’ younger brothers believed in Jesus during His lifetime (Mark 3:21, 31–35; John 7:1–10). They didn’t believe He was the Messiah, or a prophet, or even anybody special. By the criterion of embarrassment, this is doubtless a historical fact of Jesus’ life and ministry.
But after the resurrection, Jesus’ brothers show up in the Christian fellowship in the upper room in Jerusalem (Acts 1:14). There’s no further mention of them until Acts 12:17, the story of Peter’s deliverance from prison by the angel. What are Peter’s first words? “Report this to James.” In Galatians 1:19 Paul tells of his two-week visit to Jerusalem about three years after his Damascus Road experience. He says that besides Peter, he saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. Paul at least implies that James was now being reckoned as an apostle. When Paul visited Jerusalem again fourteen years later, he says there were three “pillars” of the church in Jerusalem: Peter, John, and James (Gal. 2:9). Finally, in Acts 21:18 James is the sole head of the Jerusalem church and of the council of elders. We hear no more about James in the New Testament; but from Josephus, the Jewish historian, we learn that James was stoned to death illegally by the Sanhedrin sometime after AD 60 (Antiquities 20.200).
Not only James but also Jesus’ other brothers became believers and were active in Christian preaching, as we see from 1 Corinthians 9:5: “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”
Now, how is this to be explained? On the one hand, it seems certain that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in Him during His lifetime. Jesus’ crucifixion would only confirm in James’ mind that his elder brother’s messianic pretensions were delusory, just as he had thought. On the other hand, it’s equally certain that Jesus’ brothers became ardent Christians, active in ministry. Many of us have brothers. What would it take to make you believe that your brother is the Lord, so that you would die for this belief, as James did? Can there be any doubt that the reason for this remarkable transformation is to be found in the fact that “then he appeared to James”? Even the skeptical New Testament critic Hans Grass admits that the conversion of James is one of the surest proofs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.[5]
5. Appearance to “all the apostles.” This appearance was probably to a limited circle of Christian missionaries somewhat wider than the Twelve. For such a group, see Acts 1:21–22. Once again, the fact of this appearance is guaranteed by Paul’s personal contact with the apostles themselves.
6. Appearance to Saul of Tarsus. The final appearance is just as amazing as the appearance to James: “Last of all,” says Paul, “he appeared to me also.” The story of Jesus’ appearance to Saul of Tarsus (or Paul) just outside Damascus is related in Acts 9:1–9 and is later told again twice. That this event actually occurred is established beyond doubt by Paul’s references to it in his own letters.
This event changed Saul’s whole life. He was a rabbi, a Pharisee, a respected Jewish leader. He hated the Christian heresy and did everything in his power to stamp it out. He tells us that he was even responsible for the execution of Christian believers. Then suddenly he gave up everything. He left his position as a respected Jewish leader and became a Christian missionary: He entered a life of poverty, labor, and suffering. He was whipped, beaten, stoned and left for dead, shipwrecked three times, in constant danger, deprivation, and anxiety. Finally, he made the ultimate sacrifice and was martyred for his faith at Rome. And it was all because on that day outside Damascus, he saw “Jesus our Lord” (l Cor. 9:1).
In summary, Paul’s testimony makes it historically certain that various individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus after His death and burial.
The Independent Gospel Accounts
Further, the gospel accounts provide multiple, independent reports of postmortem appearances of Jesus, even some of the same appearances found in Paul’s list. The appearance to Peter is independently mentioned by Paul and Luke (1 Cor. 15:5; Luke 24:34) and is universally acknowledged by critics. The appearance to the Twelve is independently reported by Paul, Luke, and John (1 Cor. 15:5; Luke 24:36–53; John 20:19–31) and is again not in dispute. The appearance to the women disciples is independently reported by Matthew and John (Matt. 28:9–10; John 20:11–17) and enjoys, as well, ratification by the criterion of embarrassment, given the low credibility accorded to the testimony of women. It’s generally agreed that the absence of this appearance from the list of appearances in the tradition quoted by Paul is a reflection of the discomfort in citing female witnesses. Finally, that Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee is independently reported by Mark, Matthew, and John (Mark 16; Matt. 28:16-20; John 21).
Taken sequentially, the appearances follow the pattern of Jerusalem, then Galilee, then Jerusalem again, matching the pilgrimages of the disciples as they returned to Galilee following the Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread and then traveled again to Jerusalem two months later for Pentecost.
From this evidence what should we conclude? We can call these appearances hallucinations if we want to, but we cannot deny that they occurred. Even the skeptical critic Gerd Lüdemann is emphatic: “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.”[6] The evidence makes it certain that on separate occasions different individuals and groups had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead. This conclusion is virtually indisputable.
The Bodily Nature of the Appearances
Thirdly, the resurrection appearances were physical, bodily appearances. So far the evidence I’ve presented doesn’t depend on the nature of the postmortem appearances of Jesus. I’ve left it open whether they were visionary or physical in nature. It remains to be seen whether even visionary experiences of the risen Jesus can be plausibly explained on purely psychological grounds. But if the appearances were physical and bodily in nature, then a purely psychological explanation becomes next to impossible. So it’s worth examining what we can know about the nature of these appearances.
1. Paul implies that the appearances were physical. He does this in two ways.
First, he conceives of the resurrection body as physical. Everyone recognizes that Paul does not teach the immortality of the soul alone but the resurrection of the body. In 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 Paul describes the differences between the present, earthly body and our future, resurrection body, which will be like Christ’s. He draws four essential contrasts between the earthly body and the resurrection body:
The earthly body is:
But the resurrection body is:
mortal
immortal
dishonorable
glorious
weak
powerful
natural
spiritual
Now only the last contrast could possibly make us think that Paul did not believe in a physical resurrection body. But what does he mean by the words translated here as “natural/spiritual”?
The word translated “natural” literally means “soul-ish.” Now obviously, Paul doesn’t mean that our present body is made out of soul. Rather by this word he means “dominated by or pertaining to human nature.” Similarly, when he says the resurrection body will be “spiritual,” he doesn’t mean “made out of spirit.” Rather, he means “dominated by or oriented toward the Spirit.” It’s the same sense of the word “spiritual” used when we say that someone is a spiritual person.
In fact, look at the way Paul uses exactly those same words in 1 Corinthians 2:14–15 (ESV):
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
Natural person does not mean “physical person,” but “person oriented toward human nature.” And spiritual person does not mean “intangible, invisible person” but “person oriented toward the Spirit.” The contrast is the same in 1 Corinthians 15. The present, earthly body will be freed from its slavery to sinful human nature and become instead fully empowered and directed by God’s Spirit. Thus, Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection body implies a physical resurrection.
Second, Paul, and indeed all the New Testament, makes a distinction between an appearance of Jesus and a vision of Jesus. The appearances of Jesus soon ceased, but visions of Jesus continued in the early church. Now the question is: What is the difference between an appearance and a vision? The answer of the New Testament seems to be clear: A vision, though caused by God, was purely in the mind, while an appearance took place “out there” in the external world.
Compare Stephen’s vision of Jesus in Acts 7 with the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Though Stephen saw an identifiable, bodily image, what he saw was a vision of a man, not a man who was physically there, for no one else present experienced anything at all. By contrast the resurrection appearances took place in the world “out there” and could be experienced by anybody present. Paul could rightly regard his experience on the Damascus road as an appearance, even though it took place after Jesus’ ascension, because it involved manifestations in the external world like the light and the voice, which Paul’s companions also experienced to varying degrees. Thus, the distinction between a vision and an appearance of Jesus also implies that the resurrection appearances were physical.
2. The gospel accounts show that the appearances were physical and bodily. Again, two points deserve to be made.
First, every resurrection appearance related in the gospels is a physical, bodily appearance. The unanimous testimony of the gospels in this regard is quite impressive. If none of the appearances was originally a physical, bodily appearance, then it’s very strange that we have a completely unanimous testimony in the gospels that all of them were physical, with no trace of the supposed original, nonphysical appearances. Such a thoroughgoing corruption of oral tradition in so short a time, while the original eyewitnesses were still about, is most unlikely.
Second, if all the appearances were originally nonphysical visions, then we’re at a complete loss to explain the rise of the gospel accounts. For physical, bodily appearances would be foolishness to Gentiles and a stumbling block to Jews, since neither could accept physical resurrection from the dead. The Greek mentality regarded the death of the physical body as “good riddance,” since the physical body was an impediment to the soul. The Jewish mentality precluded any physical resurrection to glory and immortality prior to the general resurrection at the end of the world. So both parties would have been very skeptical about tales of real, bodily appearances of someone risen from the dead. But both would have been quite happy to accept stories of visionary appearances of the deceased. If the original appearances were just visions, then, it becomes inexplicable why a unanimous tradition of physical appearances would develop.
TALK ABOUT IT
Why does Jesus’ bodily resurrection matter to Christians? What difference would it make if Jesus simply lives on as a spirit and has no body?
To be perfectly candid, the only grounds for denying the physical, bodily nature of the postmortem appearances of Jesus is philosophical, not historical: Such appearances would be miracles of the most stupendous proportions, and that many critics cannot swallow. But in that case we need to retrace our steps to think again about the evidence for the existence of God. If God exists, there’s no good reason to be skeptical about miracles. As the agnostic Australian philosopher Peter Slezak nicely put it in our debate, for a God who is able to create the entire universe, the odd resurrection would be child’s play!
So on the basis of these three lines of evidence, we can conclude that the fact of Jesus’ postmortem appearances to various individuals and groups under a variety of circumstances is firmly established historically and, moreover, that these appearances were bodily and physical.
The Fact of the Origin of the Christian Faith
The third fact to be explained is the very origin of the Christian faith. We all know that Christianity sprang into being sometime midway through the first century AD. Why did it come into existence? What caused this movement to begin? Even skeptical New Testament scholars recognize that the Christian faith owes its origin to the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. In fact, they pinned nearly everything on this belief.
Which of the lines of evidence in this chapter do you find most convincing personally? How do you think non-Christians you know would respond to the various lines of evidence? Which would be most compelling for them?
To take just one example: their belief that Jesus was the Messiah. Jews had no conception 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. A Messiah who failed to deliver and to reign, who was defeated, humiliated, and slain by His enemies, is a contradiction in terms. Nowhere do Jewish texts speak of such a “Messiah.” Therefore, it’s difficult to overemphasize what a disaster the crucifixion was for the disciples’ faith. Jesus’ death on the cross spelled the humiliating end for any hopes they had entertained that He was the Messiah.
But the belief in the resurrection of Jesus reversed the catastrophe of the crucifixion. Because God had raised Jesus from the dead, He was seen to be Messiah after all. Thus, Peter proclaims in Acts 2:23–36: “This man … God raised.… Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” It was on the basis of belief in His resurrection that the disciples could believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that belief in Jesus’ resurrection was universal in the early Christian church. The traditional formula quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7, in which the gospel is defined as the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ, shows that this understanding of the gospel goes right back to the very beginning of the church in Jerusalem.
Thus, the origin of Christianity hinges on the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. But the question is: How does one 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. But what was that X?
Summary
Now we’re ready to summarize all three of our 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.
One of the things that most astonished me after completing my research in Munich was the realization that 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 the conclusions of conservative or evangelical scholarship; these are the conclusions of mainstream New Testament criticism. As we saw, the wide majority 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 postmortem 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 is the critic who would deny these facts that today finds himself on the defensive.
So don’t be misled by unbelievers who want to quibble about inconsistencies in the circumstantial details of the gospel accounts. Our case for Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t depend on such details. All four gospels agree that:
Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in Jerusalem by Roman authority during the Passover Feast, having been arrested and convicted on charges of blasphemy by the Jewish Sanhedrin and then slandered before the governor Pilate on charges of treason. He died within several hours and was buried Friday afternoon by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb, which was shut with a stone. Certain female followers of Jesus, including Mary Magdalene, having observed his interment, visited his tomb early on Sunday morning, only to find it empty. Thereafter, Jesus appeared alive from the dead to the disciples, including Peter, who then became proclaimers of the message of His resurrection.
All four gospels attest to these facts. Many more details can be supplied by adding facts that are attested by three out of four.
So minor discrepancies don’t affect our case. Historians expect to find inconsistencies even in the most reliable sources. No historian simply throws out a source because it has inconsistencies. Otherwise we’d have to be skeptical about all secular historical narratives that also contain such inconsistencies, which is wholly unreasonable. Moreover, in this case the inconsistencies aren’t even within a single source; they’re between independent sources. But obviously, it doesn’t follow from an inconsistency between two independent sources that both sources are wrong. At worst, one is wrong if they can’t be harmonized.
The remaining issue, then, is how the three established facts I’ve stated are best explained.
Explaining the Evidence
We come, then, to the second step in our case: determining which explanation of the evidence is the best. Historians weigh various factors in assessing competing hypotheses. Some of the most important are as follows:
1. The best explanation will have greater explanatory scope than other explanations. That is, it will explain more of the evidence.
2. The best explanation will have greater explanatory power than other explanations. That is, it will make the evidence more probable.
3. The best explanation will be more plausible than other explanations. That is, it will fit better with true background beliefs.
4. The best explanation will be less contrived than other explanations. That is, it won’t require adopting as many new beliefs that have no independent evidence.
5. The best explanation will be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than other explanations. That is, it won’t conflict with as many accepted beliefs.
6. The best explanation will meet conditions 1–5 so much better than the others that there’s little chance that one of the other explanations, after further investigation, will do better in meeting these conditions.
Since a hypothesis may do really well in meeting some conditions but not so well in meeting others, figuring out which hypothesis is the best explanation may often be difficult and requires skill. But if the explanatory scope and power of a hypothesis are very great, so that it does a much better job in explaining a wide variety of facts, then it’s likely to be the true explanation.
So let’s apply these tests to the typical hypotheses that have been offered down through history to explain the empty tomb, postmortem appearances, and origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, and let’s see if they do better or as well in explaining these facts as the resurrection hypothesis.
Conspiracy Hypothesis
According to this hypothesis, the disciples stole the body of Jesus and lied about His appearances, thus faking the resurrection. This was the very first counterexplanation for the empty tomb, as we’ve seen, and it was revived during the eighteenth century by European deists. Today, however, this explanation has been completely given up by modern scholarship. Let’s see how it fares when assessed by the standard criteria for testing historical hypotheses.
1. Explanatory scope. The conspiracy hypothesis meets this condition pretty well, for it offers explanations of the empty tomb (the disciples stole the body), the postmortem appearances (the disciples lied about these), and the origin of the disciples’ (supposed) belief in Jesus’ resurrection (again, they lied).
2. Explanatory power. Here doubts begin to arise about the conspiracy hypothesis. Take the empty tomb, for example. If the disciples stole Jesus’ corpse, then it would be utterly pointless to fabricate a story about women finding the tomb to be empty. Such a story would not be the sort of tale Jewish men would invent. Moreover, the simplicity of the story is not well explained by the conspiracy hypothesis—where are the scriptural proof texts, the evidence of fulfilled prophecy? Why isn’t Jesus described as emerging from the tomb, as in later forgeries like the Gospel of Peter? Neither is the dispute with nonbelieving Jews well explained. Why isn’t Matthew’s guard already there in Mark’s story? Even in Matthew’s story the guard is set too late: The body could have already been stolen before the guard arrived on Saturday morning, so that they were guarding, unbeknownst to them, an empty tomb! For a fail-safe alibi against theft of the body, see again the forged Gospel of Peter, where the guard is set immediately upon interment of the corpse.
As for the appearance stories, similar problems arise. A fabricator would probably describe Jesus’ resurrection appearances in terms of Old Testament visions of God and descriptions of the end-time resurrection (as in Daniel 12:2). But then Jesus should appear to the disciples in dazzling glory. And why not a description of the resurrection itself? Why no appearances to Caiaphas the high priest or to the villains on the Sanhedrin, as Jesus predicted? They could be then branded as the real liars for denying that Jesus did appear to them!
But the explanatory power of the conspiracy hypothesis is undoubtedly weakest when it comes to the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. For the hypothesis is really a denial of that fact; it seeks to explain the mere semblance of belief on the disciples’ part. But as critics have universally recognized, you can’t plausibly deny that the earliest disciples at least sincerely believed that Jesus was risen from the dead. They staked their very lives on that conviction. The transformation in the lives of the disciples is not credibly explained by the hypothesis of a conspiracy. This shortcoming alone has been enough in the minds of most scholars to sink the old conspiracy hypothesis forever.
3. Plausibility. The real Achilles’ heel of the conspiracy hypothesis is, however, its implausibility. One might mention here objections to the unbelievable complexity of such a conspiracy or the supposed psychological state of the disciples; but the overriding problem that dwarfs all others is that it is wholly anachronistic to suppose that first-century Jews intended to hoax Jesus’ resurrection.
The conspiracy hypothesis views the disciples’ situation through the rearview mirror of Christian history rather than through the eyes of a first-century Jew. There was no expectation of a Messiah who, instead of establishing David’s throne and subduing Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by the Gentiles as a criminal. Moreover, the idea of resurrection was just unconnected with the idea of Messiah and even incompatible with it, since Messiah was not supposed to be killed. As N. T. Wright nicely puts it, if you’re a first-century Jew, and your favorite Messiah got himself crucified, then you’ve basically got two choices: Either you go home or else you get yourself a new Messiah. But the idea of stealing Jesus’ corpse and saying that God had raised him from the dead is hardly one that would have entered the minds of the disciples.
It has been suggested that the idea of Jesus’ resurrection could have originated through the influence of pagan mythology. Back around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, scholars in comparative religion collected parallels to Christian beliefs in other religious movements, and some thought to explain Christian beliefs, including the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, as the result of the influence of such myths. The movement soon collapsed, however, principally due to two factors:
First, scholars came to realize that the parallels are false. The ancient world was a virtual fruit basket of myths of various gods and heroes. Comparative studies in religion require sensitivity to their similarities and differences, or distortion and confusion inevitably result. Unfortunately, those who were eager to find parallels to Jesus’ resurrection failed to exercise such sensitivity.
Many of the alleged parallels are actually stories of the assumption of the hero into heaven (Hercules, Romulus). Others are disappearance stories, which claim that the hero has vanished into a higher sphere (Apollonius of Tyana, Empedocles). Still others are seasonal symbols for the crop cycle, as the vegetation dies in the dry season and comes back to life in the rainy season (Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis). Some are political expressions of emperor worship (Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus).
None of these is parallel to the Jewish idea of the resurrection of the dead. Indeed, most scholars have come to doubt whether, properly speaking, there really were any myths of dying and rising gods at all. For example, in the myth of Osiris, which was one of the best-known symbolic seasonal myths, Osiris doesn’t really come back to life but simply continues to exist in the realm of the departed.
In general, scholars have come to realize that pagan mythology is simply the wrong interpretive context for understanding Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus and His disciples were first-century Israelite Jews, and it is against that background that they must be understood. The collapse of the alleged parallels is just one indication that pagan mythology is the wrong interpretive context for understanding the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
Second, there’s no causal connection between pagan myths and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Jews were familiar with the seasonal deities (Ezek. 37:1–14) and found them abhorrent. Therefore, there’s no trace of cults of dying and rising gods in first-century Israel. In any case it’s highly unlikely that the original disciples would have come up with the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was risen from the dead because they had heard pagan myths about dying and rising seasonal gods. Contemporary scholars have therefore abandoned this approach.
But maybe the disciples could have come up with the idea of Jesus’ resurrection on the basis of Jewish influences? Again, this is unlikely. For the Jewish conception of resurrection differed in at least two fundamental respects from the resurrection of Jesus.
First, in Jewish thinking the resurrection to glory and immortality always occurred after the end of the world. Jews had no idea of a resurrection within history. That’s why, I think, the disciples had so much trouble understanding Jesus’ predictions of His own resurrection. They thought He was talking about the resurrection at the end of the world. Look at Mark 9:9–11 (NASB), for example.
As they were coming down from the mountain, He gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen, until the Son of Man rose from the dead. They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant. They asked Him, saying, “Why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”
Here Jesus predicts His resurrection, and what do the disciples ask? “Why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” In first-century Judaism it was believed the prophet Elijah would come again before the great and terrible day of the Lord, the judgment day when the dead would be raised. The disciples could not understand the idea of a resurrection occurring within history prior to the end of the world. Hence, Jesus’ predictions only confused them.
Thus, given the Jewish conception of the resurrection, the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion would not have come up with the idea that He had been already raised. They would have only looked forward to the resurrection at the last day and perhaps, in keeping with Jewish custom, preserved His tomb as a shrine where His bones could rest until the resurrection.
TALK ABOUT IT
How does this historical background help you understand incidents such as those described in Mark 8:31–32 and Acts 17:16–18, 32?
Second, in Jewish thinking the resurrection was always the resurrection of all the righteous dead. They had no idea of the resurrection of an isolated individual. Moreover, not only was there no connection between the individual believer’s resurrection and the prior resurrection of the Messiah, there existed no belief in the Messiah’s prior resurrection at all. That’s why we find no examples of other messianic movements claiming that their executed leader was risen from the dead. Wright has been insistent upon this point. “The followers of the first-century messianic movements … were fanatically committed to the cause.… In no other case, however, right across the century before Jesus and the century after him, do we hear of any Jewish group saying that their executed leader had been raised again from the dead.”[7]
Jews had no idea of the resurrection of an isolated individual, especially of the Messiah. Therefore, after Jesus’ crucifixion, all the disciples could do was wait with longing for the general resurrection of the dead to see their Master again.
Notice that this point undermines not only conspiracy theories, which suppose that the disciples insincerely proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection, but also any theory that suggests that, on the basis of pagan or Jewish influences, they sincerely came to believe in and preached His resurrection.
4. Less contrived. Like all conspiracy theories of history, the conspiracy hypothesis is contrived in supposing that what all the evidence seems to point to is, in fact, mere appearance only, to be explained away by hypotheses for which there is no evidence. Specifically, it postulates motives and ideas in the minds of the earliest disciples and actions on their part for which there is not a shred of evidence. It can become even more contrived, as hypotheses have to be multiplied to deal with objections to the theory; for example, how to account for the appearance to the five hundred brethren or the women’s role in the empty tomb and appearance stories.
5. Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs. The conspiracy hypothesis tends to be disconfirmed by our general knowledge of conspiracies, their instability and tendency to unravel. Moreover, it is disconfirmed by accepted beliefs such as the sincerity of the disciples, the nature of first-century Jewish messianic expectations, and so on.
6. Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1–5. The conspiracy hypothesis obviously fails to meet this condition, since there are better hypotheses (such as the hallucination hypothesis), which don’t dismiss the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection as a blatant lie.
No scholar would defend the conspiracy hypothesis today. The only place you read about such things is in the popular, sensationalist press or Internet fantasies.
Apparent Death Hypothesis
A second explanation was the apparent death hypothesis. Critics around the beginning of the nineteenth century claimed that Jesus was not completely dead when He was taken down from the cross. He revived in the tomb and escaped to convince His disciples He had risen from the dead. Today this hypothesis has also been almost completely given up. Once again, let’s apply our criteria for the best explanation:
1. Explanatory scope. The apparent death hypothesis also provides explanations for the empty tomb, postmortem appearances, and origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
2. Explanatory power. Here the theory begins to founder. Some versions of the apparent death hypothesis were really variations on the conspiracy hypothesis. Instead of stealing the body, the disciples (along with Jesus Himself!) were supposed to have conspired to fake Jesus’ death on the cross. In such cases, the theory shares all the weaknesses of the conspiracy hypothesis. A nonconspiratorial version of the theory was that Jesus just happened to survive the crucifixion, though the guards thought He was dead. Such a version of the hypothesis is also saddled with insurmountable difficulties: How do you explain the empty tomb, since a man sealed inside a tomb could not move the stone so as to escape? How do you explain the postmortem appearances, since the appearance of a half-dead man desperately in need of medical attention would hardly have elicited in the disciples the conclusion that He was the risen Lord and conqueror of death? How do you explain the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since seeing Him again would lead them to conclude merely that He hadn’t died? They wouldn’t think that He was, contrary to Jewish thought (as well as their own eyes), gloriously risen from the dead.
3. Plausibility. Here again the theory fails miserably. Roman executioners could be relied upon to ensure that their victims were dead. Since the exact moment of death by crucifixion is uncertain, executioners could ensure death by a spear thrust into the victim’s side. This is what happened to Jesus (John 19:34). Moreover, what the theory suggests is virtually physically impossible. The Jewish historian Josephus tells of how he had three acquaintances who had been crucified removed from their crosses, but despite the best medical attention two of the three died anyway (Life 75:420–21). The extent of Jesus’ tortures was such that He could never have survived the crucifixion and entombment. The suggestion that a man so critically wounded then went on to appear to the disciples on various occasions in Jerusalem and Galilee is pure fantasy.
4. Less contrived. The apparent death hypothesis, especially in its conspiratorial versions, can become enormously contrived. We’re invited to imagine secret societies, stealthily administered potions, conspiratorial alliances between Jesus’ disciples and members of the Sanhedrin, and so forth, all with nary a scrap of evidence in support.
5. Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs. The apparent death hypothesis is massively disconfirmed by medical facts concerning what would happen to a person who has been scourged and crucified. It is also disconfirmed by the unanimous evidence that Jesus did not continue among His disciples after His death.
6. Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1–5. This theory also is hardly a standout! For that reason it has virtually no defenders among New Testament historians today.
Displaced Body Hypothesis
In one of the few modern Jewish attempts to deal with the facts concerning Jesus’ resurrection, Joseph Klausner in 1922 proposed that Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’ body in his tomb temporarily, due to the lateness of the hour and the closeness of his own family tomb to the place of Jesus’ execution. But then he moved the corpse later to the criminals’ common graveyard. Unaware of the displacement of the body, the disciples upon finding the tomb empty inferred that Jesus was risen from the dead. Although no scholars defend Klausner’s hypothesis today, I have seen attempts by popular authors to revive it. In light of what has already been said of other theories, its shortcomings are evident:
1. Explanatory scope. The displaced body hypothesis has narrow explanatory scope. It tries to explain the empty tomb but says nothing about the postmortem appearances and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Independent hypotheses must be adopted to explain the full scope of the evidence.
2. Explanatory power. Klausner’s hypothesis has no explanatory power with regard to either the appearances or the origin of the Christian faith. As for the empty tomb, the hypothesis faces an obvious problem: Since Joseph and any servants with him knew what they had done with the corpse, the theory is at a loss to explain why the disciples’ error wasn’t corrected once they began to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection—unless, that is, one resorts to contrived conjectures to save the day, such as Joseph and his servants’ sudden deaths!
It might be said that Jesus’ corpse would have no longer been identifiable. But this assertion is not, in fact, true. Jewish burial practices typically involved digging up the bones of the deceased a year later and placing them in an ossuary. So grave sites, even for criminals, were carefully noted. But, in any case, the objection misses the point. The point is that the earliest Jewish-Christian disputes about the resurrection were not over the location of Jesus’ grave or the identity of the corpse but over why the tomb was empty. Had Joseph displaced the body, the Jewish-Christian controversy would have taken a quite different course.
3. Plausibility. The hypothesis is implausible for a number of reasons. So far as we can rely on Jewish sources, the criminals’ graveyard was only fifty to six hundred yards from the site of Jesus’ crucifixion. Jewish practice, furthermore, was to bury executed criminals on the day of their execution, so that’s what Joseph would have wanted to accomplish. Therefore, Joseph could and would have placed the body directly in the criminals’ graveyard, thereby eliminating any need to move it later or defile his own family tomb. Indeed, Jewish law did not even permit the body to be moved later, except to the family tomb. Joseph had adequate time for a simple burial, which probably included washing the corpse and wrapping it up in a sheet with dry spices.
4. Less contrived. The theory is mildly contrived in ascribing to Joseph motives and activities for which we have no evidence at all. It becomes really contrived if we have to start inventing things like Joseph’s sudden death in order to save the hypothesis.
5. Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs. The theory suffers disconfirmation from what we know about Jewish burial procedures for criminals mentioned above.
6. Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1–5. Again, no historian seems to share this estimation.
Hallucination Hypothesis
In his book The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1835), David Strauss proposed that the resurrection appearances were merely hallucinations on the part of the disciples. The most prominent defender of this view today is the German New Testament critic Gerd Lüdemann. How does the hallucination hypothesis fare when assessed by our criteria?
1. Explanatory scope. The hallucination hypothesis has narrow explanatory scope. It says nothing to explain the empty tomb. Therefore, one must either deny the fact of the empty tomb (and, therefore, the burial as well) or else conjoin some independent hypothesis to the hallucination hypothesis to account for the empty tomb.
TALK ABOUT IT
If you were to talk with a non-Christian friend about these hypotheses, how do you think your friend would respond? Would your friend defend one of them? Would he or she back up and reject the empty tomb or the postmortem appearances as invented?
Again, the hallucination hypothesis says nothing to explain the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Some scholars have made a great deal out of the alleged similarities between the postmortem appearances of Jesus and visions of the recently departed on the part of the bereaved. But the overriding lesson of such intriguing stories is that the bereaved do not conclude that the deceased has returned physically to life as a result of such experiences, however real and tangible they may seem—rather the deceased is seen in the afterlife. As Wright observes, for someone in the ancient world, visions of the deceased are not evidence that the person is alive, but evidence that he is dead!
Moreover, in a Jewish context other, more appropriate interpretations of such experiences than resurrection are close to hand. Given the current Jewish beliefs about life after death, the disciples, if they were to project hallucinations of Jesus, would have seen Jesus in heaven or in Abraham’s bosom, where the souls of the righteous dead were believed to abide until the final resurrection. And such visions would not have led to belief in Jesus’ resurrection. At the most, it would have only led the disciples to say that Jesus had been assumed into heaven, not raised from the dead.
In the Old Testament, figures such as Enoch and Elijah were portrayed as not having died but as having been taken directly into heaven. In an extrabiblical Jewish writing called The Testament of Job (40), the story is told of two children killed in the collapse of a house. When the rescuers clear away the rubble, the bodies of the children are nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, their mother sees a vision of the two children glorified in heaven, where they have been taken up by God. It needs to be emphasized that for the Jew an assumption into heaven is not the same as a resurrection. Assumption is the taking of someone bodily out of this world into heaven. Resurrection is the raising up of a dead man in the space-time universe. They are distinct ideas.
Given Jewish beliefs concerning assumption and resurrection, the disciples, having seen heavenly visions of Jesus, would not have preached that Jesus had been raised from the dead. At the very most, the empty tomb and hallucinations of Jesus would have caused them to believe in the assumption of Jesus into glory, for this was consistent with their Jewish frame of thought. But they wouldn’t have come to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, for this contradicted Jewish beliefs about the resurrection of the dead, as we have seen. Thus, even given hallucinations, belief in Jesus’ resurrection remains unexplained.
2. Explanatory power. The hallucination hypothesis obviously does nothing to explain the empty tomb and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. But it arguably has weak explanatory power even when it comes to the appearances. Suppose that Peter was one of those individuals who experienced a vision of a deceased loved one or experienced a guilt-induced vision, as Lüdemann imagines. Would this suffice to explain the resurrection appearances? Not really, for the diversity of the appearances bursts the bounds of anything found in the psychological casebooks. Jesus appeared not just one time, but many times; not at just one locale and circumstance, but at a variety of places and under a variety of circumstances; not to just one individual, but to different persons; not just to individuals, but to various groups; not just to believers, but to unbelievers and even enemies. Positing a chain reaction among the disciples won’t solve the problem because people like James and Paul don’t stand in the chain. Those who would explain the resurrection appearances psychologically are compelled to construct a composite picture by cobbling together different unrelated cases of hallucinatory experiences, which only serves to underline the fact that there’s nothing like the resurrection appearances in the psychological casebooks.
3. Plausibility. Lüdemann attempts to make his hallucination hypothesis plausible by a psychoanalysis of Peter and Paul. He believes they both labored under guilt complexes that found release in hallucinations of Jesus. But Lüdemann’s psychoanalysis is implausible for three reasons: First, Lüdemann’s use of depth psychology is based upon certain theories of Jung and Freud, which are highly disputed. Second, there’s insufficient data to do a psychoanalysis of Peter and Paul. Psychoanalysis is difficult enough to carry out even with patients on the psychoanalyst’s couch, so to speak, but it’s next to impossible with historical figures. For that reason the attempt to write psychobiography is rejected by historians today. Finally, third, the evidence we do have suggests that Paul did not struggle with a guilt complex as Lüdemann supposes. Nearly fifty years ago the Swedish scholar Krister Stendahl pointed out that Western readers have tended to interpret Paul in light of Martin Luther’s struggles with guilt and sin. But Paul (or Saul) the Pharisee experienced no such struggle. Stendahl writes:
Contrast Paul, a very happy and successful Jew, one who can say “As to righteousness under the Law (I was) blameless” (Phil. 3:6). That is what he says. He experiences no troubles, no problems, no qualms of conscience. He is a star pupil, the student to get the thousand dollar graduate scholarship in Gamaliel’s Seminary.… Nowhere in Paul’s writings is there any indication … that psychologically Paul had some problem of conscience.[8]
In order to justify his portrait of a guilt-ridden Paul, Lüdemann is forced to interpret Romans 7 in terms of Paul’s pre-Christian experience. But this interpretation is rejected by almost all commentators since the late 1920s. So Lüdemann’s psychoanalysis is positively implausible.
A second respect in which the hallucination hypothesis is implausible is its taking the resurrection appearances to be merely visionary experiences. Lüdemann recognizes that the hallucination hypothesis depends on the presupposition that what Paul experienced on the Damascus road was the same as what all the other disciples experienced. But this presupposition is groundless. In including himself in the list of eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection appearances, Paul is in no way implying that they were all just like the appearance to him. Many of Paul’s opponents in Corinth denied that he was a true apostle, so Paul is anxious to include himself along with the other apostles who had seen Christ. Paul is trying to bring his experience up to the objectivity and reality of theirs, not to pull their experience down to the level of merely visionary experiences.
So the hallucination hypothesis suffers from implausibility with respect to its psychoanalysis of the witnesses and its blanket reduction of the appearances to visionary experiences.
4. Less contrived. Lüdemann’s version of the hallucination hypothesis is contrived in a number of ways: For example, it assumes that the disciples fled back to Galilee after Jesus’ arrest, that Peter was so obsessed with guilt that he projected a hallucination of Jesus, that the other disciples were also prone to hallucinations, and that Paul had a struggle with the Jewish law and a secret attraction to Christianity.
TALK ABOUT IT
Why do you suppose the hallucination hypothesis is today the most prominent hypothesis among those who deny Jesus’ resurrection?
5. Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs. Some of the accepted beliefs of New Testament scholars today tend to disconfirm the hallucination hypothesis, at least as Lüdemann presents it; for example, the beliefs that Jesus was laid in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, that Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by women, that psychoanalysis of historical figures is not feasible, that Paul was basically content with his life under the Jewish law, and that the New Testament makes a distinction between a mere vision and a resurrection appearance.
6. Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1–5. The hallucination hypothesis remains a live option today and in that respect has outstripped its naturalistic rivals. But the question is whether it outstrips the resurrection hypothesis.
The Resurrection Hypothesis
We’ve seen how poorly the typical explanations of the empty tomb, the postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ faith fare when assessed by standard criteria for testing historical hypotheses. They’re especially weak when it comes to explanatory scope and power and are often highly implausible.
But does the resurrection hypothesis do any better at explaining the evidence? Is it a better explanation than the implausible naturalistic explanations offered in the past? In order to answer these questions, let’s apply our same criteria to the hypothesis that “God raised Jesus from the dead.”
1. Explanatory scope. The resurrection hypothesis has greater explanatory scope than some rival explanations like the hallucination hypothesis or the displaced body hypothesis by explaining all three of the main facts at issue, whereas these rival hypotheses explain only one.
2. Explanatory power. This is perhaps the greatest strength of the resurrection hypothesis. The conspiracy hypothesis and the apparent death hypothesis, for example, just do not convincingly account for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances, and origin of the Christian faith; on these theories the evidence (for example, the transformation of the disciples) becomes very improbable. By contrast, on the hypothesis of Jesus’ resurrection it seems extremely probable that the tomb should be empty, that the disciples should see appearances of Jesus alive, and that they should come to believe in His resurrection.
3. Plausibility. The plausibility of Jesus’ resurrection grows exponentially once we consider it in its historical context, namely, Jesus’ unparalleled life and radical personal claims, and in its philosophical context, namely, the evidence for God’s existence. Once one embraces the view that God exists, the hypothesis that God would raise Jesus from the dead is no more implausible than its rivals.
4. Less contrived. The resurrection hypothesis possesses great explanatory scope and power, but some scholars have charged that it is contrived. Being contrived, you’ll recall, is a matter of how many new suppositions a hypothesis must make that are not implied by existing knowledge.
So defined, however, it’s hard to see why the resurrection hypothesis is extraordinarily contrived. It requires only one new supposition: that God exists. Surely its rival hypotheses require many new suppositions. For example, the conspiracy hypothesis requires us to suppose that the moral character of the disciples was defective, which is certainly not implied by already existing knowledge; the apparent death hypothesis requires the supposition that the centurion’s lance thrust into Jesus’ side was just a superficial poke or is an unhistorical detail in the narrative, which again goes beyond existing knowledge; the hallucination hypothesis requires us to suppose some sort of emotional preparation of the disciples which predisposed them to project visions of Jesus alive, which is not implied by our knowledge. Such examples could be multiplied.
Moreover, for the person who already believes in God, the resurrection hypothesis doesn’t even introduce the new supposition of God’s existence, since that’s already implied by his existing knowledge. So the resurrection hypothesis cannot be said to be contrived simply by virtue of the number of new suppositions it introduces.
If our hypothesis is contrived, then, it must be for some other reasons. Scientific hypotheses regularly include the supposition of the existence of new entities, such as quarks, strings, gravitons, black holes, and the like, without those theories being characterized as contrived. Philosophers of science have found it notoriously difficult to explain what it is exactly that makes a hypothesis contrived. There seems to be an air of artificiality about a hypothesis deemed to be contrived, which can be sensed by those who are seasoned practitioners of the relevant science.
Now I think the sense of discomfort that many people, even Christians, feel about appealing to God as part of an explanatory hypothesis for some phenomenon in the world is that so doing has this air of artificiality. It just seems too easy when confronted with some unexplained phenomenon to throw up one’s hands and say, “God did it!” Is the hypothesis that “God raised Jesus from the dead” contrived in this sense?
I don’t think so. A supernatural explanation of the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith can scarcely be said to be contrived given the context of Jesus’ own unparalleled life, ministry, and personal claims. A supernatural hypothesis readily fits into such a context. It’s also precisely because of this historical context that the resurrection hypothesis doesn’t seem contrived when compared to miraculous explanations of other sorts: for example, that a “psychological miracle” occurred, causing normal men and women to become conspirators and liars who would be willingly martyred for their lies; or that a “biological miracle” occurred, which prevented Jesus’ dying on the cross (despite the spear-thrust through his chest, and so forth). It is these miraculous hypotheses that strike us as artificial and contrived, not the resurrection hypothesis, which makes abundantly good sense in the context of Jesus’ ministry and radical personal claims. Thus, it seems to me that the resurrection hypothesis cannot be characterized as excessively contrived.
5. Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs. I can’t think of any accepted beliefs that disconfirm the resurrection hypothesis—unless one thinks of, say, “Dead men do not rise” as disconfirmatory. But this generalization based on what naturally happens when people die does nothing to disconfirm the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. We may consistently believe both that men do not rise naturally from the dead and that God raised Jesus from the dead. By contrast, rival theories are disconfirmed by accepted beliefs about, for example, the instability of conspiracies, the likelihood of death as a result of crucifixion, the psychological characteristics of hallucinatory experiences, and so forth, as we have seen.
6. Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1–5. There’s certainly little chance of any of the rival hypotheses’ ever exceeding the resurrection hypothesis in fulfilling the above conditions. The bewilderment of contemporary scholarship when confronted with the facts of the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith suggests that no better rival is anywhere on the horizon. Once you give up the prejudice against miracles, it’s hard to deny that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of the facts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, then, three great, independently established facts—the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—all point to the same marvelous conclusion: that God raised Jesus from the dead. Given that God exists, this conclusion cannot be barred to anyone seeking the meaning to existence.
I. Determining the evidence to be explained
A. Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of His women followers on the first day of the week following His crucifixion.
1. The historical reliability of the story of Jesus’ burial supports the empty tomb.
2. The story of Jesus’ empty tomb is independently reported in very early sources.
3. Mark’s story is simple and lacks legendary development.
4. The tomb was discovered empty by women.
5. The earliest Jewish response to the disciples presupposes the empty tomb.
B. Various individuals and groups on different occasions and under varying circumstances experienced appearances of Jesus alive.
1. Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such appearances occurred.
2. The gospel accounts provide multiple, independent reports of postmortem appearances of Jesus.
3. The resurrection appearances were physical, bodily appearances.
C. The first disciples came sincerely to believe in Jesus’ resurrection despite every predisposition to the contrary.
1. Jews had no expectation of a Messiah who instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal.
2. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife preclude anyone’s rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the resurrection at the end of the world.
II. Explaining the evidence
A. Rival explanations do not fare well when assessed by the standard criteria for the best explanation, such as explanatory scope, explanatory power, plausibility, being contrived, disconfirmation by accepted beliefs, and outstripping its rivals in meeting these criteria.
1. Conspiracy theory
2. Apparent death theory
3. Displaced body theory
4. Hallucination theory
B. The resurrection theory when judged by these same criteria emerges as the best explanation.
[1] John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 131.
[2] Jacob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien—Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), 49–50.
[3] Gary Habermas, “Experience of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection,” Dialog 45 (2006): 292.
[4] C. H. Dodd, More New Testament Studies (Manchester: University of Manchester, 1968), 128.
[5] Hans Grass, Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 80.
[6] Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus?, trans. John Bowden (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 80.
[7] N. T. Wright, Sewanee Theological Review, 41.2, 1998.
[8] Kristen Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 12–13.