11: The Swoon or Apparent Death Theory

11

The Swoon or Apparent Death Theory

One of the most popular rejoinders to the Christian belief in the resurrection particularly during the reign of older nineteenth-century German liberalism was that Jesus was never dead in the first place when he was removed from the cross. Conversely, this hypothesis has been proposed quite rarely by scholars during recent decades. Yet, it still appears periodically. The oft-mentioned cognate point is that such an oversight would be particularly more common in light of these events occurring almost 2,000 years ago when medical knowledge was far less developed than today. The less-magnanimous way to pose the same question would be to inquire where the centurion received his medical degree, or whether there was a power outlet located on the Galilean hilltop for the EEG and EKG machines.

While several of the best-known natural alternative hypotheses actually show up in the Gospels, having occurred to both believers and unbelievers alike, this was not really one of them. However, it is recorded that Pilate was surprised at the report that Jesus died so quickly, so he summoned the centurion to inquire if this were indeed the case. Only when he was persuaded of the truth of Jesus’s death did he give the body to Joseph of Arimathea for burial (Mark 15:42–45). So the basic idea behind this supposition may actually have occurred to Pilate.

After a brief survey of some scholars who have held this view, chiefly during the periods of English deism, European rationalism, and German liberalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this chapter will briefly review the major data included in the initial volume of this study on the cause of Jesus’s death by crucifixion. That earlier treatment should be consulted for far more details, given that this second volume is devoted to alternative resurrection theses.

Scholarly Suppositions

The German liberalism movement in the nineteenth century provided the major birth­place for the development of the naturalistic theories concerning Jesus’s resurrection. The liberal scholars involved in the movement fostered the heyday where one thesis after another was brought to the floor for consideration, but often only after naturalistic hypotheses favored by others were first critiqued. It was the heyday of alternative critiques not only directed at Jesus’s resurrection but also toward a few other theological and historical topics that were likewise deemed unacceptable. The latter subjects included other miracle claims like the virgin birth or nature miracles such as Jesus calming a storm, or what were considered dogmatic theological beliefs like the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, or the atonement.

During their lengthy time of more than a century of theological dominance, a number of liberal scholars championed the swoon or apparent death thesis, though almost always during the first third of this historical period. Not unlike some of the more popular, less scholarly treatments today, a number of the early efforts beginning just before nineteenth-century liberalism (such as eighteenth-century English deism and German rationalism) consisted of different fictional “plot” scenarios where the perpetrators were often the Essenes. Albert Schweitzer rather derisively termed these latter accounts the “fictitious lives” of Jesus.

One of the early English deists to hold the swoon or apparent death position was Peter Annet. He wrote several brief treatises against the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s resurrection, often repeating the same points time and again, such as criticizing the notion of miracles. Annet probably spent more time on the apparent death hypothe­sis than almost any other skeptic.

A few decades after Annet’s series of small volumes on the resurrection were published, a couple of examples from Schweitzer’s list of “fictitious lives” also supported the swoon or apparent death theory. Schweitzer introduced his chapter on these authors with the unflattering comment that they consisted of “a few ­imperfectly equipped free-lances” who nonetheless “first attempted to apply, with logical consistency, a non-supernatural interpretation to the miracle stories of the Gospel.”

The first of these two writers, Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, composed his work Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu: In Briefen an Wahrheit suchende Leser in eight volumes over an eight-year period (1784–1792). Bahrdt hypothesized that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were secret members of the Essene community who worked with Luke the physician to keep Jesus from dying during the crucifixion and then nursed him back to health so he could appear to his disciples.

The second author, Karl Heinrich Venturini, developed another plot thesis in his text Natürliche Geschichte des grossen Propheten von Nazareth, published in four volumes from 1800–1802. Similarly, Jesus was crucified and later nursed back to health by the Essene brethren while he was in hiding, from which he appeared to his followers.

Early in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher was becoming the lead voice marking the beginning of German liberalism. Annet, Bahrdt, and Venturini had popularized the swoon hypothesis before this time. But while the English deists and the fictitious lives authors were influential, they did not represent the sort of gravitas that many of the leading liberal scholars did. With these more scholarly pacesetters, a much more influential stance could be articulated.

However, Schleiermacher’s view of the death and resurrection of Jesus, especially whether or not he accepted some version of the apparent death thesis, is very difficult to discern for more than one reason, as discussed in far more depth in volume 1 in the chapters on German liberalism. The short answer is that there are insufficient grounds to prove either way whether Schleiermacher held this thesis, hence the bottom line is that it is simply unknown and debated in various directions. Karl August von Hase is another German liberal scholar who is also quite confusing on this topic of whether Jesus really died by crucifixion.

Annet, Bahrdt, Venturini, Hase, and Schleiermacher aside, Heinrich Paulus was probably the best-known proponent of the swoon or apparent death position during the heyday of liberal theology. In his Life of Jesus published in 1828, Paulus proposed that when Jesus was on the cross, he entered a death-like trance, though he revived later in the tomb. His severe crucifixion injuries kept him from always being recognized clearly, though the nail wounds in Jesus’s hands were the most helpful indicators. Paulus held that Jesus’s feet were not nailed to the cross. Nobody knew when or where Jesus died.

Schweitzer also listed three later “imaginative” or “fictitious” lives of Jesus that also embraced the swoon or apparent death hypothesis. These texts were written by Charles Hennell, August Gfrörer, and Joseph Salvador, all appearing about the same time as Strauss’s earlier volume Das Leben Jesu. Hennell patterned his work on Venturini’s earlier “fictitious” text, similarly employing a plot thesis. After his crucifixion, the Essenes removed Jesus from the cross and resuscitated him.

Gfrörer had jettisoned his Christian faith and was a lecturer at Tübingen University while Strauss was still there. In the second of his two volumes he took a different methodological tact, applying Strauss’s mythical approach to the Gospels. Gfrörer’s plot thesis is also apparent regarding the crucifixion and appearances of Jesus. The conjuring of his story without a historical basis led to the “imaginative” moniker bestowed by Schweitzer. Jesus was removed from the cross before death, taken to Joseph’s tomb nearby, and was successfully resuscitated. Jesus’s appearances were thus historical events, though he had never died.

Joseph Salvador was a French Jew who postulated that Jesus stood in the long line of those who were inspired by the ancient tales of gods and goddesses. In terms of Jesus’s “death” and later appearances, Salvador’s version of the plot thesis hypothesized the involvement of Pilate’s wife, the Roman centurion, and Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus only apparently died, was taken down, and buried, appearing alive later to his followers.

Thus ends some of the major treatments of the well-known German liberal versions of the swoon or apparent death hypotheses. This notion seems clearly to be the most popular of the naturalistic hypotheses pertaining to Jesus’s resurrection during the first third of the nineteenth century. These theses were regularly developed in the form of the ungrounded, plot-oriented, “fictitious” attempts of Bahrdt, Venturini, Hennell, Gfrörer, and Salvador, often with the Essenes posing as the coconspirators. The more respectable and serious example of the swoon theory was that developed by the scholar Heinrich Paulus. Besides Paulus, the disputed views of Schleiermacher and Hase also would have proceeded from scholars, if in fact these two authors favored these notions. But as has been noted more than once, that is a very difficult issue to determine. Even these German liberal scholars freely critiqued each other’s positions. Although being quite popular at the time, the apparent death scenarios were not the only brand of natural “resurrection” flavors.

After a lengthy hiatus of several decades brought about largely by the relative conservatism of Karl Barth and the chiefly fideistic views of Rudolf Bultmann, the swoon theory began to reappear in a few places. However, seldom were the authors of these efforts specialist scholars in a qualifying field.

One of the only exceptions to this trend of nonspecialist theorizing is the brief article by theologian Margaret Lloyd Davies and physician Trevor A. Lloyd Davies, which develops the hypothesis that Jesus lost consciousness, which caused the bystanders to think that he was truly dead. The spear wound was only the prick of a blister! After he was taken down from the cross, Jesus revived and was treated. Rather surprisingly, instead of Jesus simply appearing to his disciples after his recovery, some unspecified sort of “perceptions but not visualizations” occurred, raising the possibility of internal perceptions such as hallucinations or even a species of diatribe illumination view here.

The medical outcry against the Davies’ stance was quite instructive, with multiple reasons being provided from many letters to the editor, mostly written by British medical professors, to indicate that Jesus really died by crucifixion. Dominating these letters were comments regarding the Davies’ assertion that the spear wound was probably merely the prick of a blister, the reality of Jesus’s death by asphyxiation, the Roman spear having pierced the heart, and the assumptions that the Davies favored something such as hallucinations, which were judged to be untenable in medical terms.

Barbara Thiering has published some rather nontraditional ideas regarding Jesus. Among those is her view that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had children, got divorced, and also married Lydia of Philippi. Jesus was crucified at Qumran along with Judas Iscariot and Simon Magnus. But none of the three men died, in spite of Judas and Simon having had their ankles broken. Jesus was drugged, given an antidote later, and traveled all around the Mediterranean with his followers, dying sometime after AD 64. Not surprisingly, scholars have not taken her hypotheses very seriously.

The swoon theory has appeared from time to time over the years, almost always in popular writings and often along with a number of other strange and off-the-beaten-path notions about Jesus. But among scholars, even self-identified non-Christian researchers, the apparent death scenario has not really been overly popular since Strauss’s devastating critique, stated most forcefully in 1864. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was declared to be only a curiosity of the past.

Thus, with few exceptions, even the vast majority of very critical scholars willingly concede Jesus’s death by crucifixion as a given, as some examples indicate. Atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman summarizes the matter this way: “The most certain element of the tradition about Jesus is that he was crucified on the orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. The crucifixion is independently attested in a wide array of sources and is not the sort of thing that believers would want to make up about the person proclaimed to be the powerful Son of God.”

Other skeptical researchers who write similarly include John Dominic Crossan, who makes a comment similar to Ehrman’s: “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” Elsewhere, Crossan likewise asserts, “I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” Marcus Borg agrees with Ehrman and Crossan about the crucifixion: “The most certain fact about the historical Jesus is his execution as a political rebel.” Today it is safe to state that the vast majority of these critical scholars dispute or reject entirely the swoon or apparent death thesis.

Problems for the Swoon Hypothesis

In the response to the swoon or apparent death theory in this section, a large number of serious problems with this view will only be summarized. While the cate­gories will progress while working through each (medical, historical, and David Strauss’s critique), the count of numbered criticisms will follow in succession for the sake of gaining an overall impression of the strength of the contrary argument. Many additional details not presented in this chapter may be gleaned from the two earlier chapters devoted to Jesus’s crucifixion in the initial volume of this study.

Medical Problems for the Swoon or the Apparent Death Hypothesis

(1) For most medical researchers, by far the most common cause postulated for the death of Jesus by crucifixion is asphyxiation or suffocation. In fact, as remarked in the earlier treatment in this study on Jesus’s death by crucifixion, it is likely that this option garners more total adherents than all the other medical options combined.

The asphyxiation explanation is often presented similarly. When an adult male is hung so that the weight of the body pulls downward, the intercostal, pectoral, and deltoid muscles surrounding the lungs tend to constrict them. When this occurs, the victim can still inhale with difficulty, though it is increasingly difficult to exhale. Of course, the inability to either inhale or exhale causes asphyxiation quite quickly. Unless the process is halted, death will occur. Moreover, being nailed to a wooden cross, which is by far the more common description in the ancient world, would cause far more stress on the body.

On this explanation, the centurion at the crucifixion site did not need a medical degree or modern technologies such as those supplied by EKGs or EEGs to determine if the offenders were dead. If the victim had been hanging in the “low” position on the cross for any significant amount of time, death would result, whether the individual was in a coma, faking death, or just plain worn out. The position of the person’s body would provide much of the necessary information, since further up-and-down movements would obviously signal that more time was needed before death would ensue.

Death could be prolonged for perhaps even a considerable time if the victim could continually push down on their severely injured feet, pull up with their likewise brutally wounded arms and wrists, and contort their pain-wracked bodies into new positions to relieve the stress on their lungs in order to breathe. Even this drawn-out, incredibly painful process, recurring repeatedly, probably only resulted in just a few brief, halting and wheezing gasps before the person sank back down again. This obviously would be an incredibly painful process, especially given that nails were most often used. Further, such constant action would quickly tire out a victim. Not being able to continue these movements meant certain death in the low position, so there was a constant and repeated choice between staying alive or giving up and dying.

But if the legs of the crucified persons were smashed or severed, as with an instrument like a heavy mallet or an axe, the ability to push up to breathe certainly would be, at the very least, severely restricted if not thereby made impossible. This would be in addition to the effect of the blow itself on the substantially weakened human body and perhaps the impending shock as well.

For many reasons, then, asphyxiation has easily been the most popular choice among medical researchers to explain the chief factor in what was probably a multi­faceted cause of Jesus’s death due to the process of crucifixion, perhaps even more than the other medical options combined. Of course, as mentioned often in this study, the most popular views are not always correct. But whatever combination of factors may have been involved in the actual, physical process of Jesus’s death by crucifixion, several additional considerations indicate clearly that Jesus was certainly dead when his body was placed in the tomb. This last fact is easily the most crucial consideration here, as agreed by the vast majority of critical scholars such as those listed above.

(2) According to the Gospel of John, the two crucified men on each side of Jesus had their legs broken to hasten their deaths before the start of the Sabbath, as per Jewish custom. But when they came to Jesus the soldiers saw that he was already dead, probably due to his hanging in the low position on the cross for a significant amount of time, plus there could have been other factors as well. So, a soldier pierced his side (pleura), and blood and water came from the wound (19:31–34).

Many of these details have already been discussed in volume 1 and will not be repeated here. It will only be remarked in this context that many sources in the ancient world evidence both the practice of breaking the legs of crucifixion victims (crurifragium) as well as administering other forms of death blows for the purpose of ending a crucified person’s life more quickly, not to mention breaking legs in noncrucifixion cases to cause death. Several sources also record examples of piercing chests and hearts in both crucifixion and other scenarios to ensure the death of someone who has apparently already died.

In both instances, reports of breaking legs and piercing chests are found in various Greco-Roman accounts as well as other religious and archaeological sources. Moreover, a number of major critical scholars have also concluded that John’s accounts of the death blows for crucified victims in general and Jesus’s specific postmortem chest wound are well attested as being historical.

It is true that Jesus’s legs were not broken. Yet the upshot of these two conclusions is the importance of establishing the Roman practices of issuing death blows to hasten an individual’s death (either breaking ankles or some other death-­ensuring method) and delivering a final death blow to ensure an apparently deceased person had really died, which appears to be how the Roman soldiers addressed the situation with Jesus. In both cases, the existence of these practices in the time of Jesus is well established.

Crucially and not to be missed here, the lack of a final death blow such as crurifragium in Jesus’s case only serves to make the spear wound even more likely. Since the soldiers were basically killing the other two men on each side of Jesus at the same time as they passed by him, doing something to his body too makes absolute sense because these actions were for the purpose of ensuring the deaths of all three men. The soldiers’ lives may possibly even have depended on all three crucifixion victims being dead, especially given the potentially explosive political situation with Jesus at Passover season. So the well-documented truth of crurifragium is directly connected to the coup de grâce in the specific case of Jesus. Finally, his pierced chest came after he had already died and served as the final indication of that reality, as in Quintilian’s report.

(3) Another vital medical observation must also be added here. Assuming the likelihood that Jesus’s chest wound from the Roman spear pierced at least Jesus’s lung, in the unlikelihood that Jesus was still alive at that time a pneumothorax (lung collapse) would have resulted. This condition would have developed since the pressure outside his chest would have exceeded the inside pressure, resulting in the incidence of a very audible sucking sound proceeding from the blood and other bodily fluids in the chest cavity that “would have been obvious to the centurion and to the individuals who took Jesus down from the cross.” Pathologist Frederick Zugibe even witnessed such a sound that he could hear distinctly all the way across a room from a wounded and unconscious man.

Beyond the centurion, others who were present at the crucifixion site also would have heard the sound and naturally would have concluded that Jesus was breathing and hence still alive. That would no doubt have resulted in still more radical steps being taken by the Roman soldiers to ensure his death.

(4) Michael Licona mentions another thoughtful argument favoring Jesus’s death due to crucifixion. There “is a very low probability of surviving crucifixion.” Of all the specific details and many references to crucifixion in the ancient world, “only one account exists in antiquity of a person surviving crucifixion.” Jewish historian Josephus narrates the case where, during a Roman siege, he discovered that three of his friends had been crucified. Josephus beseeched another friend, the Roman general Titus, who “immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them.” In spite of being given Rome’s very best medical care available, only one of Josephus’s friends survived even their shortened crucifixion. The other two “died under the physicians’ hands.”

The point here is that besides this single case of a rescued crucifixion victim, we know of no other survivors of crucifixion in antiquity. There are no known cases of unrescued survival in the ancient documents of those who were crucified and mistakenly thought to be dead. Further, as Licona asserts, “Thus, even if Jesus had been removed from his cross prematurely and medically assisted, his chances of survival were quite bleak. In addition, no evidence exists that Jesus was removed while alive or that he was provided any medical care whatsoever, much less Rome’s best.”

We need to add a major consideration here: recognizing the highly likely reality of death by crucifixion indicates that even without the crucifixion death blows and the postmortem wounds, Jesus would most likely have died anyway from any of several medical causes. Josephus witnessed many crucifixions with zero unassisted swoon events, either purposeful or otherwise. Therefore, all told, those who suppose that Jesus did not die by crucifixion are banking on slight possibilities rather than historical probabilities. All the best historical and medical data that we possess on death by crucifixion oppose this naturalistic alternative view. This is precisely why so few of even the most skeptical scholars support the swoon or apparent death hypotheses.

(5) Amid all of these detailed considerations that favor so strongly Jesus’s death by crucifixion, another one has historically been the most influential critique in scholarly terms among both believing and unbelieving researchers. Developed and popularized by David Strauss, the most famous (or infamous) of the skeptical German liberals, this astute refutation of the swoon or apparent death hypothesis is not medical but rather logical or historical in nature.

When Strauss began his teaching career, the apparent death thesis was the most popular alternative view regarding Jesus’s resurrection. However, Strauss did not value it very highly. In fact, judging from his remarks, he thought it was ridiculous. After stating the essence of the swoon theory, Strauss then struck his target in its very weakest place, brandishing his now-infamous and stylishly worded critique:

It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulcher, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life. . . . Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which he had made upon them in life and in death . . . but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.

Strauss’s criticism works like this: even if Jesus had escaped this Roman death, which was highly unlikely in itself, this would not account for his disciples’ belief in his resurrection, a belief that virtually every single scholar today concedes without question to be historical. To be sure, the Jesus of the swoon theory would have convinced his disciples that he was undeniably alive. But “just alive” was hardly good enough. Since the resurrection is the center of the Christian faith in all its fullness, the disciples needed to see Jesus’s resurrection body appearing to them gloriously, grounding their newfound faith from that point onward.

However, on the opposite view, the severely wounded Jesus standing before them would have been very far from risen. The truth would have been rather straight­forward: standing before them would have been a recently beaten and crucified and barely living Jesus, who would have appeared in absolutely horrible physical shape. True, it would have been clear that he had survived crucifixion, at least for a brief time, but this was not their risen Savior. Scourged horribly, with gaping wounds that were now dripping blood anew, pale and sickly looking, hunched over and limping badly, holding his side with his breath sounding in gasps, disheveled with unwashed hair caked with blood, Jesus would have been very much in obvious need of immediate medical assistance!

Then Strauss asks a few exceptionally pointed questions. Could this Jesus really have convinced his followers that he was the “Prince of Life”? Could this Jesus have changed their grief and sadness into fervor and passion? Most of all, would this Jesus’s disciples have worshiped him?

Strauss’s questions were precisely on the mark, striking precisely at the key problems. At least two other related issues follow. Jesus’s condition obviously would have contradicted his disciples’ initial belief that he had appeared in a glorious, new resurrected body. Similarly, could Jesus’s highly disappointing appearance have led to their excitement that they would someday have a “resurrected” body just like this Jesus who now stood before them?

Strauss’s overall critique of the older liberal version of religious rationalism in general, and more specifically the swoon or apparent death theory featuring particularly this critique, were so devastatingly hard-hitting and influential that he has regularly been cited by liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike since the nineteenth century. This trend of citing Strauss’s criticism as a one-punch knockout of the idea that Jesus survived crucifixion was popular during and after liberalism, surely contributing to the demise of this natural thesis. As was noted earlier, several scholars went as far as to observe at the beginning of the twentieth century that the apparent death thesis had become basically nonexistent.

Further, comparatively few scholars in relevant fields of study well over a century after Strauss hold the swoon theory today. As a result of examining the data as well as hearing such denunciations of this thesis, more scholars have since agreed that Strauss indeed authored the strongest refutation of this naturalistic thesis. Gerald O’Collins also employs the term “knockdown,” similar to the verbiage above. Some perhaps do not even mention the point any longer due to the conviction that the view is both outdated as well as false. Nonetheless, Strauss’s criticism has remained the nemesis of swoon theories even in more recent decades, appearing regularly when the view is discussed.

Just to summarize briefly these five medical categories, the medical cause of death by crucifixion was probably multifactorial, with asphyxiation mentioned most frequently by far. But it also should be noted very carefully that if other major causes of death actually predominated instead of asphyxiation, they were likewise fully capable of ensuring Jesus’s death. Therefore, the other arguments for Jesus’s death presented in this chapter would also assure this same result.

Second, very strong textual and archaeological evidences confirm the practices of administering death blows to living crucifixion victims as well as providing additional support for a final coup de grâce being administered in the case of deceased victims like Jesus. The postmortem chest piercing was connected to the treatment of the other two victims in the same context, which lends further historical likelihood to the chest wound. The latter would certainly have assured Jesus’s death, which had already occurred.

Third, assuming that Jesus had been stabbed in the chest, a pneumothorax would have occurred. Such an event would have ensured Jesus’s death from another angle, since the ensuing sucking and gurgling sounds originating from that wound would have sounded to bystanders, Romans and others alike, as if Jesus were still alive. In such an instance, Jesus would necessarily have been struck again, probably even more severely.

Fourth, though there are many crucifixions described or discussed in antiquity, there are no known cases among them where the full crucifixion process failed to result in the death of the victim. Thus, given his completed crucifixion scenario, Jesus’s chances of survival were very bleak, even without additional wounds or death blows. This is highly significant.

Fifth, David Strauss’s absolutely devastating critique by itself has traditionally convinced most scholars, liberals and conservatives alike, that swoon or apparent death scenarios are badly mistaken. After a botched crucifixion, Jesus would only have succeeded in convincing his followers that he was barely alive and incredibly wounded, but definitely not raised from the dead! This actually would have shown that Jesus had not been raised—the exact opposite of a resurrection.

In sum, though the swoon or apparent death hypothesis was popular primarily in English deism and continental rationalism just before and then for a few decades after the beginning of German liberalism, the supposition fell out of popularity immediately thereafter, and very quickly at that. The failure of rationalistic trends within liberalism at the hands of Strauss’s mythical methodology, plus Strauss’s famous critique, combined to signal the death knell of this naturalistic option.

Historical Problems for Swoon or Jesus’s Apparent Death

There are many exceptionally serious medical problems regarding the multiple failures of the swoon thesis, as just indicated. These issues have no doubt contributed to the serious shortage of scholars in relevant fields who have proposed this option. Additionally, there are also many positive historical indications that the New Testament texts attesting to Jesus’s death are accurate. Here we will chiefly be drawing on the so-called historical criteria that biblical scholars have borrowed from historians. Rather incredibly, even very skeptical scholars generally agree with the majority of these applications, as will be indicated below. But we will have to be brief here, leaving out many additional points.

Multiple Attestation

The idea that Jesus died by crucifixion is well supported both in the New Testament and in additional ancient texts and archaeology, as well as recognized virtually unanimously by critical scholarship. For example, Bart Ehrman states, “That Jesus died by crucifixion is almost universally attested in our sources, early and late.” Then he lists a minimum of fifteen independent sources composed within 100 years of Jesus’s death that mention the crucifixion. For the ancient world, in particular, this is simply a plethora of sources. Scholars would largely look in vain for very many other personages in antiquity that have close to this number of independent testimonies. As Ehrman asserts, “For a historian these provide a wealth of materials to work with, quite unusual for accounts of anyone, literally anyone, from the ancient world.”

Other radical and strongly critical scholars agree with Ehrman as well. The Jesus Seminar corporately lists three independent Gospel sources (Mark, John, and Peter) for Jesus’s crucifixion. Crossan mentions the same three Gospels as the Seminar, plus four additional texts (1 Corinthians, 1 Clement, Ignatius, and Barnabas), for a total of seven sources that record the crucifixion of Jesus. Crossan summarizes: “I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” That skeptical researchers also agree so readily on these data and details of Jesus’s death should be sufficient to settle the matter.

Early Attestation

Continuing with Ehrman’s research, this scholar admits freely and very frequently (well over a dozen times) that many of the early pre-Pauline creedal statements at least mention Jesus’s crucifixion or death—such as those in Rom 1:3–4; 10:9; 1 Cor 15:3–7; Phil 2:6–11—along with a number of the key Acts sermon summaries, especially those in Acts 2:36 and 13:32–33, plus other passages. He thinks that such comments clearly go back to the 30s. Several times, Ehrman states further that some of these creeds and Acts summaries extend back to within one to three years after the crucifixion. Truly, this is the very definition of early dates for these texts that report Jesus’s death and other areas.

Ehrman is by no means the only critical author to make such comments about the exceptional earliness of similar creedal statements. However, that he is an atheist New Testament specialist does make this research highly significant.

As part of a discussion of several relevant New Testament passages that center on the ministry and personal claims of Jesus, G. B. Caird claimed, “The further back we go, the more we discover the intense conviction of Jesus that God is his Father and he is His son.” Richard Bauckham wrote that the earliest Easter-oriented message revolved around the death and resurrection of Jesus, indicating that “the earliest Christology was already the highest Christology.” This is one of the most radical things a scholar could report in terms of recent research. This would have been quite a significant insight for the early church after Jesus had been slain recently by the authorities as some sort of false prophet or criminal, but later was reportedly raised from the dead.

Closer to Bauckham (though agreeing with some of Ehrman’s conclusions too), Larry Hurtado specialized for some forty years on the question of the earliest Christian worship of Jesus. Hurtado held that the “earliest devotion to Jesus” dates from very soon after Jesus’s death and manifests an exceptionally high Christology. For Hurtado, this devotion occurred “very early at or near the outset of the early Christian movement.” It may even have been manifested just months after Jesus died! Therefore, this development is “so early that practically any evolutionary approach is rendered invalid as historical explanation.” After the disciples’ post­crucifixion experiences, “honorific titles” were given to Jesus incorporating pre­existence and issuing forth into hymns, prayers, and worship.

Providing an estimated date reminiscent of Ehrman, James D. G. Dunn points out that the early Christian tradition, including the famous creed on the death, resurrection, and appearances of Christ in 1 Corinthians 15, preceded Paul’s conversion about one to two years after the crucifixion. Of the early text in 1 Corinthians 15, Dunn asserts: “This tradition, we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus’s death.” For Dunn, this leaves room for this very early tradition to potentially be dated to the very same year in which Jesus died.

Even the Jesus Seminar concluded similarly on this issue! Likewise speaking of the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15, which included the report of Jesus’s death, they attested: “Most fellows think the components of the list reported there were formed prior to Paul’s conversion, which is usually dated around 33 C.E.” It is difficult to overestimate the force of this conclusion from a group of scholars who only voted in favor of 18 percent of Jesus’s oral statements and only 16 percent of the Gospel events!

Many other scholars could be cited here as well for the exceptionally early date at which the Christian proclamation of Jesus’s death by crucifixion and some of the surrounding beliefs is thought to have emerged in antiquity. Due to the data that favor the extraordinarily close proximity that these proclamations enjoyed in relation to the events themselves, the teaching of these beliefs is acknowledged and endorsed to one degree or another by most critical scholars who deal specifically with this material. This last comment applies to atheist, other self-identified non-Christian, agnostic, moderate, and conservative researchers alike. But especially given the immense reputations of many of the researchers presented here, these affirmations will suffice to indicate the force of this conclusion.

Eyewitness Testimony

Continuing an aspect of the previous argument regarding the amazing closeness of the earliest proclamation of Jesus’s death by crucifixion, at least some of those who spread the accounts presumably had access to eyewitness information pertaining to the crucifixion events. Many scholars also agree and add to the veracity of these conclusions in that either the Gospel authors or their sources could have included eyewitness material, which could potentially yield substantial amounts of testimony behind the crucifixion occurrences and these early beliefs, increasing the amount of advantageous material here.

The Jesus Seminar members overall voted and decided that Jesus’s execution and death deserved a red rating as an assured “core event.” The red indicates, “The historical reliability of this information is virtually certain.”

Did any eyewitness comments inform the crucifixion and death reports that we possess? Who might have observed the actual details of the crucifixion and then provided their witness regarding these details? The multiply attested accounts of several women witnesses could qualify here. The likewise multiply attested testimony concerning Joseph of Arimathea (and possibly Nicodemus in John 19:39–40) would probably count as well. The likelihood of Joseph actually being present at the cross seems assured, since he went to Pilate immediately and asked for Jesus’s body, surprising Pilate with the early information that Jesus had already died on the cross. The best explanation here is that Joseph came straight from the crucifixion site itself, where he witnessed the details up close, since he knew immediately when Jesus had breathed his last (Mark 15:43–45).

We have already seen that major scholars such as C. H. Dodd, Raymond Brown, and James D. G. Dunn, along with researchers like John Wilkinson and still others, are inclined to accept John’s testimony even though it is not multiply attested, largely due to his general crucifixion descriptions being supported in other ancient reports. If so, this could add John’s testimony to the list of crucifixion witnesses. Though it would be less assured, it is additionally possible that one or more other witnesses at the cross stepped forward, especially if they had later become believers, contributing their own observations. At any rate, perhaps a half dozen or more eyewitnesses are possibly in view here.

One probable and exciting development is the seeming majority critical view, based on strong evidence from even quite skeptical researchers, that Mark used a number of earlier sources in the composition of his Gospel. In Marion Soards’s influential study on this subject, several key findings emerged. For example, concerning Mark 15:24–37, which demarcates the details in the Gospel from the initiation of Jesus’s crucifixion until his ensuing death, the critical scholars surveyed by Soards concluded firmly that twelve of these verses derived from Mark’s earlier sources, with the only exception (15:31) garnering equal pro and con numbers in his survey.

Even Rudolf Bultmann concluded that Mark’s passion narrative included elements that extended from Jesus’s arrest to his death by crucifixion. Rudolf Pesch concluded, “Mark used extensive sources” involving “at least seven blocks of preMarkan [sic] tradition.” Soards’s overall conclusion was, “We may safely conclude that Mark used a source in writing his [passion narrative].”

In treating this question, Kirk MacGregor followed Pesch in arguing further, “Accordingly, the terminus ante quem of the pre-Markan passion narrative is 37 CE.” Further, MacGregor drew the important conclusion that the narrative extends to the empty tomb account in Mark 16:1–4, including parts of vv. 5–6 and parts of v. 8, though with far fewer details than are present in the Gospel of Mark. Moreover, of further importance is that the tradition here “originated quite independently of the pre-Pauline resurrection tradition” in 1 Corinthians 15.

The two possibilities mentioned above concerning Peter or a Petrine source plus a pre-Markan passion text used extensively by Mark involves an upside and a downside pertaining to the crucifixion question sources in this chapter. These developments are definitely pluses in terms of Mark having very early and potentially reliable sources at his disposal. However, in one or even both cases, exploring the possibility of there being eyewitnesses for Jesus’s crucifixion is conceivable but not necessarily a given.

Throughout his massive work Jesus Remembered, Dunn attempts to unite a number of these ideas to explain how the earliest church brought together its message. As Dunn states, his overall theme is that how the historical Jesus was remembered by his followers is the necessary key to understanding the earliest movement. Information regarding Jesus was chiefly gathered, organized, and disseminated through oral testi­mony. This “original and immediate impact made by Jesus” was accomplished by eyewitnesses who had observed Jesus. This was how it began.

Key ideas and actions among early believers involved bearing witness as well as formulating and passing along traditions as observed chiefly in the New Testament Epistles. But the most striking idea, at least at the outset, was remembering what was taught and modeled initially by Jesus, which was passed on orally. In this process, Jesus’s apostles were the custodians. Chief among these leaders were Peter, John, and James the brother of Jesus—those referred to as the “pillars” (Gal 2:9). In spite of any differences, Paul contributed much during the early years. Different contemporary commentators have emphasized particular elements. But for Dunn, those who fail to see the significance of Jesus’s original message being remembered and passed along, chiefly orally, to those who would assimilate the teachings for themselves and pass them on to others have misunderstood the process. This is the key to early Christian growth after Jesus: the eyewitnesses were the leaders, playing an indispensable role.

According to Paul (and other New Testament writers) the gospel message certainly included at least the teaching of Jesus’s deity, death, and resurrection, as in other very early and major creedal passages that we have discussed elsewhere (Rom 1:3–4; 4:24–25; 10:9; cf. 10:10–13; Gal 2:6–11; and several other texts including the many Acts sermon summaries). Even these passages that simply mention or detail Jesus’s resurrection or appearances at the very least imply Jesus’s death. Hence, the early appearance creeds would entail a very early mention of Jesus’s death.

That the other most influential apostles agreed with Paul concerning the nature of this gospel message (as in Gal 2:2, 6b, 9; 1 Cor 15:11) adds a highly crucial component here. Besides his conversion, Paul’s most important contribution to the early church, then, may have been his discussing with or interviewing of Peter and James the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem (Gal 1:18–20) and his subsequent meeting with Peter, James, and John in his trip back to the city fourteen years later (Gal 2:1–10). In so doing, he ascertained and passed on their eyewitness agreement on the gospel message and thereby confirmed the topic of this present chapter. Even Ehrman rates Paul making these two trips to Jerusalem and obtaining these apostles’ testimonies as one of the two most important historical developments in the early church, including being the closest we may have gotten to eyewitness testimony regarding these events.

Dissimilarity

This historical criterion is usually taken to be the toughest one to fulfill. But according to Ehrman, the crucifixion “clearly passes the criterion of dissimilarity.” This is because “no Jews would have expected a crucified Messiah” and “the story that Jesus was crucified created enormous headaches for the Christian mission.” This event was the ultimate stumbling block for Christian preaching. In short, neither Jews nor Christians would have invented the crucifixion if it had not actually occurred. Therefore, especially along with the exceptionally strong case from multiple in-dependent attestation, Ehrman states, “It appears highly probable that in fact Jesus was crucified.”

Embarrassment

Many incidents before, during, and after the crucifixion were especially embarrassing, hence these awkward and uncomfortable occurrences favor these incidents being reliable. At the very heart of the gospel message, why would any first-century Christian want to preach that although their Savior had been accused of being cursed by God for hanging on a tree (as per the Old Testament law in Deut 21:22–23), that event was actually the very key to salvation?

What about the male disciples abandoning Jesus when he was captured and taken prisoner, eventually to die? Further, the chief disciple and later church leader, Peter, denied his Lord repeatedly. Most of the disciples went into hiding for the next few days. This left the women to attend to Jesus’s burial and the return trip on Sunday morning to finish the job. Earlier, Jesus’s own brother James, later the leader of the largest church in the ancient world at Jerusalem, did not even believe his own brother when he came to town during his public ministry and basically thought that Jesus was mentally disturbed and ought to be ushered out of sight. Sometime afterward, Saul—later the great theologian and missionary—persecuted, imprisoned, and even sent believers to death. It can hardly be questioned that this series of embarrassments was quite stunning.

Christians overlook these enormous glitches and complications, presumably because they are comfortable having heard them repeatedly and knowing how the story plays out. However, it would seem that many major events would not have survived this series of massive setbacks and immense roadblocks, especially when they happened to such influential persons in the young movement. Humanly speaking, if only a few occurrences would have transpired in a slightly different direction, perhaps the church would not have survived. And yet, the church was born and even flourished beyond all expectations.

Enemy Attestation

There are also a number of examples where it is at least claimed that enemies corroborated or confirmed aspects of the Christian message. The best known is Matthew’s account of the guards being placed at Jesus’s tomb (also found in the Gos. Pet. 8:28–33 plus in some manuscripts of the Gospel of the Nazareans). By far the majority critical view is that this event never occurred, though in our treatment earlier in this study we pointed out that on the basis of the available data alone, the account fared pretty well. This is especially the case when there is no supernatural claim involved.

Regardless whether Jesus’s tomb was guarded, the Jewish leaders did not produce any data contrary to the claims of either the empty tomb or the appearances of Jesus. While this is a bit of an argument from silence, it is not entirely so. The Jewish leaders no doubt heard these claimed events announced all over Jerusalem. Plus, Acts asserts specifically that the Jewish leaders both heard and confronted the apostles about these resurrection teachings on more than one occasion (4:1–2, 5–12; 5:27–33) without making any accusations regarding the details. Further, we are even told provocatively, soon after these challenges, that “a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” (6:7 ESV), though without any comment concerning the specific details. Thus, it appears at least from the information available that the disciples made unrefuted claims concerning the resurrection.

An additional insight is provided by Marcus Borg, one that is made frequently by other skeptical and critical scholars. Borg points out that various Jewish leaders in Jesus’s day had often witnessed his supernatural actions and freely admitted their occurrence. However, they attributed these quite real healings and exorcisms to “the lord of the evil spirits.” Hence Jesus was “seen as a holy man with healing powers.” So virtually everyone in Jesus’s own day recognized that he was doing miracles. These responses to Jesus’s actions by the Jewish leaders alone would seem to constitute a more straightforward example of enemy attestation.

In this portion of this chapter, we have emphasized several historical indications that Jesus was crucified without yielding any major questions concerning the reality of Jesus’s death. In particular, we concentrated on several historical criteria that point firmly to Jesus’s crucifixion and death having taken place. For starters, these reports are multiply and independently attested, which is a prime signal that they are reliable. To repeat the above significant report acknowledged by prominent atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, there are at least fifteen different sources in the relevant ancient literature that record this event. Additionally, there are very strong signs that there are both exceptionally early and also eyewitness reports concerning the reality of Jesus’s death as well. These three indicators alone are powerful witnesses. Other helpful pointers include both embarrassing details and enemy reports. That there were plenty of examples of each criterion here strengthens further these considerations.

The earliest sources for the crucifixion (and for the resurrection appearances) of Jesus consist of a large number of very brief creedal testimonies and sermon summaries that were originally oral in nature. The strong majority of these oral traditions date from the first twenty years after the crucifixion. This means that though the main examples in this group were included chiefly in the Acts sermons and in Paul’s earliest works, these initial creeds among them actually predated the first New Testament writings. The canonical New Testament books are often dated from about AD 50 onward, from the time of Paul’s earliest epistles.

Therefore, most of these creedal traditions were actually pre-Pauline in origin. Even far beyond this, a select number of these creeds are often thought by critical scholars across the board (including the Jesus Seminar) to have existed before Paul’s conversion, which is usually thought to have occurred two or three years after the crucifixion. Predating Paul becoming a believer, the earliest of these pre-Pauline traditions thus would most likely have extended within one to two years after Jesus’s death. Needless to say, this is about as early as these reports could possibly get.

Besides multiple, independent sources along with the earliest testimony availa­ble, some of these creeds appear strongly to have eyewitness roots, either from within the eyewitness apostolic community itself or else at the very least being based on these apostolic reports. This qualifies these data even more positively still. That these early reports likewise also pass assessments that may be made from the historical criteria such as those viewed above just deepens the richness of the foundation here.

Many scholars would conclude that the key markers for authenticity are multiple attestation, early and eyewitness testimony, and discontinuity, which are well represented in these sources. These historical markers indicate that the chances of Jesus being taken down off the cross alive were virtually nil.

Conclusion

According to the comments of New Testament critical scholars extending over a century, the swoon or apparent death theory has fallen on tough times and has remained that way for many decades. Though it still appears periodically, it is always plagued by numerous issues, chiefly those of a medical or historical nature.

The medical arguments are more decisive in the sense of indicating reasons for knowing not just that Jesus was crucified, but that the situation actually resulted in his death. Five such arguments were presented in this chapter. The predominant medical response is that death by crucifixion is most likely multifactorial, with the chief cause of death being asphyxiation. But any other medical causes could of course kill too. The further likelihood was that Jesus was stabbed in the chest, probably piercing the heart, and that the wound would have resulted in his death had he not already been deceased when it occurred. A collapsed lung would have been the likely result from the spear wound, with the subsequent sucking sound making it appear that Jesus was alive. Such a situation would definitely have occasioned a second serious death blow from a Roman soldier. Moreover, the fact that none of the recorded descriptions of unrescued crucifixion victims in the ancient world ever depict an individual escaping death makes it highly unlikely that Jesus would have survived, even without any death blows being administered.

The last medical response was popularized by David Strauss, who was probably the best-known skeptical scholar of nineteenth-century German liberalism and an ardent critic of Jesus’s resurrection. To hold that a crucified Jesus who somehow survived this process would be half dead and sickly looking would be a vast understatement. How would Jesus even walk the distance to where the disciples were hiding in the city? Jesus would be limping severely, pale, bleeding once again (especially from his side wound), his body covered from barely scabbed beating and thorn wounds, with his breath coming in gasps due to untold injuries to his internal organs. He probably would have died anyway just a brief time later. Even if he arrived at the disciples’ hideout, would anyone have believed him if he held up his arms and announced that he had been crucified, but now he was the risen and glorified Lord of life? There would have been no doubt that he had been crucified, but raised from the dead? Where was the glorious body that believers would someday possess? Was this a joke?

Sure, Jesus’s disciples would be thankful that he was alive, but they would not have been tempted to declare him risen. Just seeing him in that sickly, wounded state would probably divest them of ever thinking of him as raised and glorified. Strauss’s critique was powerful and has had an enormous and lasting influence on scholarship. One and a half centuries later, it has remained the main reason cited by critical scholars as to why the swoon theory is untenable. Perhaps the disciples would have thought that God had spared Jesus from death (probably only temporarily), but his appearance would never cause them to conclude that he had been raised from the dead or especially that he had been glorified. Is this how believers would live in heaven (as in 1 John 3:2)? Strauss’s critique also includes a strong logical component, precisely because the experience would have convinced the disciples of the exact opposite of what it was supposed to accomplish. Jesus definitely had not been raised from the dead; he was alive, yes, but raised and glorified, never. The visual impression would simply be too strong to overcome.

Just to mention again, even briefly, the historical evidence for the crucifixion and death of Jesus will reveal that the amount of data available is simply astounding. More than a dozen independent sources within 100 years attest to these events. The majority of these sources date before the end of the first century AD, placing them within the first seventy years after the cross, or roughly from that time until the writing of the Gospel of John. This is an amazingly, almost unbelievably rich situation, even more so considering its ancient context. How many people or events from antiquity possess this many religious or other sources and traditions that date so close to the historical situations that they describe? The sources during this time period encompass Christian, Jewish, gnostic, and pagan texts, both canonical as well as noncanonical. It should be no wonder that the vast majority of critical researchers never question the crucifixion of Jesus.

In short, since Jesus died, then he obviously must have lived as well. As mentioned elsewhere in this study, ancient historian Paul Barnett also has noted the brief gap at the beginning of this time period from Jesus’s death until the earliest oral and written sources: “In terms of the historical reference to noted persons in antiquity, this would represent a brevity without parallel.”

All these historical data include a plethora of multiple, independent sources. Further, many examples of these texts begin from a time exceptionally close to the crucifixion itself. They are even traceable to eyewitnesses or those who were quite close to them. These early and evidenced reports likewise pass the dissimilarity test since they were neither inspired nor derived from earlier Jewish or later Christian ideas. Since a number of the comments are highly embarrassing to early Christian believers, one wonders why they would be shared at all. Finally, some nonpartisan confirmation (or enemy attestation) is present in this information.

We will not spell out here in any more detail this historical material summarized above. But to say that the available evidence is incredibly early, multiply and independently attested, or potentially drawn from eyewitnesses might even be considered as huge understatements. Moreover, Jesus’s death by crucifixion is probably the most firmly established event in his entire life. That even very critical scholars in relevant fields of study so seldom challenge this evidence is entirely astonishing in itself.

For example, well-known skeptical scholar John Dominic Crossan has declared of Jesus: “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” He again inserts above, “I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” Crossan also states how non-Christian writings by the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus provide final security for these events, plus the fact that Christians definitely would not have invented this story.

Other skeptical scholars agree readily. Marcus Borg concludes that Jesus’s execution was “the most certain fact about the historical Jesus.” Bart Ehrman observed, “The most certain element of the tradition about Jesus is that he was crucified on the orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate.”

E. P. Sanders observes that one of the historical facts that is “almost beyond dispute” is that Jesus “was executed on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.” Helmut Koester remarks firmly that “Jesus’s death on the cross” was ­certain. Atheist New Testament professor Gerd Lüdemann states firmly, “The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward.” This is quite an impressive array of endorsements regarding Jesus’s death by crucifixion from skeptical scholars who are not obliged to arrive at such conclusions unless they are previously warranted by the facts.

Notes

Peter Annet, The Resurrection of Jesus Considered: In Answer to the Tryal of the Witnesses (London: Printed by the Author, 1744); Annet, The Sequel of the Resurrection of Jesus Considered (London: Rose, 1749); Annet, The Supernatural Examined: In Four Dissertations on Three Treatises (London: Page, 1750); Annet, The Resurrection Defenders Stript of All Defense (London: Printed by the Author, 1745).

Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 38–39.

Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu, 8 vols. (Berlin: Mylius, 1784–1792).

Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 39–44.

Karl Heinrich Venturini, Natürliche Geschichte des grossen Propheten von Nazareth, 4 vols. (Copenhagen: Bethlehem, 1800–1802).

Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 44–47.

For example, Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus, trans. S. Maclean Gilmour, ed. Jack C. Verheyden (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1975), 415–17, where Schleiermacher states that the question “cannot be resolved ” (416), and he expresses indifference on the subject.

Karl August von Hase, Geschichte Jesu: Nach akademischen Vorlesungen (Leipzig: Breit­kopf and Härtel, 1876), section 112 on the resurrection, esp. 600–603. Hase’s version of this thesis from almost fifty years earlier was published in his volume chiefly for the use of students: Das Leben Jesu zunächst für akademische Studien (1829).

The ambiguity in Schleiermacher’s position could well be the factor that keeps him from holding this dubious distinction.

Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus, Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristentums, 3 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1828), 1:265, 281–82. Paulus’s later work, Exegetisches Handbuch über die drei ersten Evangelien, 3 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1830–1833), includes a very detailed discussion of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in all four Gospels. In the 1842 edition of this text, this material occupies 660–928 of volume 3. Key pages pertaining to the discussion in the text above are 669–750, 785–86, 793–94, 834–35, 866, 881–83, 893.

In volume 2 of Paulus, Das Leben Jesu, the discussion of the burial occurs in sections 204–6 (pages 256–66), while the resurrection appearances are discussed in sections 207–15 (pages 266–344). Schweitzer made the derogatory comment that Paulus’s Life of Jesus was actually inferior to Venturini’s “fictitious life” in that Paulus’s had basically just offered a harmony of the Gospels with added notes (Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 50, 54–55). Paulus’s Das Leben Jesu indicates the accuracy of Schweitzer’s comment, where the Gospel texts were grouped by subject matter, juxtaposed, and interspersed with Paulus’s discussion.

Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 161–62. Charles Christian Hennell, Untersuchungen über den Ursprung des Christentums: Vorrede von David Friedrich Strauss (Stuttgart: Hallberger, 1840). Hennell’s work An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity was published previously in English in London in 1838.

Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 163–64. August Friedrich Gfrörer, Kritische Geschichte des Urchristenthums, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Schweizerbart, 1831, 1838).

Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 165–66.

Joseph Salvador, Jésus-Christ et sa doctrine: Histoire de la naissance de l’église (Paris: Guyot, 1838), as indicated by his fairly lengthy list of mythological examples on 152n2. Other related instances appear on 184–86, 563.

Salvador, Jésus-Christ, 144–206, esp. 193–98. Other areas of interest in this volume include Salvador’s discussion of the importance of the resurrection message, esp. in Paul (180–82), and his evaluation of the Jewish leaders entreating Pilate for a guard for the tomb entrance (197). In common with perhaps even the vast majority of critical scholars, Salvador thinks there are many Gospel contradictions, a number of which he lists in the long note 2 on 199–200.

Another of the more outlandish treatments singled out by Schleiermacher himself in Life of Jesus, 451, was that by “the notorious” Jacob Andreas Brennecke in Biblischer Beweis, dass Jesus nach seiner Auferstehung noch 27 Jahre leibhaftig auf Erden gelebt, und zum Wohle der Menschheit in der Stille fortgewirkt habe, 2nd ed. (n.p., 1819). As his title indicates, Brennecke proposed that Jesus lived on earth for twenty-seven more years after his “resurrection,” appeared to Paul while he was still living in his earthly body, and also managed to direct other events in the early church!

As Schweitzer himself even noted in Quest of the Historical Jesus, 58. One huge consideration that could at least help solve this situation here in the case of Schleiermacher’s view, is that his Life of Jesus, from which the strong anti-swoon comment was reproduced below, was not only a posthumous work, but was “reconstructed from students’ note-books” (62). Other questions would remain to be solved in this matter of Schleiermacher’s views on the death of Jesus, but the nature of his volume of notes could still be a helpful factor for consideration.

Many prominent German liberal scholars disputed or totally rejected the apparent death hypothesis. Among these liberals were David Strauss, Albert Schweitzer, Theodor Keim, and a couple of French authors, Ernest Renan and Albert Réville. These views and sources are listed below in this chapter. Even Schleiermacher himself criticized the view in Strauss-like fashion: “As a sick man with weakened life force, the journeying hither and yon seems quite improbable, but this improbable action took place as early as the first day. Then he appears as one quite healthy, who walks without difficulty to Emmaus and back again. . . . We cannot represent him as those do who maintain the hypothesis of an apparent death” (Life of Jesus, 455–56). (The other sources here are also found in our earlier chapter in volume 1 on German liberalism that favors these scholars critiquing each other.)

Margaret Lloyd Davies and Trevor A. Lloyd Davies, “Resurrection or Resuscitation?,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 25 (1991): 167–70. It is difficult to know the precise specifics concerning the very briefly mentioned “appearance.” In fact, the entire article is less than two pages long, plus the endnotes.

“Letters to the Editor,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 25 (1991): 268–72.

Among her books that develop these ideas are Barbara Thiering, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story (New York: Harper & Row, 1992).

N. T. Wright remarks regarding ideas such as these: “Once again, it is safe to say that no serious scholar has given this elaborate and fantastic theory any credence whatsoever. . . . The only scholar who takes Thiering’s theory with any seriousness is Thiering herself.” See Wright, Who Was Jesus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 22–23. Edwin M. Yamauchi labels her ideas “an Alice-in-Wonderland scenario.” See Yamauchi, “Jesus outside the New Testament: What Is the Evidence?,” in Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 210.

Some of these popular examples include Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot: New Light on the History of Jesus (New York: Bantam, 1965); Donovan Joyce, The Jesus Scroll (New York: Signet, 1972); Gaalah Cornfeld, The Historical Jesus: A Scholarly View of the Man and His World (London: Macmillan, 1982); Duncan M. Derrett, The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event (Shipston-on-Stour: Drinkwater, 1982); Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Delacorte, 1982); David Mirsch, The Open Tomb: Why and How Jesus Faked His Death and Resurrection (Bangor, ME: Footlocker, 2011); Rolland E. Wolfe, How the Easter Story Grew from Gospel to Gospel (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1989), 92–103; Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2000), 222–24. Derrett’s text employs other naturalistic theories as well, further supposing both that the disciples cremated Jesus’s body after his later death and that the disciples experienced visions of the departed Jesus. Two other exceptionally brief mentions of the swoon thesis are B. C. Johnson, The Atheist Debater’s Handbook (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1983), 121–22; and Rupert Gethin, “The Resurrection and Buddhism,” in Resurrection Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 206. Another example of a popular treatment is Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, The Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2,000-Year-Old Mystery (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996). A special case is that of the Quran, which states that Jesus did not die by crucifixion (QS 4:156–158), thus making this the Muslim’s regular response on this subject. However, since the Quran has not spelled out the exact way that Jesus’s death was avoided, Muslims are free to employ more than one supposition as to how the mistake or oversight came about. Popular responses include Jesus being placed on the cross with Allah removing him before his death or another person (perhaps a look-alike individual) being crucified in place of Jesus. However, the Quran was written more than 600 years after Jesus’s death, far too long afterward and far too removed from the events themselves to be considered a historical treatment of Jesus, as agreed even by Muslim author Ahmed Deedat, Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction? (Jeddah: Abul-Qasim, 1984), 5–6.

David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet, 8th ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1864), 299. Schweitzer comments on the influence of Strauss’s devastating attack on rationalism (Quest of the Historical Jesus, 56–57) and does not list any nineteenth or early twentieth-century proponents of the swoon theory after 1838.

See Eduard Riggenbach, The Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1907), 48–49; James Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908; repr., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965), 92, cf. 42. Orr also remarks on the influence of Strauss’s crushing critique of the swoon thesis (11n2, 43).

Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 233. Concerning his own personal viewpoint, Ehrman specifies: “I am not a Christian, and I have no interest in promoting a Christian cause or a Christian agenda. I am an agnostic with atheist leanings.” See Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 5. In his blog Ehrman states, “So I’m an agnostic atheist. Or an atheistic agnostic. Take your pick!” See Ehrman, “On Being an Agnostic Atheist,” The Bart Ehrman Blog, May 23, 2021, https://ehrmanblog.org/on-being-an-agnostic-or-atheist/.

John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 145, cf. 154, 196, 201 as well.

John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 372, cf. 372–75.

Marcus J. Borg, Jesus, A New Vision: Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), 179, cf. the context of this comment here in 178–84.

Besides the influential authors just listed, additional skeptical thinkers who could be listed in this category against the swoon thesis include Gerd Lüdemann, Robert Funk, James Tabor, Thomas Sheehan, Geza Vermes, Elaine Pagels, Helmut Koester, A. J. M. Wedderburn, and John Shelby Spong. A long list of other influential scholars who oppose the apparent death idea for Jesus would include Dale Allison, N. T. Wright, Peter Stuhlmacher, Hans Küng, James D. G. Dunn, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, E. P. Sanders, Raymond Brown, Reginald Fuller, John Meier, John A. T. Robinson, Luke Timothy Johnson, Victor Paul Furnish, Gerard Sloyan, Walter Kasper, Gerald O’Collins, Thomas Torrance, Traugott Holtz, Pinchas Lapide, Pheme Perkins, Ulrich Wilckens, Craig Evans, Stephen Davis, George Eldon Ladd, William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, Michael Licona, Charles Perry, John Carroll, and Joel Green. The more than three dozen total researchers cited here are only examples of a much larger number of recent major researchers who reject the swoon or apparent death theory and embrace the historical fact of Jesus’s death by crucifixion.

The categories will be treated in reverse order from the original chapter in volume 1.

The five medical problems to be mentioned here should be thought of more as cate­gorical responses than as individual issues, since each critique generally contains several problems each.

These two terms can be easily confused, depending on different emphases within the definitions, though with the first term often being preferred.

Confirming this tally, see Gary Habermas, Jonathan Kopel, and Benjamin C. F. Shaw, “Medical Views on the Death by Crucifixion of Jesus Christ,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings 34 (2021): 748–52. This article was more about the medical and historical fact of Jesus’s death, along with a tally of medical researchers, rather than a dogmatic view on the exact cause of Jesus’s death per se (as mentioned at 751).

In a detailed footnote, Michael Licona provides a list of ancient sources that identify how the feet, arms, or wrists of crucifixion victims were affixed to the wood. He found that nails were mentioned much more frequently in these ancient works than were ropes. Virtually nothing pertaining to the time of death is determined by which fastening methods were employed. See Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2010), 304n98. Cf. also John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), esp. 425–26n45, also 190, 451; Ruben van Wingerden, “Crucifixion Practices: How to Attach a Patibulum to a Stipes,” Novum Testamentum 64 (2022): 269–76.

For some of the fairly large number of descriptions available in the medical literature, see particularly the many details in our earlier chapter in volume 1, “Jesus’s Death.” Cf. here William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” Journal of the American Medical Association 255 (1986): 1455, 1461; Robert Bucklin, “The Shroud of Turin: Viewpoint of a Forensic Pathologist,” Shroud Spectrum International 1, no. 5 (1982): esp. 9. Thomas A. Miller’s explanation of a different perspective on asphyxiation is also a major consideration here. Miller explains that results from “in-adequate oxygen availability to body tissues because of disturbed lung function” can impact the major organs and result in unconsciousness. See Miller, Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? A Surgeon-Scientist Examines the Evidence (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), esp. 78–85. Joseph W. Bergeron describes clearly the process of asphyxiation, even though this is not his own position. See Bergeron, The Crucifixion of Jesus: A Medical Doctor Examines the Death and Resurrection of Christ (Suwanee, GA: St. Polycarp, 2018), 144–53.

Cf. Thomas W. McGovern, David A. Kaminskas, and Eustace S. Fernandes, “Did Jesus Die by Suffocation? An Appraisal of the Evidence,” The Linacre Quarterly, August 22, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1177/00243639221116217; plus Bergeron, Crucifixion of Jesus.

Ancient sources recording examples of the three scenarios mentioned above are as follows: cases of crurifragium during crucifixion include John 19:31–35; the independent Gos. Pet. 4:14; Acts Andr. 51:1, 54:4; two more archaeological examples of crucifixion victims that appear to have received crurifragium in the ancient world as explained by archaeologist Kristina Killgrove in her discussion “Line on the Left, One Cross Each: Bioarchaeology of Crucifixion,” Powered by Osteons (blog), November 4, 2011, http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2011/11/line-on-left-one-cross-each.html. The source to which Killgrove refers is A. C. Aufderheide and C. Rodriguez-Martin, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Paleopathology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). There are also at least three more mentions of crurifragium in Cicero (Fat. 5, Phil. 11.14; 13.27), plus additionally the possible or likely Jewish archaeological scenario of crurifragium in the case of Jehohanan mentioned often elsewhere in this study, such as the volume 1 discussions of crucifixion. Martin Hengel describes ancient cases of non-crurifragium death blows of crucifixion victims, such as a ruler who ordered that ten crucified men have their skulls crushed with cudgels in order to finish the process. Also, in an ancient fictional account in Aristophanes, retold by Hengel, while a man nailed to a plank was writhing in pain, a bowman taunted him and threatened to finish him off with an arrow; see Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Cross, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 70. Other medical or archaeological authorities also report the general use of crurifragium plus other death blows during crucifixion; among these, F. P. Retief and L. Cilliers, “The History and Pathology of Crucifixion,” South African Medical Journal 93 (2003): 938; a separate archaeological case noted more recently in Emanuela Gualdi-Russo, Ursula Thun Hohenstein, Nicoletta Onista, Elena Pilli, and David Caramelli, “A Multidisciplinary Study of Calcaneal Trauma in Roman Italy: A Possible Case of Crucifixion?,” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11 (2019): 1783–91. Last, the Roman historian Suetonius mentions cases in noncrucifixion scenarios where Augustus had a man’s legs broken in order to kill him (Aug. 67), along with another situation where two men had their legs broken without mentioning whether or not they died as a result (Tib. 44).

The prime example of piercing the chest to ensure death is that by Roman author Quintilian, as discussed in detail in the main crucifixion chapter in volume 1, where this writer states in Latin that executioners allow that the dead bodies of crucifixion victims who have been taken down from the crosses to be pierced (presumably as a last step in assuring their deaths) and then given over to those who would bury the bodies (Decl. 6.9). Much later (sixteenth-century) anecdotal cases are reported by Oxford University professor and religious historian John Foxe, who cited scenarios where Christian martyrs were tied or nailed to posts and, after much pain, “their sufferings were ended by lances being thrust through their bodies.” See John Foxe and others, Foxe’s Christian Martyrs of the World, rev. ed. (Chicago: Moody, 1960), 96. Although without describing crucifixion, other ancient texts describe cases where prodding or piercing dead bodies was a method of insuring that the persons were really deceased (as in Plutarch, Cleom. 37). In another instance, Roman soldiers were in the habit of piercing with lances the dead bodies of Jews to ensure their deaths. The same Jewish incident is related in both Lam. Rab. 1.5.31 and in b. Gittin 56a. Last, other recent scholars report that piercing the heart (plus other methods) was a regular example of ensuring death by crucifixion. See Retief and Cilliers, “History and Pathology of Crucifixion,” 938; also Gualdi-Russo et al., “Calcaneal Trauma in Roman Italy,” 1783–84.

Among the scholars cited in the earlier chapter on Jesus’s death as affirming John’s crucifixion scenarios especially at these two points are Raymond Brown, James D. G. Dunn, C. H. Dodd, and John Wilkinson.

Although not totally analogous, the story of Peter’s imprisonment and release by an angel in Acts 12 is instructive at this point. Herod (Agrippa I) had lived in Rome where he was educated, so he was quite familiar with Roman law. According to Acts 12:18–19, when Herod heard the news about Peter’s escape, he interviewed the guards, who had done nothing wrong, and then he had them killed.

Quintilian, Decl. 6.9. This is not simply the verdict of modern medical testimony, but John’s account relates that the soldiers had come to the same conclusion regarding Jesus’s previous death. On the medical data, see Edwards, Gabel, and Hosmer, “Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” 1463; John Wilkinson, “The Incident of the Blood and Water in John 19.34,” Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975): 155; Bucklin, “Shroud of Turin,” 8–9. Once again, the evidence for these comments is supplied in the myriads of details provided in volume 1.

Frederick T. Zugibe, The Cross and the Shroud: A Medical Examiner Investigates the Crucifixion (Cresskill, NJ: McDonagh, 1981), 165.

Licona, Resurrection of Jesus, 311–12. Josephus himself attests that “I saw many captives crucified” (Life 75). The translation used here is William Whiston’s Josephus: Complete Works (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1960).

Josephus, Life 75. Translation again from Whiston.

Licona, Resurrection of Jesus, 311.

As with other criticisms aimed at Jesus’s death by crucifixion that were dealt with in more detail in the initial volume in the major chapters on Jesus’s death, Strauss’s critique will simply be summarized briefly here in far less detail, so as not to be overly repetitious.

Strauss, Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk, 295–99, which is the section aimed at the apparent death thesis, with the now-famous quotation on 299. Strauss uses the term “swoon” on 297. English translation from David Friedrich Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1879), 1:408–12, quotation on 412.

Strauss, Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk, 299. English translation from Strauss, New Life of Jesus, 1:412. Some commentators over the years thought that David Friedrich Strauss’s famous quotation above against the swoon theory was located in the initial publication of his earlier two-volume Life of Jesus (1835–1836). Though that is not the case, the initial four editions of the earlier work, published from 1835 to 1840, do contain a number of strong and sometimes pithy denunciations of this theory (such as 678–89, 734, 737–39, 751 in the English translation of the fourth German edition of 1840, entitled The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot, ed. Peter C. Hodgson [Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1972]). Still, none of Strauss’s other stated criticisms of this hypothesis come close to the 1864 nugget in terms of its succinctness, elegance, and power. As intriguing as it is remarkable, it is worthwhile to be reminded that after Strauss’s devastating attack on rationalism and its methodology as a whole, Schweitzer once again does not list any new proponents of the swoon theory after 1838, perhaps because this natural response to the resurrection came chiefly from commentators in the rational camp of liberal critics themselves. There is a precipitous drop in German liberal interest in the swoon thesis, which was the most popular approach among the critics before this year; see Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 56–57.

Critical scholars writing during the nineteenth century and slightly after this liberal onslaught, among the German liberals and the conservatives alike, recognized that Strauss’s criticisms basically destroyed the rationalistic critique in general and the swoon thesis in particular. On the German (and French) liberal side, several of these responses included the writings of Schleiermacher (Life of Jesus, 455); Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1864), 314–15, 347–51, 358–60 regarding Jesus’s enemies; Theodor Keim, The History of Jesus of Nazara: Considered in Its Connection with the National Life of Israel, and Related in Detail, trans. Arthur Ransom, 6 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1883), 6:330–31; Albert Réville, Jésus de Nazareth: Études critiques sur les antécédents de l’histoire évangélique et la vie de Jésus, 2 vols. (Paris: Fischbacher, 1897), 2:455; and Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 56–57, 62. For the conservatives, comments concerning the force of Strauss’s views were made by William Milligan, The Resurrection of our Lord (London: Macmillan, 1881), 75; George P. Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner’s, 1883), 193; Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, 11n2, 42–43; W. J. ­Sparrow-Simpson, The Resurrection and the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1968), 44, 160; Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone? (London: Faber & Faber, 1930), 64, 96; Doremus A. Hayes, The Resurrection Fact (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1932), 284–85; cf. also Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1883), 2:629. That both major liberal and conservative scholars alike agreed on the force of Strauss’s thoughts here as the final word on the swoon theses is a tribute to the lasting influence of Strauss’s critique.

As noted above, Riggenbach, Resurrection of Jesus, 48–49; and Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, 42, 92, are two such examples. In addition, others who noted quite similar thoughts were Morison, Who Moved the Stone?, 96; and Hayes, Resurrection Fact, 285. Hayes creatively concluded the matter like this: “It is not surprising, therefore, that the swoon theory has been rejected by all recent writers. Strauss was largely responsible for its death and burial, and he has left it without any hope of a resurrection.”

With apologies to any possibly mischaracterized authors here, many recent writers were noted above in this chapter who still favor the swoon thesis but are better described as popular writers who are rarely citied positively by the scholars. A few of the authors are scholars but in unrelated fields rather than specialists in these subjects, hence they would be out of their research areas to draw these conclusions.

Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Risen: The Resurrection—What Actually Happened and What Does It Mean? (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1987), 100–101.

Allison comments similarly on the denunciation by Strauss, whom he footnotes after this comment: “How a flagellated, half-dead victim of the hideous torture of crucifixion could impress others as triumphant over death is hard to envisage.” See Dale C. Allison Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 203–4. Among the many contemporary critical scholars who have argued that Strauss’s main critique and related evaluations were decisive and ended any thoughts of swoon, see N. T. Wright, “Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem,” Sewanee Theological Review 42 (1998): 119; A. E. Harvey, “A Short Life after Death,” review of The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Event, by J. Duncan M. Derrett, in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4153 (1982); Pheme Perkins, review of The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Event, by J. Duncan M. Derrett in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 45 (1983): 684–85; T. S. M. Williams, review of The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Event, by J. Duncan M. Derrett in Journal of Theological Studies 36 (1985): 445–47; Norman Anderson, Jesus Christ: The Witness of History (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1985), 87, 158–64, esp. 163, where Anderson remarks that “Derrett’s ‘reconstruction’ runs up against Strauss’ trenchant criticism.” Cf. Otto Merk, review of The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Event, by J. Duncan M. Derrett in Gnomon: Kritische Zeitschrift fur die gesamte klassische Altertumswissenschaft 59 (1987): 761–63.

Repeating the earlier point once again, the five medical issues listed above are more like categories that usually involve several critiques each.

Schweitzer makes this first claim more than once; see Quest of the Historical Jesus, 10, 56–57, 62. Occasionally, other arguments against swoon are also raised. For instance, New Testament professor John McNaugher argues that the best argument against the apparent death thesis is the resulting moral charge against Jesus’s character. If he had escaped death on the cross by whatever means, “then Jesus allowed Himself to be palmed off as one risen from the dead when He knew He was nothing of the sort.” He would then be guilty of willfully allowing His followers even to worship him when he was actually “an archimposter” because he would have known the truth that He was neither moral nor divine. See John McNaugher, Jesus Christ: The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever (New York: Revell, 1947), 148–49.

Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 163.

Ehrman lists at least the following New Testament and nonbiblical sources that teach or imply (usually the former) the crucifixion of Jesus: Mark, Matthew’s source (M), Luke’s source (L), John, “the speeches in Acts,” “everywhere in Paul,” 1 Timothy (because it is not one of the seven undisputed Pauline Epistles allowed by Ehrman), Hebrews, 1 Peter, Revelation, plus 1 Clement, Ignatius, the Gospel of Peter, Josephus, and Tacitus. See Ehrman, 156–58, 163–64, 290–91, cf. also 140–41, 173, 327–31.

Ehrman, 78 (emphasis added).

Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 562. Other affirmations on the fact of Jesus’s death are found on 8, 259, 567–68.

Crossan, Historical Jesus, 435.

Crossan, 372.

Of the Acts sermon summaries, Ehrman especially seems to gravitate to Acts 2:36 and 13:32–33 because he thinks they teach an adoptionist Christology, which is his view. Ehrman concludes that a few other texts like Rom 1:3–4 (at least before Paul probably added the words “with power” in 1:4) were also adoptionist in nature. See Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 110–13, 130, 172; Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 154–55, 218, 220–30. Ehrman also discusses adoptionism in How Jesus Became God, 5, 44, 49, 209, 218, 231–35, 249–52. Issued at the same time as the second of Ehrman’s books mentioned here, a division of HarperCollins also co-released a rejoinder by a number of other scholars that is an excellent critique of Ehrman’s ideas. See the highly detailed chapters and discussions in Michael Bird, ed., How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature. A Response to Bart Ehrman (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014).

Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 27, 92–93, 97, 132, 141, 144–45, 155–56, 171–74, 260–63; also, though not mentioned as often, this also appears in Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 216–18.

Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 130–31, 141, 163–64, 170, 251, 254.

G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 398–404, with the above quotation on 400.

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), quote on x, see also 268, cf. ix, 30, 128, 259. In this same work Bauckham moves on to the early worship of Jesus Christ and follows up on this provocative statement with a number of related statements pertaining to the exceptional earliness of these events: “The practice of worshipping Jesus goes far back into early Jewish Christianity” (25). Pointing “to the earliest Palestinian Jewish Christianity . . . Jesus was already understood to be risen and exalted to God’s right hand in heaven” (128). Last, “the worship of Jesus was central . . . beginning in the early Palestinian Christian movement” (151).

Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 268.

Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 23, also 42. Earlier in this text, Hurtado states, “Jesus’ exalted status ‘at God’s right hand’ had been affirmed by the one God,” who willed that Jesus be given “heavenly glory with the intention of all creation acclaiming Jesus as Lord” (6).

Hurtado, 36.

Hurtado, 25, also 37. Hurtado adds here rather graphically that far from this process taking any significant amount of time, it was “a more explosively quick phenomenon . . . more like a volcano” (25).

Hurtado, 27–30. Strangely enough, Hurtado seems to include surprisingly little time on the nature or other details of Jesus’s resurrection appearances themselves beyond what we have mentioned here. On these further matters, see Hurtado, 6, 93, 192–94; Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 72, 78, 170; Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), esp. 118–19, also 68, 94–95, 116–17, 124.

James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 864.

Dunn, 854.

Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 454.

Funk and the Jesus Seminar, 1.

Funk and the Jesus Seminar, 453, 567, 568. The quotation on the red rating is found on 36.

Cf. Mark 15:40–41; Matt 27:55–56; Luke 23:27–28, 49; John 19:25–27. See also, along with many other scholars, Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 2:1141–45.

Cf. Mark 15:42–43; Matt 27:57–58; Luke 23:50–52; John 19:38; Gos. Pet. 2:3. Cf. Keener, 2:1158–62; Merrill C. Tenney, John: The Gospel of Belief. An Analytic Study of the Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 270–71.

Wilkinson is also listed above. Others include Keener, Gospel of John, 2:1151–57, and Tenney, John, 266–67.

This study was originally published by Soards in the journal Bible Bhashyam in 1985, and it was included later as appendix 9 in Raymond E. Brown’s major study, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:1492–24.

Due to a variant reading, Mark 15:28 was not included in Soards’s list or in a number of translations such as the NRSV. See Brown, Death of the Messiah, 2:1512–14.

Brown, 2:1494, where Bultmann’s view is included in Brown’s chart.

Brown, 2:1498–1499, with Brown summarizing Pesch.

Brown, 2:1523. Soards concluded that the main issue here is that “we cannot be absolutely certain about where Mark’s source would have ended” (2:1523).

Kirk Robert MacGregor, “The Ending of the Pre-Markan Passion Narrative,” Scriptura, vol. 117 (2018, repr.), 1–2.

MacGregor, “Ending of the Pre-Markan Passion Narrative,” 8.

Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 335–36, 882, cf. 223–24 for further details on the storytelling component.

Dunn, 176–81, 242–43, 882.

There may be a parallel here in that the Jesus Seminar colored the risen Jesus’s appearance to Peter as pink instead of red (like Paul’s) because the comment about Peter came indirectly through Paul; see Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 453–54, 533, 568. Accordingly, besides the creedal text in 1 Cor 15:3–5, it was also Paul’s testimony that communicated the agreement on the gospel in Gal 2:1–10, indicating the pink rating for Peter, since it was also derived indirectly from Paul. Nonetheless, pink for the Jesus Seminar still means, “This information is probably reliable. It fits well with other evidence that is verifiable” (36).

Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, esp. 144–46.

Ehrman, 292.

Borg, Jesus, A New Vision, 61. Borg states on the same page, “Despite the difficulty which miracles pose for the modern mind, on historical grounds it is virtually indisputable that Jesus was a healer and exorcist.”

Ehrman also agrees with Borg here (Did Jesus Exist?, 261–62). Depending on how Josephus is read, many scholars think this Jewish historian who was born just a very few years after Jesus’s death most likely admitted at least that Jesus performed “wonderful works” (Ant. 18.3.3). As Licona attests, the predominant scholarly position pertaining to this text, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is that, save for a few Christian interpolations, Josephus wrote this passage (Licona, Resurrection of Jesus, 238).

Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 156–58, 163–64, 290–91, cf. also 140–41, 173, 327–31. Some of the explanations and details pertaining to these texts are found earlier in this chapter.

The material on these subjects has been summarized from our earlier chapters and arguments detailed in volume 1 of this study. Particularly for our purposes here, see the earlier chapters on Jesus’s death as well as those on the creeds themselves. On the date of Paul’s Epistles, beginning in about AD 50, see esp. Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 2:1–3, 101–4; and Ehrman, New Testament, 44 (chart), cf. 262, 290.

For some of the early and best of the classical scholarly texts on the nature of these creeds, including some of the conclusions above such as their very early and apostolic nature, see the following sources: Oscar Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions, trans. J. K. S. Reid, ed. Gary R. Habermas and Benjamin Charles Shaw (London: Lutterworth, 1949; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018), particularly 13, 16, 49–50; C. H. Dodd, The New Testament Preaching and Its Developments with an Appendix on Eschatology and History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 17–31; Vernon H. Neufeld, The Earliest Christian Confessions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), esp. Neufeld’s conclusions on 140–46. Also very helpful in this regard are Max Wilcox’s summaries in his volume The Semitisms of Acts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), particularly 79–80, 165–69, 171, 177. For more recent studies, see Dunn, Jesus Remembered, where some of the creedal texts are both dated before Paul’s conversion (855, 864) and drawn from eyewitness sources (856, 864, 882); Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), where “very old,” “primitive,” and possibly “Semitic” tradition was utilized in the creeds and sermon summaries (87–98), with key teachings in the creedal texts reflecting Christian teaching before Paul’s conversion (105–8, cf. 190–91). In James D. G. Dunn’s more popular text, Why Believe in Jesus’ Resurrection? (London: SPCK, 2016), 4, 10–11, he also opts for Paul having received material that dated from before his conversion. See also Hurtado, How on Earth, on the exceptionally early date of the material (2–9, 23–30, 36–42), which most likely originates before Paul’s teachings (36); Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), on the very early date of the teachings (110, 144–49, 169). Richard Bauckham emphasizes the role of the eyewitnesses in this early material in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), esp. 264–71, but see also 6, 25, 30, 307–8, 389, cf. 330–35, 341–46.

In addition to the examples listed earlier in this chapter, a more detailed listing of critical scholars appears in Gary R. Habermas, “The Late Twentieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus’ Resurrection,” Trinity Journal 22 (2001): 179–96. However, during the ensuing two decades-plus since this article appeared, it at least seems that the researchers who prefer natural responses have again slowed down considerably, as already discussed in some detail in this study.

For further details on this evidence, see Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996), particularly chaps. 7–11. Ehrman’s earlier comment is appropriate here as well, that the excellent number of historical sources for Jesus is perhaps unparalleled in the ancient world (Did Jesus Exist?, 78).

Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), quotation on 210. For specifics on some of these data, see also 7–13, 45–59, 67–70, 111–17, 185–86, 198–200.

Crossan, Jesus, 145, cf. 154, 196, 201.

Crossan, Historical Jesus, 373. Crossan provides further details on 372–76. More relevant to Jesus’s crucifixion, Crossan adds that “leg breaking was considered a merciful act” because it “removed any support from the legs and rendered breathing im­possible,” prompting asphyxiation or shock. See Crossan, Who Killed Jesus?, 135.

Borg, Jesus, A New Vision, 179, cf. 178–84.

Ehrman, New Testament, 233.

E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 10–11.

Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2:84.

Gerd Lüdemann with Alf Özen, What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection, trans. John Bowden (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 17.

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