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witnesses to the people.
you will see him.”
This remarkable correspondence of independent traditions is convincing proof that the four-line formula (which, as is evident from the grammatically unnecessary repetition of “and that” [ kai hoti] at the head of each line, lists sequentially four distinct events) is a summary in outline form of the basic events of Jesus’ passion and resurrection, including his burial in the tomb. We thus have evidence from two of the earliest, independent sources in the New Testament for the burial of Jesus in the tomb.
But that’s not all! For further independent testimony to Jesus’ burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John, not to mention the extra-biblical Gospel of Peter. The differences between Mark’s account and those of Matthew and Luke suggest that the latter had sources other than Mark alone. These differences are not plausibly explained as Matthew and Luke’s editorial changes of Mark because of their sporadic and uneven nature,39 the inexplicable omission of events like Pilate’s interrogation of the centurion, and the agreements in wording between Mathew and Luke in contrast to Mark.40 The first two considerations could be equally well explained by rejecting the stratigraphic model of the Gospels in favor of oral performances, in which case it will be the stability of the tradition’s core of entombment by Joseph that will commend the historicity of the event. Moreover, the third consideration is not so easily explained, for why would Matthew and Luke independently agree in their performances over 39. E.g., Mark’s “tomb which had been hewn out of rock” vs. Matthew’s “tomb which he hewed in the rock.”
40. E.g., Matt. 27:58 = Luke 23:52: “This man went in to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus”; also the phrase “wrapped it in linen” is identical in Matthew and Luke.
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against Mark? Either way, however, whether through independent sources or a common stable tradition, the historicity of Joseph’s burial of Jesus shines through.
Moreover, we have another independent source for the burial in John’s Gospel, as Paul Barnett explains: “Careful comparison of the texts of Mark and John indicate that neither of these Gospels is dependent on the other. Yet they have a number of incidents in common: for example . . . the burial of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.”41 Finally we have the early apostolic sermons in the book of Acts, which are probably not wholly Luke’s creation but preserve the early preaching of the apostles. These also make mention, as we have seen, of Jesus’ interment in a tomb. Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least four and perhaps more independent sources for Jesus’ burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.
Second, as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention. Joseph is described as a rich man, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a sort of Jewish high court made up of seventy of the leading men of Judaism, which presided in Jerusalem. There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish Sanhedrists. In Christian eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. The sermons in Acts, for example, go so far as to say that the Jewish leaders crucified Jesus (Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10)! Given his status as a Sanhedrist—all of whom, Mark reports, voted to condemn Jesus—Joseph is the last person one would expect to care properly for Jesus. Thus, according to the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, Jesus’ burial by Joseph is “very probable,” since it is “almost inexplicable”
why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus.42
For these and other reasons, most New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”43 But if this conclusion is correct, then, as I have explained, it is very difficult to deny the historicity of the empty tomb.
2) The discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb is multiply attested in very early, independent sources. The pre-Markan passion source in all probability did not end with Jesus’
burial but included the event of the women’s discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb. For the burial story and empty tomb story are really one story, forming a smooth, continuous narrative. They are linked by grammatical and linguistic ties.44 Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the early Christians would have circulated a story of Jesus’
41. Paul Barnett, Jesus and the Logic of History, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 104–5.
42. Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1994), 2:1240–41.
43. John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 131.
44. E.g., the antecedent of “him” ( Jesus) in Mark 16:1 is in the burial account (15:43); the women’s discussion of the stone over the door presupposes their prior experience of seeing the stone rolled across the entrance (15.46); their visiting the tomb presupposes their noting its location (15:47); the words of the angel, “see the place where they laid him,” refers back to Joseph’s laying the body in the tomb (15:46).
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passion ending in his burial. The passion story is incomplete without victory at the end. Hence, the pre-Markan source probably included and may have ended with the discovery of the empty tomb.
We have seen that in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 Paul quotes from an extremely early tradition that refers to Christ’s burial and resurrection. Although the empty tomb is not explicitly mentioned, a comparison of the four-line formula with the Gospel narratives on the one hand and the sermons in Acts on the other reveals that the third line is, in fact, a summary of the empty tomb narrative, the “he has been raised” mirroring the “he is risen!”45 Moreover, two features of the tradition plausibly imply the empty tomb. First, the expression “he was buried,” followed by the expression “he was raised” implies the empty tomb. The idea that a man could be buried and then be raised from the dead while his body still remained in the grave is a peculiarly modern notion. For first-century Jews there would have been no question but that the tomb of Jesus would have been empty. As E. E. Ellis remarks, “It is very unlikely that the earliest Palestinian Christians could conceive of any distinction between resurrection and physical, ‘grave-emptying’ resurrection.
To them an anastasis (resurrection) without an empty grave would have been about as meaningful as a square circle.”46 Therefore, when the tradition states that Christ was buried and he was raised, it automatically implies that an empty tomb was left behind. Given the early date and provenance of this tradition, the drafters could not have believed such a thing were the tomb not empty.
Second, the expression “on the third day” implies the empty tomb. Very briefly summarized, since no one actually saw Jesus rise from the dead, why did the early disciples proclaim that he had been raised “on the third day”? Why not the seventh day? The most likely answer is that it was on the third day that the women discovered the tomb of Jesus empty; and so naturally, the resurrection itself came to be dated on that day. In this case, the expression “on the third day” is a time indicator pointing to the discovery of the empty tomb.
We have, then, extraordinarily early, independent evidence for the fact of Jesus’
empty tomb. The discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb cannot be written off as a late legendary development.
But there’s more! Once again there are good reasons to discern independent sources for the empty tomb in the other Gospels and Acts. Matthew is clearly working with an independent source, for he includes the story of the guard at the tomb, which is unique to his Gospel. Moreover, there are traces of prior tradition 45. It is therefore insufficient to say with Allison that while Paul may have believed in the empty tomb on theological grounds, he may not have had actual historical knowledge of it (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 316). See the other two features of the tradition I mention in the text as well. Curiously, Allison himself recognizes that “1 Cor. 15:3–8 must be be a summary of traditional narratives that were told in fuller forms elsewhere” (ibid., 235; cf. his footnote 133). This is but one example of the many internal inconsistencies that characterize Allison’s treatment.
46. E. Earle Ellis, ed., The Gospel of Luke, New Century Bible (London: Nelson, 1966), 273.
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in the non-Matthean vocabulary in his narrative.47 And the comment “This story has been spread among Jews till this day” (Matt. 28:15) shows that Matthew is responding to prior tradition. Luke also has an independent source, for he relates the story, not found in Mark, of two disciples’ verifying the report of the women that the tomb was vacant. The story can’t be regarded as a Lukan creation, since the incident is independently attested in John. And, again, given John’s independence of the Synoptic Gospels, we have yet another independent attestation of the empty tomb. Finally, in the apostolic sermons in the book of Acts, we again have indirect references to the empty tomb. For example, Peter draws the sharp contrast, “David . . . both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day,”
but “this Jesus God raised up” (Acts 2:29–32 esv; cf. 13:36–7).
Historians think that they have hit historical paydirt when they have two independent accounts of the same event. But in the case of the empty tomb we have a surfeit of independent sources, no less than six, some of which are among the earliest materials to be found in the New Testament.48
3) The phrase “the first day of the week” reflects ancient tradition. According to the Markan account, the empty tomb was discovered by the women “on the first day of the week.” We’ve already seen from the Christian tradition quoted by Paul that the earliest Christians proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus “on the third day.” As E. L. Bode explains, if the empty tomb story were a late legend, it would almost certainly have been formulated in terms of the accepted and widespread third-day motif. The fact that Mark uses “on the first day of the week” confirms that his tradition is very old, even antedating the third-day reckoning. This fact is confirmed by the linguistic character of the phrase in question. For although “the first day of the week” is very awkward in the Greek ( te mia ton sabbaton), employing a cardinal instead of an ordinal number and “Sabbath” for “week,” the phrase when translated back into Aramaic is perfectly natural. This suggests that the empty tomb tradition is not a late-developing legend.
47. E.g . , several words or expressions which are unique in all the New Testament, such as “on the next day,” “the preparation day,” “deceiver,” “guard (of soldiers),” “to make secure,” “to seal.” The expression “chief priests and Pharisees” is unusual for Matthew and never appears in Mark or Luke. The expression “on the third day” is also non-Matthean; he always uses “after three days.” In general only 35 of Matthew’s 136
words in the empty tomb story are found in Mark’s 138 words. Similarly, only 16 of Luke’s 123 words are found in Mark’s account. Moreover, Matthew and Luke have only a dozen words in common, which shows the independence of their traditions.
48. It is ironic, then, that Allison deems Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea to be “well attested” and therefore “highly likely,” while complaining that scholarly opinion is divided over how many independent souces we have for the empty tomb (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 300, 354, 362). There is a clear double standard operative here. Notice that as in the case of Joseph’s burial of Jesus, multiple, independent attestation militates against the possibility, taken with grave seriousness by Allison, that the empty tomb narrative is an imaginative Christian fabrication or legend (ibid., 311). Its presence, like that of the burial narrative, in such early, independent sources makes such a possibility very unlikely. Notice, too, that the possibility of Christian fabrication or legend is predicated upon an important condition: “Christians might . . . have been able to reason like this without fear of contradiction if the location of Jesus’ burial or disposal were unknown, or if too much time had passed since his death” (ibid., 307)—a condition Allison himself admits is unmet (ibid., 232, 362).
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4) The Markan story is simple and lacks legendary development. Like the burial account, Mark’s account is remarkably straightforward and unembellished by theological or apologetic motifs likely to characterize a later legendary account.49
The resurrection itself is not witnessed or described, and there is no reflection on Jesus’ triumph over sin and death, no use of Christological titles, no quotation of fulfilled prophecy, no description of the Risen Lord. Some critics might stumble at the presence of the angel, but really there is no reason to think that the tradition ever lacked the angel. We may choose to excise him as, say, a purely literary figure which provides the interpretation of the vacant tomb, but then we have a narrative that is all the more stark and unadorned (cf. John 20:1–2). To appreciate how restrained Mark’s narrative is, one has only to read the account in the Gospel of Peter, which describes Jesus’ triumphant egress from the tomb as a gigantic figure whose head reaches above the clouds, supported by giant angels, followed by a talking cross, heralded by a voice from heaven, and all witnessed by a Roman guard, the Jewish leaders, and a multitude of spectators! This is how real legends look: they are colored by theological and apologetical developments. By contrast, the Markan account is stark in its simplicity.
5) The tomb was probably discovered empty by women. In order to grasp this point, we need to understand two things about the place of women in Jewish society.
First, women were not regarded as credible witnesses. This attitude toward the testimony of women is evident in Josephus’s description of the rules supposedly left by Moses for admissible testimony: “Let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” ( Antiquities of the Jews IV.8.15.§219). No such regulation is to be found in the Pentateuch but is rather a reflection of the patriarchal society of first-century Judaism.
Second, women occupied a low rung on the Jewish social ladder. Compared to men, women were second-class citizens. Consider these rabbinical texts: “Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women!” (Sotah 19a) and again: “Happy is he whose children are male, but unhappy is he whose children are female!” (Kiddushin 82b). The daily prayer of every Jewish man included the benediction “Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman” (Berachos 60b).
Now, given their low social status and inability to serve as legal witnesses, it’s quite amazing that it is women who are the discoverers of and principal 49. Again, it is ironic that Allison recognizes this feature of the empty tomb narrative; but whereas he considers this factor to be very weighty evidence when it comes to the historicity of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea, he doesn’t give it due weight when it comes to the empty tomb (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 320–21, 356). Cf. his treatment of the proper names associated with the burial narrative and with the empty tomb narrative (ibid., 327, 355), of the application of the criterion of embarrassment to both narratives (ibid., 327–29, 354–55), and of the public knowledge of the burial and the tomb’s location (ibid., 313, 316–20, 362). It’s strange that Allison doesn’t seem to notice that the same arguments which lead to his unqualified verdict of “highly likely” for the burial by Joseph also support the historicity of the empty tomb, which he deems “with great hesitation” to be “historically likely” (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 332).
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witnesses to the empty tomb. If the empty tomb story were a legend, then it is most likely that the male disciples would have been made to be the first to discover the empty tomb. The fact that women, whose testimony was deemed worthless, were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb can only be plausibly explained if, like it or not, they actually were the discoverers of the empty tomb. Hence, the Gospels are most likely giving an accurate account of this matter.
Skeptical critics have proposed all sorts of creative explanations for the women’s role, some of them quite fantastic, such as Crossan’s proposal that the women are vestiges of an earlier Secret Gospel of Mark (a hypothesis which has blown up in Crossan’s face by the demonstration that the Secret Gospel of Mark was a fraud perpetrated by Morton Smith). In general the problem with these hypotheses is that any conceivable role for women to play in the narrative would have been better served by men. Some scholars have said that the men were not available because they had all fled. Such a claim is wholly unconvincing, since it depends upon the implausible hypothesis that the disciples, fleeing from the garden, returned all the way back to Galilee (a supposition rightly dubbed “a fiction of the critics”) and fails to appreciate that legends by their very nature are no respecters of fact. As Allison insists, “It is the hallmark of legends to sin against the established facts. Why should Mark . . . be more conscientious? Why not bring Peter and other more important disciples on the stage despite what really happened?”50 Some critics have said that women are made the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb as Mark’s way of explaining why the fact of Jesus’ empty tomb had remained unknown until the writing of his Gospel—the women didn’t tell anybody! This hypothesis is too clever by half. In the first place we have seen that the empty tomb story is not a late-developing legend but is extremely early.
But secondly, are Mark’s readers seriously to believe that for thirty years no one in the Jerusalem church ever bothered to ask the women whom Mark placed at the cross about what happened afterward or that even after the resurrection appearances the women continued to stonewall? Mark doubtless intended the women’s silence to be taken as temporary, since he foreshadows appearances of Jesus to the disciples in Galilee, where the women are commanded to tell the disciples that they will see Jesus. When Mark says, “They said nothing to anyone” (Mark 16:8), he obviously means “as they fled back to the disciples.” This is precisely how his earliest literary interpreters Matthew and Luke understood him, and Mark would doubtless have been quite surprised by the suggestion that he meant that the women never said anything to anyone.51 The contrived 50. Dale C. Allison Jr., “Explaining the Resurrection: Conflicting Convictions,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3 (2005): 128; cf. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 329–30.
51. See the fine study by Larry Hurtado, “Mission Accomplished: Apologetics, Witness, and Women in Mark’s Passion-Resurrection Narratives,” paper delivered at the 2005 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, forthcoming as “The Women, the Tomb, and the Climax of Mark” in a Festschrift for Sean Freyne to be published by Brill.
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nature of these attempts to explain away the women witnesses only reinforces the historical credibility of this feature of the narrative; indeed, probably no other factor has proved so persuasive to scholars of the empty tomb’s historicity as the role of the female witnesses.
6) The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb. In Matthew 28:11–15
(rsv) we have the earliest Christian attempt to refute the Jewish polemic against the Christian proclamation of the resurrection:
While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people,
‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
Now our interest is not so much in the evangelist’s story of the guard at the tomb as in his incidental remark at the end: “This story had been spread among the Jews to this day.” This remark reveals that the author was concerned to refute a widespread Jewish explanation of the resurrection. Now what were unbelieving Jews saying in response to the disciples’ proclamation that Jesus was risen? That these men are full of new wine? That Jesus’ body still lay in the tomb in the hillside?
No. They were saying, “The disciples stole away his body.” Think about that. “The disciples stole away his body.” The Jewish polemic did not deny the empty tomb but instead entangled itself in a hopeless series of absurdities trying to explain it away. In other words, the Jewish claim that the disciples stole the body presupposes that the body was missing.
Skeptical critics have dismissed Matthew’s guard story as an apologetic legend.
But even if we regard the guard as a Christian apologetic creation, the fact which cannot be denied is that the story was aimed at a widespread Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body—which implies the empty tomb. That the story is not a Matthean creation out of whole cloth is evident not only in the many non-Matthean linguistic traits noted above, but also by the tradition history presupposed by the narrative. Behind the story evidently lies a developing pattern of assertion and counter-assertion:
Christian: “The Lord is risen!”
Jew: “No, his disciples stole away his body.”
Christian: “The guard at the tomb would have prevented any such theft.”
Jew: “No, the guard fell asleep.”
Christian: “The chief priests bribed the guard to say this.”
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This pattern probably goes right back to controversies in Jerusalem following the disciples’ proclamation of the resurrection.52 In response to the Christian proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection, the Jewish reaction was simply to assert that the disciples had stolen the body. The idea of a guard could only have been a Christian, not a Jewish, development. At the next stage there is no need for Christians to invent the bribing of the guard; it was sufficient to claim that the tomb was guarded. The bribe arises only in response to the second stage of the polemic, the Jewish allegation that the guard fell asleep. This part of the story could only have been a Jewish development, since it serves no purpose in the Christian polemic.
At the final stage, the time of Matthew’s writing, the Christian answer that the guards were bribed is given.
Thus, the Jewish polemic itself shows that the tomb was empty. This is historical evidence of the highest quality, since it comes not from the Christians but from the very enemies of the early Christian faith.
Taken together these six lines of evidence constitute a powerful case that Jesus’
tomb was indeed found empty on the first day of the week by a group of his women followers. As a historical fact, this seems to be well established. According to D. H.
Van Daalen, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.”53 But those assumptions cannot alter the facts themselves. New Testament scholars seem to be increasingly aware of this. According to Jacob Kremer, a New Testament critic who has specialized in the study of the resurrection: “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb.”54 In fact in a bibliographical survey of over 2,200 publications on the resurrection in English, French, and German since 1975, Habermas found 52. Allison overlooks this developing pattern in confessing that it escapes him why this passage “bears
‘the mark of a fairly protracted controversy’” (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 312). Contrast Meier’s judgment:
“The earliest fights about the person of Jesus that raged between ordinary Jews and Christian Jews after Easter centered on the Christian claims that a crucified criminal was the Messiah, that God had raised him from the dead” (Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:150). Given the early date of the pre-Markan passion story, there is no need to quarrel with Allison’s surmise that the controversy arose between Mark and Matthew, so long as by “Mark” we mean Mark’s tradition.
53. D. H. Van Daalen, The Real Resurrection (London: Collins, 1972), 41. Allison is a good case in point.
He recognizes that “a decent case” can be made for the empty tomb but thinks that there is “a respectable case against it” (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 331). This supposedly respectable case consists of only two arguments: first, “the ability of early Christians to create fictions” and, second, “the existence of numerous legends about missing bodies” (ibid., 332). But these two considerations show at the very most the possibility that the empty tomb narrative is a legend. This is a possibility we are aware of based on our general background knowledge prior to an examination of the specific evidence. These two considerations do nothing to show that, based on an examination of the specific evidence, the narrative of the empty tomb is a fiction or legend.
Allison’s skepticism is rooted in his initial philosophical doubts, which he candidly expresses, about the literal resurrection of Jesus (ibid., 225; cf. 344). That someone exhibiting such proclivity against the empty tomb, doubtless because of his philosophical reservations about the material continuity of the resurrected body with the mortal body, should nonetheless feel compelled to affirm the historicity of the empty tomb is testimony to the strength of the evidence in its favor.
54. Jacob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien—Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), 49–50.
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that 75 percent of scholars accepted the historicity of the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb.55 The evidence is so compelling that even a number of Jewish scholars, such as Pinchas Lapide and Geza Vermes, have declared themselves convinced on the basis of the evidence that Jesus’ tomb was found empty.
EXPLAINING THE EMPTY TOMB
Now if this is the case, that leads us to our second main point: explaining the empty tomb. Down through history, those who denied the resurrection of Jesus have been obligated to come up with a convincing alternative explanation. In fact, they have come up with only about four:
Conspiracy Hypothesis
According to this explanation, the disciples stole the body of Jesus and lied about his postmortem appearances, thus faking the resurrection. This was, as we saw, the first counter-explanation for the empty tomb, and it was revived by the Deists during the eighteenth century. Today, however, this explanation has been completely given up by modern scholarship. Let’s see how it fares when assessed by McCullagh’s criteria for justifying historical hypotheses.
1) The hypothesis, together with other true statements, must imply further statements describing present, observable data. Virtually any explanation offered for the resurrection will fulfill this first criterion, since such explanations are offered to account for the New Testament witness to Jesus’ resurrection and so will imply that the literary evidence contained in the New Testament will exist as a result of the events described in the proposed hypothesis. On the Conspiracy Hypothesis the Gospel accounts are simply deliberate fabrications.
2) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than rival hypotheses. The Conspiracy Hypothesis seems to cover the full scope of the evidence, for it offers explanations of the empty tomb, the postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ (supposed) belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
3) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than rival hypotheses. Here doubts begin to arise about the Conspiracy Hypothesis. Take the empty tomb, for example. If the disciples stole Jesus’ corpse, then it would be utterly daft to fabricate a story of women’s finding the tomb to be empty. Such a story would not be the sort of tale Jewish men would invent. Moreover, the simplicity of the narrative is not well explained by the Conspiracy Hypothesis—where are the Scripture citations, the evidence of fulfilled prophecy? Why isn’t Jesus described as emerging from the tomb, as in later forgeries like the Gospel of Peter? Neither is the polemic with non-believing Jews well explained. Why isn’t Matthew’s guard already there in the pre-Markan tradition? Even in Matthew’s story the guard is set too late: the body could have been already stolen before the guard arrived on Saturday morning. For a fail-safe alibi against theft of the body, see once more the 55. Gary Habermas, “Experience of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection,” Dialog 45 (2006): 292.
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Gospel of Peter, where the guard (explicitly identified as Roman) is set immediately upon interment of the corpse.
As for the appearance narratives, similar problems arise. A fabricator would probably describe the appearances in terms of Old Testament theophanies and descriptions of eschatological resurrection (e.g., Dan. 12:2). But then Jesus should appear to the disciples in dazzling glory. And why not a description of the resurrection itself? Why no appearances to Caiaphas or the villains on the Sanhedrin, as Jesus predicted? They could be then branded as the real liars for denying that Jesus did appear to them.
But the explanatory power of the Conspiracy Hypothesis is undoubtedly weakest when it comes to the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. For the hypothesis is really a denial of that fact; it seeks to explain the mere semblance of belief on the disciples’ part. But as critics since Strauss have universally recognized, one cannot plausibly deny that the earliest disciples at least sincerely believed that Jesus was risen from the dead, a conviction on which they staked their very lives, as Paley so eloquently emphasized. The transformation in the lives of the disciples is not credibly explained by the hypothesis of a conspiracy. This shortcoming alone has been enough in the minds of most scholars to sink the old Conspiracy Hypothesis.
4) The hypothesis must be more plausible than rival hypotheses. The real Achilles’ heel of the Conspiracy Hypothesis is, however, its implausibility. One might mention here the usual objections to the unbelievable complexity of such a conspiracy or the supposed psychological state of the disciples; but the overriding problem is the anachronism of first-century Jews’ intending to hoax Jesus’ resurrection. The Conspiracy Hypothesis views the disciples’ situation through the rearview mirror of Christian history rather than through the eyes of a first-century Jew. There was no expectation of a Messiah who, instead of establishing David’s throne and subduing Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by the Gentiles as a criminal. Moreover, the idea of eschatological resurrection was unconnected with the idea of Messiah and even incompatible with it. As Wright nicely puts it, if your favorite Messiah got himself crucified, then you either went home or else you got yourself a new Messiah. But the idea of stealing Jesus’ corpse and saying that God had raised him from the dead is hardly one that would have entered the minds of the disciples.
5) The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than rival hypotheses. Like all conspiracy theories of history, the Conspiracy Hypothesis is ad hoc in postulating that what all the evidence seems to point to is, in fact, mere appearance only, to be explained away by hypotheses for which there is no evidence. Specifically, it postulates motives and ideas in the thinking of the earliest disciples and actions on their part for which there is not a shred of evidence. It can become even more ad hoc, as hypotheses must be multiplied to deal with objections to the theory, for example,
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how to account for the appearance to the 500 brethren or the women’s role in the empty tomb and appearance stories.
6) The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than rival hypotheses.
The Conspiracy Hypothesis tends to be disconfirmed by our general knowledge of conspiracies, their instability and tendency to unravel. Moreover, it is disconfirmed by accepted beliefs such as the sincerity of the disciples, the nature of first-century Jewish messianic expectations, and so on.
7) The hypothesis must significantly exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)–(6).
This condition is obviously not met, since there are better hypotheses, such as the Hallucination Hypothesis, which do not dismiss the disciples’ belief in Jesus’
resurrection as fraudulent.
No scholar would defend the Conspiracy Hypothesis today. The only place you read about such things is in the popular, sensationalist press or in former propaganda from behind the Iron Curtain.
Apparent Death Hypothesis
A second theory was the apparent death explanation. Critics around the beginning of the nineteenth century such as Heinrich Paulus or Friedrich Schleiermacher defended the view that Jesus was not completely dead when he was taken down from the cross. He revived in the tomb and escaped to convince his disciples he had risen from the dead. Today this hypothesis has also been almost completely given up. Once again, let’s apply McCullagh’s criteria for the best explanation: 1) The hypothesis, together with other true statements, must imply further statements describing present, observable data. Again this condition is easily met.
2) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than rival hypotheses. The Apparent Death Hypothesis also provides explanations for the empty tomb, postmortem appearances, and origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
3) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than rival hypotheses. Here the theory begins to founder. Some versions of the Apparent Death Hypothesis are really variations on the Conspiracy Hypothesis, merely substituting the disciples’
hoaxing Jesus’ death for their stealing Jesus’ body. In such cases, the theory shares all the weaknesses of the Conspiracy Hypothesis. A non-conspiratorial version of the theory is also saddled with insuperable difficulties: how to explain the empty tomb, given Jesus’ merely apparent death, since a man sealed inside a tomb could not move the stone so as to escape; how to explain the postmortem appearances, since as Strauss mused, the appearance of a half-dead man desperately in need of medical attention would hardly have elicited in the disciples the conclusion that he was the Risen Lord and conqueror of Death; and how to explain the anachronism of the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since seeing him again would lead them to conclude that he had not died, not that he was, contrary to Jewish thought (as well as their own eyes), gloriously risen from the dead.
4) The hypothesis must be more plausible than rival hypotheses. Here again the theory fails miserably. Roman executioners could be relied upon to ensure that
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their victims were dead. Since the exact moment of death by crucifixion was uncertain, executioners could ensure death by a spear thrust into the victim’s side, such as was dealt to Jesus. Moreover, what the theory suggests is virtually physically impossible. The extent of Jesus’ tortures was such that he could never have survived the crucifixion and entombment. The suggestion that a man so critically wounded then went on to appear to the disciples on various occasions in Jerusalem and Galilee is pure fantasy.
5) The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than rival hypotheses. The Apparent Death Hypothesis, especially in its conspiratorial instantiations, can become enormously ad hoc. We are invited to imagine secret societies, stealthily administered potions, conspiratorial alliances between Jesus’ disciples and members of the Sanhedrin, and so forth, all with nary a scrap of evidence in support.
6) The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than rival hypotheses. The Apparent Death Hypothesis is massively disconfirmed by medical facts concerning what would happen to a person who has been scourged and crucified.
It is also disconfirmed by the unanimous evidence that Jesus did not continue among his disciples after his death.
7) The hypothesis must significantly exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)–(6).
This theory also is hardly a standout. For that reason it has virtually no defenders among New Testament historians today.
Wrong Tomb Hypothesis
First proposed by Kirsopp Lake in 1907, this theory holds that the belief in Jesus’
empty tomb was based on a simple mistake. According to Lake, the women lost their way that Sunday morning and happened upon a caretaker at an unoccupied tomb in the garden. He said something like, “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here.” The women, however, were so unnerved that they fled. After the disciples had experienced visions of Jesus alive, the women’s story developed into the account of their discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb. Unlike the previous two theories considered, Lake’s hypothesis generated virtually no following but was dead almost upon arrival.
1) The hypothesis, together with other true statements, must imply further statements describing present, observable data. This condition is easily met.
2) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than rival hypotheses. Lake’s theory doesn’t really explain the resurrection appearances. Some additional hypothesis will have to be conjoined to the Wrong Tomb Hypothesis in order to explain Jesus’ appearances. In that sense the theory fails to have sufficiently wide explanatory scope.
3) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than rival hypotheses. Because the Wrong Tomb Hypothesis says nothing to explain the postmortem appearances, it has no explanatory power in that respect. It also is anachronistic in its explanation of the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Merely going to the wrong tomb and seeing a man there telling them that Jesus is not
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there would hardly lead a first-century Jew to conclude that Jesus was risen from the dead—especially if this were reported by women and could not be verified.
In fact, the question of verification reveals that Lake’s hypothesis has weak explanatory power even with respect to the empty tomb. For any later check of the tomb would have revealed the women’s error. After their initial fright, wouldn’t the women have attempted to retrace their steps by the light of day? Certainly the disciples themselves would have wanted to verify the empty tomb. The state of the actual tomb could not have remained a matter of complete indifference to a movement in the same locale based on belief in the resurrection of the dead man interred there. And in any case, since the burial site was known to Jew and Christian alike, the Jewish opponents of the Christians would have been only too happy to point out the women’s error.
4) The hypothesis must be more plausible than rival hypotheses. The Wrong Tomb Hypothesis is also implausible in light of the evidence we do have, for example, that the site of Jesus’ tomb was known to Jew and Christian alike in Jerusalem, that the empty tomb story is extremely early and shows no signs of theological development and reflection, and so on. Insofar as the Hallucination Hypothesis proves to be implausible, Lake’s theory will share that, too.
5) The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than rival hypotheses. Lake’s theory is ad hoc in that it treats the evidence selectively and arbitrarily. For example, Lake regards the women’s visit to the tomb with the intention of anointing the body as historical but must discount their noting, precisely because of that intention, where the body was laid (Mark 15:47; 16:1). But why accept the one but not the other? Or again, Lake regards the angel’s words ascribed to the caretaker, “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here,” as authentic but passes over the words, “He is risen!” But all of the angel’s message is the language of Christian proclamation if any of it is. Similarly, there are no grounds for taking Mark’s “young man”
to be a human rather than angelic figure, the Greek word used here being often used of angels and the man’s white robe being typical for the Jewish portrait of angels. Moreover, the women’s fear and astonishment is a characteristic Markan motif which presupposes the angelic confrontation, so that one cannot regard the women’s reaction as traditional and historical while historically excising the angel as a legendary accretion.
6) The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than rival hypotheses. The Wrong Tomb Hypothesis will be disconfirmed by the generally accepted beliefs that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus and thus could point to his burial location, that the empty tomb tradition belongs to very early rather than late tradition, and so on.
7) The hypothesis must significantly exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)–(6).
Obviously, nobody thinks that this is the case.
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Displaced Body Hypothesis
In one of the few Jewish attempts to deal with the facts concerning Jesus’ resurrection, Joseph Klausner in 1922 proposed that Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’ body in his tomb temporarily, due to the lateness of the hour and the proximity of his own family tomb. But then he moved the corpse later to the criminals’ graveyard.
Unaware of the displacement of the body, the disciples erroneously inferred Jesus’
resurrection from the dead. Although no scholars defend Klausner’s hypothesis today, I have seen attempts by popular authors to revive it. In light of what has already been said of other theories, its shortcomings are evident: 1) The hypothesis, together with other true statements, must imply further statements describing present, observable data. No problem here.
2) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than rival hypotheses. The Displaced Body Hypothesis has narrow explanatory scope. It tries to explain the empty tomb but says nothing about the postmortem appearances and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
3) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than rival hypotheses. Klausner’s hypothesis has no explanatory power vis-à-vis the appearances and the origin of the Christian faith. As for the empty tomb, it faces the same obstacle as the Wrong Tomb Hypothesis: since Joseph and any servants with him knew what they had done with the corpse, the theory is at a loss to explain why the disciples’
error was not corrected—unless, that is, one resorts to ad hoc conjectures such as Joseph and his servants’ sudden deaths! It might be said that Jesus’ corpse would have no longer been identifiable; but that is to miss the point. The point is that the earliest Jewish/Christian disputes about the resurrection were not over the location of Jesus’ grave or the identity of the corpse but over why the tomb was empty. Had Joseph displaced the body, the Jewish/Christian polemic would have taken a quite different course.
4) The hypothesis must be more plausible than rival hypotheses. The hypothesis is implausible for a number of reasons. So far as we can rely on Jewish sources, the criminals’ graveyard was only 50 to 600 yards from the site of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Jewish practice, furthermore, was to bury executed criminals on the day of their execution, so that is what Joseph would have wanted to accomplish. Therefore, Joseph could and would have placed the body directly in the criminals’ graveyard, thereby obviating any need to move it later or defile his own family tomb. Indeed, Jewish law did not even permit the body to be moved later, except to the family tomb (Semachot 13.7). Joseph had adequate time for a simple burial, which probably included washing the corpse and wrapping it up in a sheet with dry spices.
5) The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than rival hypotheses. The theory is somewhat ad hoc in ascribing to Joseph motives and activities for which we have no evidence at all.
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6) The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than rival hypotheses. The theory suffers disconfirmation from what we know about Jewish burial procedures for criminals mentioned above.
7) The hypothesis must significantly exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)–(6).
Again, no historian seems to share this estimation.
As we look at these hypotheses proffered to explain the fact of the empty tomb, it is striking that scarcely any modern historian or biblical critic would hold to these theories. They are almost completely passé. You may say to yourselves at this point, “Well, then, what explanation of the empty tomb do modern critics offer who deny the resurrection?” The fact is that they are self-confessedly without any explanation to offer. There simply is no plausible natural explanation available today to account for how Jesus’ tomb became empty. If we deny the resurrection of Jesus, we are left with an inexplicable mystery.
CONCLUSION
We have seen that multiple lines of historical evidence indicate that Jesus’ tomb was found empty on Sunday morning by a group of his women followers. Furthermore, no convincing natural explanation is available to account for this fact. This alone might prompt us to believe that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation.
But there is even more evidence to come.
The Postmortem Appearances
In 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 (rsv), Paul writes:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried,
and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
This is a truly remarkable claim. We have here an indisputably authentic letter of a man personally acquainted with the first disciples, and he reports that they actually saw Jesus alive after his death. More than that, he says that he himself also saw an appearance of Jesus. What are we to make of this claim? Did Jesus really appear to people alive after his death?
To answer this question, let’s again consider two major points: first, the fact of the resurrection appearances of Jesus; and second, explaining the resurrection appearances.
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THE FACT OF THE POSTMORTEM APPEARANCES
Once again, space will not allow me to examine in detail all the evidence for Jesus’
post-mortem appearances. But I’d like to examine three main lines of evidence.
1) Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such appearances occurred. We saw that in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul gives a list of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Let’s look briefly at each appearance to see whether it is plausible that such events actually took place.
a) Appearance to Peter. We have no story in the Gospels telling of Jesus’ appearance to Peter. But the appearance is mentioned here in the old Christian tradition quoted by Paul, which originated in the Jerusalem church, and it is vouched by the apostle Paul himself. As we know from Galatians 1:18, Paul spent about two weeks with Peter in Jerusalem three years after his Damascus Road experience. So Paul would know personally whether Peter claimed to have had such an experience. In addition to this, the appearance to Peter is mentioned in another old Christian tradition found in Luke 24:34 (at): “The Lord has really risen, and has appeared to Simon!” That Luke is working with a tradition here is evident by the awkward way in which it intrudes into his narrative of the Emmaus disciples. So although we have no detailed story of this appearance, it is quite well founded historically.
As a result, even the most skeptical New Testament critics agree that Peter saw an appearance of Jesus alive from the dead.
b) Appearance to the Twelve. Undoubtedly, the reference here is to that original group of disciples who had been chosen by Jesus during his ministry—less, of course, Judas, whose absence did not affect the formal title of the group. This is the best-attested resurrection appearance of Jesus. It, too, is included in the very early traditional formula that Paul cites, and Paul himself had contact with members of the Twelve. Moreover, we have independent stories of this appearance in Luke 24:36–42 and John 20:19–20. Undoubtedly, the most notable feature of these appearance stories is the physical demonstrations of Jesus’ showing his wounds and eating before the disciples. The purpose of the physical demonstrations is to show two things: first, that Jesus was raised physically; and second, that he was the same Jesus who had been crucified. Thus, they served to demonstrate both corporeality and continuity of the resurrection body. There can be little doubt that such an appearance occurred, for it is attested in the old Christian tradition, vouched for by Paul, who had personal contact with the Twelve, and is independently described by both Luke and John.
c) Appearance to five hundred brethren. The third appearance comes as somewhat of a shock: “then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time”! This is surprising, since we have no mention whatsoever of this appearance elsewhere in the New Testament. This might make one rather skeptical about this appearance, but Paul himself apparently had personal contact with these people, since he knew that some had died. This is seen in Paul’s parenthetical comment, “most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.” Why does Paul add this
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remark? The great New Testament scholar of Cambridge University, C. H. Dodd, replies, “There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact that the most of the 500 are still alive, unless Paul is saying, in effect, ‘The witnesses are there to be questioned.’”56 Notice: Paul could never have said this if the event had not occurred. He could not have challenged people to ask the witnesses if the event had never taken place and there were no witnesses. But evidently there were witnesses to this event, and Paul knew that some of them had died in the meantime.
Therefore, the event must have taken place.
I think that this appearance is not related in the Gospels because it probably took place in Galilee. As one puts together the various appearances in the Gospels, it seems that they occurred first in Jerusalem, then in Galilee, and then in Jerusalem again. The appearance to the five hundred would have to be out of doors, perhaps on a hillside outside a Galilean village. In Galilee thousands had gathered to hear Jesus teach during his ministry. Since the Gospels focus their attention on the appearances in Jerusalem, we do not have any story of this appearance to the five hundred because it probably occurred in Galilee. An intriguing possibility is that this was the appearance predicted by the angel in the pre-Markan passion story and described by Matthew (28:16–17).
d) Appearance to James. The next appearance is one of the most amazing of all: he appeared to James, Jesus’ younger brother. What makes this amazing is that apparently neither James nor any of Jesus’ younger brothers believed in Jesus during his lifetime (Mark 3:21, 31–35; John 7:1–10). They didn’t believe he was the Messiah, or a prophet, or even anybody special. By the criterion of embarrassment, this is doubtless a historical facet of Jesus’ life and ministry. But after the resurrection, Jesus’ brothers show up in the Christian fellowship in the upper room in Jerusalem (Acts 1:14). There is no further mention of them until Acts 12:17. This is the story of Peter’s deliverance from prison by the angel. What are Peter’s first words? “Report this to James.” In Galatians 1:19 Paul tells of his two-week visit to Jerusalem about three years after his Damascus Road experience. He says that besides Peter, he saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.
Paul at least implies that James was now being reckoned as an apostle. When Paul visited Jerusalem again fourteen years later, he says there were three “pillars” of the church in Jerusalem: Peter, John, and James (Gal. 2:9). Finally, in Acts 21:18
James is the sole head of the Jerusalem church and of the council of elders. We hear no more about James in the New Testament; but from Josephus, the Jewish historian, we learn that James was stoned to death illegally by the Sanhedrin sometime after a.d. 60 for his faith in Christ ( Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.200). Not only James but also Jesus’ other brothers became believers and were active in Christian preaching, as we see from 1 Corinthians 9:5 (rsv): “Do we not 56. C. H. Dodd, “The Appearances of the Risen Christ: A study in the form criticism of the Gospels,”
in More New Testament Studies (Manchester: University of Manchester, 1968), 128.
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have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”
Now, how is this to be explained? On the one hand, it seems certain that Jesus’
brothers did not believe in him during his lifetime. On the other hand, it is equally certain that they became ardent Christians, active in the church. Jesus’ crucifixion would only confirm in James’s mind that his elder brother’s Messianic pretensions were delusory, just as he had thought. Many of us have brothers. What would it take to make you believe that your brother is the Lord, so that you would die for this belief, as James did? Can there be any doubt that the reason for this remarkable transformation is to be found in the fact that “then he appeared to James”?
Even the skeptical New Testament critic Hans Grass admits that the conversion of James is one of the surest proofs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.57
e) Appearance to “all the apostles.” This appearance was probably to a limited circle of Christian missionaries somewhat wider than the Twelve. For such a group, see Acts 1:21–22. Once again, the facticity of this appearance is guaranteed by Paul’s personal contact with the apostles themselves.
f ) Appearance to Saul of Tarsus. The final appearance is just as amazing as the appearance to James: “Last of all,” says Paul, “he appeared to me also.” The story of Jesus’ appearance to Saul of Tarsus (or Paul) just outside Damascus is related in Acts 9:1–9 and is later told again twice. That this event actually occurred is established beyond doubt by Paul’s references to it in his own letters.
This event changed Saul’s whole life. He was a rabbi, a Pharisee, a respected Jewish leader. He hated the Christian heresy and was doing everything in his power to stamp it out. He was even responsible for the execution of Christian believers.
Then suddenly he gave up everything. He left his position as a respected Jewish leader and became a Christian missionary: he entered a life of poverty, labor, and suffering. He was whipped, beaten, stoned and left for dead, shipwrecked three times, in constant danger, deprivation, and anxiety. Finally, he made the ultimate sacrifice and was martyred for his faith at Rome. And it was all because on that day outside Damascus, he saw “Jesus our Lord” (l Cor. 9:1).
The list of witnesses of postmortem appearances of Jesus which Paul transmits thus makes it indisputable that individuals and groups had such experiences.
2) The Gospel accounts provide multiple, independent attestation of postmortem appearances of Jesus. The Gospels independently attest to postmortem appearances of Jesus, even to some of the same appearances found in Paul’s list. Wolfgang Trilling explains,
From the list in I Cor. 15 the particular reports of the Gospels are now to be interpreted. Here may be of help what we said about Jesus’ miracles. It is impossible to
“prove” historically a particular miracle. But the totality of the miracle reports permits 57. Hans Grass, Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 80.
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no reasonable doubt that Jesus in fact performed “miracles.” That holds analogously for the appearance reports. It is not possible to secure historically the particular event. But the totality of the appearance reports permits no reasonable doubt that Jesus in fact bore witness to himself in such a way.58
Trilling’s conclusion is actually too modest: for just as we can justifiably infer the historicity of specific miracles of Jesus, such as his feeding of the 5,000, so can we infer the historicity of some of the specific appearances. The appearance to Peter is independently attested by Paul and Luke (1 Cor. 15:5; Luke 24:34) and is universally acknowledged by critics. The appearance to the Twelve is independently attested by Paul, Luke, and John (1 Cor. 15:5; Luke 24:36–43; John 20:19–20) and is again not in dispute, even if many critics are skeptical of the physical demonstrations that attend this appearance. The appearance to the women disciples is independently attested by Matthew and John (Matt. 28:9–10; John 20:11–17) and enjoys, as well, ratification by the criterion of embarrassment, given the low credibility accorded to the testimony of women. It is generally agreed that the absence of this appearance from the list of appearances in the tradition quoted by Paul is a reflection of the same discomfort in citing female witnesses. Finally, that Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee is independently attested by Mark, Matthew, and John (Mark 16:7; Matt. 28:16–17; John 21). Taken sequentially, the appearances follow the pattern of Jerusalem—Galilee—Jerusalem, matching the festival pilgrimages of the disciples as they returned to Galilee following the Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread and traveled again to Jerusalem two months later for Pentecost.
From this evidence what should we conclude? We can call these appearances hallucinations if we want to, but we cannot deny that they occurred. The late New Testament critic of the University of Chicago, Norman Perrin, states, “The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based.”59 Lüdemann is even more emphatic: “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”60 The evidence makes it certain that on separate occasions different individuals and groups had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead. This conclusion is virtually indisputable—and therefore undisputed.
58. Wolfgang Trilling, Fragen zur Geschichtlichkeit Jesu (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1966), 153. With respect to Jesus’ miracles, Trilling had written: “We are convinced and hold it for historically certain that Jesus did in fact perform miracles. . . . The miracle reports occupy so much space in the Gospels that it is impossible that they could all have been subsequently invented or transferred to Jesus” (ibid.). The fact that miracle working belongs to the historical Jesus is, as we have seen in chapter 7, no longer disputed.
59. Norman Perrin, The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 80.
60. Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus? trans. John Bowden (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 80.
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3) The resurrection appearances were physical, bodily appearances. So far the evidence I’ve presented does not depend on the nature of the post-mortem appearances of Jesus. I’ve left it open whether they were visionary or physical in nature. It remains to be seen whether even visionary experiences of the risen Jesus can be plausibly explained on the basis of psychological models. But if the appearances were physical and bodily in nature, then a purely psychological explanation becomes next to impossible. So it is worth examining what we can know about the nature of these appearances.
a) Paul implies that the appearances were physical. He does this in two ways. First, he conceives of the resurrection body as physical. Everyone recognizes that Paul does not teach the immortality of the soul alone but the resurrection of the body.
In 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 Paul describes the differences between the present earthly body and the future resurrection body, which will be like Christ’s. He draws four essential contrasts between the earthly body and the resurrection body:
The earthly body is:
But the resurrection body is:
mortal
immortal
dishonorable
glorious
weak
powerful
natural
spiritual
Only the last contrast could make us think that Paul did not believe in a physical resurrection body. But what does he mean by the words translated here as “natural/spiritual”? The word translated “natural” ( psychikos) literally means “soul-ish.”
Obviously, Paul does not mean that our present body is made out of soul. Rather by this word he means “dominated by or pertaining to human nature.” Similarly, when he says the resurrection body will be “spiritual” ( pneumatikos), he does not mean “made out of spirit.” Rather, he means “dominated by or oriented toward the Spirit.” It is the same sense of the word “spiritual” as when we say that someone is a spiritual person. In fact, look at the way Paul uses exactly those same words in 1 Corinthians 2:14–15 (at):
The natural man ( anthropos psychikos) does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man ( anthropos pneumatikos) judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one.
Natural man does not mean “physical man,” but “man oriented toward human nature.” And spiritual man does not mean “intangible, invisible man” but “man oriented toward the Spirit.” The contrast is the same in 1 Corinthians 15. The present, earthly body will be freed from its slavery to sinful human nature and become instead fully empowered and directed by God’s Spirit. Thus, Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection body implies a physical resurrection.
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Second, Paul, and indeed all the New Testament, makes a conceptual (if not linguistic) distinction between an appearance of Jesus and a vision of Jesus. The appearances of Jesus soon ceased, but visions continued in the early church.61 Now the question is: what is the difference between an appearance and a vision? The answer of the New Testament would seem to be clear: a vision, though caused by God, was purely in the mind, while an appearance took place “out there” in the external world.62 It is instructive to compare here Stephen’s vision of Jesus in Acts 7 with the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Though Stephen saw an identifiable, bodily image, what he saw was a vision of a man, not a man who was physically there, for no one else present experienced anything at all. By contrast the resurrection appearances took place in the world “out there” and could be experienced by anybody present. Paul could rightly regard his experience on the Damascus Road as an appearance, even though it took place after Jesus’ ascension, because it involved manifestations in the external world, which Paul’s companions also experienced to varying degrees. Thus, the conceptual distinction between a vision and an appearance of Jesus also implies that the resurrection appearances were physical.
b) The Gospel accounts show the appearances were physical and bodily. Again, two points deserve to be made. First, every resurrection appearance related in the Gospels is a physical, bodily appearance. The unanimous testimony of the Gospels in this regard is quite impressive. If none of the appearances was originally a physical, bodily appearance, then it is very strange that we have a completely unanimous testimony in the Gospels that all of them were physical, with no trace of the supposed original, non-physical appearances. Such a thorough-going corruption of oral tradition in so short a time, while eyewitnesses were still about, is most unlikely.
Second, if all the appearances were originally non-physical visions, then one is at a complete loss to explain the rise of the Gospel accounts. For physical, bodily appearances would be foolishness to Gentiles and a stumbling block to Jews, since neither, for different reasons, could countenance physical resurrection from the dead but would be quite happy to accept visionary appearances of the deceased.
Some critics have suggested that anti-Docetic motives might have prompted the materialization of the appearances. But this suggestion has little to commend it, since Docetists did not, in fact, affirm purely visionary resurrection appearances.
Moreover, the Gospel accounts do not evince the rigor of an anti-Docetic apologetic 61. “One can only wonder in what ways, if any, Luke and Paul imagined the original christophanies to differ from later experiences” (Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 261). The answer to this key question is, I think, fairly clear, as I explain in the text. This answer is important, for no matter how real, how tangible, how opaque, visions of the departed may seem to the bereaved, the departed only appear to be external, physical, objects. The bereaved recognize that what they experienced was a vision of the deceased.
62. A hallucination, for example, a mirage, would differ from a vision in that a hallucination is not induced by God but is the result of natural or human causes, whereas a vision is caused by God. But a vision, as opposed to a genuine appearance, is still wholly intra-mental and, hence, private, even if it is veridical.
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(more would need to be done than Jesus’ merely showing his wounds, for example), and the appearance traditions ante-date Docetism in any case.
To be perfectly candid, the only grounds for denying the physical, corporeal nature of the postmortem appearances of Jesus is philosophical, not historical: such appearances would be nature miracles of the most stupendous proportions, and that many critics cannot swallow. But in that case one needs to retrace one’s steps to think again about what we had to say concerning evidence for the existence of God and concerning the problem of miracles. Most New Testament critics are untrained in philosophy and are, hence, naïve when it comes to these issues.
Thus, on the basis of these three lines of evidence, we can conclude that the fact of Jesus’ postmortem appearances to various individuals and groups under a variety of circumstances is firmly established historically and, moreover, that these appearances were bodily and physical. But how do we explain these appearances?
That leads me to my second major point.
EXPLAINING THE RESURRECTION APPEARANCES
If one denies that Jesus actually rose from the dead, then he must try to explain away the resurrection appearances psychologically. Strauss believed that the resurrection appearances were merely hallucinations on the part of the disciples. The most prominent defender of the view today is the German New Testament critic Gerd Lüdemann. How does the hypothesis fare when assessed by McCullagh’s criteria?
1) The hypothesis, together with other true statements, must imply further statements describing present, observable data. As usual, the theory meets this criterion.
2) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than rival hypotheses. The Hallucination Hypothesis has narrow explanatory scope. It says nothing to explain the empty tomb. Therefore, one must either deny the fact of the empty tomb and, hence, burial or else conjoin some independent hypothesis to the Hallucination Hypothesis to account for the empty tomb. Allsion is right to remind us that explanatory scope is not the only or even most important criterion for theory assessement and that historical events typically have complex causes.63 Still, all things being equal, the simpler hypothesis will be preferred, and, since not all things are equal, we shall also consider the Hallucination Hypothesis’ explanatory power, plausibility, and so forth before making our final judgment.
Again, the Hallucination Hypothesis says nothing to explain the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Although Allison makes a great deal out of the alleged similarities between the postmortem appearances of Jesus and visions of the recently departed on the part of the bereaved, the overriding lesson of such fascinating stories is that the bereaved do not as a result of such experiences, however real and tangible they may seem, conclude that the deceased has returned physically to life—rather the deceased is seen in the afterlife. As Wright observes, 63. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 347–48.
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for someone in the ancient world, visions of the deceased are not evidence that the person is alive, but evidence that he is dead!64 Moreover, in a Jewish context other, more appropriate interpretations of such experiences than resurrection are close to hand. Dunn demands,
Why did they conclude that it was Jesus risen from the dead? —Why not simply a vision of the dead man?—Why not visions “fleshed out” with the apparatus of apocalyptic expectation, coming on the clouds of glory and the like . . .? Why draw the astonishing conclusion that the eschatological resurrection had already taken place in the case of a single individual separate from and prior to the general resurrection?65
As Dunn’s last question indicates, the inference “he has been raised from the dead,” so natural to our ears, would have been wholly unnatural to a first-century Jew. In Jewish thinking there was already a category perfectly suited to describe Peter’s postulated experience: Jesus had been assumed into heaven. Allison himself admits, “If there was no reason to believe that his solid body had returned to life, no one would have thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead.
Certainly visions of or perceived encounters with a postmortem Jesus would not by themselves, have supplied such reason.”66 Thus, even given hallucinations, belief in Jesus’ resurrection remains unexplained.
3) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than rival hypotheses. The Hallucination Hypothesis arguably has weak explanatory power even when it comes to the appearances. Suppose that Peter was one of those individuals who experiences a vision of a deceased loved one. Would this hypothesis suffice to explain the resurrection appearances? Not really, for the diversity of the appearances bursts the bounds of anything found in the psychological casebooks. Jesus appeared not just one time, but many times; not at just one locale and circumstance but at a variety of places and circumstances; not to just one individual, but to different persons; not just to individuals, but to various groups; not just to believers but to unbelievers and even enemies. Positing a chain reaction among the disciples won’t solve the problem because people like James and Paul don’t stand in the chain. Those who would explain the resurrection appearances psychologically are compelled to construct a composite picture by cobbling together different unrelated cases of hallucinatory experiences, which only serves to underline the fact that there is nothing like the resurrection appearances in the psychological casebooks.
4) The hypothesis must be more plausible than rival hypotheses. Lüdemann attempts to make his Hallucination Hypothesis plausible by a psychoanalysis of Peter and 64. For references to ancient pagan and Jewish texts concerning apparitions of the dead, see Craig Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2003), 2:1169.
65. James W. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (London: SCM, 1975), 132.
66. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 324–25. The remaining question is whether bereavement visons in conjunction with the discovery of the empty tomb would have led to the disciples’ belief and proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, on which see below concerning the origin of the Christian Way.
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Paul, according to which both labored under guilt complexes which found release in hallucinations of Jesus. But Lüdemann’s psychoanalysis is implausible for three reasons: first, Lüdemann’s use of depth psychology is based upon certain theories of Jung and Freud which are highly disputed. Second, there is insufficient data to do a psychoanalysis of Peter and Paul. Psychoanalysis is difficult enough to carry out even with patients on the psychoanalyst’s couch, so to speak, but it is next to impossible with historical figures. It is for that reason that the genre of psycho-biography is rejected today. Finally, third, what evidence we do have suggests that Paul did not struggle with a guilt complex as Lüdemann supposes. Nearly fifty years ago the Swedish scholar Krister Stendahl pointed out that Western readers have tended to interpret Paul in light of Martin Luther’s struggles with guilt and sin.
But Paul (or Saul) the Pharisee experienced no such struggle. Stendahl writes: Contrast Paul, a very happy and successful Jew, one who can say “As to righteousness under the Law [I was] blameless” (Phil. 3.6). That is what he says. He experiences no troubles, no problems, no qualms of conscience. He is a star pupil, the student to get the thousand dollar graduate scholarship in Gamaliel’s Seminary. . . . Nowhere in Paul’s writings is there any indication . . . that psychologically Paul had some problem of conscience.67
In order to justify his portrait of a guiltridden Paul, Lüdemann is forced to interpret Romans 7 in terms of Paul’s pre-Christian experience. But, as Hans Kessler observes, this interpretation is rejected by “almost all expositors” since the late 1920’s.68 So Lüdemann’s psychoanalysis is positively implausible.
A second respect in which the Hallucination Hypothesis is implausible is its construal of the appearances as merely visionary experiences. Lüdemann recognizes that the Hallucination Hypothesis depends on the presupposition that what Paul saw on the Damascus Road was the same as what all the other disciples experienced:
“Anyone who does not share [this] presupposition will not be able to make any sense” out of what he has to say. But this presupposition is groundless. Many of Paul’s opponents denied his true apostleship, so Paul is anxious to include himself along with the other apostles who had seen Christ. John Dominic Crossan explains:
“Paul needs in I Cor 15 to equate his own experience with that of the preceding apostles. To equate, that is, its validity and legitimacy, but not necessarily its mode or manner. . . . Paul’s own entranced revelation should not be presumed to be the model for all others.”69 Paul is trying to bring his experience up to the objectivity and reality of the disciples’ experience, not to dilute their experience to a merely visionary seeing. So with respect both to its psychoanalysis of the witnesses and its 67. Krister Stendahl, “Paul among Jews and Gentiles,” in Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortesss, 1976), 12–13.
68. Hans Kessler, Sucht den Lebenden nicht bei den Toten, new ed. (Würzburg: Echter, 1995), 423.
69. John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Bibliography (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 169.
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reduction of the appearances to visionary experiences, the Hallucination Hypothesis suffers from implausibility.
5) The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than rival hypotheses. Lüdemann’s version of the Hallucination Hypothesis is ad hoc in a number of ways: it assumes that the disciples fled back to Galilee after Jesus’ arrest, that Peter was so obsessed with guilt that he projected a hallucination of Jesus, that the other disciples were also prone to hallucinations, and that Paul had a struggle with the Jewish law and a secret attraction to Christianity.
6) The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than rival hypotheses. Some of the accepted beliefs of New Testament scholars today which tend to disconfirm the Hallucination Hypothesis, at least as Lüdemann presents it, include the belief that Jesus received an honorable burial by Joseph of Arimathea, that Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by women, that psychoanalysis of historical figures is not feasible, that Paul was basically content with his life under the Jewish law, and that the New Testament makes a distinction between a vision and a resurrection appearance.
7) The hypothesis must significantly exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)–(6).
The Hallucination Hypothesis remains a live option today and in that respect has outstripped its naturalistic rivals. But the question is whether it outstrips the Resurrection Hypothesis.
From the preceding we come to the conclusion that it is well established that in multiple and varied circumstances, different individuals and groups saw Jesus physically and bodily alive from the dead. Furthermore, there is no good way to explain this away psychologically. So once again, if we reject the resurrection of Jesus as the only reasonable explanation of the resurrection appearances, we are left with an inexplicable mystery.
The Origin of the Christian Faith
The third fact from which the resurrection of Jesus may be inferred is the very origin of the Christian faith. This fact takes pride of place in Wright’s historical argument for Jesus’ resurrection. Indeed, Wright’s entire book The Resurrection of the Son of God is probably best understood as the fullest and most sophisticated development of this third point of the overall case, for he actually argues for the historicity of Jesus’ empty tomb and postmortem appearances on the basis of the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Such a procedure understates the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, since independent evidence can be offered on behalf of the empty tomb and postmortem appearances, as we have seen and as most critics recognize. Still, Wright’s procedure serves to draw attention to the power of this third point.
THE FACT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Even skeptical New Testament scholars admit that the earliest disciples at least believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead. In fact, they pinned nearly
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everything on it; to take just one example: the belief that Jesus was the Messiah.
Jews had no conception of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal.
Messiah was supposed to be a triumphant figure who would command the respect of Jew and Gentile alike and who would establish the throne of David in Jerusalem. A Messiah who failed to deliver and to reign, who was defeated, humiliated, and slain by his enemies, is a contradiction in terms. Nowhere do Jewish texts speak of such a “Messiah.” Therefore, as Wright emphasizes, “The crucifixion of Jesus, understood from the point of view of any onlooker, whether sympathetic or not, was bound to have appeared as the complete destruction of any messianic pretensions or possibilities he or his followers might have hinted at.”70 It is difficult to overemphasize what a disaster the crucifixion was for the disciples’ faith. Jesus’ death on the cross spelled the humiliating end for any hopes they had entertained that he was the Messiah.
But the belief in the resurrection of Jesus reversed the catastrophe of the crucifixion. Because God had raised Jesus from the dead, he was seen to be Messiah after all. Thus, Peter proclaims in Acts 2:32, 36 (rsv): “This Jesus God raised up.
. . . Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” It was on the basis of belief in his resurrection that the disciples could believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
It is no surprise, therefore, that belief in Jesus’ resurrection was universal in the early Christian church. Helmut Koester points out that the traditional formula quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 in which the “gospel” is defined as the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ makes it probable that this understanding of the gospel goes right back to the very beginning of the church in Jerusalem.
“What Paul preached was never the subject of controversy between Paul’s Gentile mission and the church in Jerusalem. Jesus’ death and resurrection was the event upon which their common proclamation was based.”71 Some critics have speculated whether there was a community of believers exclusively devoted to the sayings of the Q document who had no belief in Jesus’ passion and resurrection.
But Meier rejects this conjecture, commenting that the only two Q communities that we really know of were Matthew and Luke’s churches, and they both valued the passion tradition. “The idea that some first-generation Christian community proclaimed the sayings of Q without any . . . interest in Jesus’ death and resurrection is simply not verified by the data. . . .”72 Günther Bornkamm sums it up:
“The Easter faith of the first disciples . . . was not the peculiar experience of a few enthusiasts or a peculiar theological opinion of a few apostles, who in the course 70. Wright, C hristian Origins, 3:557–58.
71. Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London: SCM, 1990), 51.
72. John Meier, “Dividing Lines in Jesus Research Today,” Interpretation 50 (1996), 359.
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of time had the luck to prevail. No, they were all one in the belief and the confession to the Risen One.”73
Some critics have sought to avoid this conclusion by maintaining with Bultmann that the earliest disciples did not distinguish between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension into heaven. The primitive proclamation was of Jesus’ exaltation, which later became differentiated into his resurrection and ascension. In effect, then, the primitive Christian belief was not in Jesus’ resurrection, so there is nothing to be explained beyond belief in his exaltation. Wright is sharply critical of such a suggestion:
The idea that there was originally no difference for the earliest Christians between resurrection and exaltation/ascension is a twentieth-century fiction, based on a misreading of Paul. Actually, Bultmann’s account is slippery at the crucial point: though he says there was no difference between resurrection and ascension, what he means is that there was no early belief in “resurrection” at all, since . . . the word
“resurrection” and its cognates was not used to denote a non-bodily extension of life in a heavenly realm, however glorious. Plenty of words existed to denote heavenly exaltation; “resurrection” is never one of them. . . . Bultmann therefore has to postulate—though he has covered up this large move—that at some point halfway through the first century someone who had previously believed that Jesus had simply
“gone to heaven when he died” began to use, to denote this belief, language which had never meant that before and continued not to mean it in either paganism, Judaism, or Christianity thereafter, namely, the language of resurrection. . . . What is more, Bultmann has to assume that, though this theory about a risen body was a new thing within the already widely diverse Christian church, it took over almost at once, so that all traces of the original view—that Jesus was not raised from the dead, but simply “went to heaven,” albeit in an exalted capacity—have dropped out of historical sight.74
Given the date, for example, of the tradition quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5, Bultmann’s hypothesis threatens to collapse into a conspiracy theory akin to those of eighteenth-century Deism, which is the reductio ad absurdum of his hypothesis. Resurrection, which the evidence shows to be the primitive belief, entails exaltation and—given that Jesus is no longer present— therefore ascension into heaven; but a reverse evolution, from exaltation to physical resurrection and ascension, does not follow from the concept of exaltation.
Thus, the origin of Christianity hinges on the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. But the question is: how does one explain the origin of that belief? As R. H. Fuller says, even the most skeptical critic must posit some mysterious X to get the movement going.75 But what was that X?
73. Günther Bornkamm, Jesus von Nazareth, 8th ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1968), 159.
74. Wright, C hristian Origins, 3:625-6.
75. R. H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (London: SPCK, 1972), 2.
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EXPLAINING THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
If one denies that the resurrection itself was that X, then one must explain the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection as the result of either Christian influences, pagan influences, or Jewish influences. That is to say, one must hold that the disciples came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection either because of the influence of early Christianity, the influence of pagan religions, or the influence of Jewish beliefs.
Not from Christian Influences
Now clearly the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection cannot be explained as a result of Christian influences, simply because there was no Christianity yet. Since the belief in Jesus’ resurrection was itself the foundation for Christianity, it cannot be explained as the later product of Christianity.
Not from Pagan Influences
But neither can belief in Jesus’ resurrection be explained as the result of pagan influences on the disciples. Back around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, in the hey-day of the History of Religions school, scholars in comparative religion collected parallels to Christian beliefs in other religious movements, and some thought to explain those beliefs, including belief in Jesus’ resurrection, as the result of the influence of such myths.
The movement soon collapsed, however, principally due to two factors: first, scholars came to realize that the parallels are spurious. The ancient world was a virtual cornucopia of myths of gods and heroes. Comparative studies in religion and literature require sensitivity to their similarities and differences, or distortion and confusion inevitably result. Unfortunately, those who adduced parallels to Jesus’ resurrection failed to exercise such sensitivity. Many of the alleged parallels are actually apotheosis stories, the divinization and assumption of the hero into heaven (Hercules, Romulus). Others are disappearance stories, asserting that the hero has vanished into a higher sphere (Apollonius of Tyana, Empedocles). Still others are seasonal symbols for the crop cycle, as the vegetation dies in the dry season and comes back to life in the rainy season (Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis). Some are political expressions of Emperor worship ( Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus).
None of these is parallel to the Jewish idea of the resurrection of the dead. David Aune, a specialist in comparative ancient Near Eastern literature, concludes, “No parallel to them [resurrection traditions] is found in Graeco-Roman biography.”76
Indeed, most scholars have come to doubt whether properly speaking there really were any myths of dying and rising gods at all. In the Osiris myth, one of the best known symbolic seasonal myths, Osiris does not really come back to life at all but simply continues to exist in the nether realm of the departed. In a recent review of the evidence, T. N. D. Mettinger reports: “From the 1930s . . . a consensus has developed to the effect that the ‘dying and rising gods’ died but did not return or 76. D. E. Aune, “The Genre of the Gospels,” in Gospel Perspectives II, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 48.
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rise to live again. . . . Those who still think differently are looked upon as residual members of an almost extinct species.”77 Mettinger himself believes that myths of dying and rising did exist in the cases of Dumuzi, Baal, and Melqart; but he recognizes that such symbols are quite unlike the early Christian belief in Jesus’
resurrection:
The dying and rising gods were closely related to the seasonal cycle. Their death and return were seen as reflected in the changes of plant life. The death and resurrection of Jesus is a one-time event, not repeated, and unrelated to seasonal changes. . . . There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions. The riddle remains.78
Notice Mettinger’s comment that the belief in Jesus’ resurrection may be profitably studied against the background of Jewish resurrection beliefs (not pagan mythology).
Here we see one of the major shifts in New Testament studies over the last century, what I earlier flagged as the Jewish reclamation of Jesus. Scholars came to realize that pagan mythology is simply the wrong interpretive context for understanding Jesus of Nazareth. Evans has called this shift the “Eclipse of Mythology” in Life of Jesus research.79 Jesus and his disciples were first-century Palestinian Jews, and it is against that background that they must be understood. The spuriousness of the alleged parallels is just one indication that pagan mythology is the wrong interpretive context for understanding the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
Second, there is no causal connection between pagan myths and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Jews were familiar with the seasonal deities (Ezek. 37:1–14) and found them abhorrent. Therefore, as Gerhard Kittel notes, there is no trace of cults of dying and rising gods in first-century Palestine.80 In any case, surely Grass does not exaggerate when he says that it would be “completely unthinkable” that the original disciples would have sincerely come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was risen from the dead because they had heard of pagan myths about dying and rising seasonal gods.81
77. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East (Stockholm, Sweden: Almquist & Wiksell International, 2001), 4, 7.
78. Ibid., 221.
79. Craig Evans, “Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology,” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 18, 34.
80. Gerhard Kittel, “Die Auferstehung Jesu,” Deutsche Theologie 4 (1937): 133–68. In fact Hengel thinks that the belief in the resurrection of the dead served as retardant to the influence of the pagan mystery religions:
“The development of the apocalyptic resurrection-, immortality-, and judgment-doctrine in Jewish Palestine explains why—in contrast to Alexandrian Judaism—the Hellenistic mystery religions . . . could gain virtually no influence there” (Martin Hengel, “Judentum und Hellenismus,” Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 10 [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1969], 368–69).
81. Grass, Ostergeschehen, 133.
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Not from Jewish Influences
The real question, then, is: would the disciples have come to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead because of Jewish influences? Again, the answer would seem to be no. To understand this, we need to look at what the Jewish conception of the resurrection was. The belief in the resurrection of the dead is explicitly mentioned three times in the Old Testament: Isaiah 26:19, Ezekiel 37, and Daniel 12:2. During the intertestamental period, the belief in the resurrection of the dead became a widespread hope. In Jesus’ day this belief was held to by the party of the Pharisees, although it was denied by the party of the Sadducees. So the belief in resurrection was itself nothing new but rather was a prominent Jewish belief.
But the Jewish conception of the resurrection differed in at least two fundamental respects from the resurrection of Jesus. First, in Jewish thought the resurrection always occurred after the end of the world. Joachim Jeremias explains: Ancient Judaism did not know of an anticipated resurrection as an event of history.
Nowhere does one find in the literature anything comparable to the resurrection of Jesus. Certainly resurrections of the dead were known, but these always concerned resuscitations, the return to the earthly life. In no place in the late Judaic literature does it concern a resurrection to doxa [glory] as an event of history.82
For a Jew the resurrection always occurred after the end of history. He had no conception of a resurrection within history. We find this typical Jewish frame of mind in the Gospels themselves, for example, John 11:23–24 (esv). Here Jesus is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He tells Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” What is her response? “Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’” She had no inkling of a resurrection within history; she thought that Jesus was talking about the resurrection at the end of the world. I think that it’s for this same reason that the disciples had so much trouble understanding Jesus’ predictions of his own resurrection. They thought he was talking about the resurrection at the end of the world. Look at Mark 9:9–11
(esv), for example.
And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. And they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?”
Here Jesus predicts his resurrection, and what do the disciples ask? “Why is it that the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” In first-century Judaism it was believed the prophet Elijah would come again before the great and terrible Day of the Lord, the judgment day when the dead would be raised. The disciples could 82. Joachim Jeremias, “Die älteste Schicht der Osteruberlieferung,” in Resurrexit, ed. Edouard Dhanis (Rome: Editrice Libreria Vaticana, 1974), 194.
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not understand the idea of a resurrection occurring within history prior to the end of the world. Hence, Jesus’ predictions only confused them. Thus, given the Jewish conception of the resurrection, the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion would not have thought that he had been already raised. They would have only looked forward to the resurrection at the last day and, in keeping with Jewish custom, perhaps preserved his tomb as a shrine where his bones could rest until the resurrection.
Second, in Jewish thought, the resurrection was always the resurrection of all the righteous or all the people. They had no conception of the resurrection of an isolated individual. Ulrich Wilckens reports:
For nowhere do the Jewish texts speak of the resurrection of an individual which already occurs before the resurrection of the righteous in the end time and is differentiated and separate from it; nowhere does the participation of the righteous in the salvation at the end time depend on their belonging to the Messiah, who was raised in advance as “First of those raised by God” (1 Cor. 15:20).83
Wilckens’ observation that no connection existed between the individual believer’s resurrection and the prior resurrection of the Messiah is an understatement. For there existed no belief in Messiah’s prior resurrection at all. That is why we find no instances of claims comparable to those of the disciples for Jesus. Wright has been insistent upon this point. “All the followers of those first century messianic movements were fanatically committed to the cause. . . . But in no case right across the century before Jesus and the century after him do we hear of any Jewish group saying that their executed leader had been raised from the dead, and he really was the Messiah after all.”84 Wright invites us to suppose that the disciples were convinced, on other grounds, that Jesus was the Messiah.
This would not have led the early disciples to say he had been raised from the dead.
A change in the meaning of “Messiah,” yes (since nobody in the first century supposed that the Messiah would die at the hands of pagans); but not an assertion of his resurrection. No second-Temple Jewish texts speak of the Messiah being raised from the dead. Nobody would have thought of saying, “I believe that so-and-so really was the Messiah; therefore he must have been raised from the dead.”85
The disciples had no idea of the resurrection of an isolated individual, especially of the Messiah. Therefore, after Jesus’ crucifixion, all they could do was wait with longing for the general resurrection of the dead to see their Master again.
For these two reasons, then, we cannot explain the disciples’ belief in Jesus’
resurrection as a result of Jewish influences. Or, as Wright puts it, some sufficient explanation must be given for these two peculiar mutations of traditional Jewish 83. Ulrich Wilckens, “Auferstehung,” Themen der Theologie 4 (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1970), 131.
84. N. T. Wright, lecture at Asbury College and Seminary, 1999.
85. Wright, C hristian Origins, 3:25.
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belief in the resurrection that occurred within early Christianity. Left to themselves, the disciples would never have come to believe that Jesus’ resurrection had already occurred. C. F. D. Moule asks:
If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of the Resurrection, what does the secular historian purpose to stop it up with? . . . The birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church . . . remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself.86
Translation versus Resurrection
But let’s push the argument one notch further. Suppose the disciples were not simply “left to themselves” after the crucifixion. Suppose that somehow Jesus’ tomb was found empty and the shock of finding the empty tomb caused the disciples to see hallucinations of Jesus. The question is: would they then have concluded that he had been raised from the dead? True, those suppositions face formidable objections in their own right; but let’s be generous and suppose for the sake of argument that this is what happened. Would the disciples have concluded that Jesus had been raised from the dead?
The answer would seem to be, no. Hallucinations, as projections of the mind, can contain nothing new. Therefore, given the current Jewish beliefs about life after death, the disciples, were they to project hallucinations of Jesus, would have seen Jesus in heaven or in Abraham’s bosom, where the souls of the righteous dead were believed to abide until the resurrection. And such visions would not have caused belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
At the most, it would have only led the disciples to say Jesus had been translated or assumed into heaven, not raised from the dead. In the Old Testament, figures such as Enoch and Elijah were portrayed as not having died but as having been translated directly into heaven. In an extra-canonical Jewish writing called The Testament of Job (40), the story is told of the translation of two children killed in the collapse of a house. The children are killed when the house collapses, but when the rescuers clear away the rubble their bodies are not to be found. Meanwhile, the mother sees a vision of the two children glorified in heaven, where they have been translated by God. It needs to be emphasized that for the Jew a translation is not the same as a resurrection. Translation is the bodily assumption of someone out of this world into heaven. Resurrection is the raising up of a dead man in the spacetime universe. They are distinct categories.
Thus, given Jewish beliefs concerning translation and resurrection, the disciples, having seen heavenly visions of Jesus, would not have preached that Jesus had been raised from the dead. At the very most, the empty tomb and hallucinations of Jesus would have caused them to believe in the translation of Jesus into glory, for 86. C. F. D. Moule, The Phenomenon of the New Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology 2/1 (London: SCM, 1967), 3, 13.
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this was consonant with their Jewish frame of thought. But they would not have come to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, for this contradicted Jewish belief in at least two fundamental respects.
The origin of Christianity owes itself to the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. That belief cannot be plausibly accounted for in terms of either Christian, pagan, or Jewish influences. Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that the tomb was somehow emptied and the disciples saw hallucinations—suppositions which we have seen to be false anyway—the origin of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection still cannot be plausibly explained. Such events would have led the disciples to say only that Jesus had been translated into heaven, not resurrected. The origin of the Christian faith is therefore inexplicable unless Jesus really rose from the dead.
Conclusion
Now we are ready to summarize all three of our discussions. First, we saw that numerous lines of historical evidence prove that the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers. Second, we saw that several lines of historical evidence established that on numerous occasions and in different places Jesus appeared physically and bodily alive from the dead to various witnesses. And finally, we saw that the very origin of the Christian faith depends on belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from among the dead.
As one reflects on this evidence, it is striking how successfully the historical facts undergirding the inference to the resurrection of Jesus pass the received tests of authenticity. A glance at our case on behalf of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection reveals that much of the evidence I have marshaled is based on an implicit application of the standard criteria of authenticity. For example, here are examples of standard criteria at work in our historical argument for Jesus’ resurrection: 1) Multiple attestation. We saw that the burial and empty tomb accounts are multiply attested by a remarkable number of independent and sometimes extremely early sources. The resurrection appearances enjoy multiple attestation from Pauline and Gospel traditions, and the latter themselves multiply attest to Jesus’ appearances, in some cases the same ones. And, of course, the fact that the first disciples came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection is attested throughout the New Testament.
2) Dissimilarity. The third point in our case based on the very origin of the Christian faith is a clear example of the application of this criterion, for the argument consists in showing that the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection cannot be explained as the result of either antecedent Jewish influences, because of its dissimilarity, or as a retrojection of Christian theology.
3) Embarrassment. Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea is supported by this criterion, since burial by a Sanhedrist is awkward for the church, whose leaders deserted Jesus. The argument for the discovery of the empty tomb by women is an outstanding illustration of the application of this criterion, for their role in the
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story was useless, not to say counterproductive, for the early church and would have been much better served by men.
4) Context and expectation. Again, the argument concerning the origin of the Christian way appeals to the absence of any expectation in Judaism of an executed, much less rising, Messiah in order to show that the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection cannot plausibly be explained as the outgrowth of Jewish beliefs and expectations.
5) Semitic traces. Aramaisms play a part in showing that the tradition quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 stems from the early church in Jerusalem. We also saw Semitic traces in the account of the empty tomb preserved in the pre-Markan passion story.
6) Effect. According to this criterion, an adequate cause must be posited for some established effect. The conversion of James and Paul, the earliest Jewish polemic concerning the disciples’ alleged theft of the body, and the disciples’ transformation after the crucifixion all constitute effects which point to the resurrection appearances, the empty tomb, and the disciples’ coming to believe that Jesus was risen as their sufficient causes.
7) Principles of embellishment. It was on the basis of this criterion that I argued that the Markan account of the empty tomb, in contrast to the apologetically and theologically embellished account in the Gospel of Peter, was not a late legend.
8) Coherence. The very fact that we have three great, independently established facts pointing to the resurrection of Jesus—namely, the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—is a powerful argument from coherence for the historicity of the resurrection. Moreover, these facts cohere interestingly with each other; for example, the coherence between Jesus’ physical resurrection appearances, Paul’s teaching on the nature of the resurrection body, and the empty tomb.
9) Historical congruence. Elsewhere I have shown the historical congruence of the burial and empty tomb narratives with what we know of first-century Jewish burial practices.87
Thus, the complex of facts which we have examined in support of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection passes the same tests for authenticity that serve to establish the authentic core of Jesus’ sayings and deeds and therefore deserves to be accorded no less degree of credibility than those facets of the historical Jesus.
Further, we have seen how poorly the typical explanations of these three facts fare when assessed by standard criteria for the justification of historical hypotheses.
They are especially weak when it comes to explanatory scope and power and are often highly implausible. But does the Resurrection Hypothesis do any better at explaining this body of evidence? Is it a better explanation than the implausible naturalistic explanations proffered in the past? In order to answer these questions, 87. William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, 3rd ed., Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 16 (Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 2002).
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let’s recall McCullagh’s seven criteria for the testing of a historical hypothesis and apply them to the hypothesis that “God raised Jesus from the dead.”
1) The hypothesis must imply further statements describing present, observable data.
Dialectical theologians like Barth often spoke of the resurrection as a supra-historical event; but even though the cause of the resurrection is beyond history, that event nonetheless has a historical margin in the empty tomb and resurrection appearances. As J. A. T. Robinson nicely put it, there was not simply nothing to show for it; rather there was nothing to show for it (that is, an empty tomb)!88
Moreover, there is the Christian faith itself to show for it. The present, observable data is chiefly in the form of historical texts which form the basis of the historian’s reconstruction of the events of Easter.
2) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than rival hypotheses. The resurrection hypothesis, we have seen, exceeds counter-explanations like hallucinations or the Wrong Tomb Hypothesis precisely by explaining all three of the great facts at issue, whereas these rival hypotheses only explain one or two.
3) The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than rival hypotheses. This is perhaps the greatest strength of the resurrection hypothesis. The Conspiracy Hypothesis or the Apparent Death Hypothesis just do not convincingly account for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances, or origin of the Christian faith: on these theories the data (for example, the transformation in the disciples, the historical credibility of the narratives) become very improbable. By contrast, on the hypothesis of the resurrection it seems extremely probable that the observable data with respect to the empty tomb, the appearances, and the disciples’ coming to believe in Jesus’ resurrection should be just as it is.
4) The hypothesis must be more plausible than rival hypotheses. The plausibility of Jesus’ resurrection grows exponentially as we consider it in its religio-historical context of Jesus’ unparalleled life and radical personal claims and in its philosophical context of the arguments of natural theology. Once one abandons the philosophical prejudice against the miraculous, the hypothesis that God should raise Jesus from the dead is no more implausible than its rivals, nor are they more plausible than the resurrection.
5) The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than rival hypotheses. It will be recalled that while McCullagh thought that the Resurrection Hypothesis possesses great explanatory scope and power, he nevertheless felt that it was ad hoc, which he defines in terms of the number of new suppositions made by a hypothesis about the past which are not already implied by existing knowledge. So defined, however, it is difficult to see why the Resurrection Hypothesis is extraordinarily ad hoc. It seems to require only one new supposition: that God exists. Surely its rival hypotheses require many new suppositions. For example, the Conspiracy Hypothesis requires us to suppose that the moral character of the disciples was defective, which is certainly not implied by already existing knowledge; the Apparent Death Hypothesis requires the supposi-88. John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (London: SCM, 1973), 136.
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tion that the centurion’s lance thrust into Jesus’ side was just a superficial poke or is an unhistorical detail in the narrative, which again goes beyond existing knowledge; the Hallucination Hypothesis requires us to suppose some sort of emotional preparation of the disciples which predisposed them to project visions of Jesus alive, which is not implied by our knowledge. Such examples could be multiplied. It should be noted, too, that scientific hypotheses regularly include the supposition of the existence of new entities, such as quarks, strings, gravitons, black holes, and the like, without those theories being characterized as ad hoc. Moreover, for the person who is already a theist, the Resurrection Hypothesis does not even introduce the new supposition of God’s existence, since that is already implied by his existing knowledge. For that reason we include the arguments of natural theology in our background knowledge. So the Resurrection Hypothesis cannot be said to be ad hoc simply in virtue of the number of new suppositions it introduces.
If our hypothesis is ad hoc, then, it must be for some other reasons. Philosophers of science have found it notoriously difficult to explain what it is exactly that makes a hypothesis ad hoc. There seems to be an ill-defined air of artificiality or contrivedness about a hypothesis deemed to be ad hoc, which can be sensed, if not explained, by those who are seasoned practitioners of the relevant science.
Now I think that the sense of discomfiture which many, even theists, feel about appealing to God as part of an explanatory hypothesis for some phenomenon in the world is that so doing has this air of being contrived. It just seems too easy when confronted with some unexplained phenomenon to throw up one’s hands and say, “God did it!” The universal disapprobation of the so-called “God of the gaps”
and the impulse towards methodological naturalism in science and history spring from the sense of illegitimacy attending such appeals to God. Is the hypothesis that “God raised Jesus from the dead” ad hoc in this sense?
I think not. One of the most important contributions of the traditional defenders of miracles was their drawing attention to the religio-historical context in which a purported miracle occurs. A supernatural explanation of the facts of the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith is not ad hoc because those events took place, as we have seen, in the context of and as the climax to Jesus’ own unparalleled life, ministry, and personal claims, with which a supernatural hypothesis readily fits. It is also precisely because of this historical context that the resurrection hypothesis does not seem ad hoc when compared to miraculous explanations of other sorts: for example, that a “psychological miracle”
occurred, causing normal men and women to become conspirators and liars who would be willingly martyred for their subterfuge; or that a “biological miracle”
occurred, which prevented Jesus’ expiring on the cross (despite the spear-thrust through his chest, and so forth) or his dying of exposure in the tomb.89 It is these 89. See Ehrman’s appeal in the Q & A period of our debate to precisely such ad hoc miraculous hypotheses, for example, that the make-believe god Zulu sent Jesus into the twelfth dimension (http://www.
reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=debates_main).
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miraculous hypotheses which strike us as artificial and contrived, not the resurrection hypothesis, which makes abundantly good sense in the context of Jesus’
ministry and radical personal claims. Thus, it seems to me that the Resurrection Hypothesis cannot be characterized as excessively ad hoc.
6) The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than rival hypotheses. I can’t think of any accepted beliefs which disconfirm the Resurrection Hypothesis—unless one thinks of, say, “dead men do not rise” as disconfirmatory.
But then we’re just back to the problem of miracles again. I’ve argued that this inductive generalization does nothing to disconfirm the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. By contrast, rival theories are disconfirmed by accepted beliefs about, for example, the instability of conspiracies, the likelihood of death as a result of crucifixion, the psychological characteristics of hallucinatory experiences, and so forth, as we have seen.
7) The hypothesis must so exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)–(6) that there is little chance of a rival hypothesis exceeding it in meeting these conditions. There is certainly little chance of any of the rival hypotheses suggested to date ever exceeding the Resurrection Hypothesis in fulfilling the above conditions. The stupefaction of contemporary scholarship when confronted with the facts of the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith suggests that no better rival is anywhere on the horizon. Once one gives up the prejudice against miracles, it’s hard to deny that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of the facts.
In conclusion, therefore, three great, independently established facts—the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—all point to the same marvelous conclusion: that God raised Jesus from the dead. Given that miracles are possible, this conclusion cannot be debarred to anyone seeking for the meaning to existence who sees therein the hope of eternal life.
Given the religio-historical context in which this event occurred, the significance of Jesus’ resurrection is clear: it is the divine vindication of Jesus’ radical personal claims. As Wolfhart Pannenberg explains:
The resurrection of Jesus acquires such decisive meaning, not merely because someone or anyone has been raised from the dead, but because it is Jesus of Nazareth, whose execution was instigated by the Jews because he had blasphemed against God. If this man was raised from the dead, then that plainly means that the God whom he had supposedly blasphemed has committed himself to him. . . . The resurrection can only be understood as the divine vindication of the man whom the Jews had rejected as a blasphemer.90
90. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Jesu Geschichte und unsere Geschichte,” in Glaube und Wirklichkeit (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1975), 92–94.
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Practical Application
The material I’ve presented on the resurrection can be nicely summarized into an evangelistic message that can be used effectively on university campuses. It can even be used in personal evangelism, if you can arrange with the person with whom you’re sharing to set up a time when you can lay out the evidence. Construct a two-step case such as I’ve laid out, using the three broad facts as your data to be explained and the criteria for assessing historical hypotheses for inferring the resurrection as the best explanation. Then lay out the case as a whole rather than present and discuss it piecemeal, for the impact of the cumulative case is greater.
For example, I was once discussing the gospel with a student who seemed open but was hesitant. I challenged him to consider the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and he told me, “If you can prove that Jesus rose from the dead, I’ll become a Christian.” So I made an appointment to see him the next week to lay out my case. When I met with him again, I submitted the evidence to him for an uninterrupted twenty minutes and then asked him what he thought. He was virtually speechless. I asked, “Are you now ready to become a Christian?” “Well, I don’t know,” he said indecisively. So I said that he should think about it some more and that I would come back again the following week to see what he had decided. By the third week, he was ready, and together in his dorm room we prayed to invite Christ into his life. It was one of the most thrilling experiences I have had in seeing God use apologetics to draw someone to himself.
Recently we received a call early Saturday morning. The foreign voice on the line announced, “Hello! This is Muhammad al-Islam calling from Oman!” (I’ve changed the names to protect his identity.) He explained that he was a former Muslim who had lost his faith in Islam and had become an atheist. But recently he had been reading books on Christian apologetics which he had been ordering through Amazon.com and had become convinced that God exists after all. Now he was reading books on the resurrection of Jesus and was nearly convinced. But he had a few questions which he wanted to ask before making the step to follow Christ. We spent the next hour and a half talking about issues surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, and I sensed that in his heart he really did believe but was just reluctant to take that step self-consciously before he had all his ducks in a row.
Before we wrapped up our conversation, he said, “You understand that this is not my real name. In my country, if I were to believe in Christ, I would be killed.” I then prayed for him and wished him well. I was on cloud nine after the privilege of a conversation like that! And some people think God doesn’t use apologetics in evangelism!
Let me encourage you to work up a talk or a case of your own that you can use in evangelistic meetings or contacts. And then always be prepared to give this defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.
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Literature Cited or Recommended
Historical Background
Craig, William Lane. The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus during the Deist Controversy. Texts and Studies in Religion 23. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1985.
Ditton, Humphrey. A Discourse Concerning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. London: J. Darby, 1712.
Fuller, Daniel P. Easter Faith and History. London: Tyndale, 1968.
Houtteville, Claude François. La religion chrétienne prouvée par les faits. 3 vols. Paris: Mercier
& Boudet, 1740.
Less, Gottfried. Wahrheit der christlichen Religion. Göttingen: G. L. Förster, 1776.
Paley, William. A View of the Evidences of Christianity. 2 vols. 5th ed. London: R. Faulder, 1796. Repr. Westmead, England: Gregg, 1970.
Reimarus, Hermann Samuel. Fragments. Translated by R. S. Fraser. Edited by C. H. Talbert.
Lives of Jesus Series. London: SCM, 1971.
Semler, Johann Salomo. Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canon. Texte zur Kirchen-und Theologiegeschichte 5. Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1967.
———. Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungennanten insbesondere vom Zweck Jesu and seiner Jünger. 2nd ed. Halle: Verlag des Erziehungsinstituts, 1780.
Sherlock, Thomas. The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus. London: J. Roberts, 1729.
Strauss, David Friedrich. “Hermann Samuel Reimarus and His ‘Apology.’” In Fragments, by H. S. Reimarus, translated by R. S. Fraser. Edited by C. H. Talbert, 44–57. Lives of Jesus Series. London: SCM, 1971.
———. The Life of Jesus Critically Examined. Translated by G. Eliot. Edited with an introduction by P. C. Hodgson. Lives of Jesus Series. London: SCM, 1973.
Tholuck, Friedrich August. “Abriss einer Geschichte der Umwälzung, welche seit 1750
auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland statt gefunden.” In Vermischte Schriften grösstentheils Apologetischen Inhalts. 2 vols. Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1859.
Turretin, J. Alph. Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne. Translated by J. Vernet. 2nd ed.
7 vols. Geneva: Henri Albert Gosse, 1745–55.
Assessment
Allison, Dale C., Jr. “Explaining the Resurrection: Conflicting Convictions,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3 (2005): 217–33.
———. “Resurrecting Jesus.” In Resurrecting Jesus, 198–375. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005.
The best presentation of skeptical arguments against inferring Jesus’ resurrection.
Alsup, John. The Post-Resurrection Appearances of the Gospel Tradition. Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1975. This is the most important work on the post-resurrection appearances.
Aune, D. E. “The Genre of the Gospels.” In Gospel Perspectives II, edited by R. T. France and David Wenham, 9–60. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981.
Barnett, Paul. Jesus and the Logic of History. New Studies in Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997.
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Blinzler, Josef. “Die Grablegung Jesu in historischer Sicht.” In Resurrexit, edited by Edouard Dhanis. Rome: Editrice Libreria Vaticana, 1974. The best piece on the burial.
Bode, Edward Lynn. The First Easter Morning. Analecta Biblica 45. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970. The best work on the empty tomb.
Brown, Raymond E. The Death of the Messiah. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1994.
The definitive work on Jesus’ passion.
Craig, William Lane. Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, 3rd ed. Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 16. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2002.
———. “Wright vs. Crossan on the Resurrection of Jesus.” In The Resurrection: The Crossan-Wright Dialogue, edited by Robert B. Stewart, 139–48. Minneapolis and London: Augsburg Fortress and SPCK, 2006.
Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: A Revolutionary Bibliography. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994.
Dodd, C. H. “The Appearances of the Risen Christ: A Study in the Form Criticism of the Gospels.” In More New Testament Studies, 102–33. Manchester: University of Manchester, 1968.
Dunn, James W. D. G. Jesus and the Spirit. London: SCM, 1975.
Ehrman, Bart D. “From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity.” Lecture 4:
“Oral and Written Traditions about Jesus.” The Teaching Company, 2003.
———. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
———. The New Testament. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Ellis, E. Earle, ed. The Gospel of Luke. New Century Bible: London: Nelson, 1966.
Evans, Craig A. “Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology.” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 3–36.
Fuller, R. H. The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives. London: SPCK, 1972.
Grass, Hans. Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte. 4th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974. This influential work remains one of the most important overall treatments of the historicity of the resurrection.
Gundry, Robert. Sōma in Biblical Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
The best work on the second part of 1 Corinthians 15.
Habermas, Gary. “Experience of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection.” Dialog 45 (2006): 288–97.
Hengel, Martin. “Judentum und Hellenismus.” Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 10. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1969.
Hurtado, Larry. “Mission Accomplished: Apologetics, Witness, and Women in Mark’s Passion-Resurrection Narratives,” paper delivered at the 2005 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, forthcoming as “The Women, the Tomb, and the Climax of Mark”
in a Festschrift for Sean Freyne to be published by Brill.
Jeremias, Joachim. “Die älteste Schicht der Osterüberlieferung.” In Resurrexit, edited by Edouard Dhanis. Rome: Editrice Libreria Vaticana, 1974.
Kessler, Hans. Sucht den Lebenden nicht bei den Toten, new ed. Würzburg: Echter, 1995.
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Kittel, Gerhard. “Die Auferstehung Jesu.” Deutsche Theologie 4 (1937): 133–68.
Klappert, Berthold. “Einleitung.” In Diskussion um Kreuz und Auferstehung, edited by B. Klappert, 9–52. Wuppertal: Aussaat Verlag, 1971.
Koester, Helmut. Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development. London: SCM, 1990.
Kremer, Jacob. Die Osterevangelien—Geschichten um Geschichte. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977.
Lehmann, Karl. Auferweckt am dritten Tag nach der Schrift. Quaestiones disputatae 38.
Freiburg: Herder, 1968. The most important work on the first part of 1 Corinthians 15.
Lipton, Peter. Inference to the Best Explanation. London: Routledge, 1981.
Lüdemann, Gerd. What Really Happened to Jesus? Trans. John Bowden. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.
McCullagh, C. Behan. Justifying Historical Descriptions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
McGrew, Timothy. “Has Plantinga Refuted the Historical Argument?” Philosophia Christi 6 (2004): 7–26.
McGrew, Lydia and Timothy McGrew. “The Argument from Miracles.” In Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William L. Craig and J. P. Moreland. Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming.
———. “On the Historical Argument: A Rejoinder to Plantinga.” Philosophia Christi 8
(2006): 23–38.
Meier, John P. “Dividing Lines in Jesus Research Today.” Interpretation 50 (1996): 355–72.
———. A Marginal Jew, vol. 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
———. A Marginal Jew, vol. 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracle. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Mettinger, Tryggve N. D. The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East. Stockholm, Sweden: Almquist & Wiksell International, 2001.
Moule, C. F. D. The Phenomenon of the New Testament. Studies in Biblical Theology 2/1.
London: SCM, 1967.
O’Collins, G. G. “Is the Resurrection an ‘Historical’ Event?” Heythrop Journal 8 (1967): 381–87.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Glaube und Wirklichkeit. München: Chr. Kaiser, 1975.
Perrin, Norman. The Resurrection according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977.
Pesch, Rudolph. Das Markusevangelium. 2 vols. Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament. Freiburg: Herder, 1976–77.
Plantinga, Alvin. “Historical Arguments and Historical Probabilities: A Response to Timothy McGrew.” Philosophia Christi 8 (2006): 7–22.
———. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Powell, Mark Allen. Critical notice of The Birth of Christianity, by John Dominic Crossan, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68 (2000): 169–71.
Robinson, John A. T. The Human Face of God. London: SCM, 1973.
Sorabji, Richard. Time, Creation, and the Continuum. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Swinburne, Richard. “Natural Theology, Its ‘Dwindling Probabilities,’ and ‘Lack of Rapport.’” Faith and Philosophy 21 (2004): 533–46.
———. The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Stendahl, Krister. Paul among Jews and Gentiles. Philadelphia: Fortesss, 1976.
Trilling, Wolfgang. Fragen zur Geschichtlichkeit Jesu. Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1966.
Van Daalen, D. H. The Real Resurrection. London: Collins, 1972.
Von Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr. Der Ablauf der Osterereignisse und das leere Grab. 3rd rev. ed. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1966.
Wilckens, Ulrich. Auferstehung. Themen der Theologie 4. Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1970.
Wright, N. T. C hristian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 3: The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
The Ultimate Apologetic
Throughout this book we’ve examined many arguments in support of the Christian faith. I’ve argued that we can know that Christianity is true because of the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit and that we can show it to be true by means of rational argumentation and evidence. We have explored the human predicament without God and immortality and seen how it leads to futility and despair. But we have also examined the evidence for a Christian solution to this predicament: evidence that a personal Creator of the universe exists and that Jesus Christ’s offer of eternal life to those who believe in him is genuine, being confirmed by his resurrection from the dead. But now I want to share with you what I believe to be the most effective and practical apologetic for the Christian faith that I know of. This apologetic will help you to win more persons to Christ than all the other arguments in your apologetic arsenal put together.
This ultimate apologetic involves two relationships: your relationship with God and your relationship with others. These two relationships are distinguished by Jesus in his teaching on the duty of man: “And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matt 22:35–40 esv). The first commandment governs our relationship to God, the second our relationship with our fellow man. Let’s examine each of these relationships in turn.
First, our relationship with God. This is governed by the great commandment: 405
Conclusion
Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:4–9 rsv)
Notice the importance given to this commandment—loving God is to be our preoccupation in life. Sometimes we get the idea that our main duty in life is to serve God, perhaps by being a great apologist, and forget, as J. I. Packer reminds us, that our primary aim ought to be to learn to know God: We both can and must get our life’s priorities straight. From current Christian publications you might think that the most vital issue for any . . . Christian in the world today is . . . social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other faiths, or refuting this or that “-ism,” or developing a Christian philosophy and culture, or what have you. But our line of study makes the present day concentration on these things look like a gigantic conspiracy of misdirection. Of course, it is not that; the issues themselves are real and must be dealt with in their place. But it is tragic that, in paying attention to them, so many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is, and always will be the true priority for every human being—that is, learning to know God in Christ.1
In our relationship with God we are to give him his legal right—namely, all that we have and are. The Christian is to be as a matter of course totally dedicated to God (Rom. 12:1–2) and filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18). For his part God gives to us positionally, as we are in Christ, forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7), eternal life (Rom. 6:23), adoption as sons (Gal. 4:5), and the availability of unlimited help and power (Eph. 1:18–19). Think of how much that means! Moreover, he gives to us experientially, as we are Spirit-filled, the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23). When this relationship is intact, the product in our lives will be righteousness (Rom. 6:16), and the by-product of righteousness is happiness. Happiness is an elusive thing and will never be found when pursued directly; but it springs into being as one pursues the knowledge of God and as his righteousness is realized in us.
The other relationship is our relationship with our fellow man. This is governed by the second great commandment, as Paul explains: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself ’” (Rom. 13:9 rsv). Why is 1. J. I. Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodden & Stoughton, 1973), 314.
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love the great commandment? Simply because all the other commandments are the outworking of love in practice (Rom. 13:10). When we love others, we simply show that we have understood God’s love for us, and it is being worked out in our lives toward others. As John says, “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11 esv). What does love involve?
To begin with, it means possessing the characteristics of love described in 1
Corinthians 13. Can we say, “I am patient and kind; I am not jealous or boast-ful, arrogant or rude; I am not selfish or irritable or resentful; I am not happy about wrong, but I rejoice in the right; I bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things”? Moreover, love will involve having a servant’s heart, a willingness to count others better than yourself and to serve and look out for their interests as well as your own (Gal. 5:13b–14; Phil. 2:3). Certainly Jesus himself is our supreme model here: think of how he stooped to wash his disciples’ dirty feet!
What will be the result when these two relationships are strong and close?
There will be a unity and warmth among Christians. There will be a love that pervades the body of Christ; as Paul describes it, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love” (Eph. 4:15–16 rsv). And what will be the result of this unity through love? Jesus himself gives us the answer in his prayer for the church: “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. . . . I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” ( John 17:21–23 esv). According to Jesus, our love is a sign to all people that we are his disciples ( John 13:35); but even more than that, our love and unity are living proof to the world that God the Father has sent his Son Jesus Christ and that the Father loves people even as he loves Jesus. When people see this—our love for one another and our unity through love—then they will in turn be drawn to Christ and will respond to the gospel’s offer of salvation.
More often than not, it is who you are rather than what you say that will bring an unbeliever to Christ.
This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is—your life.
1984 (Orwell), 236
about himself, 328–29; roles of (shaping culture,
strengthening believers, evangelizing unbelievers),
Abbadie, Jakob, 214
16–24; types of (offensive [positive] and defensive
Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canon (Sem-
[negative]), 23–24; the ultimate apologetic (rela-
ler), 344
tionship with God and relationship with others),
Abrahams, Israel, 294
405–7
Abriss der Dogmatik (Pöhlmann), 327
apostles: apologetic procedure of, 57–58; as neither
abstract art, 70
deceivers nor deceived, 337–41; standard proce-
actual infinite, impossibility of, 116–20, 122–24
dure for evangelism, 21–22
Adams, Robert, 181
Aquinas, Thomas, 32–33, 96, 114, 152, 154, 209–10;
agnosticism, view of the universe, 108–9
apologetic procedure of, 33; proofs for God’s exis-
al-Ghāzali, 96, 96–97, 123
tence (the Five Ways), 97–98, 101, 104
Allison, Dale, 357–59, 365n45, 366n48, 367n49, 368,
archaeology, 226
370nn52, 53, 383n61, 384, 385
Aristotle, 96, 100–101
Alston, William, 51, 181
Aron, Raymond, 238
analogy of being, 36
Athanasius, 336
Ankersmit, F. R., 216–17, 221
atheism, 94, 95; consequences of its naturalism,
Anselm, 48, 95–96, 96, 188–89, 209
173–74; practical impossibility of, 78–84; view of
“Anthropic Explanation in Cosmology” (McMullin),
the universe, 108–9
161n5
Atheistic Moral Platonism, 178–79; and the Euthy-
Anthropic Principle, 165–66
phro Dilemma, 181–83
anthropos pneumatikos (spiritual man), 382
Audouze, Jean, 128
anthropos psychikos (natural man), 382
Augustine, 29–31, 32, 33, 209
Antony, Louise, 176n28
Aune, David, 390
apologetics: and the appeal to moral values, 87–88;
Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu (Bahrdt), 288
cultural apologetics, 65; definition of, 15; and
authority ( auctoritas), 30–31
demonstration of the possibility of miracles,
278–81; effectiveness in, 60; English apologet-
Bahrdt, Karl, 288
ics, 215; and exemplification of biblical virtues,
Balaguer, Mark, 117
19, 190; French apologetics, 214–15; and good
Banks, T., 149n115
arguments, 55–56; and the importance of the
bar Giora, Simon, 308
objectivity of history, 241–42; and memorization
Bar Kokhba, 308, 309, 309n38
of the arguments for God’s existence, 189–90;
Barnabas, 335, 340
and personal evangelism, 400; practical advice
Barnett, Paul, 364
concerning, 189–92; presentation of Jesus’ claims
Barrera, José Carlos, 232n46
408
409
Barrow, John, 127, 135, 136, 164, 165–66
Celsus, 336
Barth, Karl, 36–37, 37–38, 38, 290, 348
Chance and Necessity (Monod), 74
Bauer, Bruno, 218
Chihara, Charles S., 117n43
Bauer, D. R., 325
Chisholm, Roderick, 94
Baumgarten, S. J., 344
Christian evidences, 24
Bayes’ Theorem, 53–54, 160n4, 271–72, 271n25,
Christianity: origin of, 342, 387–95; persecution of
272n26, 273–76, 280; and inference to the best
early Christians, 339–40; success of, 86
explanation of Jesus’ resurrection, 359-60; “odds
Christianity, knowing it to be true: role of argument
form” of, 271
and evidence in, 47–51; role of the Holy Spirit
Bayle, Pierre, 214
in, 43–47
Beanwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten (Sem-Christianity, showing it to be true: role of the Holy
ler), 344–45
Spirit in, 56–58; role of reason in (deductive ar-
Beard, Charles, 216
guments, inductive arguments, good arguments),
Becker, Carl, 216, 220–21, 221, 231, 235
51–56
Beckett, Samuel, 74
“Christianity and Culture” (Machen), 17
believers: role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of, 44–46, Christianity Not Founded on Argument (Dodwell), 35
59; strengthening of, 19–21
Christological titles, Jesus’ use of, 300–301, 327;
ben Ananias, Jesus, 306
Messiah, 301; Son of God, 310–14; Son of Man,
Ben-Chorin, Schalom, 295
315–18
ben Dosa, Hanina, 296
City of God, The (Augustine), 31
Berkeley, George, 96
Clarke, Samuel, 252–53, 265
Berkhofer, Robert F., 232n46
Clement, 335, 339, 340
Berlin, Isaiah, 235
Collins, Robin, 160n4
Bernstein, Richard, 216
Collingwood, R. C., 208, 226, 227, 232, 234
biblical criticism, 342–48
Companion to Atheism (M. Martin), 95
Big Bang, 72, 126–28, 129, 139–40, 158–59
Condorcet, 270
Bilynskyj, Stephen, 267
constructionism (non-realism), 218; methodological
Blake, Christopher, 235
constructionism, 225–26; ontological construc-
Bloch, Ernst, 82–83
tionism, 223–25
Bode, E. L., 366
Content of Form, The: Narrative Discourse and Histori-Bohm, David, 114
cal Representation (H. White), 232n46
Boltzmann, Ludwig, 141–42
Copleston, Frederick, 228, 229
“Boltzmann brains,” 148–49, 169
cosmic fine-tuning, 158–61; chance as an explanation
Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, The of, 164–70 ( see also Anthropic Principle; Many (Hemer, ed.), 294n14
Worlds Hypothesis; probability); design as an
Borde, Arvind, 133, 134, 138–39, 140, 150, 168
explanation of, 170–72; physical necessity as an
Bornkamm, Günther, 388–89
explanation of, 161–64
Bossuet, Jacque-Bénigne, 214
Cosmic Landscape, The: String Theory and the Illusion of Bousso, R., 149
Intelligent Design (Susskind), 163n7
Braun, Herbert, 248
“Cosmological Argument and the Epistemic Status
Brink, David, 181, 182n39
of Belief in God, The” (Davis), 106n19
Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky), 68–69, 69
Council of Trent, 33
Brown, Raymond, 364
Counter-Reformation, 211
Bruder Jesus: Der Nazarener in Jüdischer Sicht (Ben-Crick, Francis, 82
Chorin), 295
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky), 69
Bultmann, Rudolf, 37–38, 38, 290, 290n1, 347, 348,
“Critical Look at Inflationary Cosmology, A” (Ear-
389; demythologization of the Bible, 247–48, 290
man and Mosterin), 132n71
Crossan, John Dominic, 23, 292–93, 323, 368, 386
Cage, John, 70
culture, shaping of, 16–19
Caius, 336
Cunningham, Richard, 193
Calvin, John, 40, 41
Cur Deus Homo (Anselm), 209
Camus, Albert, 74, 78, 79
Cyprian, 335
Cantor, Georg, 117
Cyril, 336
Carr, E. H., 235
Case for Christ, The (Stroebel), 22
Das Leben Jesu (Paulus), 288
Case for Faith, The (Stroebel), 22
Das Leben Jesus, kritisch bearbeitet (D. F. Strauss), 278, causal relations: agent causation, 154; event/event
288–89, 345
causation, 153–54; state/event causation, 154;
Davies, Paul C. W., 126, 143–44, 150, 158, 163,
state/state causation, 154
163n10
Index
Davis, Stephen T., 106n19, 349
evangelism, 21–23, 59; and the danger of focusing at-
Dawkins, Richard, 76, 80–81, 95, 170–72, 173–74,
tention on the argument instead of the unbeliever,
183n40
57; success in, 60
De la vérité de la religion chrestienne (Mornay), 212
Evangelism in the Early Church (Green), 57
De veritate fidei christianae (Vives), 211–12
Evans, Craig, 295, 302, 305, 306n30, 308n36, 311,
De veritate religionis christianae (Grotius), 212–14
391
Dead Sea Scrolls, 303–4, 307, 313
Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe, The Debbins, William, 233
(Craig), 23
Deism, 342–43; conception of God, 249; and the
existentialism, 65
Gospels, 334; objections to miracles, 248–51;
“Existentialism Is a Humanism” (Sartre), 80
view of Jesus’ empty tomb, 371
Dembski, William, 160; Generic Chance Elimination
facts, 107n21; historical facts, 231–32, 232n46,
Argument of, 160
235–36
Denaux, Adelbert, 312
“Failure of Classic Theistic Arguments, The” (Gale),
Dennett, Daniel, 83–84, 95, 114, 151–52
122n49
Der Rabbi von Nazareth (Lapide), 295
Fay, Brian, 236–37, 241
Descartes, René, 34, 95, 96
Ferré, Frederick, 102
Design Inference, The (Dembski), 160
Feyerabend, Paul, 220
Diatessaron (Tatian), 335
fides quarens intellectum (faith seeking understand-Dictionnaire historique et critique (Bayle), 214
ing), 30
Dicus, Dudane, 142, 144
Filleau de la Chaise, 214
Diderot, Denis, 249
First Three Minutes, The (Weinberg), 83
Dionysius, 335
Five Gospels, The ( Jesus Seminar), 278, 299
Discours sur les preuves des livres de Moyse (Filleau de la Flew, Antony, 266–67, 276
Chaise), 214
Flusser, David, 295
Discourse Concerning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ Fowler, William A., 128
(Ditton), 337
France, R. T., 238
Discourse on Miracles (Locke), 35
Freivogel, B., 149
Ditton, Humphrey, 337, 340–41, 341, 342
Friedman, Alexander, 125–26
Dodd, C. H., 379
Fuller, R. H., 389
Dodwell, Henry, 35, 43
Funk, Robert, 299
“Does Physical Cosmology Transcend the Limits of
Naturalistic Reasoning?” (Kanitscheider), 115n37
Gale, Richard, 122, 122n29
Donation of Constantine, 210
Gamow, George, 129
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 68–69, 74, 79
Gardiner, Patrick, 219, 221
Dray, W. H., 225
Gasperini, Maurizio, 137–38
Dunn, James D. G., 297n20, 305, 315, 324, 327, 385
“Gathering, The” (BBC documentary), 79–80
Dyson, Lin, 146, 149n115, 149–50n116
General Theory of Relativity (GR), 125
genetic fallacy, 180
Earman, John, 132n71, 270, 273n28, 274
geology, 227
Eddington, Arthur, 128, 150n117
Gerhardsson, Birger, 295
Ehrman, Bart, 279–80, 293; objections to Jesus’ resur-
God: infinity of, 119n46; lack of ultimate meaning
rection, 350–51, 352
without, 72–74; lack of ultimate purpose without,
Einstein, Albert, 125
75–78; lack of ultimate value without, 74–75; loss
Eisley, Loren, 71
of, 71–72; relationship to time, 154, 154n125;
Eliot, T. S., 76
simplicity of, 171. See also God, existence of Ellis, E. Earle, 365
God, existence of: belief in, 176; conceptualist argu-
Ellis, G. F. R., 125, 145n105
ment for, 187–88; cosmological argument for, 96–
“End of the World, The” (MacLeish), 73
99; cosmological argument, kalām, for, 111–56, Enlightenment, 16, 248; as the Age of Reason, 34
192–93; cosmological argument, Leibnizian, for,
Epictetus, 339
106–11, 192; moral argument for, 104–6, 172–83,
Erasmus, 210–11
194–95; ontological argument for, 95–96, 183–85,
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 34
195–96; teleological argument (argument from
Ethics of Naturalism, The (Sorley), 104–5
design) for, 99–103, 157, 193–94
Etymologies (Isidore of Seville), 208
God: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist
Eusebius, 335
(Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong), 176n28
Euthyphro (Plato), 181
God Delusion, The (Dawkins), 170, 183n40
Evangelical Philosophical Society, 21
Gödel, Kurt, 178n33
411
Goldstein, Leon, 217, 219, 224–25
History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century Gospel of John, The: A Commentary (Keener), 385n64
(Stephen), 101–2
Gospel of Peter, 363, 367, 371, 372, 396
History of Religions school, 390
Gospel of Thomas, 311
Hocking, W. E., 76
Gospels: authenticity of (internal and external
“Hollow Men, The” (Eliot), 76
evidence), 334–36; and criteria of authenticity,
Holy Spirit: cultivating the ministry of, 59; role of in 292; purity of the text of, 336–37; reliability of,
knowing Christianity to be true, 43–47; role of in
337–42; and the two-source hypothesis, 289
showing Christianity to be true, 56–58
Gott, J. Richard, III, 127n60, 132
Honi the Circle-Drawer, 296
Grass, Hans, 349, 380, 391
Houtteville, Claude Françoise, 254, 264, 267, 337,
Great Awakening, 348
341
Great Story, The: History as Text and Discourse (Berk-Hoyle, Fred, 82, 127
hofer), 232n46
Hubble, Edwin, 126
Green, Michael, 57
Huet, Pierre Daniel, 214
Grotius, Hugo, 211, 212–14
human predicament, 65, 66–68, 84–86
Gruenler, Royce, 322–23, 326–27
humanists, 210–11
Grünbaum, Adolf, 154–56
Hume, David, 102, 112, 113, 151, 248, 250–51, 266,
Guelich, Robert, 321
268; “in fact” arguments of, 251, 277–78; “in prin-
Gundry, Robert H., 307n32, 317–18
ciple” argument of, 250–51, 269–77; objections to
Gunn, James E., 127n60
miracles, 269–78
Guth, Alan, 134, 138–39, 140, 150, 168
Hurtado, Larry, 300, 368n51
Hutchinson, Robert, 321
hypotheses, historical: factors weighed in the testing
ha’Am, Ahad, 321
of, 233; and the hypothetico-deductive model,
Habermas, Gary, 352, 370–71
232–33; and the inference model, 233–34; plau-
Hagner, Donald A., 294
sibility/implausibility of, 239–40; testing of by
Hale, Bob, 107, 108
objective facts, 234–35
hallucinations, 383, 383n62, 394
Harris, Sam, 95
ibn Rushd, 96
Harrison, R. K., 227
ibn Sīna, 96
Hartle, James, 134
Ignatius, 335, 339, 340
Hartshorne, Charles, 95, 183
immortality: lack of ultimate meaning without, 72–
Haskell, T. L., 235
74; lack of ultimate purpose without, 75–78; lack
Hawking, Stephen, 130, 134, 135, 136, 136n87,
of ultimate value without, 74–75; loss of, 71–72.
145–46, 158–59, 162–63
See also resurrection
Hawking-Penrose Singularity Theorems, 130
Irenaeus, 335, 340
Hegel, G. W. F., 70
Isham, Christopher, 132
Heidegger, Martin, 112, 248, 290
Isidore of Seville, 208
Hemer, Colin, 294n14
Hengel, Martin, 300, 302, 307–8, 310n41, 391n80
Jenkins, Keith, 217, 221
Hermas, 339
Jeremias, Joachim, 325, 392
Herrmann, Wilhelm, 289
Jesus: apologetic procedure of, 57–58; as arbiter of
Hesse, Mary, 261
people’s eternal destiny, 325–27; authority of,
Hick, John, 300
320–23; “the historical Jesus,” 218, 290–94, 296–
Hilbert, David, 117; Hilbert’s Hotel, 118–20
98, 353–54; Jewish reclamation of, 294–96, 391;
Historical Jesus, The: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish miracles of, 323–25; prayer life of, 325; preaching
Peasant (Crossan), 292–93
of the kingdom by, 319. See also Christological historicism, 216
titles, Jesus’ use of; Jesus, resurrection of
historiography: during the eighteenth and nineteenth
Jesus, resurrection of, 239–40, 267–68; and Bayes’
centuries, 216–18; during the medieval period,
Theorem, 274–76, 359–60; case for in the tradi-
208–10; during the modern period, 210–15; post-
tional apologetic (the authenticity of the Gospels,
modern approaches to, 241, 241n72
the purity of the Gospels, the reliability of the
history: distinguishing between good history and
Gospels), 334–42; the empty tomb as evidence
poor history, 237; distinguishing between history
for, 361–71; facts supporting the historicity of,
and propaganda, 236–37; and inference on the
395–96; his postmortem appearances as evidence
basis of present evidence, 352–53; mitigating the
for, 377–87; historical argument for, 350; non-
lack of neutrality, 237–38; rewriting of by each
Christian explanations for the empty tomb (Con-
generation, 238
spiracy Hypothesis, Apparent Death Hypothesis,
Index
Wrong Tomb Hypothesis, Displaced Body
life: meaning of, 78–79; purpose of, 82–84; scientific
Hypothesis), 371–77; the origin of the Christian
definition of, 159; value of, 79–82
faith as evidence for, 342, 387–95; the Resurrec-
Life of Jesus movement, 259, 287–89
tion Hypothesis, 397–99
Linde, Andrei, 132–33, 134, 134n74, 150
Jesus (Flusser), 295
Locke, John, 34–35, 96, 215
Jesus als Lehrer (Riesner), 295
Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in Jesus and Judaism (Sanders), 295
God (Sobel), 95, 107n20
Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching (Klaus-Lorenz, Chris, 242
ner), 294
Lüdemann, Gerd, 279, 381, 384–87
Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making (Dunn), Luther, Martin, 47
297n20
Jesus Seminar, 278–79, 292, 299, 321
Machen, J. Gresham, 17
Jesus the Jew (Vermes), 295
Mackie, J. L., 112–13, 113, 113n30, 119, 123
Josephus, 306, 308n37, 340, 367, 379
MacLeish, Archibald, 73
Judas the Galilean, 308
Maimonides, Moses, 96
Julian (emperor), 336
“Making History, Talking about History” (Barrera),
Justifying Historical Descriptions (McCullagh), 233–34
232n46
Justin Martyr, 335, 340
Malbranche, Nicolas, 214
Juvenal, 339
Malcolm, Norman, 95, 183
Mandelbaum, Maurice, 234, 238
Kähler, Martin, 218
Many Worlds Hypothesis, 166–70
kalām (speech), 96n4
Marcus Aurelius, 339
Kalām Cosmological Argument, The (Craig), 112
Marginal Jew, A (Meier), 291–92
“Kalām Cosmological Arguments for Atheism” (Q.
Martial, 339
Smith), 112n27
Martin, Michael, 95
Kanitscheider, Bernulf, 115n37
Martin, Raymond, 232n46
Kant, Immanuel, 348
McCullagh, C. Behan, 233–34, 239
Käsemann, Ernst, 290, 349
McDowell, Josh, 22
Kee, Howard, 324
McGrew, Lydia, 276n30
Keener, Craig, 385n64
McGrew, Tim, 276n30
Kessler, Hans, 386
McMullin, Ernan, 161n5
Kierkegaard, Søren, 69–70
McTaggart, J. M. E., 121
Kirchner, U., 125
Meier, John, 291–92, 296, 297, 323, 324, 370n52, 388;
Kittel, Gerhard, 391
reservations about Jesus’ resurrection, 353–57
Klausner, Joseph, 294, 376
Melito, 335
Kleban, Matthew, 146, 149n115, 149–50n116
Memory and Manuscript (Gerhardsson), 295
Koester, Helmut, 388
Merrick, Trenton, 359n33
Kremer, Jacob, 370
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 101
Kuhn, Thomas, 220, 227
Mettinger, T. N. D., 390–91
Kurtz, Paul, 75, 174, 175, 176
Meyer, Ben, 322, 323n67
Mill, John Stuart, 270, 270–71
La religion chrétienne prouvée par les faits (Houtteville), miracles: Christian defense of contra Hume, 254–57,
254
258–59; Christian defense of contra Spinoza,
La Shell, John, 20
252–54, 257–58; criteria for identification of, 267;
Ladd, George, 207
Deist objections to, 248–51; of Jesus, 323–25
Lake, Kirsopp, 374–75
“Mission Accomplished: Apologetics, Witness, and
Lapide, Pinchas, 295, 349, 371
Women in Mark’s Passion-Resurrection Narra-
Laplace, Pierre Simon de, 248
tives” (Hurtado), 368n51
Le Clerc, Jean, 252, 267
monism, 105–6
Leibniz, Gottfried, 95, 96, 98–99, 106, 183, 184;
Monod, Jacques, 74
Principle of Sufficient Reason, 99, 107–8, 110
Montaigne, 66
Lemaître, Georges, 125–26
Montefiore, C. G., 294
Leslie, Charles, 215
moral duties, 172–79; objectivity of, 179–81
Leslie, John, 159, 160, 165–66
moral epistemology, 176
Less, Gottfried, 255–56, 264, 270, 334, 335, 337
moral ontology, 176
Lessing, Gottfried, 343
“Moral Skepticism and Justification” (Sinnott-Arm-
Lewis, C. S., 22
strong), 176n28
Licona, Michael, 237
moral values, 172–79; objectivity of, 179–81
413
Moral Values and the Idea of God (Sorley), 104
Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (Newton), Mornay, Philippe de, 211, 212
248
Mosterin, Jesus, 132n71
Pirenne, Henri, 222
Moule, C. F. D., 300, 394
Plantinga, Alvin, 29–43, 41n23, 43, 44, 48, 55, 94, 95, Myth of God Incarnate, The (Hick, ed.), 300
180n36, 183, 223, 359n34; on Freud and Marx’s
objections to religious belief, 179n34; ontological
Nachrichten von einer Hallischen Bibliothek (Baumgar-argument of, 184–89
ten), 344
Plato, 96, 100, 104, 181
natural law: causal dispositions theory of, 263; nomic
Platonism, 188
necessity theory of, 262–63; regularity theory of,
plerophoria (complete confidence, full assurance), 44
262
Pliny the Younger, 339
Natural Theology (Paley), 101
pluralism, 105
naturalism, 238; methodological naturalism, 240
pneumatikos (dominated by or oriented toward the Nature of Space and Time, The (Hawking), 136n87
Spirit), 382
Natürliche Geschichte des grossen Propheten von Naza-Pöhlmann, Horst Georg, 327
reth (Venturini), 288
Poincaré, Henri, 146n108
Nero, 339
Polycarp, 335, 339, 340
Neusner, Jacob, 320–21, 321
Popper, Karl, 222, 238
Newman, Cardinal, 81
Porphyry, 336
Newton, Isaac, 248–49; assessment of Newtonian
“possible worlds,” 110, 183–84
mechanics, 261–63; Newton’s law of gravity, 158
postmodernism, 18–19, 216–17
Nielsen, Kai, 74–75
Powell, Mark Allen, 362n38
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 77–78, 80
Preskill, James, 145
No Exit (Sartre), 74
Principle of Sufficient Reason, The: A Reassessment Noble Lie, 85–86
(Pruss), 107n20
nominalism, 188
probability, 164–65
Novikov, I. D., 82, 144–45
Problem of Historical Knowledge, The (Mandelbaum), Nowell-Smith, P. H., 223, 225–26
238
“Progress in Historical Studies” (R. Martin), 232n46
Ockham’s Razor, 152
propaganda, 236–37
O’Collins, Gerald, 354–57
propositions, 107n21
Offenbarung als Geschichte [ Revelation as History], 38
Pruss, Alexander, 107n20, 110
Ogden, Schubert, 248
Psalms of Solomon, 301–2, 305, 308–9
On Philosophy (Aristotle), 100–101
psychikos (soul-ish), 382
Oppy, Graham, 117, 119–20
Origen, 335, 336
Quadratus, 335, 340
Origin of the Genetic Code, The (Crick), 82
quantum physics: interpretations of quantum me-
Orwell, George, 236
chanics, 114–15, 114n36; quantum indeterminacy,
Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte (Grass), 349
259–61
Quarles, Charles L., 311n42
Packer, J. I., 406
Quinn, Philip, 181
Paley, William, 101–3, 256–57, 265, 270, 334, 338,
340, 342, 372; argument for the authenticity of
Rabbi Talks with Jesus, A (Neusner), 320–21
the Gospels, 335–36; “watch-maker argument”
Rand, Ayn, 74
of, 102–3
Rationalists, 342–43, 345
Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 37–38, 38–39, 268, 277,
reason, 47–48; deductive reasoning, 52; inductive rea-
325n75, 349, 355, 399
soning, 52–55; magisterial use of, 47, 50; ministe-
Partner, Nancy, 241
rial use of, 47–48; role of in showing Christianity
Pascal, Blaise, 66–68, 86, 214, 269; wager argument
to be true, 51–56. See also Bayes’ Theorem
of, 68
Reasonableness of Christianity, The (Locke), 35, 215
Paul, apologetic procedure of, 56, 57–58
Reeves, Hubert, 128
Paulus, H. E. G., 288, 345, 373
Reformation, 211
Peacocke, Arthur, 280
Reimarus, Herrmann Samuel, 343–44, 345
Pelikan, Jaroslav, 300
relativism, 87, 207, 216, 217–18; critique of , 222–40; Penrose, Roger, 130, 148, 159, 169, 169n17
objections to the objectivity of history (lack of
Pensées (Pascal), 66
direct access and lack of neutrality), 219–22
Perrin, Norman, 381
Religion of Jesus the Jew, The (Vermes), 295
Pesch, Rudolf, 362
“religious enthusiasm,” 34–35, 338
Index
Renaissance, 210
Stephen, Leslie, 101–2
Renan, Ernest, 218
Stoeger, W. R., 125
resurrection: and bodily identity, 359, 359n32; of
Stranger, The (Camus), 74
Jesus ( see Jesus, resurrection of ); Jewish concep-Strauss, David Friedrich, 259, 278–79, 288–89,
tion of resurrection, 358, 358–59, 392–93; versus
345–48, 373
translation, 394–95
Strauss, Gerhard, 30
Resurrection of the Son of God, The (N. T. Wright), Strauss, Leo, 218
351–52, 387
string theory (M-theory), 136–39, 162–63, 163nn8, 9
Riesner, Rainer, 295
Stroebel, Lee, 22
Ritschl, Albrecht, 218, 289
Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels (Abrahams), 294
Robinson, James, 291, 292, 293, 294
subjectivism (non-objectivism), 218, 348
Robinson, John A. T., 364, 397
Suetonius, 339
Romanticism, 348
Summa contra gentiles (Aquinas), 32
Rorty, Richard, 223
Suppe, Frederick, 229, 230
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 348
Susskind, Leonard, 146, 149n115, 149–50n116,
Rubinoff, Lionel, 224
163n7
Rue, L. D., 84–85
Swinburne, Richard, 152, 188, 265, 349, 359
Rundle, Bede, 110
Synoptic Gospels, The (Montefiore), 294
Ruse, Michael, 84, 174, 177, 180
Russell, Bertrand, 78, 79, 124
Tacitus, 339
Tatian, 335
Sagan, Carl, 82
Taylor, Richard, 75, 107, 175
Sanders, E. P., 295
Taylor, Vincent, 313
Sandmel, Samuel, 295
te mia ton sabbaton (“the first day of the week”), 366
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 71–72, 74, 75, 78–79, 80, 82
Tertullian, 335
Schaeffer, Francis, 65, 70, 77, 78
Theater of the Absurd, 70
Scheffler, Israel, 227
theism, 105
Schlegel, Richard, 141
theology: dialectical theology, 36–37, 38, 218, 290,
Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E., 345, 373
348; existential theology, 37–38, 38, 218, 290,
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 114, 183
348; natural theology, 24, 93
Schramm, David N., 128, 137n60
Theophilus, 335
Schweitzer, Albert, 259, 289–90, 296
Theory of Everything (T.O.E.), 162
Scotus, Duns, 95, 96
“There Are No Criteria of Identity over Time” (Mer-
Secret Gospel of Mark, 368
rick), 359n33
secularism/secularization, 16–17
thermodynamics, second law of, 140–41; cosmologi-
Selfish Gene, The (Dawkins), 81
cal implications of, 141–42
Semler, Johann Salomo, 344–45, 346
Thompson, J. Westfall, 211
sensus divinitatis, 41, 42
Tillich, Paul, 71
Sentimens de quelques théologiens (Le Clerc), 252
time: A-Theory of, 121, 122; B-Theory of, 121, 167–
Shepherd of Hermas, 335
68; cosmic time, 168n13; global time, 168n13;
Sherlock, Thomas, 254–55, 267, 270, 338
Greek paradoxes of motion, 356; Hubble time,
Sherwin-White, A. N., 294
127n60; imaginary time, 134–36; Planck time,
Short and Easie Method with the Deists (C. Leslie), 215
131; semi-infinite time, 139n93
Silk, Joseph, 145
Time and Eternity (Craig), 121n48, 152n22, 168n13
Similitudes of Enoch, 309–10, 316
Time, Creation, and the Continuum (Sorabji), 356n27
Sinclair, James, 150n119
Time Machine, The (Wells), 75–76
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 176n28, 177
Time magazine: “Is God Coming Back to Life?” 93; Smith, Morton, 368
“Is God Dead?” 93; “Modernizing the Case for
Smith, Quentin, 94, 112, 112n27
God,” 94
Sobel, J. Howard, 95, 107n20, 117, 119, 123, 273
Tinsley, Beatrice M., 127n60, 142, 143
Sorabji, Richard, 356n27
Tipler, Frank, 127, 165–66
Sorley, William, 104–6, 179
Tractatus theologico-politicus (Spinoza), 249–50, 264
Spinoza, Benedict de, 95, 96, 248; objections to
Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne (Turretin and miracles, 249–50, 264–69
Vernet), 253
Stackhouse, John, 21
Trilling, Wolfgang, 380–81, 381n58
Steinhardt, Paul, 138, 139, 139n93
Troeltsch, Ernst, 276–77, 350
Stendahl, Krister, 386
Tryal of the Witnesses (Sherlock), 254–55
Stenger, Victor, 114n36
Tryon, Edward, 131
415
Turretin, Jean Alphonse, 253
Vives, Juan Luis, 211–12
Tyrell, George, 218
Voltaire, 249
von Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr, 349
unbelievers: evangelizing of, 21–23; role of the Holy
von Ranke, Leopold, 216, 218
Spirit in the lives of, 46–47; standard apologetics
approach to, 58; and unbelief as a spiritual, not an
Wagner, Richard, 80
intellectual, problem, 59
Waiting for Godot (Beckett), 74
universe: cause of, 150–56; contingency of, 108–10;
Walsh, W. H., 236
of, 72; explanation of, 108; extinction of, 72, 142–
Wahrheit der christlichen Religion (Less), 255–56
44; as the Newtonian world-machine, 248–49;
Warranted Christian Belief (Plantinga), 41n23
philosophical arguments for its beginning to exist,
We Jews and Jesus (Sandmel), 295
116–24; scientific arguments for its beginning
Weinberg, Steven, 83
to exist, 125–50. See also universe, expansion of; Wells, H. G., 75–76
universe, thermodynamic properties of
Weltanschauung, 220, 228; analyses of, 229–30
universe, expansion of, 125–26; Oscillating Models,
Wheeler, John, 126
129–30; Quantum Gravity Models, 134–36;
White, Hayden, 217, 221, 232n46
Standard Model (Big Bang), 126–28, 139–40;
White, Morton, 235, 236
Steady State Model, 128–29; string scenarios
Wilckens, Ulrich, 393
(Pre–Big Bang Scenario and Ekpyrotic Scenario),
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (Craig), 23
136–39; Vacuum Fluctuation Models, 131–32
“Will the Universe Expand Forever?” (Gott et al.),
universe, thermodynamic properties of: and “baby
127n60
universes,” 145–46; eschatological scenarios,
Witherington, Ben, III, 320, 321, 322n63, 324n72,
142–44; inflationary multiverse theory, 146–50;
326
oscillating models, 144–45
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 118, 216
“Use of the Gospel of Thomas in the Research on
women, in Jewish society, 367
Historical Jesus of John Dominic Crossan, The”
Woolston, Thomas, 254
(Quarles), 311n42
worldviews, 189. See also Weltanschauung
Wrede, William, 289; “Messianic secret” theory of,
Valla, Lorenzo, 210, 211
289, 308
Van Daalen, D. H., 370
Wright, Crispin, 107, 108
Van der Dussen, W. J., 227
Wright, N. T., 305n28, 351–52, 355, 361, 372, 384–
Vatican I, 33
85, 387, 388, 389, 393, 393–94
Vatican II, 33
Wurmbrand, Richard, 81
Velikovsky, Immanuel, 237
Veneziano, Gabriele, 137–38
Yablo, Stephen, 117
Venturini, Karl, 288
Yamauchi, Edwin, 237
Vermes, Geza, 295, 296, 371
Vernet, Jacob, 253, 264, 267, 334, 335, 337, 341, 342
Zacharias, Ravi, 22
View of the Evidences of Christianity, The (Paley), Zagorin, Perez, 224n26, 235, 241, 241n72
256–57, 342
Zeldovich, Yakov B., 82, 144–45
Vilenkin, Alexander, 115–16, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139,
Zeno, 122–23
140, 150, 166–69
visions, 383, 383n62
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“ It is hard to overstate the impact that William Lane Craig has had for the cause of Christ. He is simply the finest Christian apologist of the last half century, and his academic work justifies ranking him among the top one percent of practicing philosophers in the Western world. I know him well and can say that he lives a life of integrity and lives out what he believes. I do not know of a single thinker who has done more to raise the bar of Christian scholarship in our generation than Craig. He is one of a kind and I thank God for his life and work.”
J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology
“ With extraordinary erudition, Craig sketches the arguments of major thinkers of both past centuries and recent times, and he presents his own reasons for concluding that traditional Christian doctrines about God and Jesus are credible. His replies to those skeptical of the existence of God, of historical knowledge, of the occurrence of miracles, and in particular of the resurrection of Jesus, take debates over those difficult topics an important stage further. Here is an admirable defense of basic Christian faith.”
C. Behan McCullagh, Philosophy Program, La Trobe University
“ A much-needed book for our times. It overflows with cogent and compelling argument presented in accessible and irenic language. University and seminary students will find this book especially helpful in exposing the fallacies and lack of evidence in the many and various challenges that have been leveled against historic Christian claims. I highly recommend this book.”
Craig A. Evans, Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Acadia Divinity College; author, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels
“ Although my philosophical predilections often differ from Dr. Craig’s (as they do from those of everyone else I know), I have found that he is very knowledgeable about science and current cosmological ideas. He provides interesting insights into their implications for our shared Christian beliefs.”
Don Nelson Page, Professor of Physics, University of Alberta WILLIAM LANE CRAIG (PhD, University of Birmingham, England; DTheol, University of Munich, Germany) is research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He is also the founder of Reasonable Faith (www.reasonablefaith.org), a web-based apologetics ministry that provides a variety of supplementary material to this edition of Reasonable Faith.
THEOLOGY / APOLOGETICS