Conclusion
My PhD dissertation on the resurrection of Jesus was completed while I was a student at Michigan State University. It was published soon afterward, in 1976, by University Microfilms. I will begin here with some autobiographical comments that provide background to my dissertation. Since then, a remarkable number of volumes, essays, articles, and reviews have appeared addressing the many aspects of the crucially important topic of Jesus’ resurrection. The majority of this introduction consists of extended comments on the recent state of resurrection research, chiefly since 1976.
Having published and lectured on my story on perhaps hundreds of occasions, I will write a brief account here. Though I was raised in a Christian home and attended a German Baptist church in the Detroit area, my young faith took a real hit when the closest person in my life, my great-grandmother, died when I was a child. I was plunged into fears and doubts that I did not know existed in the world. What happens to our loved ones when they die? What about us? Years later, I started down the path of rather dogged religious doubt, which did not abate during ten straight years of ardent questioning, followed by another ten years of intermittent uncertainty, lasting even beyond the completion of my dissertation.
Friends came alongside me during the early years to share what they thought were surefire ways to know that Christianity was true. However, after listening to them and then studying each of these suggested options, I concluded that while some of these evidential trails were potentially worthwhile in one way or another, some more than others, it was still the case that none of these paths could bear the promised weight of the Christian faith.
During this time, I visited other religious sites and places of worship in my area and across the country. Countless hours were spent in public and university libraries, acquiring and studying sources that favored the opposing viewpoints. Throughout this process I debated all sorts of religious ideas and persons, Christian and non-Christian alike, in a constant search for any particular religious system that could be acknowledged as being largely true.
For instance, I specifically recall marching into a Christian professor’s office one day and challenging his arguments for the inspiration of Scripture. After disputing at length each of his ideas, probably doing so a little too stridently, I walked out, absolutely convinced that I had easily gotten the best of the argument. A fellow skeptic who had accompanied me into the office readily agreed that there had been no contest. Actually, I was quite bothered that an exceptionally well-trained theologian would have no better basis for his beliefs in the truth of Christianity than what he had presented. After hearing that I had rejected the inspiration of Scripture, another student confronted me in the hallway and told me rather forcefully that I was possessed by seven demons, turned abruptly, and walked away.
At that time, my life consisted largely of sports and incessant personal study related to my doubts. One day while reading, it occurred to me that if Jesus had been raised from the dead—especially based on what even critical scholars acknowledged were the accredited facts—and if a pared down list of Jesus’ central teachings could be established similarly, then this combination could possibly ground the truth of the central teachings of Christianity. But I had no idea if the resurrection could stand the test of potential skeptical assaults. These questions marked the beginning stages of the issues that I later pursued in detail in my dissertation.
At this point, the reader could be forgiven for concluding that this insight on my part regarding the potential for such a resurrection study probably provided the light I needed at the end of the tunnel—and that after I worked out the details concerning the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, all would be right in the world once again! But that would be far from the case. Actually, the mere recognition of such a possible path for the resurrection case did not lead to the final resolution of my resurrection doubts until many years afterward. They were not fully resolved until long after my initial 1,600 note cards on the subject and, later, the dissertation itself!
After much of my initial study, prior to doing my PhD, I concluded that one of the naturalistic theories stubbornly refused to be discarded. While the resurrection could be accepted by faith, it could not be known to be true historically. That halted my resurrection research for the time being. During this interlude, I considered whether there might not be an afterlife. Many years later, a professional Christian philosopher commented to me, somewhat disapprovingly, that he could tell David Hume had made a big impression on me during my studies. I could have added the names of David Strauss and especially Rudolf Bultmann, my constant reading and dialogue partners.
Still, my worst two episodes with doubt were still ahead of me and actually came long after my PhD had been completed. It is the second of these that I have spoken of often: I thought I was close to walking away from Christianity altogether and embracing a scientific version of Buddhism.
Over the years since that time, there was something I wished for more than anything else. I often hoped that someone would come along beside me and explain that not all doubt is created equal. There are definitely different species of uncertainty, and studies indicate that the most common variety is not factual doubt but emotional doubt. The latter is also the most painful kind. To be sure, the vast majority of my doubt at that time was factual, but emotional elements had begun to creep into the picture. Yet there were few publications on these topics to which I could turn, so I felt as if I would simply have to keep working at it on my own.
Fast forward to years later, after my first book on the subject of doubt had been published, when my wife became ill. The diagnosis changed from the flu to the much-dreaded verdict of stomach cancer. Just a few short months later, in August 1995, my wife—the mother of our four children, and my very best friend in the world—died. At that time, I told my closest friends that the worst possible suffering I could ever imagine had indeed come upon me. Having struggled years before past the long time of doubt, I feared that, on top of everything else, her sickness and death would reawaken those issues. That’s a story in itself. Thankfully, the doubts never returned after my wife’s death. It was as if the deaths of the two people who were the closest to me—my great-grandmother and my wife—at those junctions in my early and later life served as bookends to my doubt.
THE MINIMAL FACTS METHODOLOGY IN RESURRECTION RESEARCH
Chiefly due to my previous doubts surrounding the subject of Jesus’ resurrection and my search for a foundation for religious belief, I had learned to depend less on responses that were based chiefly on conservative apologetic answers, since these were frequently unacceptable to more critical researchers. For example, conservatives and some moderates tended to rely much more on eyewitness testimony of the sources and the authors of the Gospels, whereas more skeptical researchers usually would not grant such conclusions. The latter preferred what were judged to be the highly attested epistles of Paul.
Of course, I realized that it did not follow that these skeptical objections were themselves true simply because they were frequently expressed in a negative, challenging manner. These critical positions also had to be established by solid arguments and could likewise be mistaken. But I still sided with the skeptical responses, to the extent that above all I was interested in discovering whether any positive answers could address even such skeptical doubts.
Therefore, early in my doubting I determined that, as much as possible, it would be better to base the most crucial responses on the very strongest critical data. Although fewer total arguments were addressed in that manner, the results were grounded by stronger reasons. This approach attained both a more solid basis for my own personal knowledge and achieved a greater impact in discussions with others. Moreover, all sides recognized this core, critical material. It was the way critical scholars argued, and while conservatives would posit a greater amount of data, the former researchers also recognized and accepted what was arrived at by more stringent methods.
In arguing for the resurrection, then, the strongest constructed case would rely much more on the short list of undisputed Pauline epistles than on the Gospels. And during the times when the Gospels were employed, it was best done by utilizing the more carefully established information from those volumes.
During one of my more advanced research sessions, while studying the particular naturalistic hypothesis that Jesus’ resurrection could be accounted for by pre-Christian dying and rising tales or by other versions of legendary accretions, I compiled a list of the very surest refutations. Each of these responses was based on the minimal data accepted by virtually all researchers, due to the strength of the accompanying reasons in its favor. The hard-hitting and establishable nature of these data was precisely why the majority of scholars were on board with the refutations. Hence, the case was at least potentially established via the sturdiest arguments. However, strictly due to the strength of the arguments, scholars across the spectrum would also more or less agree with the reasons listed for rejecting this alternative hypothesis, such as the strict absence of such pre-Christian accounts, the pre-Pauline New Testament creeds, the relevant language being that of persons who actually saw the appearances, the empty tomb, transformed lives, and so on. And in a side comment in the notes for this research session, I remarked that even when addressing the most skeptical commentators of all, a truncated list of these facts could be constructed to refute the alternative view!
Again, it could be thought that this realization might have catapulted me into the final phase of my doubts. But that was once more not the case. My doubts remained for years, continuing even past this time. However, this was the beginning of utilizing the methodological standards that would become my “minimal facts” approach.
After my wife died and my doubts had subsided significantly, I published more on the resurrection of Jesus, moving toward employing almost exclusively the basic, underlying data. I began referring to this move as utilizing the historical “core” or the “minimal facts.” The more crucial the subject being discussed, the more I preferred this succinct and technical approach. This methodology was developed in my PhD dissertation, where it was applied specifically to studies of Jesus’ resurrection.
To be sure, arguments from the Gospels were also used in the dissertation, but this was done more selectively—particularly when there were more reasons to be careful. But never was an argument based on the assumption that such-and-such must be true solely because it is found in the New Testament (“Because the Bible tells me so!”), as if that alone were a sufficient basis to verify the assumption, for that would be circular reasoning and thus insufficient. But the approach in the dissertation was also layered: the data gleaned from the Gospels could come into greater use in order to appeal to more moderate or conservative scholars. But to repeat, the most powerful facts in an argument were quite often those that were drawn from the Pauline corpus and other, very select, sources. The minimal facts resurrection argument had been born.
THE THIRD QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS
About the same time as my PhD dissertation was being completed, a new trend in contemporary theology was being born. Dubbed by N. T. Wright as the “Third Quest for the Historical Jesus,” this movement has dominated much of recent New Testament thought ever since. The famous German liberal “First Quest for the Historical Jesus” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lasted over a century, as summarized admirably by Albert Schweitzer. Afterward came a hiatus that is often referred to as the “No Quest” reign of Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, among others, when the role of historical research was downplayed even among scholars who generally held quite different views. This time was followed, in turn, by the “Second Quest for the Historical Jesus,” a much more limited, relatively short-lived movement that was birthed by several of Bultmann’s own students.
Unlike the earlier explorations, the overall thrust of the Third Quest participants has been anchored firmly and centrally in interpreting Jesus and his teachings against the Jewish milieu of the time just prior to and current with Jesus. There were still different interpretations of Jesus within this framework, as pointed out in detail by many researchers, including Ben Witherington III. As Witherington states concerning the Third Quest, “One thing is clear—a non-Jewish Jesus is a non-sequitur. Jesus must make sense within his historical context … studying the life of Jesus in his first-century setting.”
This reliance on a strong Jewish background and flavor is apparent in all of Witherington’s scholarly categories except that of Jesus actually being a Hellenistic cynic sage, a thesis that is held by a number of members of the Jesus Seminar. The majority of historical Jesus researchers, liberal or conservative, would reject such a notion out of hand. But the Jesus Seminar is a radical group of scholars that differs quite drastically from other Third Questers in many of its methods and conclusions. Similarly, and among the most noticeable items, the Seminar deals more with non-Jewish categories for Jesus—distinct from virtually all of the other Third Questers. As a result, many scholars, including a number of Third Questers, criticize the Seminar quite severely, both on these more general matters as well as because their overall approach places their ideas outside the realm of the Third Quest altogether. Wright is not alone in thinking that the Jesus Seminar is better characterized as a holdover position from the Second Quest that separated from Bultmann rather than as part of the Third Quest. The point of this brief critique of the Jesus Seminar will be more obvious below.
None of the earlier groups identified above—the First, Second, and No Quest adherents—concentrated primarily on the Jewishness of Jesus and his ideas. Rather, each of these movements largely reflected the philosophical milieus of their day: German idealism plus the advent of more sophisticated biblical criticism in the case of German liberalism, followed by historical skepticism and existentialist theory in at least the earlier forms of both the No Quest and Second Quest periods. The Third Quest movement is perhaps best known today for the world-class scholars involved and their unequalled literary output, especially as viewed from the angle of their major sets of tomes and other massive studies devoted to the Jewishness of Jesus and related areas. The sheer quantity of information being communicated in recent years could take a lifetime of study to digest! This emphasis on a specific Jewish starting point has taken many researchers into studies of the New Testament writers and their works, the earliest church and what was taught by its leaders, and whether there is any factual confirmation of their primary teachings and claims.
By the very nature of studying Jesus’ contemporary Jewish environment in relation to his life and teachings, the research produced by the Third Quest over the past forty-five years or so has tended to be generally more moderate or even conservative in many of its responses and outcomes, especially compared to its predecessors in the earlier movements. As will be pointed out below, even the most critical scholars in the Third Quest are milder than the more critical members of the older movements!
A comparison and contrast on a crucial subject may be helpful in demarcating these differences between the earlier scholars and the more recent ones. Rudolf Bultmann freely recognized the presence of dozens of very early creedal teachings, both in the form of key phrases as well as longer statements, drawn from a variety of New Testament authors and writings. These originally oral statements clearly predated the New Testament writings in which they were embedded, as even Bultmann allowed without question. He referred to many of these early traditions as pre-Pauline liturgical formulas and traditions, identifying them with adjectives such as “old,” “quite early,” “crystalized,” and “highly schematic”—with at least some of them even going back geographically to Jerusalem, and with their very origination being the “earliest church.”
However, though Bultmann recognized the presence of these data, his theoretical allegiance largely favored the remnants of the First Quest’s religionsgeschichtliche Schule—with its reliance on non-Jewish, largely Hellenistic influences on Christianity—in addition to sporting a prior rejection of supernatural events. Therefore, in spite of arguing that these creedal traditions indeed emanated from the earliest Jewish church, Bultmann decided that they were largely derived from Hellenistic thought—borrowed from notions of the gnostic redeemer myth!
How did these foreign myths and other ideas infiltrate the earliest church, overpowering the apostolic memories of Jesus’ teachings and, most of all, doing so from the very beginning of New Testament history? This seems to be especially difficult to entertain when Jewish views would be in much closer geographical proximity and drawn from a stronger religious context. Further, the latter is particularly the case in the detailed defenses of these creedal traditions that had already appeared from major researchers during Bultmann’s career and that were strongly opposed to his ideas on this subject.
The Third Quest scholars readily agreed with Bultmann and similar researchers that the nature of the data indicated that these numerous creedal texts were indeed present in the writings of several New Testament authors and did originate in the earliest church. However, they disagreed with the ideas of Bultmann and other scholars in related camps that these traditions were Hellenistic in nature. Since at least some of these creeds were traceable to Jerusalem in the earliest times after Jesus, many of the Third Quest scholars concluded that the clearest and most direct route of origination would entail that, rather than having been imported from Hellenistic sources, such early information in Jerusalem would have emanated from and been chiefly concerned with more general Jewish roots plus Jesus’ teachings. This realization amounted to discovering a veritable historical gold mine, clearly indicating that these texts provided useful data concerning the events and teachings that formed the basis of Christian beliefs.
Further, these Third Quest researchers rejected almost uniformly the various strands of the larger religionsgeschichtliche Schule movement and similar Hellenistic or other pagan conclusions that went back to the late nineteenth-century German studies. After Bultmann’s death in 1976, these older interpretations took a rather precipitous plummet, especially after the realization that there was actually an incredible dearth of material to support the argument that there never was a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth in the first place. James D. G. Dunn sums up the matter thusly: “The problem with all this has been that the full-blown Gnostic redeemer myth here inferred is nowhere clearly attested before the Second Century CE.” Then Dunn adds that “the first redeemer figures as such do not appear till the second century—probably Christianity’s contribution to syncretistic Gnosticism!”
So, as Dunn hints, could Christianity have not only pre-dated these gnostic redeemer stories but even encouraged their rise? Because of the failure to engage this crucial data—among many other issues—the pendulum of research swung far away from the Hellenistic views of the older religionsgeschichtliche Schule, Bultmann, and others.
The absence of clear Hellenistic roots influencing the Christian gospel message—combined with the realization that the early creedal traditions that originated in Jerusalem and its environs were most obviously Jewish in nature and were very early indeed—resulted in a growing agreement that these sources provided much crucial material upon which to interpret the very center of earliest Christian theology. In a sense, then, the factors just mentioned—Bultmann’s death, the gradual demise of the Second Quest and the turn of the evidence against their ideas, plus the rise of the Third Quest with its emphasis on Jewish backgrounds—provided an impetus for the new direction of research. This focus on Jewish foundations, along with Jesus’ teachings, brought these ideas together, most of which pointed to the more moderate or conservative leanings mentioned above. Here is a clear indication that methodological starting points can yield absolutely crucial results!
Fast forward briefly to where the Third Quest is presently, a few decades later, regarding studies of the Christian gospel message. The research on Jesus within his Jewish surroundings has continued in largely the same direction as mentioned above, with a diverse scholarly consensus concluding that the earliest message emerged out of Jerusalem very soon after Jesus’ crucifixion. In fact, several researchers such as Richard Bauckham have commented that this is the consensus position at present. But we are moving too quickly now: we need to step back and observe how research arrived at this point from the beginning of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus.
RESURRECTION STUDIES FROM 1975 TO THE PRESENT
How did the critical study of Jesus’ resurrection progress after the completion of my dissertation? During the next thirty years and into the twenty-first century, studies related to the Third Quest continued to develop. In a 1994 volume on the state of parallel studies in Christology during the last portion of the twentieth century, Raymond Brown noted that after the influence of Bultmann’s “radical” New Testament research diminished, there was a positional shift to a more moderately conservative Christology, which became the most popular position in that field. This was strongly consistent with a large portion of the Third Quest leanings as well.
Beginning about the same time as the publication of Brown’s work and extending over a number of years, I initiated a personal effort that began simply as a modest attempt to update my own dissertation research in order to remain informed on resurrection studies. But the project quickly morphed into a huge exploration of its own. For personal use, I detailed the represented positions in an ongoing documentation that expanded to cover thousands of recent resurrection sources that had been published in German, French, and English. The document grew to several hundred pages. A few years later, with the help of my PhD research assistant who could record the data much more quickly than I could, the study expanded to about 1,500 pages in length! It did not contain reactions to the scholarly views, but simply recorded and specified the various contemporary approaches to about 140 separate but related questions regarding the early source data on the death, burial, and resurrection appearances of Jesus, along with various scholars’ jabs at their peers on these subjects.
In an attempt to parallel Brown’s treatment of Christological views, I defined two approaches to the crucial question concerning the possible resurrection appearances of Jesus. The moderate/conservative approach was a range of positions which held that, after his death by crucifixion, Jesus appeared in some actual sense—either in a real body of some sort or in a more glorified manner that could still be seen and experienced by his followers. The chief point in the moderate/conservative classification was that this change happened to Jesus himself: he was actually alive. On the other hand, the more liberal or skeptical range of views, whatever the species, held that nothing actually occurred to Jesus himself after his death. Physically speaking, Jesus remained dead. Rather, real internal, subjective changes occurred to his followers. The key issue here is whether the events in question actually happened to a living Jesus, who was seen in some sense, or whether the occurrences happened internally to the disciples alone, bringing them to a new understanding apart from any real appearances. This distinction formed the watershed demarcation.
I checked my repository of resurrection sources and—after doing a representative survey of scholarly works on the appearances of Jesus published approximately during the same time frame as Brown’s Christological study and extended about ten years afterward—published the early results in 2005. According to my classifications above, the indication was that the overall majority position was a general approximation of what Brown had described as a moderate/conservative position.
By way of scholarly differentiation, the German sources tended more toward theological emphases, critiques, and problem-solving discussions, exhibiting a greater variety of both moderate/conservative as well as skeptical approaches. The French writings tended to be less numerous overall, were frequently more exegetical in nature and leaned slightly to the moderate/conservative side. The British publications seemed to entail a larger mixture of views across the entire board; some were fairly conservative while others were quite skeptical. The North American works were the most numerous and encompassed the widest range of positions and nuances, extending from outright skeptical, dismissive views and denials all the way to moderate and conservative positions.
Without any attempts beforehand to arrange the results of the data in any particular manner, a rough estimate from 1975 to 2005 (the date of the article) shows that the combined European sources (German, French, and British) and the North American sources both came to approximately a 3:1 ratio of moderate/conservative to liberal/skeptical publications. Needless to mention, such headcounts at best indicate the scholarly lay of the land; they don’t demonstrate anything concerning what may actually have occurred on the occasions of the resurrection appearances.
MAJOR RESURRECTION TRENDS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
In the 2005 study on these contemporary resurrection inclinations, I noted six important research trends that had either already emerged or appeared to have developed significantly since 1975. Each of these trends had captured a good portion of the researchers at that time, often across the liberal/conservative divide. These six trends were:
(1) Naturalistic theories seemed to be at least somewhat on the rise. They also were manifest in a considerable amount of variety. The vast majority of scholars opposed these theories and frequently engaged in offering their own comebacks. The combination of these clashes amounted to quite a flurry of debates.
(2) The facticity of the empty tomb was supported by approximately 75 percent of the scholars writing at that time, with a surprising number of arguments—almost two dozen—in favor of this event and with a little over a dozen opposing arguments.
(3) The apostle Paul was accepted across the board by skeptical, moderate, and conservative scholars alike as the strongest witness in favor of the resurrection appearances. Further, the pre-Pauline creedal statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 was viewed by virtually all researchers as the strongest and earliest witness to the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Paul probably received this material when he visited Jerusalem in 35–36 CE to stay with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, as recorded in Galatians 1:18–20.
(4) The significance of the dozens of early Christian creedal traditions and sermon summaries in Acts, which had already been singled out by Bultmann, had attained a place of growing historical importance. Many more works had appeared on these subjects since Bultmann’s time, and the results had bolstered the understanding of the historicity of the earliest Christian beliefs and the growth of the young movement. Bultmann’s view that these confessions had emerged from Hellenistic origins had been dispatched by the emerging data.
(5) A major move among the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus scholars was to acknowledge that, at least among the New Testament’s authors, Jesus’ resurrection appearances were understood to have been bodily in nature. Thus, even a number of skeptical scholars who rejected the resurrection event still recognized that bodily appearances of some sort were originally taught in the canonical sources.
(6) Virtually all scholars across the theological spectrum held to the application of the resurrection teaching, whether or not such an event actually occurred. The resurrection was interpreted as the primary force that grounded Christian ethics, hope, and belief, either metaphorically or literally. This was a foundational teaching point for Bultmann decades beforehand, including his famous dictum that Jesus was risen in the proclamation of the church. Likewise, it was a central emphasis made enthusiastically in the works of scholars such as John Dominic Crossan, Willi Marxsen, and Marcus Borg, as cited in the 2005 article above.
Since the early twentieth century, some changes have occurred in these six resurrection areas and beyond. The earlier conclusion that the predominant theological ethos of the Third Quest was moderately conservative has arguably been borne out in many studies. That approach has also been increasingly manifested in many resurrection studies.
In the first trend I identified in my initial research observations in 2005, I noted that during the past quarter-century there was an increase in the amount of naturalistic resurrection appearance theories, with a subtle shift that began to transpire during the last couple of decades. The number of scholars who choose a particular alternative thesis at least seems to have been reduced among younger skeptical researchers. When such natural theses are still held strongly by some observers, these theories appear to be held mostly by older skeptics, whereas in the most recent research, fewer of the newer generation of trained skeptics seem to be willing to pick a single natural thesis. This could be due in part to the diminishing influence of Bultmann’s ideas. But this intriguing development also could have emerged due to the recognized historical data being so well-established and honed during recent years, even by critical scholars, so that skeptics were not so quick to get roped into a corner on a single hypothesis in case they have to backtrack!
This was pointed out to a certain extent by Bart Ehrman himself while speaking of his early days as a believer. Conservatives often seem to enjoy encouraging skeptics to choose their favorite naturalistic view, only to present the unbeliever with a cascade of challenges, one after another. In this regard, Ehrman noted that believers “typically have a field day with such explanations.” This is particularly the case when so many scholars today—liberals as well as conservatives—begin their studies of the historical Jesus by providing their lists of accredited, well-established historical facts. It just may be the case that being aware of this established and broadly accepted information is at least one of the reasons why fewer younger scholars willingly choose specific naturalistic theses. Such a procedure on the part of a young skeptic might be likened to driving a vehicle through a difficult obstacle course: while some may enjoy the challenge, others may wonder why they should volunteer and take such a risk. Similarly, why choose a particular naturalistic alternative route to the resurrection appearances if there is even a chance that believers could “have a field day” at their expense?
In 2005, the same year that my article was published, John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright held one of their public discussions on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection. As a respondent to that dialogue, I contributed a tally of many naturalistic theories held by recent scholars. In my published count of those researchers, less than one-quarter of all the critical scholars chose naturalistic theories. By far the majority of the remainder chose either the bodily appearances or glorious resurrection views. Intriguingly, once again, this is approximately a 3:1 result in favor of the present ethos that we have identified as the moderate/conservative position.
The second research area in my 2005 article concerned the empty tomb. During the earlier influence of the No Quest and Second Quest periods, fewer scholars accepted the details in the Gospels, and fewer still thought there were strong historical reasons for embracing the empty tomb. It was often rejected by large margins, except by conservative researchers. After the beginning of the Third Quest movement, however, things began to change. I commented that the number of scholars who accepted the historicity of the empty tomb had grown incredibly from where it had been decades before to approximately 75 percent. The next year I commented that the percentage may have dropped somewhat. But with additional indications, both positive and negative, the overall research still indicates that the clear majority, perhaps in the vicinity of two-thirds of researchers, affirms the empty tomb. In a doctoral dissertation devoted to this subject, Mark Waterman also concluded that a majority of recent scholars held that, at the very least, the empty tomb tradition contained a kernel of historicity.
The third area has only grown stronger in the last dozen or so years. It remains the case that Paul is accepted by virtually all commentators across the spectrum, from the theological left to the right, to be the best witness to the resurrection appearances of Jesus, with the pre-Pauline creedal tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 being the strongest textual argument in favor of these events. Moreover, the argument that Paul received these data no later than 35–36 CE, upon his first visit to Jerusalem to visit Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, has been strengthened considerably. Extending beyond this consideration, yet aligned with it, the fourth area—the study of the many other early Christian creeds—has also grown significantly. But we will return to these two points below for more discussion and additional comments concerning the earliest traditions.
The fifth area mentioned in the 2005 article capitalized on what, at that time, may have been the beginning of a trend that was just starting to be recognized. Decades of critical interpretation going back to the nineteenth century had argued the dominant view that Paul (and hence the other apostles) had witnessed disembodied, glorified appearances of Jesus similar to Paul’s encounter on the way to Damascus. But during the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus and the predominant influence of the Jewish background on Christian origins, the tables began to turn. During this time it was increasingly being recognized—even by a number of scholars who rejected the resurrection—that Paul, at least, held to some species of bodily appearances of the resurrected Jesus, in keeping with the predominant Jewish views of the time. For example, in the Crossan-Wright dialogue mentioned above, Crossan noted more than once that he agreed with Wright on this subject of Paul’s view of the bodily resurrection appearances of Jesus.
Wright’s huge study The Resurrection of the Son of God added much of the impetus here, to be sure, with almost four hundred pages devoted chiefly to this issue of the bodily nature of the resurrection appearances. Then just seven years later, Michael Licona’s equally enormous text, The Resurrection of Jesus, added other arguments from a slightly different angle, further ensuring that the influence of the bodily resurrection appearance position was moving forward. Even prior to these two studies, Robert Gundry had released a landmark work on the same subject, Sōma in Biblical Theology, which was largely a critique of Bultmann’s anthropology.
In my response to the Crossan-Wright dialogue above, I also mentioned another count: the predominant New Testament views on the nature of the resurrection appearances to the apostles (including to Paul). Again, even counting those researchers who themselves doubted or rejected these appearances, three-quarters of the scholars still chose some form of bodily appearance as being the position held by the New Testament authors. Less than a quarter of these researchers chose the recently more prominent view that Jesus appeared in a glorious, non-bodily manner. The approximate 75-percent-to-25-percent margin held, yielding a 3:1 ratio in support of the moderate/conservative position.
The sixth and last research trend mentioned in the 2005 article was the exceptionally strong impetus across the entire theological landscape, from liberal and conservative commentators alike, that in various ways the resurrection of Jesus grounds many areas of theology and practice, both in the New Testament and in the church today. For some scholars, this event actually evidences particular doctrines, such as salvation and eternal life. Even when other researchers reject the resurrection event, they still emphasize, often metaphorically, the implications for various ethical, political, and other truths that proceed from this event. My 2005 article provided detailed examples from Willi Marxsen and Marcus Borg, and an entire host of other examples could easily be added here.
During the more recent Crossan-Wright dialogue cited above, the two scholars insisted that the resurrection should lead believers to transform the world in which they live. Wright’s characteristic line was: “God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do.” Crossan is clear that his vision “applies to both the literal and the metaphorical” realms. With his characteristically verbal artwork, Crossan states that what we need is a “Great Divine Clean-Up,” because “I want really to know how we are going to take back God’s world from the thugs.”
Concerning this matter of world clean-up, Crossan suggested the words “collaborative eschaton.” Then Wright borrowed those words and declared, “I love the phrase, collaborative eschatology” regarding the idea that, due to believers being raised bodily in God’s new, future, renovated cosmos, they need in the present to offer “justice and mercy and grace and forgiveness and healing and liberation and all the rest of it, all that is done in the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit.” These provide examples of how the resurrection of Jesus can be applied in both literal and metaphorical approaches.
Somewhat remarkably, these six resurrection research trends that were relevant in 2005 remain so today, including additional developments. In their own regard, these areas of disagreement and agreement cover wide and diverse areas of application, both theoretically as well as pastorally.
THE MINIMAL FACTS ARGUMENT: SPOTLIGHTING THE BEST DATA
As the central methodological concept throughout my resurrection research, the minimal facts argument deserves a brief word. Many (though not all) of the initial ideas that developed into this method are found in my 1976 dissertation. Admittedly, the ideas were in their infancy; they were just beginning to bloom. But the kernel of the concept is recognizable in several places.
This approach features two major steps, and it has been pointed out at length that the initial stage is easily the most crucial. (1) No historical or other fact will be employed unless it can be established by multiple lines of evidence, each being derived by critical means. Because of this initial underpinning, (2) virtually all recent critical scholars, including atheists, agnostics, and other skeptical specialists in relevant fields, accept these facts. Hints of these two rules can be seen in the dissertation (particularly pages 256–58).
In the vast majority of my publications on the resurrection, the task begins with a list of approximately ten or a few more “known” or “accepted” historical facts. These are in turn pared down to a shorter list of usually four to six facts, which are termed the “minimal facts.” It is this smaller list that is conceded by virtually all of the critical scholars mentioned above. The second step is absent from the dissertation; it was developed shortly afterward and published four years later, in 1980.
In recent years, the six minimal facts that are generally used are: (1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion (pages 113–21, 256–57 of the dissertation), followed by (2) the disciples’ experiences that, they concluded, were appearances of the risen Jesus (pages 122–34, 256–57). (3) These data from the Gospels began to be taught exceptionally early, sometime between the initial year of the crucifixion itself and the next year or two (pages 129, 140–42, 257, 260). (4) The disciples were transformed by these events, even to the point of being willing to die for the resurrection message (pages 144–45, 256–57). Lastly, two former unbelievers, (5) James, the brother of Jesus (cf. pages 141–42), and (6) the church persecutor, Saul of Tarsus (pages 140–41, 256–57, 258, 259), both became believers because they concluded that they, too, had witnessed appearances of the risen Jesus.
Of crucial note regarding these minimal facts is that the naturalistic hypotheses that are frequently proposed in order to account for these data have failed. One critical indication that this is the case is the diminishing use of these natural views even among skeptical specialists, as already noted above. In the refutations of these objections, one of the major considerations is that even the briefest statements supporting these basic facts are often enough to provide the foremost critiques. The treatment of the alternative views was the longest single topic in the dissertation, occupying more than one hundred pages in length (pages 89–151, 235–44).
In addition to refutations of the natural views, decisive evidential topics within the minimal facts also should be emphasized when discussing the recent trends in resurrection research. The single most crucial portion of the entire resurrection discussion concerns Jesus’ appearances. They are both the best-attested of the evidential considerations and the most important. In a 2006 journal article, I listed eight major considerations specifically in favor of these appearances, each accompanied in turn by their own attesting critical data. These can only be outlined here. The first four are drawn from the undisputed epistles of Paul, as identified above, along with other Pauline considerations. The second four are derived from other well-attested research. Virtually all eight of these considerations are taken from the information contained in the minimal facts, and most of these eight topics were addressed at least briefly in my 1976 dissertation.
The first four Pauline considerations include:
(1) Paul being an eyewitness and the most respected overall resurrection observer according to critical scholars (pages 256–58, 259), especially given his seven undisputed epistles.
(2) An incredible amount of critically recognized data from the 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 creedal tradition includes its being a pre-Pauline report that lists five appearances, three of which occurred in groups. Moreover, Paul probably received the report when he visited Jerusalem to converse with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, in Galatians 1:18–20—a meeting that is dated at 35–36 CE (pages 129, 139–42, 260).
(3) Paul’s second trip to Jerusalem in Galatians 2:1–10 was likewise to specifically examine the nature of the gospel message with Peter, James, and the apostle John, as well. The result was that the other three major apostles approved Paul’s gospel teaching (especially Gal 2:6b, 9), which certainly included Jesus’ resurrection (as per creeds like 1 Cor 15:3–5; Rom 1:3–4, and 10:9).
(4) Paul knew personally at least the three other most influential apostles (just mentioned) and confirmed that they were teaching the very same message of Jesus’ resurrection appearances that he was (1 Cor 15:11, also 12, 15). From this critically accepted Pauline text, the other key eyewitnesses all taught the same resurrection truth (pages 140–42).
The additional four strong arguments include:
(5) The witness of James, the brother of Jesus and a former unbeliever, who saw the risen Jesus (1 Cor 15:7) (pages 140–41).
(6) Many very early and critically recognized creedal traditions and the Acts sermon summaries also mention the resurrection testimony (page 359).
(7) The disciples’ total transformations, including even being willing to die for their resurrection beliefs, were the very center of their teaching and preaching (pages 144–45; 257–58).
(8) The strong critical testimony that favors the historicity of the empty tomb (pages 257, 258–59).
In the overall discussions of the historical Jesus that most occupy the studies of the Third Quest, these creedal traditions account for perhaps the strongest data in favor of the exceptionally early date for the historical facts involved in the gospel proclamation. That these teachings were not simply hearsay, idle rumors, or legends and myths is accounted for by noting the sources of these teachings. That this material occupies the centermost proclamations of Jesus’ apostles themselves is indicated, for example, by the content of the Acts creedal summaries mentioned both earlier and also below. Even more directly, Paul’s two trips to Jerusalem to discuss these gospel essentials in Galatians 1:18–20 and 2:1–10 served to verify that it was the eyewitnesses themselves—Paul, Peter, James the brother of Jesus, and John—who were making these proclamations regarding the gospel content. Further still, Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 15:11 specifically notes that the other apostles had both witnessed the risen Jesus and were declaring these observations, both singly and in groups. In other words, the earliest eyewitnesses themselves were the sources, rather than tall tales.
Due to the strength and clarity of these arguments, it is no wonder that even atheist New Testament scholars such as Bart Ehrman acknowledge freely and often that these creedal traditions dated very early, beginning within just one to two years after the crucifixion, and thus even predated Paul’s conversion. Further, the exceptionally early creeds that Paul recorded in his epistles may all have originated in Jerusalem, and could well have come from the original apostles themselves. Ehrman even goes as far as to attest that the resulting testimony gets us the closest to the original eyewitness teaching.
Though the equally skeptical New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann also rejected traditional Christianity, he still made very similar comments to Ehrman’s in regard to the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7: “All the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus.” Further, “we may reckon that appearances of Jesus were talked about immediately after they happened.”
The resurrection argument developed in my PhD dissertation has moved much further since 1976, progressing quickly onward to the minimal facts argument for the resurrection, which has been constantly honed and nuanced since that time. In fact, in a recent volume Lydia McGrew, a scholar who does not disparage the argument but thinks it needs to be developed more broadly, stated that the minimal facts argument has had “widespread use [that] may be in part a result of the fact that it provides a straightforward template for a debate format.” She then mentions its “near-exclusive use in Christian apologetic circles” before moving on to discuss her own strategy. Even with the differences she sees between our approaches, her kind comments are welcomed.
In addition to the early creedal traditions, another influential area that has been quite common in recent decades is the application of the historical criteria of authenticity that indicate the likelihood that individual New Testament passages are historical. Robert Stein lists almost a dozen of these tests, including examples such as multiple independent attestation of sources, multiple forms of tradition, the presence of Aramaisms in the text, dissimilarity with Jewish or New Testament sources, and coherence. Other such tests have also been used regularly, such as embarrassment, enemy attestation, and of course, eyewitness and early reports. Though often qualified and even doubted in some cases, these criteria are still generally used quite widely in biblical studies among critical scholars in historical Jesus scholarship.
These various tests can be of great value in assisting to establish the historicity of many circumstances that are relevant to our present study of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Ehrman has one of the best examples: he identified at least fifteen independent sources for Jesus’ crucifixion, a number of which are not located in the New Testament. That Jesus was a miracle worker and exorcist is attested in all five of the major underlying gospel sources, as is Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man. Jesus’ Son of Man teachings are also dissimilar from both prior Jewish thought as well as the early Christian epistles. We have already discussed at length the multiple examples of what is probably the strongest evidence of all: the very early sources were derived from the eyewitnesses.
There are many embarrassing details in the New Testament, too, such as the prior unbelief of James the brother of Jesus, who later became the leader of the Jerusalem church; the apostle Peter’s denials of Jesus; the unanimous reports in each of the Gospels that the women were the chief witnesses (the most popular argument for the historicity of the empty tomb); or that Paul was the best-known persecutor of Christians in the early church. Enemy attestation can be observed in the case of the Jewish priests who became believers in the very early church (Acts 6:7b), along with the many examples of the early believers’ stalwart faith in the presence of challenge and strong persecution, sometimes even to the death of the witnesses.
The strengths of these authenticity criteria were that they zeroed in on the historicity of individual New Testament passages, had been used by ancient historians in their own research, and, while there were questions and nuancing to be worked out, were widely recognized and employed by critical New Testament scholars. Thus, one more set of validating tools was introduced to strengthen the historical process relative to studies pertaining to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The case for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection and his appearances was already strong in 1976. It is significantly more robust today. Critical scholars readily allow that something strange and unique may have happened, while sometimes inquiring as to how such an event could be connected to the supernatural world of God and eternal life. That is a topic for another day, but it has been treated regularly by resurrection researchers, including myself and others.