APPENDIX 8 - What Really Happened at the Tomb?
APPENDIX 8
What Really Happened at the Tomb?
Historical Jesus books often stop short of addressing the resurrection,1 though the early Christian claim about this event is the reason that most of our other material about Jesus (as opposed to that about most other prophets or Galilean sages of his day) was preserved.2 Nevertheless, a historian can address the question of the resurrection the way historians today usually address Jesus’ miracles (I will address that subject in a separate book): this is what the disciples experienced, without regard for what may have actually happened to Jesus.
Although historians do not rule out intelligent human causation, for the sake of theological neutrality they normally omit the question of divine causation. (For the most part, such neutrality is prudent: theological interpretations of history vary as widely as the theology behind them.) But what happens when divine causation is the most plausible available explanation? While conventional rules for historical discussion may keep us from asking the question within the framework of conventional historiography, they do not mean (much less prove) that the question is philosophically illegitimate. I am many times more conversant with ancient history than I am with modern philosophy,3 so I venture the question below to provoke consideration of these suggestions, not to offer dogmatic guidance for philosophic procedures.