1 Sanders, Figure, 276-80, addresses it carefully, but begins by conceding that “The resurrection is not, strictly speaking, part of the story of the historical Jesus, but rather belongs to the aftermath of his life.”
2 For insistence that historical Jesus research is incomplete without addressing this question, see Bockmuehl, “Resurrection,” 102-18; for insistence on incorporating the theological question, see Geivett, “Epistemology.” Keck, History, 127-28, rightly points to the evidence that the early Jesus movement focused on his resurrection more than on his words alone.
3 For a philosophic response (developing Pannenberg), see Houston, Miracles, 210-23; more briefly, Charlesworth, “Resurrection,” 170-71; idem, “Conclusion,” 227.
5 Segal, “Resurrection,” 136. Segal’s appeal to Paul is more helpful, but I focus on his objection here because it makes explicit a wider methodological problem sometimes ignored in current academic discussion.
6 Habermas, “Trend,” 91-92, shows that the majority of scholars writing on the resurrection now view bodily resurrection as the likeliest option, quite a dramatic increase over the views a generation earlier.
7 Here I do not mean a “neutral” one ready to follow wherever the evidence leads, but, as the context of this argument should suggest, someone committed to the philosophic a priori that supernatural activity is impossible (an approach that reflects either atheistic or deistic premises, although not all its advocates would recognize or articulate this).
8 The closest parallels usually cited for the biblical creation narratives are early-second-millennium BCE Mesopotamian creation narratives; Egyptian creation narratives should also be taken into account. Whatever one’s other views concerning their point, the genre and interests of the biblical creation narratives differ from the form of Greco-Roman biography and historiography we have earlier argued for the Gospels. (The only common elements are a narrative format and focus on divine activity, neither of which is very distinctive.)
9 Cf. e.g., Borg, “Disagreement,” 232, allowing for healings and exorcisms but not raising someone long dead, walking on water, or multiplying food.
10 The later parallel with Sabbetai Zevi occurs in a context when the resurrection explanation was already available from pervasive Christian tradition.
11 Although Christians following Paul’s theology would affirm that Jesus’ resurrection differed in character from other resuscitation accounts (i.e., with an immortal “spiritual” body), many would not see the return of life to a corpse, the primary issue under debate here, as “unique.” It appears in the Hebrew Bible, in Jesus’ ministry, and in Acts, and claims of such occurrences abound today (albeit with varying degrees of documentation and variation in the plausibility of alternative explanations; see e.g., De Wet, “Signs,” 110-11; Lewis, Healing, 64-65; Bush and Pegues, Move, 52, 57-60, 118-19; Lambert, Millions, 109; Chevreau, Turnings, 53-56; Khai, “Pentecostalism,” 270; Jenkins, New Faces, 114; Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 151-53). Again, I reserve full discussion (including more of these claims) for the book on miracles. With Pannenberg, Jesus’ resurrection is not unique even in kind if one allows its eschatological context; but this approach necessarily postpones verification and falsification, so (while technically true) it does not affect the matter under discussion here.
12 Wright, Resurrection, 12; for his full discussion of historical investigation and Jesus’ resurrection, see Wright, Resurrection, 3-31, 685-718.
16 Cf. Meier, “Reflections,” 106, who apparently does believe that the resurrection occurred, but denies that it is “verifiable in principle by believer and nonbeliever alike.”
17 The most thorough work on historiography and the resurrection, one not yet available to me at the time of this work’s preparation, is Licona, “Historicity of Resurrection.” I mention it here in the hope that further work can take it into account and build on it.
18 Wright, Resurrection, 16-17. In contrast to physics and chemistry, history cannot deal only in repeatable events (Wright, Resurrection, 685), though one might naturally counter that it normally focuses on “repeatable kinds of events.”
19 Meier, “Reflections,” 106 (though he apparently does himself believe that the resurrection occurred).
21 Antony Flew is a notable case of an atheist who turned deist (Flew, God); his case is particularly notable because the modern academic world includes many more examples that moved in the other direction (e.g., Bart Ehrman’s move toward agnosticism). I believe that particular philosophic premises dominant in the past century of academia drive academicians more naturally toward skepticism (cf. Smith, “Education”; Marsden, Idea, 3-7, 13-24), and I personally would attribute this tendency more to cultural plausibility structures than to where I believe the evidence best points.
22 E.g., Johnson, “Quest”; cf. idem, Real Jesus (for a summary, see Dowd, “Real Jesus”). Miller, “Orthodoxy,” argues that Johnson inconsistently mixes a Jesus of faith (a composite from different Gospels) with an appeal to the earliest, historical Jesus.
23 E.g., Reiser, “Eclipsing”; McEvoy, “Dilemma”; McClymond, Stranger, x-xi; Haar, “Quest”; on the importance of Jesus’ Jewish character for Christian faith and for dialogue with Judaism, see Levine, Misunderstood Jew. For an attempt to enculturate the fruits of Jesus research for India, see e.g., Mathews, “Quest”; for Africa, see e.g., Craffert, “Research.” For a postfoundational attempt to integrate the value of historical Jesus inquiry with faith, see Keating, “Epistemology.”
24 For example, McClymond, Stranger, 140, notes that the sources provide not only the comfortable western interpretation of Jesus as “socially inclusive” or oriented toward “family values,” but also “a homewrecker,” one who favored the poor, “preached fire-and-brimstone,” and “was a totalitarian.”
