Craig, The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (Review)

Craig, William Lane. The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2000. ISBN: 1-57910-464-9. 156 pp.

In this short book William Lane Craig tackles the question of the resurrection of Jesus as a historical problem.  Craig is currently Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, having received doctorates in philosophy and theology. In addition to his academic work, Craig is a prominent Christian apologist having engaged in many debates from the existence of God to the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. 

Craig makes no secret of his evangelistic aims – the preface notes the intended audience as “those who may believe in some kind of God or Supreme Being, but doubt whether He has revealed Himself to us in any decisive way.” (7) To Craig, God has been revealed in history through the resurrection of Jesus. Craig writes that there are two ways in which the Christian can affirm the resurrection of Jesus. The first is the historical evidence and arguments; however, the failure of the historical evidence does not mean the resurrection did not happen. The second ‘evidence’ is the “assurance that Jesus is risen because God’s Spirit bears unmistakable witness…that it is so.”(8) While I was initially critical of the inclusion of this argument from the historical perspective, Craig’s purpose is not just the “historical evidence” but the confession that it is the “son” that rises. 

Chapter 1: Death and Resurrection is relatively brief. Craig tackles post-enlightenment thinking on the place of humans in the universe. Are we really just an insignificant product of natural selection? What are our options in this world? What is the meaning of life without resurrection? Craig proposes four which I will leap frog to the fourth as I did not pay close attention to the non-historical arguments. The final position is that an affirmation that there is God and immortality which gives life significance and value.  This idea of immortality is a segue into the crux of the chapter from a historical perspective, that is, the concept of “resurrection from the dead.” (20) Again we find a list of four but in terms of what resurrection is not. The biblical view of Resurrection is not : “immortality of the soul alone” but a state where “body and soul [are] in unity.” (20);  reincarnation but that “a man lives only one lifetime and then is raised from the dead and judged by God.”(21); resuscitation where an individual returns to earthly life to die again, but resurrection is to “eternal life, and a person raised from the dead is immortal.” (21); and finally resurrection is not translation – a Jewish view  of immediate assumption into heaven. Resurrection is the “raising up of the dead man in the space-time universe, and the resurrected man is still part of the created world.” (21) For the Christian, the resurrection is an end times event where God will “raise up all those who have died and so reconstitute them as whole men of body and soul in union.” (21). Craig presents the backdrop of resurrection as a physical concept of both body and soul. This understanding is important for an orthodox defence of the resurrection, and is one that accurately represents the resurrection belief in the time of Jesus and, as Craig and I would argue, the earliest Christians. 

Chapter 2: Some Blind Alleys deals with the alternative theories to historical resurrection that may be popular among skeptical treatments but are “unanimously rejected by contemporary scholarship.” (23) Craig deals with the “conspiracy theory” that the disciples stole the body (cf. Matt 28:13-15) as logically and ethically implausible. He goes on to cite 18^th century scholar William Paley to provide an unsatisfying positive case – with some good and some bad arguments – for the reliability of the gospel accounts.  He briefly deals with the “apparent death” and “wrong tomb” theories which do not have much going for them in contemporary debate. Finally, he comes to the “legend theory”, that which is widely known in New Testament studies. The purpose of the following three chapters are to argue the positive evidence for the resurrection accounts as history in favour of the legendary theory. 

Chapter 3: The Empty Tomb is where Craig finally gets to the historical arguments. There are three lines of evidence for the resurrection: “the empty tomb of Jesus, the appearances of Jesus to his disciples, and the origin of the Christian faith. If it can be shown that the tomb of Jesus was found empty, that He did appear to His disciples and others after His death, and that the origin of the Christian faith cannot be explained adequately apart from His historical resurrection, then if there is no plausible natural explanation for these facts, one is amply justified in concluding that Jesus really did rise from the dead.” (45) 

In establishing the empty tomb, Craig begins with the burial of Jesus: “If it can be shown that the story of Jesus’ burial in the tomb is basically reliable, then the fact that the tomb was later found empty is also close at hand.” (46) He discusses the burial in 1 Cor 15, Acts 13:28-31 and Mark 15:37-16:8 while demonstrating a common Christian tradition on Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection and appearances. Craig contends that the burial account is very early and shows no signs of legend, widely attested and the witness of the women to it is “historically probable.” (59) Craig’s sober use of historical criteria on the NT sources has him conclude that “If one denies this [the burial], then one is reduced to denying the historicity of one of the most straightforward and unadorned narratives about Jesus…”(63) On an aside, for an excellent short study on the burial of Jesus within his historical context I highly recommend Craig A. Evans’ essay in Jesus, the Final Days (ed. Troy A. Miller). However, this sound method comes to a temporary halt when Craig controversially defends the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. (63-7) I do not have the relevant knowledge to delve into the issue, but my understanding is against the authenticity of the Shroud.

Having firmly established the likelihood of Jesus’ burial Craig presents 9 arguments in favour of the discovery of the empty tomb. He begins with the early pre-Pauline creed of 1 Cor 15 stating that “When Paul then says “He was raised,” he  necessarily implies that the tomb was left empty.” (67) This is the best way to understand the linguistic choice, especially in the context of  physical resurrection expectations.  The gospel accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb are pre-Markan and it is early and historically likely due to – Aramaic expressions, lack of legendary development, the discovery by the women, etc. He notes that both Luke 24:11-12, 24 and John 20:2-10 contain independent witness to the “investigation of the empty tomb by Peter and John”  (78), with special attention being given to the Gospel of John as having access to the eyewitness testimony of the beloved disciple who Craig identifies as John the son of Zebedee. (81) Craig defends the historicity that some of the disciples investigated the tomb (78), and that the Matthean apologetic  Matt 28:11-15 evidences that polemics against Christians acknowledge that the tomb was in fact empty. If it was not, we would expect Christian’s to partake in tomb veneration. Craig believes that these (and other) points “constitute a powerful case for the fact that Jesus’ tomb was actually found empty on Sunday morning by a small group of His women followers” and that objections to this are not on historical grounds, but theological/philosophical ones.(85-6)

Chapter 4: The Appearances of Jesus is the next piece in the puzzle for the historical argument in Craig’s positive argument for the resurrection of Jesus.  He follows the “testimony of Paul” in 1 Cor 15 in order to demonstrate that the disciples had appearances of Jesus. He notes the appearances to Peter and the twelve which are also attested to in the gospels. He discusses the appearance to the 500 – Craig speculates it does not appear in the gospels as it took place in Galilee, and there appears to be no reason to make up such a large number if it simply did not happen. Significance is found in the evidence related to James and Paul who were both transformed by their experience to join the Jesus movement. Following these more scanty appearances he turns his attention to the gospel accounts contending that they are “fundamentally reliable historically.” (100) His first contention in this regard is that there was insufficient time for legends to develop, citing Muller’s critique of Strauss and more recently A.N. Sherwin-White. By arguing an early date for the Gospels as well as authoritative control by the apostles and presence of eyewitnesses within the Christian communities Craig tries to squeeze out any plausible opportunity for legendary developments.

Craig defends the view that the appearances were physical appearances, beginning with Paul.  While many in favour of Jesus’ physical resurrection will separate Paul’s experience as visionary, Craig contends that unlike Stephen’s vision of Jesus (Acts 7:54-58), Paul’s was an appearances manifested by light and sounds. But this aside, Craig’s view of resurrection was one that was physical in nature balancing the whole 1 Cor 15 future body debate. Similarly, “the gospels prove that the appearances were bodily and physical.” (110)

Chapter 5: The Origin of the Christian Faith draws on the explanatory power of the resurrection in light of the fact that “even the most sceptical scholars admit that at least the belief that Jesus rose from the dead lay at the very heart of the earliest Christian faith.” (127) The resurrection of Jesus explains how the disciples came to see him as Messiah (and re-imagine the role) and Lord (e.g. Acts 2) Craig believes that the onus is on those denying the resurrection to provide a satisfactory origin for the Christian faith from Jewish precedents. The argument is that the Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection is a mutation of the expectations held by the Jews (such as Jesus’ resurrection being separate from end times resurrection of the Jewish people). While it has been argued elsewhere that it was the empty tomb that lead to the belief that Jesus was resurrected, Craig believes that this would have simply lead the disciples to believe Jesus was translated such as with Enoch and Elijah.(132)

Craig concludes the chapter summarising his conclusion from the three sets of historical evidence. He writes, “Each of these three great facts – the empty tomb, the appearances, the origin of the Christian faith  - is independently established. Together they point with unwavering conviction to the same unavoidable and marvellous conclusion: Jesus actually rose from the dead.” (134)

Chapter 6: Finding the Resurrection Faith acts as an epilogue for those who have been convinced by the historical evidence. Citing 1 Corinthians 15 Craig notes that a Christian faith without the resurrection would have been “simply false” (135) and the proclamation that Jesus was Lord, Messiah and Son of God would have been “stupid” for he would have been simply another Jewish prophet meeting an unfortunate end. The resurrection is a necessary truth to the Christian message and Christian life where (1) God acted in time resurrecting Jesus from the dead, (2) confirmed Jesus’ claims about his unique relationship with the Father and divine authority and (3) shows “Jesus holds the key to eternal life”(141ff). The last 11 pages are essentially an alter call bringing the work back to the evangelistic aims noted earlier on.

Apologies for the Apologist: This book was first published in 1981 and according to my constructed chronology of Craig’s life this was relatively early in his doctoral study on the resurrection. It was not for another 8 years that his 400+ page Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus. (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press. 1989.) was published. I suggest that this may explain a number of the drawbacks in this book regarding Craig’s critical engagement with the gospel tradition. For example, in my opinion Craig failed to adequately defend his assumption on the reliability of the gospel tradition, or at the very least the historical reliability of the resurrection narratives he was working on. 

That said, the work is adequate and is representative of what I would view as a standard historical apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus. Those with an interest in the resurrection will find it easy to understand and follow, while those with a background in critical Gospel studies will find themselves disappointed at times.More thorough treatments for those with a lot more time on their hand include N.T. Wright's  The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3) and Michael R. Licona's recent The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach 


Note: This review was mostly written in July last year so I have not been able to remember any errors in need of proof.

Robert H. Stein on the Empty Tomb

As far as I am aware, "Was the tomb really empty?" by Robert H. Stein appears in three places. (1) Journal of the Evangelical Theologicla Society, 20, 1977, pp.23-29, (2) Themelios 5.1 (September 1979): 8-12. and (3) The Historical Jesus: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (Vol. III Jesus' Mission, Death and Resurrection) ed. Craig A. Evans, 324-331. For the sake of simplicity, I will follow the numbering of the Themelios publication as it is freely available online here.

For Stein, the resurrection is fundamental to historical and contemporary Christian faith. For "Evangelical apologetics" there are four features to support the "historicity, the 'facticity', of the resurrection." (10) There are the resurrection appearances, the  existence of the Christian church, "the existential experience of the risen Christ in the heart of the believer" and, finally, the witness to the empty tomb. It should be noted that Stein sees the resurrection appearances as the primary witness to the resurrection, as the narratives themselves testify that the empty tomb need not necessitate resurrection.(Luke 24:21-24, Jn. 20:13)

The purpose of the article is dealing with the final point in light of claims that the empty tomb was secondary in explaining the resurrection appearances. He has in mind Rudolf Bultmann who wrote, "The Story of the empty tomb is completely secondary.... The story is an apologetic legend as Mark 16: 8... clearly shows. Paul knows nothing about the empty tomb." (The History of the Synoptic Tradition. p. 290.)

Stein has a number of reasons that "support the fact that the Christian tradition of the empty tomb is very early and that the tomb in which the body of Jesus was placed was indeed empty."(11)

1. The story of the empty tomb is in three gospel sources - Mark, M and John. The variance in these accounts arise suggest independent traditions.
2. "Semitisms and Semitic customs" in the narratives indicate early Palestinian origin (Mark 16:2, Matthew 28:2-5, Luke 24:5.)
3. "Jewish belief in the resurrection necessitated an empty tomb" therefore in Jerusalem, especially among Pharasaic and Christina Jews, requires an empty tomb.
4. The early church would be unlikely to create women as the first witnesses to the empty tomb as their testimony "since women were invalid witnesses according to Jewish principles of evidence." A created story would probably have male disciples as the primary witnesses.
5. The Jewish polemic confirms the empty tomb "indicates that the account of the empty tomb had from the very beginning an important place in the early Church's proclamation of the resurrection." (12)
6. The firm tradition regarding Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43-46; Matt. 27:57-60; Luke 23:50-53; Jn. 19:38-42) has a number of implications. (1) Joseph was not a prominent Christian personality so an unlikely invention and (2) the tomb would have been identifiable.
7.  The tradition of the empty tomb on the first day of the week is probably the event that shifted Christian religious observance from Saturday to Sunday
8. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 speaks of Jesus being "buried", the empty tomb is implied in the resurrection. As a Pharisee, Paul knew physical resurrection that necessitates the empty tomb.
9. There are also a few linguistic arguments provided.

Stein makes an interesting proposal for Paul's silence on the empty tomb:

It may be that the lack of a specific reference to the empty tomb by Paul stems from an apologetic motive rather than from ignorance. When it came to the resurrection appearances, the apostle could argue on equal terms with the other disciples. He, too, had seen the Lord! He could not, however, say the same about the empty tomb. Perhaps this is the reason why he does not refer to it specifically in his letters. (12)

Geza Vermes, "Six Theories to Explain the Resurrection of Jesus"

For many years scholars waited for Geza Vermes' contribution to the resurrection of Jesus, and he came around in 2008 with The Resurrection. First of all, at only $6 it is recommended for those interested in the resurrection narratives, beliefs and the historical background (more so than a historical hypothesis on the resurrection).

Vermes contends that neither the empty tomb or resurrection appearances satisfy the "minimum requirements of a legal or scientific inquiry. The only alternative historians are left with in their effort to make some sense of the Resurrection is to fall back on speculation..."(141) This speculation requires the dismissal of "two extreme" theories - (1) the "blind faith of the fundamentalist"  who accept the bodily resurrection and (2) the "unbelievers" who "treat the whole Resurrection story as the figment of early Christian imagination." (141) So what are the alternatives between this spectrum? 

1. The Body was Removed by Someone Unconnected with Jesus
The emptiness of the tomb was genuine, but there are a number of reasons aside from Mark 16:6. The swift nature of the burial in a tomb "obviously prepared for someone else" is explained  that someone - possibly the gardener (Jn 20:15) - "took the first opportunity to move the body of Jesus to another available tomb." (142) It was this innocent transfer of the body that later developed into the "legend of the Resurrection." (143) Vermes notes that this is itself problematic - those who organised the  burial were well known and could have explained this.

2. The Body of Jesus was Stolen by His Disciples
Those familiar with the narrative in Matthew will recognise this hypothesis as a current polemic against the empty tomb tradition (Matt 28:15). Vermes points out that this theory "presupposes that a fraudulent prophecy concerning Jesus' rising from the dead was widely known among Palestinian Jews." (143) Evidently, this is a "later Jewish gossip" circulating the time the evangelist was writing and its value for the Resurrection is "next to nil".

3. The Empty Tomb was not the Tomb of Jesus
Drawing on the fact that the witness of women was not very convincing, the disciples who investigated the report of the empty tomb (Luke 24:11) may have suspected the women had "gone to the wrong tomb." The disciples may have simply been mistaken, and the resurrection appearances that soon followed "rendered such an inquiry [as to the location of the tomb] superfluous." (144)

4. Buried Alive, Jesus Later Left the Tomb
This is self-explanatory, and is elaborately forwarded by Barbara Thiering. Josephus' Life 420 evidences crucifixion victims surviving. The theory is that Jesus was on the cross for such a short time that he was not dead when Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body. John's mention of the spear in the side was an apologetic to dispel these sort of doubts. (John 19:34) However, I would argue that John's mention, if invention, would have more to do with suffering servant styled prophecy fulfilled. Vermes sees this as implausible - a "semiconscious Jesus crept out of the tomb in the darkness of night..." (145)

5. The Migrant Jesus
A belief evident in contemporary Ahmadiyya Islam which believes Jesus was revived and eventually died in Kashmir, India. Others such as Thiering believe that Jesus wandered off to Rome where he died. Vermes concludes "In the absence of real ancient evidence, these modern musings need not retain us."(146) By real evidence, he is of course referring to Thiering's discovery by using "Pesher" to find whatever she wants in whatever document. For a brief review of pesher see my earlier post.

6. Do the appearances suggest spiritual, not bodily, resurrection?
Visions of the risen Jesus are abundant in the Christian sources (with a notable exception being the shorter ending of Mark.) These visions are separated into 4 categories:

1. "In Matthew no concrete details are given" 
2. John/Luke - unknown man such as the gardener and travel are later recognised as Jesus
3. Luke/John - "a spirit mysteriously enters the apostles' residence despite the locked doors"
4. "The ghost later becomes a stranger with flesh and bones, who says he is Jesus and invited the apostles to touch him, and eat with him." (146)

As the evangelists do not mention appearances to people outside the circle of his close followers Vermes takes these to imply that the Resurrection was not meant to be an extension of public ministry. In essence, the "Resurrection becomes a purely spiritual concept without requiring any accompanying physical reality." (147) The idea of spiritual resurrection accounts for the visions, but the Jewish bond of body and spirit spurred the empty tomb and physicality of the body in John and Luke. In appealing to the mystic tradition, Vermes contends that this view is no different from crosscultural experiences. [I didn't explain this option best although in my defence neither does Vermes.]

Conclusions
Vermes really does come to something quite unsatisfying - "All in all, none of the six suggested theories stands up to stringent scrutiny." (148)

Burial of Jesus in Dunn, "Jesus Remembered"

While making little mention of the burial of Jesus in an earlier treatment of the resurrection, Dunn addresses the assertion of Crossan and others that Jesus was not buried. Against this view, Dunn contends that "the tradition is firm that Jesus was given a proper burial (Mark 15:42-47 pars.), and there are good reasons why its testimony should be respected." (781) There are a number of reasons as to why this is so:

1. It is one of the oldest traditions we have available to us about Jesus 1 Cor. 15:4 and like in the narrative accounts, it is not drawn from scripture.
2. Jewish law required the body be removed before nightfall (Deut 21:22-23; Josephus Wars 4.317) and Passover was a sensitive time meaning the Romans would probably hold to it.
3. Literary and archaeological evidence of crucifixion victims being buried - Philo, Flacc. 83, Josephus Life 420, the disciples of John in Mark 6:29; Crucified man in family tomb discovered at Giv'at ha-Mivtar.
4. Joseph of Arimathea is a plausible historical character (Mark 15:43 pars; G. Peter 2:3-5), unlikely to create a sympathiser from among the Jewish council, Arimathea has no scriptural significance.
5. Presence of women at the cross and their involvement in the burial - "more plausibly [attributed] to early oral memory than creative story telling" (783)

Resurrection in Dunn "The Evidence for Jesus"

I have recently been working on the burial and resurrection traditions and a number of treatments of these. I might as well share my notes on some of these for all those interested (and I know at least one person around here has written a book on the subject.)

James D.G. Dunn discusses the resurrection in a number of works that I will later discuss (namely, Jesus Remembered and  Jesus and the Spirit). This first post will set out his position as presented in the shorter popular level book The Evidence for Jesus (1985).

What did the first Christians believe about the resurrection?
Dunn begins with a short(ish) discussion on the nature of history and that the historians task is to provide a reconstruction on the available data. This reconstruction will always risk being imperfect - it is an event in the past that cannot be repeated. The data/evidence is never enough.

Reports of the Empty Tomb
Dunn points to the gospel accounts of the empty tomb - Matt 28.1-10, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 23.1-11, John 20:1-10. (57) There are inconsistencies with these accounts at different levels: Matt has two women discover the tomb/Mark has three/ John has one; was it discovered before dawn (Matt, John) or after dawn (Mark)? When was the stone rolled back? Did the women tell the other disciples of the discovery or not? Dunn contends that these inconsistencies are insufficient to dismiss the accounts, the litmus test being "is the degree of confusion more or less than we might expect where the participants were very emotionally involved?" (64) Secondly, are these differences any more significant than those we would usually find in the synoptic gospels? Furthermore, what do we make of Paul's silence on the empty tomb?

Dunn provides four key arguments in favour of the authenticity of the Gospel's testimony of the empty tomb.

1. Discovery by women - all the gospels testify to the discovery of the empty tomb by women, in the historical context the testimony of women was not worth as much as a man's. It is unlikely that a contrived story would attribute the discovery of the empty tomb to women, especially if there was a high chance of their testimony being rejected. (65)
2. "The confusion between the different accounts in the Gospels does not appear to have been contrived. The conflict of testimony is more a mark of the sincerity of those from whom the testimony was derived than a mark against their veracity." (65) The hallmark of a created witness would be a unified testimony. In Mark the empty tomb is ambiguous and does not lead directly to the realisation of resurrection. While the early creed of 1 Cor 15 has no empty tomb but has resurrection appearances, but Mark has an empty tomb and no resurrection appearances - both were independent in some sense and not contrived to apologise for or expand the other.
3. Archaeology and burial practices. From the evidence we can say that resurrection beliefs had a lot to do with bones in tombs. "It follows that in Palestine the ideas of resurrection and of empty tomb would naturally go together for many people. But this also means that any assertion that Jesus had been raised would be unlikely to cut much ice unless his tomb was empty." (67) Without an empty tomb, the claim of resurrection would not stand and even the Jewish polemics at the time of Matthew witness this (Matt. 28:13-15)
4. No tomb veneration - although this was current among Jewish contemporaries (e.g. Matt 23:29) This lack of veneration is explained quite easily: "The tomb was not venerated, it did not become a place of pilgrimage, because the tomb was empty!" (68)

The verdict on the empty tomb: "As a matter of historical reconstruction, the weight of evidence points firmly to the conclusion that Jesus' tomb was found empty and that its emptiness was a factor in the first Christians' belief in the resurrection of Jesus."(68)

Resurrection Appearances
The chief narrative data for the "sightings" are Matthew and Luke. Matthew contains two sightings in Matt. 28:8-10 and Matt 28:16-20. In addition to those there is the Emmaus appearance (Luke 24.13-35); an allusion to an appearance to Peter (Luke 24:34) and an explicit appearance to the disciples as a group (Luke 24:36-43.) In John there is Mary M at the tomb (John 20:11-18), an appearance to the disciples w/o Thomas (Jn 20:19-23), Thomas with the disciples (Jn 20:24-29) and a Galilee appearance (John 21:1-23). Finally, there are the sightings in the pre-Pauline creed of 1 Cor. 15:3-8.

Like the empty tomb tradition, there is some confusion such as with the when/where of the appearances. Were there Galilean appearances or were they only in Jerusalem? Of the five traditions Dunn notes that "Each contain one or more reports of which the others make no mention. Indeed, almost the only common ground between two or more is that (1) the earliest appearances were to
women (Matthew and John), (2) one of the first appearances was to Peter (Luke 24.34; I Cor. 15.5), and (3) there was one or more appearances to 'the twelve' (all five, including Acts 1.2-3 and I Cor.
15.5)." (69)

Dunn provides three positive considerations for the resurrection appearances.

1. The earliest testimony is very early. Paul recorded the 1 Cor 15 creed in the 50s while those purporting to be witnesses would still be alive. By providing the appearances Paul is inviting cross examination. Furthermore, the creed is itself is what Paul had earlier received. Most likely within 2-3 years of the crucifixion/resurrection when Paul converted.
2. First sightings reported by the women, as with point 1 for empty tomb.  For these reasons it is most likely authentic, and the omission in 1 Cor 15 may reflect a bias in including them as witnesses in the "fairly formal list".
3. As for note two under empty tomb - the divergence in the appearances does not reflect a uniform contrived story. The inclusion of unresolved doubt in Matt 28:17 whereas Luke and John resolve the doubt. In Matthew it is is not a literary technique but "it was introduced simply because it was part of the original eyewitness testimony." (70) The honesty of confusion and doubt in the appearances is in favour of authenticity.

How do the alternative explanations to the resurrection appearances stack up?  Drawing parallels with visions of Isis and Asclepius are insufficient. Dreams of Asclepius, for example, were conditioned and a prerequisite of the healing. The psychological process for the disciples visions would be more complicated, and require more speculative theories. Dunn suggests closer parallals would be found in Jewish visionary experiences-  such as those of dead Jewish heroes in near/contemporary literature. However, these visionary experiences never lead to the conclusion that the figure was raised from the dead. It is this conclusion, more so than the visions themselves, that set the story of Jesus apart. He points out that in 1 Cor 15 Paul sets his own appearance apart from those that came before him.

Circumstantial evidence: 

• Up to the crucifixion, the disciples were demoralised - Peter disowned Jesus (Mark 15:66-72), the disciples on the road to Emmaus lamented (Luke 24:21) and the disciples returned to Galilee lacking purpose (John 21:2-3). This is in contrast to the disciples as presented in Acts as bold and charismatic individuals. According to the preaching, it is the resurrection of Jesus that was the source of this transformation. "From the Christian perspective 'the resurrection of Jesus' is a central part of that explanation." (60)
• "But already within the first generation of Christianity we see Jesus being spoken of in divine terms."(61) But why? "For Paul the Christian, confession of Jesus as Lord evidently
  arose out of belief that God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 10.9)." (62)

Resurrection redefined
Dunn emphasises the innovation regarding the resurrection of Jesus. Firstly, although many Jews at the time held to a resurrection belief, this belief was a "final" and "general" resurrection at the "end of history" (72, cf. Daniel 12:12).  However, the Christian's belief was that Jesus was resurrected before the end. Secondly, "the first Christians believed that with Jesus' resurrection the general resurrection had already begun." (73) Romans 1:4 has Jesus resurrection as "the resurrection of the dead" and 1 Cor 15:20-23 describes Jesus resurrection as the "first fruits" for all; it was "the beginning of the harvest." This understanding is incompatible with the visionary claims as it is from these sightings that the first Christians came to believe "that God had actually begun the resurrection of the dead is without any real precedent." (73)

This brings us to the meaning of resurrection and the NT writer's conception of a resurrected body.

• Luke - a very physical body (Luke 24:39)
• Paul - distinguishes between the "body of this life (='physical or natural body') and the resurrection body (= 'spiritual body') (I Cor. 15.42-46). And he concludes his discussion on the
  point with the ringing declaration: 'I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God . . .' (I Cor. 15.50). What Luke affirms (Jesus' resurrection body was flesh and bones) Paul denies (the resurrection body is not composed of flesh and blood)!" (74) How do we reconclise this? In 1 Cor 15 Paul was addressing a Greek audience who were not fans of bodily resurrection. However, Paul continues to emphasise the bodily aspect but there is both continuity and discontinuity.

Conclusions
Dunn lists five conclusions to take away from his examination.

1. It is impossible to deny that the origins of Christianity lie in some visionary experience of Jesus that lead to the belief that God raised Jesus. 
2. The empty tomb was a "contributory fact" to this belief "
3. In the terms Paul has given us, Christian belief in resurrection is not properly speaking belief in a physical resurrection. Nor is it properly speaking belief in immortality (the true 'me' will never die). The Christian believes rather that death is followed by resurrection more in the sense of recreation." (75-6)
4. (1) At the historical level it is hard to explain the resurrection belief w/o the empty tomb but (2) at the theological level it is not necessary. But as both these statements can be made independently, they both strengthen the historical and theological significance. Evidently, whether one emphasises one or the other should not mean they are breaching orthodoxy.
5. The Christian interpretation of the data (empty tomb/appearances) that "God raised Jesus from the dead" is the best explanation of the alternatives.

Sorry if this needs to be proof read but it is 2.30am here and they are mostly for my own benefit. Next posts will probably be on the Markan burial tradition, Fitzmyer's discussion in To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies (The Biblical Resource Series) or an almost completed review of The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

Can we take the resurrection seriously?

A three part video series by Dr John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX).

Part 1

Can we take the resurrection seriously? Part 1 from CPX on Vimeo.

Part 2

Can we take the resurrection seriously? Part 2 from CPX on Vimeo.

Part 3


Can we take the resurrection seriously? Part 3 from CPX on Vimeo.