Evidence for the resurrection - 13 March 2009 |
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J. N. D. Anderson wrote a fabulous little booklet called The Evidence for the Resurrection. I think it’s out of print, but you may be able to get a copy at abebooks.co.uk or some other second hand bookshop. Summary below (pages refs in brackets).
I. Introduction
If Jesus was not raised from the dead, ‘then the whole of Christianity is a fraud’ (1). The apostle Paul agreed (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).
II. Sources of written evidence
There’s plenty of written evidence to go on in the New Testament. And despite ‘the most strenuous efforts’ (2) of 19th-century scholars to prove that the Gospels were written in the middle of the 2nd century AD, the overwhelming scholarly consensus dates them in the middle of the 1st century, within the lifetime of eyewitnesses of the events they describe. You might not agree with what they say, but as evidence these witnesses must be heard and accounted for. Three examples:
1. The apostle Paul, writing around AD 56 , ‘gives a detailed list of several resurrection appearances’ (2) in 1 Corinthians 15. He claims to have conveyed this information verbally to his readers earlier (around AD 49), and to have ‘received’ it several years before that.
2. Mark’s Gospel, generally reckoned to represent Peter’s oral teaching, dates from very early (perhaps as early as AD 44?), and records Jesus appearing after his resurrection.
3. Luke provides a detailed record of Jesus resurrection and subsequent appearances in his Gospel and in the book of Acts. Sir William Ramsey has argued that Luke was an extremely reliable historian.
Besides this, there is the additional written evidence of Matthew, John and Peter.
III. Assessing the evidence
So much for the evidence; how should we appraise it? Unsurprisingly, several attempts have been made to evade its apparent force. Here are a couple of the top contenders.
1. Deliberate invention. They made it all up, pure and simple.
This is pretty unlikely, for at least two reasons:
i. In AD 56, when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15, he states that ‘the majority of some 500 witnesses were still alive’ (4). That particular fact would not be easily falsifiable, and moreover it would make it very difficult for Paul to misrepresent the facts concerning the resurrection itself – the event those people had all witnessed.
ii. Jesus’ resurrection inspired many of his followers – including those who had written about it (Paul and John, for example) – to a life of incredible sacrifice. Not the sort of thing you’d do if you knew you’d made it all up.
2. Legends. Not deliberately invented, but ‘elaborated’, ‘embroidered’ and ‘exaggerated’ over time.
Again, pretty unlikely.
i. All those witnesses… (see above)
ii. They don’t read like exaggerated legends. They’re restrained, concise, understated.
iii. They contain bizarre details that would hardly commend themselves to individual legend-mongers, and certainly not to a wide consensus among the early church. Like the fact that Jesus appeared first to a woman.
Finally, both of these theories struggle (to put it mildly) to deal with one crucial fact: Jesus’ tomb was empty. Little wonder that ‘very few scholars have any use for the above theories’ (5).
3. A genuine mistake? The possibility remains that the records of the events were sincere, but the ‘resurrection’ (and the empty tomb) can be explained in some other way, ‘without recourse to the miraculous’ (5). To be satisfied with this theory, we’d have to explain two sets of events: first, the empty tomb; second, the subsequent appearances of Jesus to his followers. Let’s look at them in turn.
IV. Explaining the empty tomb
Four theories have been proposed. Here they are, together with their (decisive) shortcomings.
1. The disciples stole the body. (5)
Nope. They’re hardly have endured persecution and martyrdom for what they knew was a lie.
2. The Jewish or Roman authorities, or possibly Joseph of Arimathea, stole the body. (6)
Hopeless. The one thing that upset the authorities more than anything else in the first few months and year after Jesus’ resurrection was that the disciples wouldn’t shut up about it. If the authorities had the body, they could have put a stop to the whole ‘Jesus thing’ overnight by simply producing the corpse.
As for Joseph of Arimathea, according to Matthew 27:57, he was a disciple of Jesus. Why would he have knowingly deceived every other disciple by stealing the body, and not revealing the fact even after the persecution kicked in. Alternatively, suppose we ignore Matthew 27 and assume that he was not a faithful disciple, he would certainly have informed the authorities of his actions once the ‘Jesus movement’ – complete with proclamation of the resurrection – got started. Another non-starter.
3. The women went to the wrong tomb. (7)
This initially seems more promising. After all, it was early in the morning. Maybe they were tired. But again, there’s the (considerable) problem that, on this theory, Jesus’ body was still somewhere, and no convincing explanation can be offered for why the Jewish authorities didn’t simply produce it.
4. The ‘swoon’ theory. (8)
Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, we are told. He ‘swooned’, only later to be ‘revived’ by ‘the cool restfulness of the tomb’, whereupon he got to his feet and walked away.
Give me a break. Apart from the fact that this would make Jesus ‘a party to a gross deception’ (10), some people clearly need to read up a bit about crucifixion. I’ll spare you the details – Google it sometime, but not straight after a heavy meal. Anyway, here’s Anderson:
We are then, presumably, asked to believe that three days in a cold tomb, without food and attention, would so far revive him that, instead of providing the inevitable finale to His flickering life, He was able to set Himself free from the spice-laden grave-clothes which swathed Him round, roll away a stone which three women felt unable to tackle, terrify the Roman guards, and walk miles on pierced and wounded feet. (9)
This theory would have us believe that Jesus, having made his way to Jerusalem,
could have given the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life: an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. (9-10, quoting Strauss)
Finally, a couple of further points about the empty tomb. First, it’s never mentioned in the apostles’ preaching. But if its existence was contested, it surely would have been. Instead, the apostles all but take for granted the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, focussing almost entirely on its significance. Second, it wasn’t actually empty. The grave-clothes were still there, ‘lying just as they would if the body had simply been withdrawn or passed through them’ (11).
Anderson again:
The empty tomb, then, forms a veritable rock on which all rationalistic theories of the resurrection dash themselves in vain. (11)
So much for the empty tomb. What about the post-resurrection appearances?
V. Explaining the post-resurrection appearances
Here’s the deal: Jesus appeared alive to hundreds of people after his death. If he wasn’t raised to life, the only possibility is ‘some form of hallucination’ (12). But this suggestion has some fatal flaws. Five, to be exact:
1. Normally only ‘the more highly-strung and imaginative types’ (12) are subject to hallucinations. Hard to explain how 500 people all witnessed it at once; not easy to account for the testimony of ‘a hard-headed tax collector, a number of prosaic fishermen’ (12) and so on.
2. Hallucinations are highly individual and unique experiences. How come so many people all ‘saw’ the same thing?
3. Hallucinations are normally connected with something people expect and desire, but the disciples were emphatically not expecting Jesus to rise. Nothing could have been further from their minds; they’d completely given up hope.
4. Hallucinations normally occur in particular times or situations; but Jesus appeared to people in many different situations and at many different times.
5. Hallucinations ‘usually recur over a long period with some degree of regularity, either increasing or decreasing in frequency as time goes by’ (13). But Jesus’ appearances all occurred during a 40-day period, and then stopped abruptly.
Hallucination, shmallucination.
VI. Final thoughts
Just a few more things (well, eight).
1. How else can the founding and growth of the Christian church be explained?
2. Many of Jesus’ first disciples were Jews, and were therefore ‘fanatically attached to their Sabbath’ (14) – which occurred on Saturday. But after Jesus’ resurrection, they switched to Sunday. That change would have needed something really significant.
3. A variation of 1: how could the earliest apostolic preaching (which was all about the resurrection) have been so compelling if the tomb was not in fact empty, particularly since the tomb was just a few minutes walk from Jerusalem, where much of this preaching took place?
4. Why the seven-week delay between the resurrection and the start of the disciples’ proclamation of that event? It would be an odd way to fabricate a story. But the biblical record of events provides a simple explanation: they ‘spent the first forty days in intermittent fellowship with their risen Lord’ (15), before waiting a further ten for the promised Holy Spirit.
5. Jesus predicted his resurrection during his earthly life.
6. The apostles were transformed from ‘a little company of sad and defeated cowards into a band of irrepressible missionaries who turned the world upside down’ (15).
7. How many millions of Christians have had their lives transformed by the risen Christ in the last 2000 years?
8. If Jesus is divine, it would have been surprising if he had not risen from the dead.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Minister's Blog