Monday, February 11, 2013

The Resurrection: A Cultural and Historical Overview


            The popular axiom of modern secular thought is that an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. In no area is this more evident than in the skeptics’ claims that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is incapable of providing such a weight of evidence to justify its truthfulness. However, critics of this axiom are right to point out that it is not extraordinary evidence that is necessary, but rather sufficient evidence to support the claim. In examining the resurrection we must then be careful to ask of, and then examine the evidence to see if it is sufficient to justify the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead. Doing so requires that we examine the historical evidence in a twofold manner. First, we must examine it for its weight and historical reliability. Second, we must examine it to see if it could have been falsified in the context and culture of 1st century Judaism. Our final task will then be to discern how best to use this evidence in the best manner when confronted with contrary explanations of what could have caused the belief of that Jesus had been resurrected.
The Descent from the Cross
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
            Affirming that the resurrection occurred first requires that it be verified that Jesus was actually crucified. Flavius Josephus, writing in A.D. 94, reports of Jesus’ death that “Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross…”[1] Scholars are of a general agreement that this passage has possible interpolations inserted by early Christians concerning the deity of Christ, his status as Messiah, and his resurrection. However, it is also agreed that if the “questionable components are removed, there are good reasons for maintaining that Josephus wrote the remaining text”[2] which includes the mention of Christ’s death by crucifixion at Pilate’s hands. The satirist Lucian of Samosata provides another attestation of Jesus’ crucifixion in Passing of Peregrinus written in the latter half of the second century. Peregrinus, the focus of the satire, is taken in by Christians who end up worshipping him “next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.”[3] While Lucian is mocking Christ and early Christian beliefs it should be noted that he never treats the historical fact of Christ’s death as something that was not true. It can be readily affirmed that “Lucian…tells us what educated pagans of the second century knew or believed about Jesus.”[4] Finally, the historian Tacitus reports that Nero attempted to attach the blame for the fire of Rome on Christians whose founder Christus “had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus.”[5] The misspelling of Christ as Christus “was a common error made by pagan writers”[6] and Tacitus’ mention of him provides us “with testimony by the leading Roman historian of his day”[7] that Christ lived and was crucified.
            Jesus’ death by crucifixion is also recorded in all four of the canonical gospels. Subsequently, the question must be asked if early Jewish converts to Christianity would have portrayed their Messiah as dying by crucifixion. Old Testament case law prohibited leaving a man who had been hung on a tree from overnight exposure as “a hanged man is cursed by God” and such an act would bring defilement on the land.[8] Disgust at executing a man by hanging from a tree was further exacerbated under the Seleucids and Romans by their extensive use of crucifixion. Josephus records that those who resisted Antiochus Epiphanies in 167 B.C. “were whipped with rods, and their bodies torn to pieces, and were crucified.”[9] Mass crucifixions were also the means by which Rome crushed rebellions and Josephus recounts several such episodes including the crucifixion of 2,000 Jews by Varus to stop a revolt in 4 B.C[10] and the crucifixion of a multitude of Jews during Titus’ campaign in A.D. 70.[11]
These reports from Josephus and other sources, such as the seven brothers in 2 Maccabees, provide a picture a Jews resisting their conquerors in the face of torture and execution. The contrast with Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels is quite striking. Jesus in no account defies his executioners, but instead goes meekly to the crucifixion. This contrast, as well as the curse placed upon those who die by hanging on a tree, provides a criterion of embarrassment that helps to solidify that the crucifixion would not have been an invented belief. In first century Palestine “the differences between Jesus in the Passion Narratives and the seven brothers and Eleazar must have stood out immediately to the early readers and would most likely have been quite embarrassing for Christians…the embarrassing elements in the Passion Narratives weigh in favor of the presence of historical kernels.”[12]
The Resurrection of Christ
Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516)
The first proclaimed evidence of the resurrection is the reports by the women of the empty tomb. All four gospels record in some fashion that when the women and Peter and John went to the tomb “they did not find the Lord Jesus.”[13] While it could be claimed that this is insufficient evidence that the tomb was actually empty, several factors can lead us to believe it is true. First, the gospels record this as a piece of common knowledge known to both early Christians and their opponents. Matthew records that the story that Christ’s body had been stolen from the tomb was propagated by chief priests and had “spread among the Jews to this day.”[14] Such a statement invited direct investigation by the readers of the gospel and predicted that the story, though false, could be verified and would testify to the empty tomb. Similarly, Luke records Paul’s statement to Agrippa of his conversion in which he proclaims it was necessary that “the Christ must suffer and…[be] the first to rise from the dead…”[15] While the statement does not directly mention the empty tomb, it does imply it by speaking of the resurrection from the dead. Paul declares these events to be widely known by Agrippa for “none of these things [had] escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner.”[16] Again, such statements invited scrutiny and were not denied by those to whom they were given.
Paralleling the lack of denial of the empty tomb is the fact that at no time did the opponents of Christianity ever produce the body of Christ to refute the claim of the empty tomb. Matthew’s record again provides illumination in this area as the chief priests’ efforts to deny the resurrection were to tell the guards to “[t]ell people, His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.”[17] Gary Habermas and Michael Licona note that it would have been much more effective to exhume Jesus’ body and “publicly display it for the hoax to be shattered.”[18] The silence from the early critics of Christianity in this area is telling. No easier method of destroying the fledgling religion could have been available to the Romans or the Sanhedrin, and yet no source records the body being produced or the location of a still occupied tomb. Recent attempts to explain away the body not being produced are inadequate in their scope or explanatory power as well. To say that the body was so decomposed as to be unrecognizable ignores “the arid climate of Jerusalem, [and] a corpse’s hair, stature, and distinctive wounds” that would have made the corpse “identifiable, even after fifty days.”[19] Also, no matter how disfigured, the presentation of any corpse that could even be remotely identified with Christ would have been immensely damaging to the early church.
Ascertaining whether or not the account of the empty tomb could arise naturally within the minds of first century Jews is more difficult. Certainly the religious and philosophical mindset of Roman and Greek culture denied that anyone could rise from the dead and leave an empty tomb. The more common belief, as represented in Homer and religious praxis, was that that “the dead were non-existent; outside Judaism, nobody believed in resurrection.”[20] In this view the dead were at most “shades…ghosts…phantoms…They are in no way fully human being…one cannot grasp them physically.”[21] In such an environment the idea of a body coming to life and leaving its tomb went against common observance and was absurd at the least. If such appearance was appealed to as a vision of the deceased, the common interpretation would be that it was only a haunting of the recently deceased since “such visions meant precisely, as people in the ancient and modern worlds have discovered, that the person was dead, not that they were alive.[22]
Even Jewish belief in resurrection precluded the type of resurrection that left an empty tomb as portrayed in the gospels. The resurrection hoped for by the Jews had less to do with individual resurrection “but on the fate of Israel and her promised land.”[23] Such a view of the resurrection was more long term, looking ahead to the future resurrection of the faithful at the Day of Judgment, not on a single individual resurrected as a sign from God. In this combined atmosphere the spontaneous creation of a story that presented Jesus as being physically absent from the tomb through resurrection would have been laughable without direct confirmatory evidence.
Saints Peter and John Healing the Lame Man
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
The third line of evidence that points to the resurrection of Jesus is the testimony of the disciples that the resurrection occurred and their willingness to die for that testimony. Matthew and Mark record that prior to the resurrection the disciples lacked the courage to even stand with Jesus when he was arrested choosing instead to flee in fear.[24] The change after the resurrection events is startling in its contrast. Acts records that the disciples were willing to defy the Jewish religious authorities,[25] be beaten,[26] rejoice in that suffering[27], and suffer martyrdom for their testimony.[28] The testimony of the early church fathers provides further extra-biblical support of the willingness of the disciples to suffer and die for what they believed. Hippolytus, writing in the third century, records that of the original twelve disciples seven of them suffered martyrdom for their beliefs.[29] Among the early church fathers Clement records in the first century that “[b]y reason of jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars of the Church [Peter and Paul] were persecuted, and contended even unto death.”[30] What could have brought about such a radical change of behavior among those who fled from the fear of persecution and death previously? Licona correctly states that “[t]he strength of their conviction indicates they were not just claiming that Jesus had appeared to them after rising from the dead. They really believed it.”[31]
The specific content of the testimony that the disciples were willing to suffer for is demonstrative of their belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Peter’s sermon at Pentecost hinges upon the resurrection of Christ as its central point. It is because “God raised [Jesus] up, loosing the pangs the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it”[32] that the disciples were able to testify and perform signs and wonders. Furthermore, the means of freedom salvation have been made known and demonstrated to be true in the resurrection of Jesus because “he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.”[33] Other sermons recorded in Acts continue to appeal to the resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate confirmation that the message being presented is indeed true.[34] John writes of Jesus that he is the “firstborn of the dead”[35] and that “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”[36] as he returns in his resurrected body. Similarly, Peter addresses persecuted believers in the name of the Father who gives hope “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”[37] It can be unequivocally asserted that the resurrection mattered to those who had witnessed it, and it made an indelible change in their beliefs and actions.
But we must ask if the disciples could have been deceived or invented the story, and would they have been willing to die for what they knew to be false. N.T. Wright argues that Hellenistic literature provides evidence that the ancients were “aware of haunting, appearances, and so forth”[38]of those who had died. However, such visions were by no means the type of events that would be interpreted as a resurrection from the dead or an event that would cause such a radical worldview shift as to cause someone to be willing to be martyred. Rather, such events were “not cases of people ceasing to be dead and resuming something like normal life, but precisely of the dead remaining dead and being encountered as visitors from the world of the dead, who have not and will not resume anything like the kind of life they had before.”[39] To thus claim that the disciples were deceived by a vision, cognitive dissonance, or mass hallucinations ignores the cultural milieu in which the disciples lived. In addition, claims of hallucination or cognitive dissonance cannot adequately address the willingness to die for the claim that they had seen the resurrected Christ. Lee Strobel succinctly addresses the point by noting that “[p]eople will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they’re true, but people won’t die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false.”[40]
Conversion on the Way to Damascus
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610)
For our final line of evidence we look to the apostle Paul and his conversion experience upon seeing the resurrected Jesus. The testimony of Paul as to his experience is particularly useful as he “is the earliest known author to mention the resurrection of Jesus, and there are numerous extant texts he wrote that give us clues pertaining to the nature of Jesus’ resurrection.”[41] The Scriptural record is clear that Paul was antagonistic to the early church “ravaging the church, and…dragg[ing] off men and women…to prison”[42] Paul testifies of himself that he “was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent”[43] of the church prior to his conversion. The catalyst that drove Paul from persecutor to willing martyr must then have been drastic and profound. By Paul’s own words and the record of Luke we learn that this event was seeing the resurrected Jesus.
Paul writes in Galatians that he received his ministry “through a revelation of Jesus the Messiah”[44]in which God “was pleased to reveal his Son to me”[45] and not through the commissioning of men. Gerd Luedemann contends that Paul’s use of the phrase revelation is indicative of “an experience in terms of its religious character”[46] and that this revealing was not a true experience of Christ resurrected but only a vision. However, such an interpretation does not capture the full scope of what Paul is saying. The revelation which Paul experienced was one of commissioning by which he was to “preach among the Gentiles” the gospel of Christ. Wright notes that

[A] comparison of this passage with Romans 1.3-4 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 reminds us that when Paul here talks about ‘the gospel’ he does not mean ‘justification by faith’ or ‘the inclusion of the Gentiles’. He means ‘Jesus, the Messiah, is risen from the dead and is the lord of the world’…[T]he best way of taking Galatians 1.12 and 16 is to insist that when Paul spoke of the revelation of Jesus the Messiah, of God’s son, he was taking it for granted that in and through his revelation he had become convinced that Jesus had been raised from the dead in the sense explained by those other two letters.[47]

            At this point we need to examine Paul’s description of Christ’s resurrection appearances as recorded in 1 Corinthians to bring the statements in Galatians into their full context. 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is a creedal formula that most scholars agree “was formed in Jerusalem and that Paul either received it directly from the Jerusalem apostles or from someone he deemed very credible.”[48]Additionally, this creed in its basic formulation has a very early date “within four to six years of Jesus’ crucifixion and…it comes from the eyewitnesses themselves.”[49] As we’ve already noted, the eyewitnesses mentioned in the creed all testified that Jesus had appeared to them in alive in bodily form. The reader is thus invited to test the veracity of their claims by being given the list of those to whom Christ had appeared and the statement that most of those mentioned were still alive and thus able to be questioned. To this list of witnesses Paul adds that “as one untimely born, he appeared to me also.”[50] Paul is not trying to indicate that his experience was different in quality than that of the other witnesses as some contend. Rather, he is showing his own unpreparedness for the life altering change seeing Jesus resurrected had upon him. In effect, he “explains the difference between himself and the others not in terms of his seeing of Jesus being a different sort of ‘seeing’, but in terms of his own personal unreadiness for such an experience.”[51]
Paul Writing His Epistles
Possibly Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632)
            What does this say of Paul’s experience and the possibility that it was either a mistaken hallucination or a fabricated event? As we have previously noted, the idea of a vision or visitation of a spirit would not have been interpreted as a full physical resurrection, but rather been considered a haunting by the recently deceased. Furthermore, Paul’s declaration that he was a “Pharisee, a son of Pharisees”[52] helps to demonstrate that the resurrection as described by him is not the fiction that would have been told had he been creating a legend extemporaneously. The tradition of the Pharisees was rooted in the second Temple belief that “[r]esurrection…was not simply about ‘life after death’; it was about a new, embodied life after ‘life after death’. Nobody supposed that the patriarchs, Moses, Reuben or anyone else had yet been given this resurrection life.”[53] Even the rabbinic tradition of the second century AD, which grew out of the Pharisee’s beliefs, continued to look ahead because the “resurrection of the dead, though confidently expected, has not yet occurred.”[54]
            With our historical basis in place we must finally ask how best to use the historical and cultural evidence for the validity of the resurrection when confronted with a contrary explanation. Since we have examined the claims of the resurrection from a historical perspective and found them to fit with the historical record and the cultural beliefs that were prevalent, it is only fitting that we examine counter-claims in the same way and see if they are capable of explaining both as well. Habermas and Licona point out that “as the Christian can be expected to provide facts to support her claim that Jesus rose from the dead, the critic must do likewise for his opposing explanations…The critic must provide good reason why [their] theory…offers a better explanation for the facts than does Jesus’ actual bodily resurrection.”[55]
            In comparing the resurrection narratives to any competing claims it is necessary to have some criterion in place to judge which is most in accordance with what really happened. Licona provides a set of criteria which provide an ample basis on which to compare and a few of them merit mentioning in brief here. First, explanatory scope is the means by which we “look at the quantity of facts accounted for by a hypothesis. The hypothesis that includes the most relevant data has the greatest explanatory scope.”[56] Second, explanatory power examines the data to determine which account “explains the date with the least amount of effort, vagueness and ambiguity.”[57] Third, plausibility determines whether other areas of knowledge and accepted fact lean towards one particular hypothesis or the other. Finally, each claim must be examined to see which is less ad hoc by avoiding “nonevidenced assumptions” that go “beyond what is already known.”[58]
            We have only mentioned in passing some counter claims to the resurrection such as Luedemann’s claim the resurrections events were hallucinations, the claim to cognitive dissonance among the disciples, or the supposedly strictly religious nature of the Easter narrative which has no basis in actual events. However, if we were to examine each of these, and others like them, we would find that each is unable to account for some aspect of the criteria that Licona suggests. Indeed we would find that each must manipulate or ignore the historicity of the records or the cultural beliefs that would have been incapable of conceiving of the resurrection as presented in the gospels. We rightly reject these explanations because, as Karl Barth put it,

(quite apart from the many inconsistencies of detail) it all smacks too strongly of an apologetic to explain away the mystery and miracle attested in the texts. And this is something that cannot be said of the identification of the Easter event with the rise of the Easter faith…[The belief in Jesus’ resurrection] did at least keep closer to the texts by not only maintaining but trying to show that the disciples did not come to this faith of themselves, but were brought to it by some factor concretely at work in the world…[59]

We may rest assured that ours is not a blind faith informed by legend, but a faith that has roots deeply imbedded in the historical reality that is the promise of our future reality in Jesus Christ.


[1] Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.3.
[2] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 239.
[3] Lucian of Samosata, The Passing of Peregrinus, 11, http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/peregrinus.htm (accessed November 17, 2012).
[4] Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, 246.
[5] Tacitus, Annals, XV.44, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Annals/15B*.html#note28 (accessed November 17, 2012).
[6] Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Dallas, TX: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 120.
[7] Ibid., 121.
[8] Deuteronomy 21:23, ESV.
[9] Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, XII.5.4.
[10] Ibid., XVII.10.10.
[11] Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, V.11.1.
[12] Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, 306.
[13] Luke 24:3, ESV.
[14] Matthew 28:15, ESV.
[15] Acts 26:23, ESV.
[16] Acts 26:26, ESV.
[17] Matthew 28:7, ESV.
[18] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), Kindle e-book, 616.
[19] Ibid., 625.
[20] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 35.
[21] Ibid., 43.
[22] Ibid., 690-691.
[23] Ibid., 99.
[24] Matthew 26:56, Mark 14:50.
[25] Acts 4:19-20.
[26] Acts 5:40.
[27] Acts 5:41.
[28] Acts 7:57-60, 12:1-2.
[29] Hippolytus, On the Twelve Apostles: Where Each of Them Preached, And Where He Met His End, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.iii.v.ii.html (accessed November 18, 2012).
[30] Clement, The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, Chapter V “No less evils have arisen from the same source in the most recent times. The martyrdom of Peter and Paul”, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ii.ii.v.html, (accessed November 18, 2012).
[31] Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, 366.
[32] Acts 2:24, ESV.
[33] Acts 2:31, 32, ESV.
[34] Cf. Acts 3:14, 15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:39-41; 13:30.
[35] Revelation 1:5, ESV.
[36] Revelation 1:7, ESV.
[37] 1 Peter 1:3, ESV.
[38] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 63.
[39] Ibid., 64.
[40] Lee Strobel, The Case For Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 247.
[41] Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, 437.
[42] Acts 8:3, ESV.
[43] 1Timothy 1:13, ESV.
[44] Galatians 1:12, ESV.
[45] Galatians 1:16, ESV.
[46] Gerd Luedemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), Kindle e-book, 52.
[47] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 380-381.
[48] Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, 237-238.
[49] Ibid., 231.
[50] 1 Corinthians 15:8.
[51] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 328.
[52] Acts, 23:6, ESV.
[53] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 199.
[54] Ibid., 194.
[55] Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 716.
[56] Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, 109.
[57] Ibid., 109.
[58] Ibid., 110.
[59] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation (New York, NY: T&T Clark International, 2004), 340-341.

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