Jesus’ Resurrection
and Christian Origins
A Historical Argument
Based Upon the High Christology
of N.T. Wright
4 Critical Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
What did people in the first century, both pagans
and Jews, hope for? What did they believe about
life after death, and particularly about resurrection?
What did the early Christians believe on the same
subjects? What did they hope for?
What reasons did the early Christians give for their
hope and belief, and what did they mean by the key
word ‘resurrection’ which they used of Jesus?
What can the historian say by way of comment on
this early Christian claim?
Life After Death
in First Century Paganism
Homer
Odysseus’s journey to the underworld
Hades
Agnosticism & Epicureanism
“Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo”
Life After Death
in First Century Paganism
Plato
Blissful afterlife, at least for some
Possibility of reincarnation
Mystery Religions
Stoicism
Punctuated Equilibrium?
Life After Death
in First Century Paganism
Euripides’s play Alcestis
Hercules does battle with Thanatos
Rescues Alcestis from his clutches
Brings her back to sorrowing husband
Later Christian iconography may be
influenced by this
Probably more “interested curiosity”
than popular belief
Life After Death
in First Century Paganism
Question of bodily resurrection in paganism
always nets a negative answer
Homer: No way back!
Plato: Who would want to come back?
Many different ideas, but one is conspicuously
absent: Resurrection
Anastasi~ always refers to something everyone
knows is impossible
Aeschylus’s Eumenides: “when a man has died, and his
blood is spilt on the ground, there is no resurrection”
Apollo
Life After Death
in First Century Paganism
Hope? Temples to the goddess Spes?
Temporal “this-worldly” conceptualization
Peace and security, social stability, good harvests,
large families, good fortune
A lasting name and a reputation
Succession of one’s family, city, culture
Life After Death
in First Century Paganism
Some believed in the apotheosis of heroes
and kings
Hercules began as a mortal and was exalted
Alexander & Julio-Claudians were deified
Various legitimating devices, such as witnessing
the departed person’s soul ascending to heaven
Julius Caesar in the form of a comet
Or as an eagle, as depicted on the Arch of Titus
Probably not the stuff of ordinary
people’s beliefs.
Many did believe a strong central ruler
would guarantee freedom and security
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
Sheol: The abode of the dead
Much like Homer’s Hades
People are asleep, and can sometimes be
awakened, as with Saul and Samuel
Dangerous and forbidden practice
Psalms explore ways in which YHWH’s
love will still be known, even after death
Psalm 73 is the clearest statement
Hope beyond the grave predicated not upon the
existence of an eternal soul, as in Plato, but upon
the “Hesed” of YHWH here and now and into the
unforseeable future as well.
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
RESURRECTION
bursts the bounds of paganism
Some presuppose a progression
No future hope --> Disembodied future hope -->
Resurrection
Better to understand a paradox between the
early idea of Sheol and the later idea of a
Resurrection Hope
Isaiah 26; Ezekiel 37; Hosea 6 opening the way for
a new view, generated by Israel’s own basic beliefs
and contingent circumstances
Daniel 12: The new view fully expressed
Israel’s latter view rooted in a strong belief in
the goodness of present-tense life, YHWH’s
created order and human life within it
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
RESURRECTION
Not just survival or a form of life after death
A particular belief in a future event
People do not pass from death to
resurrection
Some interim period, after which the effects of
death are reversed in resurrection
Always means the reversal, the undoing, the
conquest over death and its effects.
Precisely what Homer, Plato, Aeschylus
and the other pagans denied, and what
some Jews and all early Christians
affirmed
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
RESURRECTION
Means being given back one’s body
Life after “life after death.”
Always includes an intermediate state
The righteous are in God’s hand (Wisdom 3:1)
A quasi-angelic intermediate existence
Spirits that lived on prior to the resurrection
Alive to God
Paradise (borrowed from Persians) (Zoroaster?)
• 1 Enoch 37 -70 the peaceful garden where people
rest before their new bodily life begins
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
Not much canonical teaching
A wide range of beliefs, running from those
who deny the resurrection to those who insist
upon it
Saducees saw it as a political doctrine
Pharisees incorporated it as part of their generally
revolutionary ideology
• Incentive to martyrdom (cf Daniel & Maccabees)
Philo saw disembodied bliss for the immortal soul
(cf Jubilees)
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
RESURRECTION
Just one point on a spectrum of
Jewish beliefs about life after death
How, then, do we find all these
ideas conflating into one unified
Christian concept so early in the
Christian era?
Life After Death
in First Century Judaism
RESURRECTION
A point-in-time event
Part of God’s future for Israel and the World
Unspecific in detail
Some who believed in resurrection also
believed in the coming of Messiah
Defeat YHWH’s enemies, establish YHWH’s Reign
A political belief as well as a theological one
It was from one such political, messianic
renewal movement that Christianity is
born, clearly making two specific claims:
Jesus is Messiah
Jesus’ resurrection proves He is Messiah
The Early Christian Hope
Modified and Realized
Early Christian views were clearly more
Jewish than pagan, yet very different
Early Christians modified the Jewish concept
Christianity’s ultimate hope was always
seen as the resurrection of the body
No range of beliefs as we find in Judaism
Some Corinthian Christians denied the
resurrection, most likely reverting to pagan views,
but Paul corrects this (1Corinthians 15:12)
Two named in 2 Timothy 2:18 say the resurrection
has already happened, again Paul corrects
By the end of the first generation some were
spiritualizing it, opening the door to insipient
gnosticism (cf. Epistle to Rheginos)
The Early Christian Hope
Modified and Realized
Christian Resurrection had a much
more precise definition than in Judaism
An act of new creation
Accomplished by the Holy Spirit
Resurrection body already planned by God
A transformed body with different properties
So engrained in Early Christianity that it already
affects teaching on other subjects:
• Romans 6 (Baptism)
• Colossians 3 (Ethics)
The Early Christian Hope
Modified and Realized
What is “An Inheritance in Heaven?”
1 Peter 1:4
2 Corinthians 5:1
Philippians 3:20
The new identity which, at present, is
kept safe in heaven with God, to be
brought from heaven to Earth.
Heaven is not the Christian’s ultimate
destination
The New Testament promises a renewed
cosmos, including a renewed Earth
The Early Christian Hope
Modified and Realized
Unlike 2nd Temple Judaism, where the
Resurrection was one single, allembracing moment
Early Christian Resurrection split into
two parts:
First, the Messiah
Rom 1.4; 1 Cor 15.20-28.
Then at His coming, all His people
1 Cor 15.23.
It makes sense, as a follow-on to 2nd
Temple Judaism, but no Jew had ever
said it before
The Early Christian Hope
Modified and Realized
Jesus: The “un-messianic Messiah”
No decisive victory of Israel’s enemies
No justice and peace to the world
No “lion laying down with the lamb”
Once Jesus was crucified, why would
anyone claim Him as the Messiah?
No succession, although James was a good
candidate
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
Early Christians retained the Jewish
belief in resurrection
Modified it
Sharpened it
They also retained the Jewish idea of a
coming Messiah
Kept Jesus as Messiah, rather than a
successor to the position as we would expect
Their explanation of this was that Jesus
was bodily raised from death three days
after His crucifixion
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
Moving Onward
Did the Disciples invent the idea of His
resurrection from Jesus’ teaching?
They didn’t need to do that. Other Jewish
“Messiahs” had died and remained heroes, and
their movements flourished.
Still doesn’t account for the modifications and new
focus they gave to the existing Jewish notions of
resurrection.
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
Did the Early Church invent the
resurrection stories?
Some have said, Jesus’ followers came first
to a belief in his exaltation, and they
deduced from this, either by logic or
devotion, that he had been raised from the
dead.
The logic fails at every point when we remind
ourselves of how these ideas worked within the
historical world of the first century.
Resurrection was something that had to do with
bodies and would occur to all people at a future time.
Why would the Early Church use that term when they
knew it meant something else?
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
When Paul sums up the Gospel tradition in 1
Corinthians 15:21 it is clear that the Gospel is
about an event which occurred at some interval
after Jesus’ death
Paul’s summary must also have agreed with Cephas
and Apollos, otherwise the Corinthians would have
been able to challenge him on it.
Jews had well-developed ways of talking about
martyrs being honored and respected, and they
believed that they would be raised in the future.
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
The story could only have developed
from Resurrection to Christology.
No possibility exists for it to have
developed in reverse.
Even if the story were fabricated,
why would Jews use Resurrection
and Messianic hope so differently
from what they had been taught?
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
RESURRECTION: the thing Aeschylus
said could never happen, that Daniel had
assured the Jews would happen to all
God’s people at once, had happened to
Jesus, all by Himself. This is clearly
what the early Christians meant to say.
They were using the language of
Resurrection and Messiahship in their
normal sense.
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
Matthew records the debate that
occurred, that some said Jesus’ body
was stolen, and others said it wasn’t.
This in itself tells us that in the first century
‘resurrection’ wasn’t about exaltation, spiritual
presence, a sense of forgiveness, or divinization;
it was about bodies and tombs. This was what
they meant when they said Jesus was “raised
from the dead” as proof of His Messiahship
The Early Christian Hope
From Theology to Story
Luke and John tell much fuller stories
about the resurrection
Stories which provided the basis for the
transformed belief about resurrection outlined
earlier:
Stories about Jesus’ body being neither
abandoned (as though he had simply ‘gone to
heaven’ and was now a ‘spiritual’, ‘non-bodily’
presence) nor merely resuscitated, like Lazarus,
and like (perhaps) the martyrs expected to be, but
transformed.
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
What can the historian say that will
account for the early Christians’ claim
that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised
from the dead?
3 Kinds of unbelieving explanations
Jesus didn’t really die
Someone stole the body, leaving an empty
tomb
Post-resurrection appearances were
visions or mass-hallucinations
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
Christian historians have our work cut out
for us
1.
2.
3.
We must show that Jesus really died
We must deal with the stolen body and
wrong tomb theories
We must show that the Disciples really did
see and speak to a figure who was not only
demonstrably the crucified Jesus, but who
showed Himself to be in some ways
different, though not different in the ways
one might expect after reading Daniel or
Isaiah.
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
Historians are not impeached by their
point of view.
We believe testimony from a host of
historical sources that obviously have
something to prove and so are writing
their history.
The fact that a historian has a point of
view doesn’t mean that nothing
happened!
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
We must also take care not to allow
the historical method to become
Lord, to set the boundaries of what
we can know.
We can know, apart from historical
proof, that Jesus was raised from the
dead, and that is the proof of His
Messiahship
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
The resurrection did not “prove”
that Jesus is divine.
What if the thief had been raised?
Would everyone think he was God?
It was Jesus’ declaration that He
was/is Messiah, the Son of God,
coupled with His resurrection that
gives us the basis for belief in His
deity.
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
Historical investigation, I propose, brings us to the point where we
must say that the tomb previously housing a thoroughly dead
Jesus was empty, and that his followers saw and met someone
they were convinced was this same Jesus, bodily alive though in
a new, transformed fashion. The empty tomb on the one hand
and the convincing appearances of Jesus on the other are the
two conclusions the historian must draw. I do not think that
history can force us to draw any particular further deductions
beyond these two phenomena; the conclusion the disciples
drew is there for the taking, but it is open to us, as it was to
them, to remain cautious. Thomas waited a week before
believing what he had been told. On Matthew’s mountain, some
had their doubts.
The Early Christian Hope
From Story to Event
However, the elegance and simplicity of explaining the two
outstanding phenomena, the empty tomb and the postresurrection appearances, by means of one another, ought to
be obvious. Were it not for the astounding, and world-viewchallenging, claim that is thereby made, I think everyone would
long since have concluded that this was the correct historical
result. If some other account explained the rise of Christianity
as naturally, completely and satisfyingly as does the early
Christians’ belief, while leaving normal worldviews intact, it
would be accepted without demur.
The Early Christian Hope
Conclusions
What we are left with, then, is this:
The single greatest and most powerful
evidence of the veracity of the
Christian Gospel lies with those who
first believed, and then spoke clearly
about what they knew to be true.
The empty tomb and the personal
appearances of Jesus afterward are
the most incontrovertible evidence
there is!