In his book, Jesus Through the Centuries, the late Jaroslav Pelikan begins by writing,
Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of super magnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left? It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse, and in his name that millions pray.
Last Sunday Christian churches were filled with people celebrating the signal event in the life of Jesus that would make him unlike any person who ever lived – the fulfillment of his claim that he would rise from being dead. If one accepts the resurrection miracle, then all of the claims Jesus made about himself must also be accepted – his oneness with God, his redemptive mission, and his exclusive agency as the way to eternal salvation.
Did the resurrection happen?
The historicity of Jesus, his crucifixion, death, and burial are well established by witnesses and secular historians – both his advocates and adversaries – who wrote in the first century and therefore were historically close to these events. Modern scholars accept this historicity without equivocation.
The controversy begins with the events after his death and burial.
There are those who argue that the resurrection miracle must be accepted by faith (implicitly without substantiating evidence) and there are those who argue that miracles which defy the physical laws of existence are impossible (implicitly denying that many things in our existence can’t be explained) Beyond their narrow coterie of adherents, neither of these extreme positions can ever be successfully advanced as an objective argument that has a chance at being accepted or criticized by mainstream advocates and adversaries. The poles are too far apart.
True faith, however, is not blind faith. True faith is the most reasonable conclusion one can reach based on the consistency of facts, corroborating evidence, and the testimony of witnesses. Likewise true skepticism is not blind skepticism. A true skeptic similarly examines facts, corroborating evidence, and the testimony of witnesses to determine if the conventional conclusion can be explained any other way. A true skeptic is a critical thinker and true faith is based on critical thinking. There will never be enough facts, enough data, or experience to explain anything with absolute certainty. Just look at how the understanding of “matter” has changed since the Middle Ages to the present, for example. True faith and true skepticism are simply two sides of the same coin. Neither believes it is possible to absolutely know anything.
That said, there has never been anyone who claimed to have witnessed the resurrection as it took place. But there has been ample evidence that it had to have taken place given circumstances that existed before and after the event. While the analogy is imperfect, detectives solve crimes and lawyers try cases without eye witnesses, using evidence and testimony. Likewise, the argument for the resurrection can be made with reason, motive, and circumstantial evidence – not blind faith. To refute the resurrection argument, one would have to present compelling reasons for interpreting the evidence and motives in a different way.
The discovery of the empty tomb, for example, was made by women, according to the authors of four biblical history books – the Gospels – namely Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Because women were held in low esteem in Jewish society, and weren’t even allowed to be legal witnesses, it is unlikely that this assertion is not fact. With Jesus’ arrest and trial, all of the men who had been his disciples fled and hid behind locked doors, terrified that they might come to a similar end. Why would the authors of the Gospels historically embarrass these men – the future leaders of the Christian movement – and have the empty tomb discovered by women who followed Jesus unless that fact were true?
The fact of the empty tomb was later confirmed by the male disciples upon hearing the women’s witness, but neither their witness nor the women’s became an object of controversy in Jerusalem during the generation that lived during these events. Why? Because the empty tomb must have become widely accepted in a very short time. Because anyone who doubted that the crucified body of Jesus was missing could verify it for themselves by walking the short distance from Jerusalem to the tomb. Because absent a body, the tomb never became an object of Christian veneration by Christ’s followers in the years following the crucifixion. They knew Jesus wasn’t in it.
While this establishes the empty tomb it does not explain what happened to the body.
The Jewish leaders who had instigated the crucifixion of Jesus, however, also became aware of the missing body. Matthew’s account of the scene at the tomb is the only one which mentions guards were stationed there. After the women’s discovery, those guards went to the city and told the chief priests “everything that had happened.” Everything. Whatever the guards reported, Matthew says the priests then bribed them and instructed that they were to lie by saying the disciples stole the body while the guards were asleep.
Despite the unlikelihood that all of several guards would fall asleep at the same time, and all would sleep through the noise of more than a few men toiling to break the seal and roll away a large stone to steal a body, why include the-guards-were-asleep tale in a story whose bias is to advocate for the resurrection – unless there was a cover up? What was being covered up? A sleeping witness can’t testify to anything – certainly not as witness to a theft or the resurrection. But if the guards were awake and saw something which could corroborate what happened in the pre-dawn that Sunday morning, it would be worth all of the hush money the chief priests would pay.
Matthew tells what happened.
And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.
First century Jews believed in angels. There were reported accounts of encounters with them. When the guards regained their wits and told the chief priests what had happened, the Jewish religious establishment would have had little choice but to keep the guard quiet and to concoct the stolen body hoax to explain the empty tomb.
Anyone continuing to believe that the disciples stole Jesus’ body should consider that these men had denied their association with their leader during his arrest and trial, had not (except for one of them) attended his crucifixion and death, had been hiding behind closed doors in fear of the Jewish establishment during the weekend, and had not accompanied women to the tomb in the pre-dawn hours of dark when they were least likely to be seen. How would these same men muster the nerve to steal a body under guard?
Okay, perhaps others antagonistic to the followers of Jesus stole the body. For what motive? Assuming that the theft of the body could figure into some angle to disprove the resurrection, why didn’t the thieves produce the body when the resurrection was being proclaimed 50 days later? Because there was no body – anywhere.
The tomb was empty and no one had a motive and opportunity to take the body. But, there also is enough circumstantial evidence of an inexplicable supernatural event by eye witnesses because something induced the Jewish religious establishment to hush it up with a bribe. Why?
If Jesus had risen from the dead, as he said he would, that could spell trouble for the Jewish leaders. The Roman general, Pompey the Great, invaded Palestine in 63 BC, initiating seven centuries of Roman rule. There had been many uprisings in Palestine since the Roman occupation began, and the region had a reputation in Rome of being a haven of troublemakers. Ultimately, an uprising would occur in 70 AD – about 40 years after these events – that would result in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.
When Jesus began teaching his message that the kingdom of God was coming, his followers misunderstood his mission, thinking he had come to establish an earthly kingdom that would liberate the Jews from their Roman occupiers. This terrified the religious establishment. John tells why using the words of the chief priests:
Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place (the Temple) and our nation. So from that day on, the Jewish leaders plotted to kill Jesus.
The Jewish leaders did succeed in getting Jesus executed, but much to their chagrin, the Roman procurator insisted on crucifying him with a placard over his head that declared Jesus to be the king of the Jews. Now this “king” goes missing from his tomb and a bribe has been paid to suppress an apparent supernatural event.
If that is all we have, the argument for the resurrection would be weak. But there is more. Having heard from the women that Jesus’ body is missing, Peter and John go to the tomb to observe for themselves. John tells his recollection:
Peter then came out with [John], and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but [John] outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then [John], who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed. (Underline mine)
The word “saw” is used three times in this account. Translated into English, it would seem that each instance of “seeing” was equal. But the writer uses three different Greek words to describe what was seen in this event for a good reason. The first “saw” is a word that could be translated in English as peep or glance; it was a quick look. The second “saw” uses a word that describes a more analytical way of looking. Peter, for example, studied the scene sufficiently to observe that the burial wrappings and the facial cloth were lying separately.
The third “saw” – the one used in reference to John – is a Greek verb that means to see and understand, to “get it” because all of the clues fall in place. John’s seeing produced understanding that caused him to believe.
What John saw that caused belief can only be speculated but it had to be something so compelling that no other conclusion could be reached except that a miracle had occurred. Quite possibly, the burial wrappings that had encased Jesus remained fixed in a way that a body could not have gotten out of them except miraculously. A bunch of linen strips tossed about the tomb would not produce that kind of insight and belief. A thief could have left that evidence. Whatever happened there happened without haste. The facial napkin was folded and placed separately. Why? Perhaps so an observer could plainly see that the undisturbed burial strips no longer contained a body.
Why didn’t Peter see this? There is nothing that says he didn’t. Luke describes Peter leaving the tomb “marveling” at what he had seen. Why didn’t the women see this? The angel they encountered scared the wits out of them, as it did the guards, and they fled – only learning that Jesus wasn’t there from the angel. Peter and John encountered no reported angels and quite possibly felt it safe to explore.
One might expect that the testimony of Peter and John would have been sufficient to spark a wildfire of rumor that Jesus had risen from the dead. But it still would have been hearsay evidence. Evidence of the resurrection had to be made known in a way that it could not be disputed, and it was – by Jesus himself.
Paul, a persecutor of the Christian movement who later converted to it because of the compelling evidence that a resurrection had occurred, wrote this about 20 to 25 years after the event:
What I received I passed on to you … that Christ died for our sins according to the [Jewish prophecy], that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the [Jewish prophecy], and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also.
Significantly, most of these people were still living when Paul wrote this and therefore could be consulted to corroborate Paul’s assertion that over 500 people had seen Jesus after his burial and apparent resurrection. Moreover, while Jesus appeared to some people individually, he appeared to most as a group. Individual sightings could have been fobbed off by disbelievers as a hoax; but how is a hoax perpetrated among 500 people who unlike, perhaps, “the twelve” and the “apostles” could not have collaborated in a lie?
The last two Paul mentions – James and himself – were particularly important appearances because neither believed Jesus was the son of God during Jesus’ life until he appeared to them individually after his death. James was the earthly brother of Jesus and would be martyred for his belief in the resurrected Jesus. Paul encountered Jesus on a journey to arrest Christians about five to seven years after the resurrection. It was an experience that changed Paul’s life. He became a Christian missionary, primarily to the Gentile world and would be martyred most likely in Rome.
On the day of Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks which came 50 days after the Jewish Passover, the followers of Jesus and his disciples became fiery evangelists and bold witnesses in the new Christian movement as Luke records in the biblical book of Acts. Only their belief in the resurrection, which had been revealed to them by direct contact with Jesus, can explain this transformation. That transformation would make them willing to die for their faith.
In fact, hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed in the two centuries following the resurrection. They were tortured, beheaded, crucified, sawn in two, covered in tar and turned into torches to light Roman roads. They were wrapped in animal skins and thrown in the Roman arenas where wild beasts tore them to pieces and devoured them. For what? To protect a hoax that they had stolen a body to give lie to a resurrection story? Liars don’t make good martyrs.
Knowing what lay in store for them, persecution scattered these early believers to the ends of the Roman Empire where they founded many communities of believers. Those communities in turn would, in connection with their trades and vocations, travel throughout the Roman world, starting other communities of believers until they could say the good news of Jesus’ resurrection had been spread to the entire world.
The key evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is not only his empty tomb. It is also the disciples’ experiences with the literal appearances of the risen Jesus that caused their inexplicable transformation from cowards into crusaders who were willing to die for their faith that they too would be resurrected to a life without end. So compelling is the evidence of the resurrection that it has been the central rationale for Christian discipleship for over two millennia.
That is the message of Easter.
Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of super magnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left? It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse, and in his name that millions pray.
Last Sunday Christian churches were filled with people celebrating the signal event in the life of Jesus that would make him unlike any person who ever lived – the fulfillment of his claim that he would rise from being dead. If one accepts the resurrection miracle, then all of the claims Jesus made about himself must also be accepted – his oneness with God, his redemptive mission, and his exclusive agency as the way to eternal salvation.
Did the resurrection happen?
The historicity of Jesus, his crucifixion, death, and burial are well established by witnesses and secular historians – both his advocates and adversaries – who wrote in the first century and therefore were historically close to these events. Modern scholars accept this historicity without equivocation.
The controversy begins with the events after his death and burial.
There are those who argue that the resurrection miracle must be accepted by faith (implicitly without substantiating evidence) and there are those who argue that miracles which defy the physical laws of existence are impossible (implicitly denying that many things in our existence can’t be explained) Beyond their narrow coterie of adherents, neither of these extreme positions can ever be successfully advanced as an objective argument that has a chance at being accepted or criticized by mainstream advocates and adversaries. The poles are too far apart.
True faith, however, is not blind faith. True faith is the most reasonable conclusion one can reach based on the consistency of facts, corroborating evidence, and the testimony of witnesses. Likewise true skepticism is not blind skepticism. A true skeptic similarly examines facts, corroborating evidence, and the testimony of witnesses to determine if the conventional conclusion can be explained any other way. A true skeptic is a critical thinker and true faith is based on critical thinking. There will never be enough facts, enough data, or experience to explain anything with absolute certainty. Just look at how the understanding of “matter” has changed since the Middle Ages to the present, for example. True faith and true skepticism are simply two sides of the same coin. Neither believes it is possible to absolutely know anything.
That said, there has never been anyone who claimed to have witnessed the resurrection as it took place. But there has been ample evidence that it had to have taken place given circumstances that existed before and after the event. While the analogy is imperfect, detectives solve crimes and lawyers try cases without eye witnesses, using evidence and testimony. Likewise, the argument for the resurrection can be made with reason, motive, and circumstantial evidence – not blind faith. To refute the resurrection argument, one would have to present compelling reasons for interpreting the evidence and motives in a different way.
The discovery of the empty tomb, for example, was made by women, according to the authors of four biblical history books – the Gospels – namely Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Because women were held in low esteem in Jewish society, and weren’t even allowed to be legal witnesses, it is unlikely that this assertion is not fact. With Jesus’ arrest and trial, all of the men who had been his disciples fled and hid behind locked doors, terrified that they might come to a similar end. Why would the authors of the Gospels historically embarrass these men – the future leaders of the Christian movement – and have the empty tomb discovered by women who followed Jesus unless that fact were true?
The fact of the empty tomb was later confirmed by the male disciples upon hearing the women’s witness, but neither their witness nor the women’s became an object of controversy in Jerusalem during the generation that lived during these events. Why? Because the empty tomb must have become widely accepted in a very short time. Because anyone who doubted that the crucified body of Jesus was missing could verify it for themselves by walking the short distance from Jerusalem to the tomb. Because absent a body, the tomb never became an object of Christian veneration by Christ’s followers in the years following the crucifixion. They knew Jesus wasn’t in it.
While this establishes the empty tomb it does not explain what happened to the body.
The Jewish leaders who had instigated the crucifixion of Jesus, however, also became aware of the missing body. Matthew’s account of the scene at the tomb is the only one which mentions guards were stationed there. After the women’s discovery, those guards went to the city and told the chief priests “everything that had happened.” Everything. Whatever the guards reported, Matthew says the priests then bribed them and instructed that they were to lie by saying the disciples stole the body while the guards were asleep.
Despite the unlikelihood that all of several guards would fall asleep at the same time, and all would sleep through the noise of more than a few men toiling to break the seal and roll away a large stone to steal a body, why include the-guards-were-asleep tale in a story whose bias is to advocate for the resurrection – unless there was a cover up? What was being covered up? A sleeping witness can’t testify to anything – certainly not as witness to a theft or the resurrection. But if the guards were awake and saw something which could corroborate what happened in the pre-dawn that Sunday morning, it would be worth all of the hush money the chief priests would pay.
Matthew tells what happened.
And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.
First century Jews believed in angels. There were reported accounts of encounters with them. When the guards regained their wits and told the chief priests what had happened, the Jewish religious establishment would have had little choice but to keep the guard quiet and to concoct the stolen body hoax to explain the empty tomb.
Anyone continuing to believe that the disciples stole Jesus’ body should consider that these men had denied their association with their leader during his arrest and trial, had not (except for one of them) attended his crucifixion and death, had been hiding behind closed doors in fear of the Jewish establishment during the weekend, and had not accompanied women to the tomb in the pre-dawn hours of dark when they were least likely to be seen. How would these same men muster the nerve to steal a body under guard?
Okay, perhaps others antagonistic to the followers of Jesus stole the body. For what motive? Assuming that the theft of the body could figure into some angle to disprove the resurrection, why didn’t the thieves produce the body when the resurrection was being proclaimed 50 days later? Because there was no body – anywhere.
The tomb was empty and no one had a motive and opportunity to take the body. But, there also is enough circumstantial evidence of an inexplicable supernatural event by eye witnesses because something induced the Jewish religious establishment to hush it up with a bribe. Why?
If Jesus had risen from the dead, as he said he would, that could spell trouble for the Jewish leaders. The Roman general, Pompey the Great, invaded Palestine in 63 BC, initiating seven centuries of Roman rule. There had been many uprisings in Palestine since the Roman occupation began, and the region had a reputation in Rome of being a haven of troublemakers. Ultimately, an uprising would occur in 70 AD – about 40 years after these events – that would result in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.
When Jesus began teaching his message that the kingdom of God was coming, his followers misunderstood his mission, thinking he had come to establish an earthly kingdom that would liberate the Jews from their Roman occupiers. This terrified the religious establishment. John tells why using the words of the chief priests:
Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place (the Temple) and our nation. So from that day on, the Jewish leaders plotted to kill Jesus.
The Jewish leaders did succeed in getting Jesus executed, but much to their chagrin, the Roman procurator insisted on crucifying him with a placard over his head that declared Jesus to be the king of the Jews. Now this “king” goes missing from his tomb and a bribe has been paid to suppress an apparent supernatural event.
If that is all we have, the argument for the resurrection would be weak. But there is more. Having heard from the women that Jesus’ body is missing, Peter and John go to the tomb to observe for themselves. John tells his recollection:
Peter then came out with [John], and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but [John] outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then [John], who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed. (Underline mine)
The word “saw” is used three times in this account. Translated into English, it would seem that each instance of “seeing” was equal. But the writer uses three different Greek words to describe what was seen in this event for a good reason. The first “saw” is a word that could be translated in English as peep or glance; it was a quick look. The second “saw” uses a word that describes a more analytical way of looking. Peter, for example, studied the scene sufficiently to observe that the burial wrappings and the facial cloth were lying separately.
The third “saw” – the one used in reference to John – is a Greek verb that means to see and understand, to “get it” because all of the clues fall in place. John’s seeing produced understanding that caused him to believe.
What John saw that caused belief can only be speculated but it had to be something so compelling that no other conclusion could be reached except that a miracle had occurred. Quite possibly, the burial wrappings that had encased Jesus remained fixed in a way that a body could not have gotten out of them except miraculously. A bunch of linen strips tossed about the tomb would not produce that kind of insight and belief. A thief could have left that evidence. Whatever happened there happened without haste. The facial napkin was folded and placed separately. Why? Perhaps so an observer could plainly see that the undisturbed burial strips no longer contained a body.
Why didn’t Peter see this? There is nothing that says he didn’t. Luke describes Peter leaving the tomb “marveling” at what he had seen. Why didn’t the women see this? The angel they encountered scared the wits out of them, as it did the guards, and they fled – only learning that Jesus wasn’t there from the angel. Peter and John encountered no reported angels and quite possibly felt it safe to explore.
One might expect that the testimony of Peter and John would have been sufficient to spark a wildfire of rumor that Jesus had risen from the dead. But it still would have been hearsay evidence. Evidence of the resurrection had to be made known in a way that it could not be disputed, and it was – by Jesus himself.
Paul, a persecutor of the Christian movement who later converted to it because of the compelling evidence that a resurrection had occurred, wrote this about 20 to 25 years after the event:
What I received I passed on to you … that Christ died for our sins according to the [Jewish prophecy], that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the [Jewish prophecy], and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also.
Significantly, most of these people were still living when Paul wrote this and therefore could be consulted to corroborate Paul’s assertion that over 500 people had seen Jesus after his burial and apparent resurrection. Moreover, while Jesus appeared to some people individually, he appeared to most as a group. Individual sightings could have been fobbed off by disbelievers as a hoax; but how is a hoax perpetrated among 500 people who unlike, perhaps, “the twelve” and the “apostles” could not have collaborated in a lie?
The last two Paul mentions – James and himself – were particularly important appearances because neither believed Jesus was the son of God during Jesus’ life until he appeared to them individually after his death. James was the earthly brother of Jesus and would be martyred for his belief in the resurrected Jesus. Paul encountered Jesus on a journey to arrest Christians about five to seven years after the resurrection. It was an experience that changed Paul’s life. He became a Christian missionary, primarily to the Gentile world and would be martyred most likely in Rome.
On the day of Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks which came 50 days after the Jewish Passover, the followers of Jesus and his disciples became fiery evangelists and bold witnesses in the new Christian movement as Luke records in the biblical book of Acts. Only their belief in the resurrection, which had been revealed to them by direct contact with Jesus, can explain this transformation. That transformation would make them willing to die for their faith.
In fact, hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed in the two centuries following the resurrection. They were tortured, beheaded, crucified, sawn in two, covered in tar and turned into torches to light Roman roads. They were wrapped in animal skins and thrown in the Roman arenas where wild beasts tore them to pieces and devoured them. For what? To protect a hoax that they had stolen a body to give lie to a resurrection story? Liars don’t make good martyrs.
Knowing what lay in store for them, persecution scattered these early believers to the ends of the Roman Empire where they founded many communities of believers. Those communities in turn would, in connection with their trades and vocations, travel throughout the Roman world, starting other communities of believers until they could say the good news of Jesus’ resurrection had been spread to the entire world.
The key evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is not only his empty tomb. It is also the disciples’ experiences with the literal appearances of the risen Jesus that caused their inexplicable transformation from cowards into crusaders who were willing to die for their faith that they too would be resurrected to a life without end. So compelling is the evidence of the resurrection that it has been the central rationale for Christian discipleship for over two millennia.
That is the message of Easter.
No comments:
Post a Comment