Last week we began to investigate the bedrock facts that might help us understand the event of Jesus’ resurrection. Was it a provable, historic event, or was it an invented story by his bewildered disciples?

I will continue to rely on Justin Bass’ book The Bedrock of Christianity. He lays out an argument that isn’t built on the inerrancy or the inspiration of the Bible. It’s built on universally accepted scholarship with no religious persuasion. The first three facts we solidified were these.

• Fact #1 The Inexplicable Conversion of Saul of Tarsus
• Fact #2 The Creedal Tradition of 1 Corinthians 15:3-7
• Fact #3 The Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth

In these facts we summarized how scholarship has affirmed the crucifixion of Jesus on a cross under the governor Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Scholarship has also pinned down Christian tradition to a creedal statement originating from as early as three to five years after Jesus’ death on the cross. Additionally, within the first three years of Jesus’ death, we encountered a surprising Jewish convert who became a follower of “The Way” that he once considered blasphemous.

Does a legendary god-like Jesus of the Christian tradition fail to meet historical criteria, or did a phenomenal event transpire that best fits the historical hole in the story?

Fact #4 Soon after the crucifixion the overwhelmed disciples were suddenly convinced that their crucified leader had risen from the grave.

The early creedal statement we read in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 states, “he was buried…and he was raised.” Time and culture have eroded, in our modern minds, the radical novelty of this idea. Here are three significant ways this innovation wouldn’t have made sense within a first century Jewish community. Why would the first Jewish disciples create a story that, at best, has no resonance, and at worst would be received with hostility?

Innovation #1

All who lived within first century Judaism would have agreed that a “crucified Messiah was a contradiction of terms” Bass, 114. If the warrior king claiming to be Messiah was killed, or failed in his mission, then he wasn’t Messiah. A victorious champion is only declared one after he wins. In fact, we have at least a dozen other failed Messianic movements ranging from 40 BCE to 136 CE. Each of those movements came to a disastrous end when their leader was destroyed by the Romans. Sentimentality and wishful hallucination did not convince followers that their deceased leader had succeeded in his mission. “Even if they still loved him and wept for him, Jesus’ death meant he could not be God’s Messiah” Bass, 126. Thus, the fact that the early movement embraced the cross and turned it into a positive core belief, was a radical departure from all prevailing precedents and expectations.

Innovation #2

The Jewish community had a general theology of bodily resurrection at the end of the age. They believed renewed creation would include the soul awakening to inhabit a renewed body. But nowhere did they believe in a disembodied spirit that continued to live apart from the body. The broader Greek influence upon Jewish thinking was no help on this point either, as many influential Greek and Roman thinkers at the time outright rejected the idea of a resurrection. So the second radical innovation of the Christian community was the belief that a single person, the Messiah, had arisen from the dead in the middle of the age. James Dunn writes, “Why draw the astonishing conclusion that the eschatological resurrection had already taken place in the case of a single individual quiet separate from and prior to the general resurrection? There must have been something very compelling about the appearances for such an extravagant, not to say ridiculous and outrageous conclusion to be drawn” Dunn, Jesus and Spirit, 132.

That first century Jewish community had a theology of a conquering Messiah. No one envisioned a dying Messiah who would raise from the dead by himself in the middle of the age. N.T Wright tells us, “There are no traditions about a Messiah being raised to life: most Jews of this period hoped for resurrection, many Jews of this period hoped for a Messiah, but nobody put those hopes together until the early Christians did so” Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 205.

Innovation #3

The final and seemingly insurmountable innovation was the belief that this crucified Messiah was actually God himself, the Divine being. The earliest creedal statements and community standards proclaimed Jesus was God, worshipped him as God, stated he was involved in the creation of the universe, and attributed to him the Deity’s unique identity and right to rulership. Again, what could convince a community of Jewish men and women to concoct such a blasphemous idea that would most certainly alienate them from their friends, relatives, and their most deeply held personal beliefs?

Fact #5 Soon after Jesus’ crucifixion, individuals and groups, men and women, followers and at least one enemy, became convinced that Jesus appeared to them alive, raised from the dead.

Their earliest creedal statement demonstrates this conviction.

“that he appeared to Cephas,
then to the twelve.
After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren…” 1 Corinthians 15:5-6

Their theological practices and expressions express this conviction, and their eyewitness accounts recorded within their lifetime speak of that conviction. The martyr’s death of a least a core group of them seems to validate the consistency of that conviction. Dunn claims 99 percent of scholars agree that Peter, James, Paul and a group of Jesus’ followers believed that the risen Jesus had appeared to them.

Paula Fredriksen writes, “I know in their own terms what they saw was the raised Jesus. That’s what they say and then all the historic evidence we have afterwards attests to their conviction that that’s what they saw. I’m not saying that they really did see the raised Jesus. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what they saw. But I do know that as a historian that they must have see something.” From an interview in Peter Jenning’s The Search for Jesus (ABC News, July 2000).

The “appearances of Jesus” do not conform to any preexisting examples or patterns within that era. Bart Erhman says, “they created their own (paradigm)” How Jesus Became God, 174. Perhaps the most common theory to speculate what the disciples actually saw is the “hallucination theory”—that they, or Peter, hallucinated and convinced others of the Lord’s appearance. But this theory, for a number of reasons, doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny. Additionally, Paul suggests in his letter to the Corinthian community, dated only twenty years after Jesus’ death, that the Corinthians could speak to any number of the 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. Many of those first eyewitnesses were still alive and capable of affirming or disproving the resurrection.

The puzzle of Jesus' resurrection can be somewhat simplified down to this: none of the opponents of Jesus’ movement could produce Jesus’ body to discredit the claim of the resurrection. And even the earliest followers of Jesus would have had no reason to hide the body to create an alternative narrative. Even if one of them had hidden the body, it doesn’t account for the multitude of living eye witnesses who attested to having seen him in his resurrected state. Both ancient and modern observers seem left to grapple with a claim (of the resurrection) that is impossible to believe, and a testimony of which (the appearances) is impossible to deny.

Fact #6: The Rise of the Nazarenes

Maybe you overlooked this simple fact, but it’s really hard to lead a movement when you are dead. That’s not to say that a person’s ideals or influence can’t outlive them. Yet we have to give credence to how unique the Nazarene movement (followers of Jesus of Nazareth) really was, and still is. The claim of the resurrection is the “only reason why his life and words possessed any relevance two weeks, let alone two millennia, after his death” Bass, 177.

We have no other examples from history of failed Messianic leaders whose movement continued even one day after their failure. We don’t have, for example, Simon bar Kockba (Jewish revolt in 132-135 CE) disciples still running around today claiming that their leader had risen from the dead. Without the resurrection Jesus is another false prophet, another failed Messianic-hopeful, another dead guy.

At the time Jesus had been crucified he had conquered no lands, no cities, upset no political structures. He may have had residual influence over a couple hundred people at the most. The Nazarene movement was a fringe movement proclaiming a crucified and risen Messiah. In fact, for the first three centuries their movement was a persecuted sect within the Roman empire.  But their influence expanded based on the teaching of the resurrection, their humanitarian services, their elevating of the social status of women, children, and family, and their love for each other. That movement had grown in influence to become the largest religion in the world. At the very least, it causes one to sit up and examine what’s going on. If Jesus did rise from the dead then it is reasonable to infer that the movement is the result of him still transforming lives today.

Conclusion:

What could empower this movement of followers in a “failed” messiah to innovate a desperate idea that would have been sure to attract hostile attention from their otherwise supportive friends and family. How did Jesus’ skeptical brother James become convinced, and a violent enemy, Saul of Tarsus, become convinced he had arisen from the dead, if in fact he had not?

And what could give this idea the power to overwhelm and transform the Roman Empire with love and sacrifice instead of armies and force? Bass summarizes, “The historian is pressed for an explanation for this unparalleled innovation among these first-century Nazarenes. If Jesus did not appear to them, then where did these ideas come from?” Bass, 115. The appearance of a resurrected Jesus from the dead seems to be Cinderella’s foot upon which the glass slipper fits. No other explanations seem to contour to all of the evidence.

It seems truly marvelous that even after discounting evidence contested by scholarship as possessing Christian bias historians still possess irrefutable facts that point persuasively towards this miraculous event. We seem left with a claim impossible to believe and evidence impossible to deny. For the believer, these facts reenforce our faith in the historical event of the resurrection. For the skeptic, it should provoke them to an honest consideration of the data.  

Life is full of wonderful mysteries. Many scientific truths appear counterintuitive but upon further examination prove credible. It certainly seems to fit the unique nature of God that his ways are mysteriously grand. They possess all of the facts to support them but require humility and faith to embrace them. This is his invitation to us, to consider carefully his greatest miracle of all, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead and what that means for our lives.

Books for Endorsement:

• The Bedrock of Christianity by Justin Bass
• Lord or Legend? by Gregory Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy
• The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective by Pinchas Lapide
• The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright

Tags: #resurrection #facts #jesus #death #burial #bedrock of christianity