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Resurrection of Jesus

(Redirected from Resurrection of Jesus Christ)
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According to the New Testament, God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. This event is referred to in Christian terminology as the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and is commemorated and celebrated by most Christians each year at Easter.

Most Christians accept the New Testament story as an historical account of an actual event central to their faith. According to them, belief in the resurrection of Jesus distinguishes a Christian from a non-Christian: the belief that Jesus died for the sins of humanity and was resurrected to live with God the Father is regarded by many as the cornerstone of Christianity. Saint Paul said that if the resurrection did not really happen, then Christians were still in their sins and to be pitied above all men (1 Corinthians 15:19). Christians have lived and died the death of martyrs because of faith in Jesus' resurrection in the past and hope of their own in the future. Shortly after Jesus' death, Peter preached that Jesus' resurrection was the cornerstone of Christianity (Acts 2:22-32). The resurrection was also included in the Apostle's Creed as a fundamental tenet of Christianity.

However, there is significant dissent. Non-Christians generally view the New Testament account of the resurrection of Jesus as fictional to varying degrees. Under the influence of modernity, many self-described Christians, such as Rudolf Bultmann, consider the historicity of the resurrection to be irrelevant to its significance as a religious symbol of hope, and accept it as a richly symbolic and spiritually nourishing myth. Such a view is sometimes put "It does not matter if Jesus was literally raised from the dead. What is important is that he is risen in your heart." According to them, the fundamental difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is a subjective one, centered upon how a person responds to the myth: making the resurrection a matter not of history, but of religious attitude. This rejection of the essentially historical nature of the resurrection of Jesus is one of the issues that have divided orthodox Pauline Christians on the one side from Modernist Christianity, which denies that belief in historical factuality is defensible, but accepts that belief in the resurrection is nevertheless essential to Christian faith. Those who believe that the resurrection must be accepted as a fact of history, and in those terms essential to Christianity, often cannot regard as genuine Christians those who view the resurrection as an unhistorical myth. It must be stressed that the orthodox view dominates among the adherents of Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Churches and mainline Protestant denominations, with the possible exception of some Anglicans.

In support of this view, the defenders of the historical view have all of Church history on their side. It is for them, as it has been in all eras of the Church, the bridge between the beginning and the end of human destiny as represented in the Fall and the Consummation: the very essence of faith. People reared in Christian culture (as well as non-Christians) may consider the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus to be powerful myths (for instance, Carl Jung suggests in his essay "The Answer to Job" that the crucifixion-resurrection story was the forceful spiritual symbol of, literally, God-as-Yahweh becoming God-as-Job). But these opinions rather represent personal approaches to spirituality, and are at odds with an historical view of the Christian religion. Nevertheless, this allowance for a subjective understanding of the importance of the resurrection has gained a vast representation among the mainline Protestant churches since the middle of the 20th century.

Contents

The Biblical account

The primary accounts of the resurrection are in the Gospels: the last chapter of Matthew, of Mark, and of Luke, as well as the last two chapters of John.

Some other New Testament references to this event are:

Acts 4:10 Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.
1 Cor 6:14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.
Gal 1:1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)
1 Pet 1:21 Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God

Other Christian records

Some of the earliest records of the resurrection outside the New Testament are found in the writings of Ignatius (50 - 115), Polycarp (69 - 155) Justin Martyr (100 - 165), and Tertullian (160 - 220).

The Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians -- 1:2 - 2:1, 12:2

The Letters of Ignatius...

  • ... to the Ephesians -- 20:1
  • ... to the Magnesians -- 11:1
  • ... to the Trallians -- 9:1-2 (one of the more detailed mentions of the historical events)
  • ... to the Romans -- 6:1
  • ... to the Philadelphians -- 8:2 - 9:2
  • ... to the Smyrnaeans -- 1:1 - 3:3 (another passage with slightly more historical details than the others)

The letter of the Romans to the Corinthians, probably written by Pope Clement I, also speaks of the resurrection at length.

Non-Christian records

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus is reputed to have written in 93 that Jesus "appeared to [the disciples] alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold". However, this is a highly controversial passage: see Josephus on Jesus for more information.

The Qur'an, however, states that Jesus was not killed or resurrected: "yet they did not slay him, neither crucified him, only a likeness of that was shown to them" (Qur'an 4:156). However, as this was not written until the 7th century it cannot be considered authoritative, unless one accepts the Muslim belief in an eternal, uncreated Qur'an.

In the Roman world, Tacitus is often cited as an authority. However, the passage only mentions the historical existence of a "Christus", who was put to death under Pontius Pilate. No mention is made of the resurrection. See Tacitus on Jesus. Suetonius also mentions a rebel named "Chrestus" [sic], but places him during Claudius' reign.

The historicity of the resurrection

As with all historical events before the past few hundred years, the issue of historicity is an important aspect of any person's belief in the actual occurrence of the resurrection. In contrast with scientific phenomena for which reproducibility and falsifiability are essential, historical phenomena depend on different criteria, such as uniqueness of occurrence, plausibility of circumstances, and testimony of witnesses.

Christians who defend the resurrection's historicity cite the following, among other evidence:

  • Multiple eyewitness accounts - different people, different times, different situations, all seeing the resurrected Jesus, eating with him, talking with him.
  • Eyewitnesses who were willing to suffer and die for their testimonies, which ends any chance of false motives for their testimonies.
  • The Gospels state that the early witnesses to the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus were women, whose testimony was not regarded as credible in the patriarchal Judaism of that period. If the resurrection stories were invented, one would not expect this: a hoax or conspiracy would have used men as these early witnesses. An honest account, on the other hand, would have described what was true, however inconvenient it was.
  • Lack of protests against the empty tomb. That is, apparently the tomb was indeed empty on the Sunday of the resurrection.
  • Who could find a whole group of people willing to concoct a wild lie, be tortured and killed for it, and not have one of them tell the truth to escape death?
  • The morality of Jesus and his disciples.
  • The relatively poor educational level of the disciples (most were fishermen), which would make the devising of an elaborate cover-up difficult.
  • The radical change of Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul.
  • The birth and rapid spread of the early church, all from people who were originally hiding in fear.
  • The Bible openly declared that the resurrection had over 500 witnesses, many still alive at the time. This open declaration was in the face of non-Christians who could respond to the charge.
  • The Jewish Scriptures contain many statements that Christians have interpreted as saying that God would take a body, die for sins and rise again
  • The early dates for most of the New Testament.
  • Jesus fulfilled many Jewish prophecies. The probability of the fulfilment of all of them by chance is extremely small and best accounted for as a miracle. This ought to prompt us to take more seriously the possibility of a second miracle, the resurrection.
  • The experiences of millions of Christians worldwide today, who claim to have met Jesus personally and experience the Spirit which he promised would come.
  • Negative accounts of Jesus' disciples in the New Testament resurrection stories. Jesus' disciples became the leaders of Christianity after Jesus' death, and yet the resurrection stories speak poorly of their belief and understanding when Jesus met with them after rising. If the stories were concoctaed, why would they include such negative portrayals of themselves?
  • The uniqueness of the New Testament descriptions of the resurrection as throughly bodily and physical. Most, if not all, resurrection stories of antiquity emphasize the immortality of their hero's soul. This is indicative of a general philosphical culture that looked harshly on physicality and emphasized the value of the soul/spirit over body.
  • A general acceptance by a majoriy of biblical scholars and historians that Jesus' disciples at least thought they met Jesus after he died (although scholars still disagree as to if they actually saw a physical Jesus, a poser, a vision, or "something" else).
  • Occom's Razor: that Jesus really did rise and appear to his disciples is a very simple and complete explanation for the complex events that came later: the actions of the disciples, the unique rise of Christianity as a Jewish sect (many other would-be Messiahs and movements had appeared and quickly disappeared in 1st century Palestine), the continued significance of Christiniaty, etc. Note: this point is not acceptable to those holding a materialist philosophical presupposition and therefore deny a priori the existence of miracles. In this case, supposing a miracle is actually complicating the argument by adding an obtuse variable.

This last point also reveals the vast importance of philosophical and theological presuppositions when evaluating the evidence for or against Jesus' resurrection. A materialist philosophy, for instance, automatically rules out the possiblity of Jesus actually dying and miraculously rising to life again (although it would allow for resuscitation, meaning that Jesus did not actually die - see "Swooning" theory below). It also rules out the intervention of a non-physical God (God, by traditional definition, is completely non-physical). A philosophy which allows for miracles, on the other hand, allows for the possiblity of a miraculous or non-miraculous explanation in judging the evidence.

Skeptical views

Those who reject or question the resurrection make the following claims, among others:

  • There is a lack of substantial evidence outside of Christian sources that most of Jesus' disciples were martyred for their faith (though Josephus explicitly cites the death of James the Just).
  • Crucifixion victims were normally placed in a common grave (this was certainly the case in Rome proper, though archeological evidence has been found for at least some Jewish crucifixion victims being buried in individual or family tombs, and Jewish burial customs in general varied greatly from Roman).
  • Most people outside Christianity were not particularly aware of the claims of its early proponents (such as those of an empty tomb), so would not have bothered to try to refute them. By the time Christianity became better known, no evidence remained to refute.
  • The Gospels state that Jesus was not recognized at first by those who allegedly met him after the resurrection, even though the contact was sometimes prolonged and intimate. This makes it less clear that the resurrection was a literal rather than psychological phenomenon or a piece of religious symbolism.
  • Human beings have suffered and died throughout history for a huge variety of contradictory religious and non-religious beliefs. Willingness to die for a belief is not direct evidence of the truth of a belief, merely of the strength of the believer's faith in that belief, and human beings have an enormous capacity for self-deception and wishful thinking.
  • The Gospel accounts of the resurrection differ, and there appears to be evidence of a progressive supernaturalization involving the appearance of angels at the Empty tomb.
  • There is evidence in Mark, generally recognized as the earliest Gospel, that the resurrection account has been added by a later hand (see Markan priority and Mark 16).
  • If the resurrection is so clearly prophesied in Jewish scripture and the contemporary historical evidence for its actual occurrence so strong, we require another miracle to account for its rejection not only by the vast majority of Jews in the first century A.D. but also by the vast majority of Jews ever since, despite the persistent efforts of Christians to persuade them of the error of their ways.
  • Stories of the bodily disappearance of divine heroes are common: Gesar, the Savior of Tibet, The Gurus of Sikhism, the ascension of Muhammad (even though he has a tomb), the vanishing of Elisha into the sky, God buries Moses in secret.

Some historians have questioned the historicity of the events related by the New Testament. One of the first to do so was Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794), in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, arguing about the fact that no Roman Historian quotes any darkness of three hours at the time of Jesus' death; other historians have explained this darkness as not a true solar eclipse but as being caused by very dark clouds, local to the Jerusalem area.

Comparisons with other Resurrection stories

While the Jesus' resurrection is one of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, accounts of other resurrections also appear in religion, myth, and fable. This leads some to suggest that the founding Christians invented the story of Jesus' resurrection based on other pagan traditions. However since resurrection stories in these "mystery religions" almost always center around agricultural cycles (i.e. seedtime and harvest) and involve their god dying and being resurrected every year any resemblance to the resurrection of Jesus is strictly superficial. We also do not have good records of what the "mystery religions" believed before c. AD 200, but given their propensity of borrowing from one another and the growth of Christianity at that time Christians argue that it is highly likely they borrowed from Christianity rather than the reverse.

Another observation is that while many believers in the various "mystery religions" in the first and second centuries of the Roman Empire freely borrowed from each other, Christianity was not an offshoot of any of these, but of Judaism. Paul the Apostle, who wrote much of the New Testament, was himself a Jew, a Pharisee, until his conversion on the road to Damascus, and had been trained by Gamaliel, one of the leading Jewish theologians of the time. In each town that Paul visited, he preached in the Jewish synagogues before preaching to the Gentiles or non-Jews. Therefore, Christians argue that it is unlikely that the resurrection story would be invented or borrowed in order to appeal to Gentiles.

Skeptics, however, point out that while Christianity was largely Jewish in the first century, Gentiles eventually dominated the faith. This might suggest that Gentiles were much ready to believe in stories like the resurrection. That Gentiles were specifically intrigued by the resurrection is highly unlikely, however, in light of the common/popular philosophy in the Roman empire at the time. Most Gentiles at the time were taught that the body was a lesser form of being than the spirit, and that death brought the release of the soul from the essentially evil prision of the body. The idea of a return to the body through resurrection was scandalous to many pagans and was an area that the early Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr and Tertullian had to contend with.

Justin Martyr argued in the second century that Jesus' virgin birth, death and resurrection were prophesied by the Hebrew scriptures, and that similar stories in other religions were loosely based on the same Hebrew prophecies.

Other theories

Some 20th century authors have come up with elaborate alternative theories for the resurrection.

  • The swoon hypothesis states that Jesus was drugged and didn't die on the cross but instead died many years later away from Jerusalem. It supports this by noting that Joseph of Arimathea removed Jesus' body from the cross, but Jews were forbidden from touching a dead body on the Sabbath, especially during Passover. David Strauss argued against the theory: "It is impossible that a being who had stolen half dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill and wanting medical treatment ... could have given the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of life: an impression that lay at the bottom of their future ministry."
  • Some have suggested that the disciples stole the body from the tomb and then faked the resurrection. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen considered this argument to be weak, because it is often claimed that the same disciples were also later martyred for their belief in the resurrection, which is taken as a sign of sincere belief.
  • Writers, including Donovan Joyce in his book The Jesus Scrolls , have speculated that the story of Jesus in the New Testament is incomplete and that he married, had children and later moved with his wife to the south of France or Glastonbury, England.
  • Other writers claim that Jesus was taken from Roman custody when the crowds asked instead for Barabbas. These theories have given rise to such works of pseudohistory as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which espouses the idea that the Merovingian kings were descendants of Jesus.

These claims are generally considered to be highly speculative, and are not accepted by any substantial number of scholars.

See also

External links


Last updated: 10-24-2004 05:10:45