Thesis: During an investigation of the early Christian movement, it will become evident that solid grounds for faith in the resurrection should be proclaimed for the sake of others’ faith in Jesus Christ unto salvation.
Before the resurrection of Jesus is established, it may be wise to establish the existence of this Jesus. Both supporters and detractors described Jesus as a man (Mark 14:71; 15:39; Luke 23:4,14; John 18:29; 19:5; 7:46; {cf. 7:51;} 9:16, 24; 10:33; 11:47; {cf. 11:50;} 18:17; Acts 5:28; 1 Tim 2:5) in the public eye (e.g. Mark 1:33; 2:1-2; 2:7; 4:1; 5:21; 6:34; 6:53-56; 7:31-33; 8:27-34; 10:1; 10:46; 11:4-18; 12:37; 14:43; 15:8-15; 3:20; 4:1; cf. 5:21; 10:1; 3:7-8; cf. Mark 7:24) in Palestine during the First Century (Luke 2:1-7) who taught something new (e.g. John 13:34), performed unexpected spectacles (Matt 8:26-27; 9:6; 12:27; 14:29; 15:31; 16:9; Mark 3:11; Luke 7:22; John 11; cf. Matt 9:4; 12:25; Luke 5:22; 6:8; 11:17; John 1:50), received a violent death (Matt 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19) and inspired a post-mortem movement (Acts). Far from claiming the non-existence of Jesus, opponents, such as the Jewish authors of the Babylonian Talmud, describe the knowns as negatives. According to the author of Sanhedrin 107b, when this man in the public eye performed the unexpected and taught something new, “Jesus the Nazarene practiced magic and led Israel astray.” (Bock 59) Sanhedrin 43a offers the following description of his death, miracles, and doctrine: “On the eve of Passover Yeshu [Jesus] was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, ‘’He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.’” (Bock 60; Emphasis Added) According to opponents, the “apostacy” spread rapidly - after the death of Jesus. Writing about Nero’s “choicest punishments” of “Chrestiani,” Cornelius Tacitus explains,
“The source of the name was Christus, on whom, during the command of Tiberius, reprisal had been inflicted by the procurator Pontius Pilatus; and, though the baleful superstition had been stifled for the moment, there was now another outbreak, not only across Judaea, the origin of the malignancy, but also across the City, where everything frightful or shameful, of whatever provenance, converges and is celebrated.” (284)
According to Suetonius, by the time of Claudius, “[h]e banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus.” (318) By late AD 111, a perplexed Pliny submitted the following report to Emperor Trajan, highlighting “...the number indicted, for there are many of all ages, every rank, and both sexes who are summoned and will be summoned to confront danger. The infection of this superstition has extended not merely through the cities, but also through the villages and country areas...” (279) As one historian, N.T. Wright, remarks, “Never before had there been a movement which began as a quasi-messianic group within Judaism and was transformed into the sort of movement which Christianity quickly became. Nor has any similar phenomenon ever occurred again.” (15) Wright continues, noting that “... the early church by its very existence forces upon us the question which we, as historians, must ask: what precisely happened after Jesus' crucifixion that caused early Christianity to come into being?” (16)
What happened, according to the earliest Christians, is that many witnessed Jesus’ body alive again after it had been crucified. Jesus had a body (1 Peter 2:24; Luke 23:52) with bones (John 19:36), hands (John 20:25), fingers (Mark 7:33), feet (Matthew 28:9; Mark 5:22), a side (John 19:34), a face (Mark 14:65; Matthew 26:27), eyes (John 17:1) and a head (Matthew 27:29), as well as clothing (Mark 5:27). In this body, Jesus was born (Matthew 1:18), pierced (Mark 14:65), beaten, slapped and spat upon (Mark 15:19; Matthew 27:30; Matthew 26:67), flogged (Matthew 19:1), “killed” (Acts 5:30), and buried (Matthew 50:59). Most importantly, in this body, Jesus was resurrected (Acts 5:30), bearing the scars from the crucifixion on his arms and side (John 20:24-28). Before His crucifixion, Jesus ate and drank (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34; John 13:26); Jesus ate and drank “after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). As N.T. Wright notes, the language is crystal clear: “The word 'resurrection' and its cognates, in Hebrew or Greek, is never used to denote something other than this position [i.e. a return to bodily life after the state of being dead]. The belief can occur without the word, but never the other way round.” (179).
When the early apostles made the claim of witnessing Jesus’ resurrection, either, (a) they really did believe the claim themselves or (b) they did not believe the claim. As an example in favor of (b), speaking of “the witnesses” as “people who are not in good repute with us,” “the great German thinker” Reimarus argued, “The senate at Jerusalem has distinctly warned us against them, saying, that these disciples came to the grave secretly, by night, and stole away the body of Jesus, and that now they were going about, proclaiming that he had arisen from the dead.” (38) First, if the disciples really desired to perpetuate their messianic movement, it would be odd for them to assert the messiah’s resurrection and ascension (unparalleled claims for a messianic movement) rather than to assert some kind of family succession (a common practice in contemporary messianic movements). N.T. Wright observes the following:
“If we suppose that Jesus of Nazareth had simply been executed as a messianic pretender, and that his younger brother had become a strong and powerful leader among his former followers over the next thirty years, someone would have been bound, given the climate of the times, to suggest that James himself was the Messiah. But nobody ever did.” (560)
It is difficult to reconcile Reimarus’ assertion with the apostles’ behavior. In their recent work on the resurrection, Gary R. Habermas, Ph.D. and Michael Licona, Ph.D. report, “From the early martyrdoms of Stephen and James the brother of John as well as the imprisonments and sufferings of Peter, Paul, and others, the disciples became well aware that publicly proclaiming Jesus as risen Lord in certain times and places made suffering and, perhaps, martyrdom inevitable.” (35) Nonetheless, by their persistent behavior, they chose to die for their claim: “The disciples' willingness to suffer and die for their beliefs indicates that they certainly regarded those beliefs as true... Liars make poor martyrs.” (35 with Emphasis in Original) It is difficult to imagine what the disciples could have done in addition to martyrdom to indicate their sincerity.
Even though they were sincere, they could have been sincerely mistaken in their belief that Jesus was alive again from the dead. First, it is theoretically possible that Jesus only appeared to have died, just as a fainted man might. In response to the swoon theory, David Strauss penned the following in 1892:
“It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthenings and indulgence, and who still, at last, yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry.” (665)
Dr. Habermas and Dr. Licona add that advances in medical science over the last few decades have deepened our appreciation for the intensity of the trauma induced by “the nature of scourging and crucifixion” (76). If it is not reasonable to maintain that this sincere belief of the disciples in Jesus’ death was the result of a misperception, it is only reasonable to maintain that their belief was the result of correct perception; in other words, Jesus died.
Even though Jesus did die, it is theoretically possible that Jesus only seemed to be alive again, just as a vivid hallucination might seem actual. Dr. Habermas, featured in Lee Strobel’s investigative work in regard to this particular hypothesis, and his colleague find it difficult to identify the interactions with Jesus in the Gospels as hallucinations, given their nature and their number. Just as a dream by its nature cannot be shared, so also “a hallucination [by its nature] cannot be shared.” (82) However, “the earliest witnesses, and indeed all of them we know of, taught that several of Jesus' post-mortem appearances were to groups.” (83) Furthermore, the number of interactions - along with the depth and variety of those interactions, which included individuals who had never followed Jesus - make their identification with hallucinations even more difficult. The researchers conclude, “It pushes credulity beyond reason to regard every last one of these appearances as hallucinations. ...In fact, there are probably more refutations of this theory than any other.” (85) If it is not reasonable to maintain that the disciples’ sincere belief in their interactions with a resurrected Jesus was the result of a misperception, then it is reasonable to maintain that this belief was the result of correct perception; in other words, Jesus did rise from the dead.
(See Next Post for Part 2...)
