Outline
Lecture 11-- What History Reveals about the Resurrection
Even though we, as historians, cannot provide historical proof for a
miracle, such as the Resurrection of Jesus, there are certain things
we can say about this pivotal event that marks the beginning of
Christianity. Above all, we can say that whether or not Jesus was actually
raised from the dead, some of his disciples claimed that he was. What
made some of Jesus’s followers believe that he had been resurrected?
The simple answer is one that is attested in all of our earliest sources:
Some followers of Jesus had visions of him alive after his death. This is
a historical explanation that can be accepted by believers and unbelievers
alike on purely historical grounds.
I. The Start of Christianity
A. Contrary to what we might think, the Christian religion did notbegin with the life and teaching of Jesus. Christianity started out asa belief in Jesus’s Resurrection; if the followers of Jesus had simplyadhered to his teaching, they would have remained as one of thesects of Judaism.
B. We cannot say either that Christianity started with Jesus’s deathbecause without the Resurrection, his death would simply havebeen seen as the death of yet another Jewish prophet who ended upon the wrong side of the law.
C. Nor, technically speaking, can we say that Christianity started withJesus’s Resurrection-both because historians cannot demonstrate,on historical grounds, that Jesus was raised from the dead andbecause if Jesus had been raised but no one knew about it, thenthere would have been no faith in his Resurrection.
D. Thus, Christianity started with the proclamation of Jesus’sResurrection by some of his followers. What is it that made thesefollowers believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead?
II. Belief in the Resurrection
A. It’s important to stress that belief in Jesus’s Resurrection was notbased on the fact that there was an empty tomb. As we’ve seen, itis doubtful, from a historical standpoint, that there was an emptytomb. Further, an empty tomb would not make someone think thatJesus had been raised from the dead because there are other, moreobvious explanations for why a tomb would be empty.
B. Even more significant, all of our earliest sources are unified insaying that it was visions of Jesus alive-not the empty tomb-thatmade his followers believe he had been raised.
1. Our earliest account is in the writings of Paul: 1 Corinthians15:3-8. It is widely recognized that this account is a pre-literary formula, that is, a saying that existed prior to its beingincorporated into its current literary context. It is a view of thefaith that predates Paul’s founding of the church in Corinth, asPaul himself indicates.
2. As such, Paul’s account may be the earliest record we have ofwhy it is that people came to believe in the Resurrection-anaccount written decades before the Gospels.
3. And this passage is completely unambiguous: It was the so-called “appearances” of Jesus to his followers that led them tobelieve. There is no reference here to an empty tomb.
4. The same is true of the Gospels. In the Gospel of Luke (2423,ll; 13-53), the discovery of the empty tomb does not inspireanyone to believe that Jesus was raised; it is only when heappears to them that they come to believe. We can make asimilar point about the Gospel of John (2021-13; 14-18).C. Our earliest sources, then, are quite definite: It was visions of Jesusalive again, after his death, that inspired the belief that he had beenraised from the dead.
D. How can we accept that as a historical explanation? Doesn’t theclaim that his disciples saw Jesus alive after he had died require thehistorian to accept the miracle of the Resurrection-something thatcannot be accepted on historical grounds?
1. The answer is no. On the contrary, it is perfectly possible forhistorians to accept the premise that Jesus’s followers declaredthat Jesus had been brought back to life based on visions ofhim they had because people have visions all the time.
2. Sometimes people have visions that scholars would callveridical-meaning they actually saw what they thought theysaw--and other times, visions are nonveridical--meaning thatthe person experiencing the vision had a hallucination.
3. In other words, sometimes we see someone in our bedroom atnight because someone is really there, and at other times, we’rejust seeing things.E. Believers in Jesus’s physical Resurrection would say that thedisciples’ visions of Jesus were veridical; nonbelievers would saythat they were nonveridical. But in either case, the historian can saythat it was the visions that made the followers of Jesus believe hewas still alive.
F. New Testament scholars themselves are split on the question ofwhether the visions were veridical or not. Some, such as MikeLicona and N. T. Wright, insist that Jesus really did appear to hisdisciples after his death, and others, such as Michael Goulder andGerd Ludemann, insist that the disciples had hallucinations.
G. As historians, we do not need to resolve that matter. We will look atthe phenomenon of nonveridical visions further in our next lecture.
H. For now, we will explore what more we can say about belief in theResurrection of Jesus based on visionary experiences.
I. The Gospel of John includes the story of doubting Thomas, who required
physical proof of the Resurrection.
III. Visions of Jesus
A. It is impossible to know how many of Jesus’s disciples actuallyhad visions of him after his death. The Gospels, of course, indicatethat all of the 11 remaining disciples, as well as several of Jesus’sfemale followers, had these visions, and as a result, all of thembelieved. There are reasons, however, to call these accountsinto question.
B. Most striking, there are consistent reports in the Gospels that someof the disciples “doubted” that Jesus actually appeared to them,calling for proof from the resurrected Jesus (thus, Matthew 28:17;Luke 24:10-11; John 20; and Acts 1:3).
C. Why would the disciples experience doubt if in fact, Jesus wasright in front of them talking to them? This is a particularly pressingquestion because, as we will see in the next lecture, people whohave visions of deceased loved ones almost never doubt what theyhave seen.
D. One explanation for the doubting tradition is that these stories ofdoubt were told to explain why some of the disciples never cameto believe.
1. A plausible situation is this: Some of the disciples--but not allof them--had these visions. Peter is universally said to havehad one, as is Mary Magdalene. And we know that later, theapostle Paul did, as well.
2. These three people-Peter, Paul, and Mary-told of theirvisions to others. Many believed them, but others were not sosure, as is seen in the later stories of the doubting disciples.
3. This would also explain why we have passages that indicateJesus is sometimes not “recognized” by those having the vision.Understandings of the ResurrectionE. If some of the disciples had visions of Jesus alive after his death,and therefore, they came to believe that he was no longer dead, howwould they understand his Resurrection? In fact, different earlyChristians had different understandings of what it meant to say thatJesus was raised.
F. Some Christians, including some of Paul’s opponents in some of hischurches, claimed that Jesus’s body, in fact, had not been raised atall. Instead, he had been raised in spirit, while his body experiencedcorruption, like all other bodies.
G. Paul insisted, on the contrary, that Jesus’s body had experienced aspiritual resurrection: The body itself was raised, but it was raised asan “immortal” body-glorified, no longer subject to the limitations,failings, and temporalities of human bodies.
H. Other Christians insisted even more vehemently than Paul on thereal physical nature of the Resurrection-that the body that came out
of the grave was precisely the body that went into it, as seen in the
stories of the Resurrection in the later Gospels of Luke and John.
I. What would the earliest followers of Jesus-his own disciples-
have thought?
1. It is important to remember that the disciples were, like Jesus,apocalypticists. They, like him, thought that at the end ofthe age, everyone would be raised from the dead, bodily, toface judgment. Those who had done evil would be punishedeternally, and those who had sided with God would berewarded with eternal bliss.
2. What would Jewish apocalypticists think if they believedthat someone had been raised from the dead? One answer isthat they would think the end was very near indeed-theresurrection had started! This would intensify the fervorof their belief as they enthusiastically proclaimed that thekingdom was soon to appear on earth.
3. In addition, for the disciples, the realization that Jesus hadbeen raised certainly would have meant that his body hadbeen reanimated and made glorious-as was to happen to allbodies at the end of the age and as Paul himself appears to havebelieved soon afterward.
4. Thus, the earliest Christians, including Jesus’s own followers,probably believed that Jesus ’s body had been raised and madeeternal. He himself in the body, had been made divine.
Suggested Reading
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus.
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament.
-----, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.
---, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
---, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision.”
Liidemann, The Resurrection of Christ.
Questions to Consider
1. Do you agree that the discovery of Jesus’s empty tomb had no bearing
on whether his followers came to think he was raised from the dead?
Why or Why not?
2. What is the evidence that visions of Jesus after his death led his
followers to think he had been raised?
Transcript -- Lecture 11
What History Reveals about the Resurrection
Even though historians cannot provide historical proof for a miracle such as
the Resurrection of Jesus, there are certain things that historians can indeed
say about this foundational and pivotal event that marks the beginning of
Christianity. Above all, we can say that whether or not Jesus was actually
raised from the dead, some of his disciples claimed that he was. This claim
that Jesus was raised from the dead can be seen as the beginning of the
Christian religion.
Contrary to what one might think, the Christian religion did not begin with
the life and teaching of Jesus. If you recall, Jesus preached that the end of
the age was soon to come. Jesus believed that he was living in an evil age
controlled by the forces of evil, but that God was soon going to intervene by
sending the Son of Man-a cosmic judge of the earth who would destroy the
forces of evil and bring in God’s good kingdom here on earth, where there’d
be no more pain, misery, or suffering.
People needed to repent in preparation for this coming of the Son of Man,
so that when the kingdom of God arrived, they could enter into it. This was
the teaching of Jesus. If Jesus’ followers had simply adhered to his teaching,
they would have remained one of the sects of Judaism. And Christianity
would never have begun.
One cannot say that Christianity started with the death of Jesus, since
without the Resurrection, Jesus’ death would simply have been seen as
the death of yet another Jewish prophet who ended up on the wrong side
of the law. Nor, technically speaking, can we say that Christianity started
with Jesus’ Resurrection, both because historians cannot demonstrate on
historical grounds that Jesus was raised from the dead, and because if Jesus
had been raised, but no one knew about it, there would have been no faith in
his Resurrection. And so Christianity started with the proclamation of Jesus’
Resurrection by some of his followers.
This leads us to the driving question behind this lecture: What is it that made
some of Jesus’ followers believe that he had been raised from the dead? The
simple answer is one that is attested in all of our sources. The followers of
Jesus declared that he had been raised from the dead, because some of them
had visions of him alive after his death. This is a historical explanation that
could be accepted by believers and unbelievers alike on purely historical
grounds, whether or not Jesus was really raised, as we’ll see in this lecture
and the next.
It’s important to stress that belief in Jesus’ Resurrection was not based on
the fact that there was an empty tomb. For one thing, we’ve already seen
that it’s not clear this was a fact. It is doubtful historically whether there was
an empty tomb. More than that, an empty tomb would never make someone
think that Jesus had been raised from the dead, since there are always more
obvious explanations for why a tomb would be empty.
Suppose somebody is buried in a tomb. And several days later, they go to
the tomb, the tomb’s empty. What is their first thought? It’s not, oh, he’s
been raised from the dead. The first thought is something like, grave robbers.
Or they think, well, somebody’s moved the body. Or they think, I’m at the
wrong tomb. What they don’t think is, he’s been raised from the dead. The
tomb being empty would not itself lead to a belief in the Resurrection. And
what is most significant-all of our earliest sources are unified in saying that
it was visions of Jesus alive again that made the followers of Jesus believe he
had been raised. It was not the empty tomb. Our earliest account, again, is in
the writings of Paul, in a passage we’ve looked at a couple of times already.
Now I want to look at a different part of the passage in a little bit more depth:
1 Corinthians 15:3-4. Paul talks about how he’s received the information
from others that “Christ died in accordance [from] the scriptures.” And
then he goes on to say that “he was raised [from the dead] on the third day in
accordance with the scriptures.” And then comes the important part for our
purposes here:
He was raised [From the dead] on the third day and he appearedto Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, thoughsome have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.Last of all, as to one untimely bom, he appeared also to me.
In this passage, Paul seems to be narrating every appearance of Jesus that he
knows about. It is striking that he doesn’t say anything about an empty tomb,
only about appearances, and that it’s the appearances that have made people
believe that Jesus was raised.
The appearances themselves are somewhat interesting. First Jesus appears
to Peter. Then, Paul says, he appeared to the twelve. Now, that’s a curious
thing to say, because according to the Gospels, one of the twelve, Judas,
had betrayed Jesus. And according to Matthew, he had committed suicide
afterwards. So in what sense does Jesus appear to the twelve?
There are two standard explanations for this. One is that Paul doesn’t know
the tradition about Judas Iscariot-that Paul doesn’t know that one of the
twelve disciples actually betrayed Jesus. The other explanation is that the
term the twelve simply is a technical term to refer to the immediate disciples
of Jesus. Either way, it’s interesting that Paul says that Jesus appeared to all
twelve of the apostles.
He then says that he appeared to 500 people at one time. And Paul points out,
some of them are still living. He goes on to say that he appeared to James,
presumably the brother of Jesus, then to all the apostles. And last of all, Paul
says, he appeared to me. This passage was probably written in the middle
of the 50s-perhaps 55 CE, as I’ve said before. But it’s written before the
gospels-before Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
It too, according to Paul himself is based on oral traditions, just as the
Gospels were. As such, as a passage written before the Gospels, it appears to
be our earliest record of why it is people came to believe in the Resurrection.
The passage is completely unambiguous. The reason people came to believe
in the Resurrection was because of the appearances of Jesus to his followers.
There is no mention here of an empty tomb.
So, too, in our gospels. In the gospel of Luke, for example, we learned that
the discovery of the empty tomb inspires nobody to believe that Jesus has
been raised from the dead. According to Luke’s gospel, the women went
to the tomb. They found it empty. And they went back and reported to the
disciples what they had seen-an empty tomb. And do the disciples then
come to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead?
No. In Luke 24:11, it indicates that the disciples thought that the women
were telling them an idle tale. They didn’t believe, based on the empty tomb.
They thought it was foolishness. How do the disciples come to believe,
according to the gospel of Luke? Well, Luke tells us that after this report of
the empty tomb, which was not believed, the disciples do come to believe,
because Jesus appears to them.
Two of the disciples are walking to the town of Emmaus, and Jesus, raised
from the dead, appears to them. They at first don’t know who he is. It’s like
he’s in disguise. But he talks to them for a long time, explains to them the
meaning of the scriptures, sits down with them, and starts eating with them.
And as soon as he breaks bread, they recognize him. Jesus then later appears
to the disciples themselves, and they come to believe because they’ve
seen him.
Something very similar is talked about in the Gospel of John. In John’s
gospel, Jesus is dead and buried. The women go to the tomb-or at least one
of the women goes to the tomb. In John’s gospel, it’s only Mary Magdalene
by herself who goes to the tomb. She goes to the tomb, and she finds it empty.
And what is her first thought? She runs back to Peter and she says, the Lord
is not in the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. In other
words, are first thought is not resurrection. Her first thought is, somebody
has moved the body.
It’s only later that Mary comes to believe, in a rather moving story. Mary is
weeping beside the tomb, and as she weeps, she looks in and she sees two
angels there. And then Jesus shows up behind her. She doesn’t know who it
is. Once again, it’s as if he’s in disguise.
Jesus [says] to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you
looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, “Sir, if
you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, [so
that] I [can] take him.
Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
“Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).
She recognizes him. And she falls down before him in worship.
Our earliest sources, then, are quite definite. It was visions of Jesus as alive
again after his death that inspired the belief that he had been raised from
the dead. But how can we accept that as a historical explanation? Doesn’t
the claim that his disciples saw Jesus alive after he had died require the
historian to accept the miracle of the Resurrection-something that CaI1I1Ot
be accepted on historical grounds?
No-in fact, on the contrary. It is perfectly possible for historians to accept
the premise that Jesus followers declared that he had been brought back to
life based on visions of him they had because people have visions all the
time. This can be a historical explanation, because people do have visions.
Sometimes people have visions that scholars would call veridical, meaning
that these people saw what they thought they saw. They are true visions,
because they’re actually seeing something that’s there. Other times, visions
people have are nonveridical, meaning they’re seeing something that isn’t
there. They’ve had a hallucination. In other words, sometimes we see
someone in our bedroom at night because someone’s really there. And other
times, we’re just seeing things.
Believers in Jesus’ physical Resurrection would say that the disciples’ visions
of Jesus were veridical. Nonbelievers would say that they’re nonveridical.
But in either case, the historian can say that it was the visions that made the
followers of Jesus believe he was still alive.
New Testament scholars themselves, of course, are split on the question of
whether the visions were veridical or not. New Testament scholars are split,
because the vast majority of New Testament scholars happen to be Christian
in some respects-that’s why they’re New Testament scholars-and other
New Testament scholars are not Christian. The Christians frequently, most
of the time, think that Jesus visions were veridical. And the non-Christians
think not.
And so we have scholars such as Mike Licona, who’s a New Testament
scholar and a Christian apologist, and we have a very famous English scholar
of the New Testament, N. T. Wright, both of whom insist that Jesus really
did appear to his disciples after his death-and they think they can prove it.
Others, such as the English scholar Michael Goulder and the German scholar
Gerd Ludemann, insist that the disciples did not have veridical visions-
they, in fact, had hallucinations.
As historians, we don’t need to resolve that matter. We’ll be looking at the
phenomenon of nonveridical visions further in our next lecture. For now,
it’s important to discuss what more we can say about the belief in the
Resurrection of Jesus, based on visionary experiences.
It’s impossible to know how many of Jesus’ disciples actually had these
visions. According to Paul, 12 disciples had the vision. According to the
Gospels, 11 of the disciples had them-in other words, all 12 but Judas
Iscariot-as well as several of Jesus’ women followers. As a result of these
visions, all of them believed.
There are reasons, however, to call these accounts into question. Most
strikingly, there are consistent reports in the Gospels that some of the
disciples doubted that Jesus actually appeared to them, and that the
resurrected Jesus actually had to prove it. We find this in virtually all of the
accounts of the Gospels.
For example, in Matthew’s gospel, we’re told that the disciples went to
Galilee as they were instructed in order to see Jesus. And according to
Matthew 28:17, Jesus appeared to them, and “when they saw him, they
worshipped him; but some doubted.” I’ve always wondered why they
doubted. If Jesus was there, right in front of their eyes, what was there to
doubt? But according to these accounts, they did doubt.
We find the same thing in Luke. As I pointed out earlier, some of the disciples
thought that the story of Jesus’ Resurrection was an idle tale. The most
famous instance is in John 20--the case of doubting Thomas. According to
John 20, Jesus appeared to 10 of the disciples, Judas not being present and
Thomas not being among them. Jesus appeared to them, and they came to
believe that he’d been raised from the dead.
The 10 then tell Thomas, and Thomas says he won’t believe it unless he is
able to feel the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side. And then Jesus appears to
him, and Jesus tells him to feel the wounds. In other words, Thomas still
doesn’t believe it. He has to examine the wounds before he’ll believe.
In some ways, I think that the oddest verse in the New Testament is Acts
123. In Acts 123, we’re told that after his Resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days
with the disciples demonstrating to them with many proofs that he had been
raised from the dead. Why would the disciples need 40 days of proof to show
that he’d been raised from the dead? If Jesus just showed up to them once,
and was right in front of them talking to them, why would they doubt?
This is a particularly pressing question because as we’re going to see in the
next lecture, people who have visions of deceased loved ones almost never
doubt what it is they’ve seen. When someone has a vision of a loved one
who is deceased, they almost automatically believe that the person really
has appeared to them. But according to these gospel traditions, when Jesus
appears to the disciples and talks with them, some of them still doubt. How
do we explain this doubting tradition?
One explanation is that these stories of doubt that we find in the Gospels
were told in order to explain why some of the disciples never did come
to believe. A plausible situation is this. Some of the disciples-not all of
them-had these visions. In all of these accounts, Peter is said to have had
one. You find this in the writings of Paul in 1 Corinthians, and you find it in
the Gospels. Peter is said to have one of the visions. And according to Paul,
he had the first one.
Mary Magdalene, in all four gospels, is said to have had a vision of Jesus,
either in company with other women or by herself and to then have come to
believe. And we know from the Apostle Paul that later, he also had a vision.
According to Paul, it was the vision of Jesus that led him to come to believe
that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
And so these three people-Peter, Paul, and Mary, as it turns out-told
their visions to other people. Many, possibly most of the others, believed
the reports of these visions. But according to this theory, others were not so
sure. This is seen, then, in the later stories of the doubting disciples. Not just
the doubting Thomas, but the doubting disciples. Virtually all of them doubt,
presumably except for the ones who themselves have actually had the vision.
This would explain as well why we have passages in the New Testament
that indicate Jesus is sometimes not recognized by those having the vision.
Remember, these two disciples on the road to Emmaus at first don’t recognize
Jesus. They don’t recognize him until he breaks bread, and they recognizing
him in the breaking of the bread.
Mary, at the tomb in the Gospel of John, thinks it’s the gardener. Why is it
that you have these accounts of people not recognizing him? It may be that
some people have had a vision. They’ve narrated the vision to other people.
But there remains doubt. And so you have accounts of the doubt tradition,
and of Jesus not being recognized.
If some of the disciples had visions of Jesus alive after his death, and they
came to believe that therefore he was no longer dead, how would they
understand his coming back to life? As it turns out, to the surprise of many
people today, different early Christians had different understandings of what
it meant to say that Jesus was raised from the dead.
Some Christians, including possibly some of Paul’s opponents in some of
his churches, claimed that Jesus’ body, lI1 fact, had not been raised at all,
even though they believed in the Resurrection. These people maintained
that Jesus’ body had died, but Jesus had been raised in spirit. His body
experienced corruption like all other bodies, and his spirit lived on.
This view is rooted lI1 a Greek understanding that you find in some
philosophical circles lI1 Greece, connected especially with Plato, that there’s
a difference between matter and spirit. That matter is imperfect and spirit
is perfect. And so there’s a division. People who think that the body is a
material thing and that’s an imperfect object would not want to think that the
body lives forever. The body dies.
And so, in 1 Corinthians, we have evidence that some of Paul’s opponents
in the church that he founded in Corinth believed that, in fact, Jesus’ body
was itself terminated-it died, and it apparently corrupted-but that Jesus
himself was raised spiritually. These same people in the church in Corinth
think that they themselves have had a resurrection of the spirit. The spirit-
their spirit-has been raised from the dead, just as Jesus’ spirit was raised
from the dead, and they are already enjoying the benefits of salvation.
They thought, in fact, that they had experienced the full benefits that could
come to one who had faith in Christ. There’s nothing yet to happen. Jesus is
not coming back. There’s not going to be a destruction of the forces of evil.
They are raised spiritually, and they’re going to go to heaven when they die.
This is a view of some of the people in Corinth. It was a view that was later
held by some Gnostic believers. These Gnostic believers were people who
believed that the body and the material world in which it lives are evil, and
that the spirit has to transcend the body. That happens when one understands
the secret teachings that Jesus delivered.
This was not a view that Paul himself had. Paul understood this idea that
Jesus’ spirit was raised, or that people are resurrected only in the spirit,
was completely wrong. Paul was a Jewish apocalypticist before he became
a believer in Jesus. And as an apocalypticist, he thought not only had this
world grown corrupt, but God was going to redeem this world. God was not
going to destroy the world so that there was only, then, a spiritual existence
afterwards. The world was going to be redeemed because the body is going
to be raised From the dead at the end of time.
This understanding that the body is going to be raised affected Paul’s
understanding of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. According to Paul, Jesus’
resurrection was a resurrection of the spiritual body. This gets a little bit
tricky, because Paul thinks in terms that people do not typically think of
today. Paul did not differentiate between your body and your spirit in the
sense that your spirit dies and goes to heaven. Paul thought that at the end of
time your body was going to be transformed into a shape like Jesus’ body,
which was what he calls a spiritual body. Paul is addressing his opponents in
1 Corinthians-these opponents who think that the resurrection is a spiritual,
not a bodily event.
And these opponents argue with Paul by saying, look-your body is going to
be raised from the dead. What kind of body are you going to have, exactly,
that is going to live forever? And Paul responds-this is 1 Corinthians
15:35-“Someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of
body do they come?’ You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless
it dies.” For you to come back to life, you have to die. Your body has to die.
There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the glory of
the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. So it
is with the resurrection of the dead. [The body is sown perishable.
It is raised imperishable.] It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical
body, it is raised a spiritual body.
Christians at the end of time will be brought back bodily, and they will live
forever in their bodies. But their bodies won’t be like our present bodies,
just as Jesus’ body was not like his body that he had that was buried. It was
a glorified body, a body that was made immortal and imperishable. But it
was still a body. Paul insisted that it wasn’t a spiritual resurrection. It was a
resurrection of a spiritual body.
Other Christians insisted even more vehemently than Paul on the real
physical nature of the resurrection-that the body of Jesus that went into the
grave was the same body that came out of the grave. This can be seen in the
stories of the resurrection in our later gospels of Luke and John.
Luke’s gospel is very interesting. Jesus gets raised from the dead. He appears
to his two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And then he appears to all of the
remaining disciples. But some of them doubt. And so Jesus says, observe
my body. A ghost-a spirit-doesn’t have flesh and bones. They still don’t
believe. And Jesus says, do you have anything to eat? They give them a piece
of fish, and he eats the fish.
So Jesus’ body after he’s raised from the dead is a tangible body. He can
not only be seen and heard, he could be touched. And he apparently still
has a digestive system. This is the same body that went in the grave come
out again. You get the same thing in the story of doubting Thomas, where
the emphasis is that Jesus’ resurrected body is still the body that has the
wounds in it.
More than Paul, Luke and John want to emphasize the physicality of Jesus’
resurrection. It’s a real body. In fact, it’s the same body that went in the tomb.
It’s not a glorified spiritual body in Paul’s sense. It’s Jesus’ earthly body that
has been reanimated.
With these different understandings of the resurrection, what would the
earliest followers of Jesus-his own disciples-have thought, once they
came to believe he had been raised from the dead, based on the visions
that they had? It’s important to remember that the followers of Jesus were
followers of Jesus precisely because they agreed with his teaching. His
teaching was an apocalyptic view that the end was coming soon, and God
was going to destroy the forces of evil, bring in a good kingdom, and raised
everybody from the dead for judgment.
Like Jesus, his followers thought that at the end of the age, everyone would
experience a resurrection. The resurrection for apocalyptic thinkers was the
idea that you could not side with evil and get away with it by dying. Evil
does not have the last word in apocalyptic thinking. God has the last word.
And death is not the end of the story, because there’s a resurrection of the
dead. Those who do evil in this life will be punished eternally in their bodies.
Those who sided with God will be rewarded eternally in their bodies. What
would Jewish apocalypticists like the disciples think if they came to believe
this someone now been raised from the dead?
For one thing, they would think that the end has started, because somebody
has been raised and the resurrection is something that happens at the end
of time. So if somebody’s been raised, the resurrection has begun; we are
at the end of time. This would intensify the fervor of their belief as they
enthusiastically proclaimed that the kingdom was soon to appear here on
earth. That’s why the earliest followers of Jesus thought they were living at
the end of time: because the resurrection of Jesus showed that the resurrection
had started, and they’re waiting for that short time in which Jesus would
return and raise everybody from the dead. Not only would they think that the
end was near, they would think that Jesus had been raised, meaning that his
body had become reanimated and made glorious.
The resurrection of the body that’s going to happen at the end has already
happened for Jesus, so that Jesus has not only just come to life, he’s been
made glorified, just as people will later be glorified. But Jesus was glorified
in a different sense. Jesus’ earliest followers believed, as did Paul earlier, that
Jesus’ body had been raised and made eternal.
But that body is not here with us. Where is it? Jesus had been raised. He
appeared. But he’s nowhere to be found. What were the earliest followers
to think of that? What they thought was that Jesus had been taken up to
heaven. These earliest followers of Jesus did not differentiate between the
Resurrection of Jesus and the Ascension of Jesus.
It’s not until much later-by the time you get to the book of Acts near the
end of the 1st century-that it was thought that there was a period of time
between Jesus’ Resurrection and his Ascension. The earliest followers
thought that when Jesus was raised from the dead, he was exalted up to
heaven. But what does it mean for a person in the Greco-Roman world to
think that someone has been taken up in an eternal body into heaven? That
person has been divinized. That’s what pagans thought about Romulus and
Apollonius of Tyana. It’s what Jews thought about Enoch.
For the very earliest Christians who came to believe in the resurrection, Jesus
himself in the body had been made divine. This view of the divinization of
Jesus was based on visions that his disciples had, whether these visions were
veridical or nonveridical. We’ll explore more about visions and visionary
experiences in our next lecture.
