Outline
Lecture 9 -- Jesus’s Death-What Historians Can’t Know
In the previous lecture, we discussed what historians can know with
reasonable certainty about Jesus’s death; in this lecture, we look at
the Hip side of that coin, what we CaI1I1Ot know about his death. This
discussion will serve as a prelude to the following two lectures, which deal
with what we can and CaI1I1Ot know about his Resurrection. Those lectures
are the keys to the entire course; in them, we will see that it was precisely the
belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead that led his followers to claim
that he was, in fact, God.
I. Discrepancies in the Sources
A. There are some events leading up to Jesus’s death that we CaI1I10tknow about because the sources are so full of discrepancies,both major and minor. This is no real surprise, given that thesesources are all based on oral traditions that had been in circulationfor decades.
B. Some of these discrepancies are important and difficult to reconcile.For example, what day was Jesus crucified?1. Mark is quite unambiguous. Jesus was crucified on the dayafter the Passover meal was eaten.
2. John is also quite unambiguous. Jesus was crucified on the daybefore the Passover meal was eaten.
3. Why does the day matter? Because John has clearly changeda historical fact in order to make a theological point. For him(and only him), Jesus was the “lamb of God who takes awaythe sins of the world” (John 1229). Thus, it is not an accidentthat in John’s account, Jesus is killed on the same day, by thesame people, who killed the Passover lambs.
4. This is the problem of the historical reliability of the Gospelsin a nutshell: These writers, and the storytellers who precededthem, are less interested in giving historically accurate factsthan in giving theologically interpreted stories. This is whyhistorians must use these accounts so carefully, applyingrigorous historical criteria.C. There are other issues lI1 the Gospel stories of the events leading
up to Jesus’s death that are familiar but highly problematic from
a historical standpoint. A good example is his supposed triumphal
entry lI1t0 Jerusalem to the acclaims of the masses that he was the
one coming “in the name of the Lord.”
1. This is, in effect, the acclamation that Jesus is the
coming messiah.
2. If in fact any such thing had happened, it is difficult to explain
why Jesus would not have been arrested on the spot by the
Roman troops. After all, they had been brought into town
precisely to prevent any such enthusiastic acclamation that
could lead to civil disturbances.
II. Jesus’s Burial
A. Perhaps the most significant historical problem in the accounts
of Jesus’s death is the question of whether or not he was given a
decent burial.
B. In all four Gospels, Jesus is said to have been buried by a Jewish
leader named Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin.
C. There are indeed other reports of how Jesus was buried, including
Acts 13:28-29, which may preserve an older tradition. As the
tradition developed, storytellers provided “names for the nameless.”
D. It’s important to reflect on why storytellers would want to make
sure it was understood that Jesus was given a decent burial in a
known tomb.1. If Jesus did not have a known tomb, then no one could laterclaim that the tomb was empty, and the claim of an emptytomb eventually became a central aspect of the Christianproclamation that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Onepiece of proof was that he was no longer in his tomb.
2. But what if he was never placed in a tomb?E. There are three reasons for thinking that Jesus was never given a
decent burial in a tomb that could be identified.1. It was against Roman practices to allow crucified criminals tobe given decent burials. Instead, they were left to rot for dayson their crosses as part of the punishment.
2. Romans usually buried lowly criminals themselves--ratherthan allowing others to do so--in common graves. With thisburial method, if the corpses were not already disintegratedbeyond recognition and identification, they would be in amatter of days.
3. Pontius Pilate in particular was not a sympathetic ruler whowas willing to bestow kindnesses on those who asked.
III. What We Can and Cannot Know
A. In the end, as historians, we must realize that there are numerousincidents in the Gospels that we cannot know about or that wecannot accept as historically certain.
B. What is certain is that Jesus was executed by Pilate for callinghimself the king of the Jews. This unexpected turn of events musthave driven the disciples of Jesus into deep despair until they cameto believe that God had reversed the judgment of the world byraising Jesus from the dead. This reversal led the disciples to beginto proclaim that far from being a discredited messiah, Jesus hadbeen made divine.
Suggested Reading
Allison, Jesus of Nazareth.
Brown, The Death of the Messiah.
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.
Meier, A Marginal Jew.
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus.
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus.
Verrnes, Jesus the Jew.
Questions to Consider
1. Why is it that historians cannot trust that all of the stories of Jesus’s
last days, as recounted in the New Testament Gospels, are historically
accurate?
2. What are the arguments for and against Jesus’s body having been given
a decent burial in a known tomb after his Crucifixion?
Transcript -- Lecture 9 -- Jesus’s Death-What Historians Can’t Know
In the previous lecture, we discussed what historians can know with
reasonable certainty about Jesus’ death. In this lecture, we look at the flip
side of the coin-what we cannot know about his death. This will serve as
a prelude, then, to the following two lectures, which deal with what we can
and cannot know about his Resurrection. These lectures will be key to the
entire course since I’ll be arguing that it was precisely the belief that God
had raised Jesus from the dead that led his followers to claim that he was, in
fact, God.
There are some events leading up to Jesus’ death that we cannot know about,
because the sources are so full of discrepancies, both major and minor. This
is no real surprise given what we’ve seen-that these sources are all based
on oral traditions that had been in circulation for decades. We can see already
by our first author, the Apostle Paul, that traditions had been circulating for
many years before they had been written down.
The first reference that we have to Jesus’ death and Resurrection by an
author is by Paul himself And nowhere more clearly do we find this than in
1 Corinthians 15:3-5. This is what Paul says.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I, in turn, hadreceived-that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with thescriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on thethird day, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared toCephas, then to the Twelve.
Paul indicates that he has passed on to the Corinthians what he himself had
received. He passed on this information to them orally when he converted
them to be believers in Jesus. He passed on the ideas that Jesus had died in
accordance with the scriptures and that he had been raised in accordance with
the scriptures. But Paul indicates that he himself had received this information.
How was this information received? It was received orally. The traditions
about Jesus had been in circulation. When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, it was
about 55 of the common era-in other words, about 25 years alter Jesus had
died. During that time, traditions about Jesus’ death and Resurrection had
been passed along by word of mouth from one person to another throughout
the Mediterranean world.
This circulation of the traditions about Jesus’ death and Resurrection orally
had led to changes in the tradition. And we have evidence of it right here.
Paul indicates that Jesus, when he was raised, first appeared to Cephas-
that is, to Peter, Simon Peter, Jesus’ closest disciple. But according to the
Gospels, Jesus first appears to the women who went to the tomb on the day
of the Resurrection. Somebody is altering the stories about the events of
Jesus’ death and Resurrection. We can see that changes are being made in the
traditions about Jesus’ death by looking closely at how the different gospels
portray the events leading up to his death.
It is interesting to note that as you go through the Gospels chronologically,
Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea who condemned Jesus to death,
is shown to be increasingly innocent in the entire proceeding. If we start
with our earliest gospel, Mark, Mark shows that Pilate is told by the Jewish
authorities that Jesus is deserving of death. And Pilate then agrees with the
Jewish authorities to put Jesus to death. So there seems to be some kind of
collaboration between Pilate and the Jewish authorities in the condemnation
of Jesus for crucifixion.
Written about 10 or 15 years later after Mark is the gospel of Luke. In the
gospel of Luke, in the trial of Jesus, Pilate declares that Jesus is innocent
on three separate occasions. Three times Pilate declares Jesus innocent in
Luke. Written at about the same time as Luke is the Gospel of Matthew. In
Matthew’s gospel, Pilate declares Jesus innocent. And when he declares him
innocent, the Jewish people cry out that they want him crucified.
Pilate asks for water to be brought, and he washes his hands. This is only in
Matthew’s gospel. He washes his hands in the water and says, I am innocent
of this man’s blood. And the Jewish crowd cries out, “His blood be upon us
and our children.” Pilate is being portrayed as increasingly innocent until
we get to the Gospel of John, our last gospel written, in which Pilate again
declares Jesus innocent three times. The Jewish leaders demand that Pilate
execute him. And then the text says that Pilate handed him over to them to
be crucified.
Now, in the many English translations, it’ll say Pilate handed him over to the
soldiers to be crucified. But that’s not what the text says in the original Greek.
The text says Pilate handed him over to them. And the closest antecedent is
the Jewish authorities, which means it’s the Jewish authorities who crucify
Jesus, according to John. Of course, that’s historically not plausible.
But the point is that Pilate is being shown as increasingly innocent for very
clear reasons. Because if the Roman governor declared Jesus innocent, who
found him guilty? It was those Jews. They’re the ones who are responsible
for Jesus’ death. The increasing exoneration of Pilate is developing
throughout the gospel traditions in order to inculpate the Jews in the death of
Jesus. My point here is that the stories of Jesus’ death are changed overtime
for Christian purposes.
Even more important than this exoneration of Pilate are the discrepancies
that one finds moving from one gospel to another. Some of these differences
are highly important and very difficult to reconcile with one another. Let
me just take one example. One can ask a very simple question about what
the Gospels say about Jesus’ death, namely, when did Jesus die? Well, you
would think there’d be a consistent answer to this. And all one needs to ask
is, what day did it take place on?
As it turns out, two of our gospels are quite unambiguous in dating the event
of Jesus’ death. They both indicate which day he died on. I’ll start with
Mark, our earliest gospel. Mark indicates that Jesus was crucified the day
after the Passover meal was eaten. Now, if you remember in my previous
lecture, I talked about the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, where people
from around the world would come together to celebrate the festival in
commemoration of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt.
The way that the Passover was celebrated is, on the day before the meal
was to be eaten, people would bring their lambs or they would purchase
lambs at the temple and they would have them sacrificed by the priests in
the temple. Then they would take the lambs home, and they would prepare
a meal. That’s on the day called the day of preparation for the Passover. The
only tricky thing in what I have to describe is the dating-the way days work
in Jewish reckoning.
As you probably know, in Jewish reckoning, a day begins when it gets dark.
It doesn’t begin as it does for most of us, that the new day begins at midnight.
In Jewish reckoning, the new day starts when it gets dark. So that on the day
of preparation for Passover, they prepare the lamb. When it gets dark, it’s the
next day. That’s the Passover day. And they eat the meal that evening. So it’s
not the evening of the same day. The evening begins the day instead of ends
the day.
So in the Passover feast, they would sacrifice the lamb on the day of
preparation for Passover. That night, on the Passover day, they would eat the
meal. And then the next night would be the night after. And then it would be
the day of Passover until it got dark the next day. Then it would be the day
after Passover.
According to Mark’s gospel, the disciples come up to Jesus and ask him,
where do you want us to prepare the Passover? This is in Mark 14: 12. Jesus
tells them where and how to prepare the Passover, and they do so. So that’s
on the day of preparation for the Passover. That night they have the Passover
meal. Jesus takes the symbolic foods of the unleavened bread, he breaks it,
and says, “This is my body that’s given for you.” He takes one of the cups of
wine and says, “This cup represents the covenant in my blood.”
They eat the meal. After the meal, Jesus goes out. He goes to the Garden of
Gethsemane to pray. Judas brings the authorities who arrest Jesus. He spends
the night in jail. And he’s put on trial before Pontius Pilate on the Passover
day, after they’ve eaten the meal. And in Mark 15:25 we are told exactly
when this. This is at 9 o’clock in the morning that he’s crucified. And so
Mark is unambiguous. They have the Passover meal, and Jesus is executed
of the day of Passover, after the meal is eaten, at 9 o’clock.
John’s gospel-our last gospel to be written-is also completely unambiguous.
In John’s gospel, there’s no word about the disciples preparing the Passover
meal. And at the last meal Jesus eats, there’s nothing to indicate that it’s a
Passover meal. Jesus doesn’t take the bread and say, “This is my body,” or
the cup of wine and say, “This is my blood.” Instead, he washes the disciples’
feet, and he gives them a very long live-chapter discourse, after which he goes
out, he’s betrayed, he spends the night in jail, he’s put on trial. And then John
tells you exactly when it is he’s put on trial. John indicates, in John 19: 14, now
this was the day of preparation for the Passover at noon. But wait a second.
How could it be the day of preparation for the Passover? According to Mark’s
gospel, Jesus lived through that day, ate the Passover meal at night, and then
was killed the next day-is killed on the Passover day. But not in John. In
John, Jesus is executed on the day of preparation for Passover.
Now, why does this matter? It matters because that John appears to have
changed a historical datum of when Jesus died in order to make a theological
point. The Gospel of John is the only gospel that identifies Jesus precisely as
the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”-John 1:29. Jesus
is understood by John to be the Passover lamb, whose death brings about
salvation for the world.
If Jesus is the Passover lamb, it’s no accident that John ensures that Jesus is
killed on the same day as the Passover lambs. He’s killed by the same people-
the Jewish leaders who killed the Passover lambs. And he’s killed in the same
place-in Jerusalem. J olm wants to emphasize that Jesus is the Passover lamb,
and he changes the time of Jesus’ death in order to make the point.
This, in a nutshell, is the problem of the historical reliability of the Gospels.
These gospel writers, and the storytellers who preceded them, are less
interested in giving us historically accurate facts than they are in giving us
theologically interpreted stories. That’s why historians have to use these
accounts so carefully, with rigorous historical criteria, because these writers are
not interested simply in giving us facts of things that happened in 1st-century
Palestine. They’re interested in telling us the gospel-the good news, as they
understand it, about Jesus. So if historians want to get behind these theological
stories to the historical facts, they have to use rigorous historical criteria.
There are other problems in the gospel stories of the events leading up to
Jesus’ death that are very familiar stories, but highly problematic historically.
A good example of this is the account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem
to the acclaims of the masses that he is the one coming in the name of the
Lord. This account is found in all of our gospels, the first account of which is
in the Gospel of Mark.
According to Mark’s gospel, when Jesus comes to Jerusalem, he has his
disciples bring a colt to him, so that he can ride into Jerusalem on the colt.
And we’re told he sat on the colt-this is Mark 11-“he sat on the colt.
Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy
branches that they’d cut off` in the fields.” So that he comes over their cloaks
and the branches.
“Then those who went ahead and those who followed [him],” the crowds,
“[shout out], ‘Hosanna! Blessed is [he] who comes in the name of the
Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in
the highest heaven!’ ” And so Jesus enters into Jerusalem to the acclamation
of the crowd that the king is coming, the kingdom of David is about to be
realized. This in effect is the acclamation that Jesus is the coming king-in
other words, that Jesus is the messiah.
This is a beautiful story that is celebrated every year in Christian churches,
of course, on Palm Sunday. But the reality is that it’s very hard to reconcile
with anything like historical fact. It’s very hard indeed to explain how Jesus
could have ridden into Jerusalem in this way, with the crowd shouting out
that he was the king coming to establish the kingdom of David. And it’s hard
to explain how that happened without him being arrested on the spot by the
Roman troops that had been brought into town precisely in order to prevent
any such enthusiastic acclamation.
It should be noted that this coming of Jesus into Jerusalem is stated explicitly
in the Gospel of Matthew to be fulfilling a prophecy of scripture. Zachariah
9:9-“Behold, your King is coming to you triumphant and victorious,
humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The gospel
story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem appears to have been invented by
Christian storytellers in order to fulfill a prophecy. It’s very hard to imagine
that it could be historically accurate.
Something similar can be said about the incident of the Barabbas episode as
it’s narrated in the Gospels. According to the Gospels, when Jesus was put
on trial before Pontius Pilate, Pilate offered to release Jesus to the crowds.
But the crowds insisted on another person to be released to them instead, a
person named Barabbas. As Mark says in chapter 15, Pilate was accustomed
to release a prisoner to them. And there was a man named Barabbas in prison
with the rebels, a man who had committed murder during the insurrection.
The crowd asked Pilate to do for them according to his custom and he said,
“Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?” [Meaning Jesus.]
But the crowds instead were stirred up by the chief priests to have Barabbas
released it to them instead. And so Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released
Barabbas for them.
And after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Is this a reliable
account?
Historians have long cited many reasons for thinking that this could not have
happened, at least as it’s narrated in Mark and the other gospels. We have no
account anywhere of any such thing taking place under Pilate or any other
governor of the Roman provinces. The idea that Pilate, who was there to
keep order, would release an insurrectionist-somebody who had committed
insurrection against Rome-simply because the crowds wanted him to is
completely implausible.
It should be pointed out that Barabbas is not mentioned in any sources except
for these Christian stories. The name Barabbas literally in Aramaic means
the son of the father. The Jews are deciding which son of God they want. Do
they want a son of God who’s an insurrectionist? Or do they want one who
is the true coming messiah? They choose Barabbas--that kind of son of the
father-rather than the true Son of God. This, again, is a story in order to
show that the Jews are guilty in the death of Jesus.
There are yet other historical problems in the accounts of Jesus’ death that
are absolutely of fundamental importance. None is more significant than the
question of whether Jesus was given a decent burial after his death. In all
four of our Gospels, we’re told that Jesus was buried by a Jewish leader
named Joseph of Arimathea who was a member of the Jewish council called
the Sanhedrin.
According to Mark’s version in Mark 15, we read that “Joseph of Arimathea,
a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly
for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of
Jesus.” So Jesus has been crucified, and Joseph, a member of the Sanhedrin,
asked for his body. Pilate wondered if he were already dead, and summoned
the centurion and asked him whether he’d been dead for some time.
“He learned from the centurion that he was dead. And he granted the body to
Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen cloth. Taking down the body, he wrapped
it in the cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock.
He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.” So according to this
passage, Joseph of Arimathea, a Jewish leader, is the one who buried Jesus
by asking Pilate for the body.
Again, historians have long cited arguments against this understanding
of what really happened historically. For one thing, according to Mark’s
gospel, the night before Jesus was crucified, the entire Jewish council-the
entire Sanhedrin, and therefore including Joseph-had found him guilty of
blasphemy, and decided that he deserved to die as a blasphemer. If Joseph
said that the night before, why now is he showing an act of kindness as if
he’s a follower of Jesus? It’s hard to make sense of that historically.
It’s important to note that there are, indeed, other stories about how Jesus
was buried-some of them at least as old as the Gospels. For example, in
the book of Acts-the fifth book of the New Testament, written by the same
author who wrote the gospel of Luke-we find a tradition about Jesus’ burial
that is somewhat at odds with what we read in the Gospel of Mark.
According to a speech delivered in Acts 13 by the Apostle Paul, we’re
told that “even though [the Jewish leaders] found no cause for a sentence
of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. [And] when they carried out
everything that was written about [Jesus], they took him down from the tree
and laid him in a tomb.” According to Acts, it was a group of the Sanhedrin,
or the entire Sanhedrin, that had Jesus buried. But according to Mark, it’s
just one of them.
What appears to be happening here is a phenomenon that occurs throughout
the gospel traditions. As people tell stories about things that happened, they
start providing names for the nameless. This can be traced throughout our
long Christian tradition. There are a number of people in the gospel stories
who are left nameless. So who were the three wise men that came to Jesus, if
there were three of them? Later traditions named three people. Who are the
two robbers killed with Jesus? Later traditions name the two robbers. When
people are nameless, later in the tradition, people add names to them. The
earlier form of Jesus’ burial was the unnamed they-the members of Jewish
Sanhedrin. But as the tradition developed later, the nameless got named.
That would suggest that the Joseph of Arimathea story is a later tradition.
It’s also important to reflect on why Christian storytellers would want to
make sure that it was understood that Jesus was given a decent burial in a
known tomb. If Jesus did not have a known tomb, then no one could later
claim that the tomb was empty. And the claim of an empty tomb eventually
became a central aspect of the Christian proclamation that Jesus had been
raised from the dead. One piece of proof was that he was no longer in his
tomb. But what if he had never been placed in the tomb?
There are three reasons for thinking that Jesus was never given a decent
burial in a tomb that could be identified. First reason-it was against Roman
practices to allow crucified criminals to be given decent burials. They were
instead left to rot on their crosses, as part of the punishment, for days.
Some years ago, a New Testament scholar named John Dominic Crossan
came out with a book about the historical Jesus in which he claimed that
Jesus’ body had not been placed in a known tomb, but had been given a
burial in a common tomb, and that Jesus’ body had been eaten by dogs. When
this came out, I thought it was completely ridiculous, and sensationalist, and
obviously wrong. And I thought this for many years.
I am not prepared to say that Jesus’ body was eaten by dogs. I don’t know
what happened to Jesus’ body. But I have looked up every reference that
exists that I can find about crucifixion in the ancient world. I indicated earlier
that there are no literary descriptions of how they crucified people, but there
are references to people who have been crucified. And in every instance
that there’s a reference to the body of the crucified person on the cross, the
reference indicates that they’re left on the cross.
They’re not allowed to be given a decent burial because part of the
punishment is not only the torture of crucifixion, but also the humiliation
of not being given a decent burial. The sources repeatedly talk about bodies
being left on the cross for scavengers, usually for scavenging birds. Bodies
were normally left to rot. Was Jesus an exception? He could’ve been an
exception. But why would he have been an exception?
First reason for thinking Jesus wasn’t given a decent burial in a known tomb
is because that was not Roman practice. Second, Romans normally buried
lowly criminals themselves, rather than allowing others to do it. When
Romans would finally bury the carcass, or whatever remained of the carcass
from a crucified person or for some other executed person, they would
throw the person in a common grave where, if the corpses were not already
disintegrated beyond recognition and identification, they soon would be, in
a matter of days.
Third reason for thinking Jesus wasn’t given a decent burial. We’ve seen it
wasn’t customary for Romans to provide decent burial. Was an exception
made in the case of Jesus? The third reason suggests not--that is, that
Pontius Pilate in particular was not a kind and sympathetic ruler who was
willing to bestow kindnesses upon those who asked him nicely.
We know about Pontius Pilate from the writings of the 1st-century historian
Josephus, who tells us two very interesting stories about Pilate. And only
two stories is all he tells us. He tells us two stories that indicate something
about Pontius Pilate’s character. In the first story Josephus tells us, we are
dealing with when Pilate came into Jerusalem when he took over power of
the governorship in the year 26. According to Josephus, Pilate came into the
city-the capital city of the Jews-at night, and had his soldiers bring III the
Roman standards, the standards on which was emblazoned an image of the
Roman emperor. He set these up around the city, so that when the Jews woke
up the next morning, they found these standards scattered around the town.
And they were incensed. This was the Holy City! This is a violation of God
being the ruler and being centered in Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews.
They protested to Caesar. They marched on his palace in Caesarea and there
was a five-day standoff At the end of five days, Pilate ordered his soldiers
out, they surrounded the Jews, and Pilate ordered them to execute every one
of them. The Jews were not cowed. They stretched out their necks, according
to Josephus, and told the soldiers to do their worst. And Pilate decided that,
in fact, he couldn’t have this mass execution and so he backed off But this
story does show us something about Pontius Pilate’s character. He was not a
kind person, willing to give in easily to the requests of others.
The second incident that Josephus relates tells us the same thing. In the second
incident, Pilate has decided that he wanted to bring fresh water into Jerusalem,
and so he had an aqueduct built. But in order to fund the aqueduct, he raided
the treasury in the Jewish temple. People were incensed, and crowds were
gathering very angry. Pilate ordered his soldiers to intermingle with the crowd
disguised. So they weren’t in their military armor. And at his order, they pulled
out clubs and started beating people, leading to massive deaths.
This is the kind of character that Pontius Pilate was--not a kind, loving
governor who was concerned for the welfare of his people. Would he decide
that yes, I would like Jesus to have a decent burial? It seems unlikely at
the least.
At the end of the day, there are numerous incidents in the Gospels that we
cannot know about, or that we cannot accept as historically certain. What is
certain is that Jesus was executed by Pilate for calling himself the king of
the Jews. And this unexpected turn of events must have driven the disciples
of Jesus into deep despair. Until they came to believe that God had reversed
the judgment of the world by raising Jesus from the dead-a reversal that led
these disciples to begin to proclaim that, far from being a discredited messiah,
Jesus had been made divine. It is to the stories of Jesus’ Resurrection that we
turn in the next lecture.
