Christianity is a Verb

The title of this essay is a phrase I have been using recently in discussions about religion and the nature of Christianity. I have frequently said that I would like to write a book by that title. More than anything, however, I’d like to live my life in conjunction with it.

Christianity isn’t a title and most certainly isn’t an entitlement. “Christian” isn’t something you are; it’s something you do. Christianity isn’t the group you align yourself with; it’s the lifestyle you lead each and every day. Church isn’t an activity center; it’s a community outreach center.

In our earliest Christian writings, texts found both within the New Testament and outside the New Testament, we find that discussions like this – discussions about the very nature of Christianity and what it means to call one’s self a Christian – go back to the earliest days of Christianity. In New Testament theology, this discussion is one that goes by the more familiar theme of “faith vs. works.”

Faith was an integral part of early church life, much as it is today. For modern Christians, “faith” generally means trusting that God exists, that Jesus was his divine son, that he died for our sins, and that he rose again after three days.

For the earliest generation of Christians, however, “faith” was somewhat different. First, the question of God’s existence wasn’t one that generally concerned people. “Atheist” in the first century typically referred to someone who believed in a different god, not someone who had no faith in any gods. Someone who believed in no gods at all would likely have been called insane, rather than atheist.

Second, the earliest Christians didn’t think of Jesus as “divine,” the way that we do today. The idea that Jesus was literally God in the flesh did not come about in Christian circles until well after the first generations of Christians. The Trinity doctrine, for instance, wasn’t formulated and adopted until the 4th century C.E. For the earliest Christians, faith in Jesus meant faith that Jesus was a uniquely “God-inspired” person; a teacher and prophet through whom God worked directly; a human being through whom one could meet and engage the spirit of God. For a Jewish Christian in the 1st century, the very suggestion that Jesus had been God himself would have been seen as the worst kind of blasphemy. It would never have even crossed their minds. For Jews, God was so completely “other” that they didn’t even write his name. They used code words – abbreviations, essentially – to refer to God.

Third, while the idea of Jesus’ atonement and resurrection was an early development in Christian history, “resurrection” had a different meaning for those earliest Christians than it has for us today. Jewish tradition had conceived of resurrection as a physical event that happens to the body; you die, you are buried, and then your body comes back to life and you rise up out of your tomb. In Jewish theology, this was an event that was expected at the end of time, when God would finally reconcile the broken world to himself.

Jewish Christians, however, came to understand resurrection quite differently. Faced with the stark reality that their teacher had been brutally and unceremoniously executed by the Romans, they came to understand that, in death, Jesus had been exalted to the right hand of God. He had died for their sins, like the Passover lamb, and had been raised up to the heavenly realms. For these earliest Christians, Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension happened simultaneously. It wasn’t until later that Jesus’ resurrection and ascension was separated from his death. So when those early Christian texts talk about resurrection, they are talking about spiritual resurrection, not bodily resurrection. When they talk about the risen Jesus appearing to people, they are talking about spiritual apparitions and religious ecstasy, not a literally dead person literally coming back to life and re-entering society. That sort of literalistic understanding of early Jewish Christian scripture is a product of later centuries and later Christians unfamiliar with the unique religious worldview of 1st century Jewish Christians.

Some of my readers may find this last point particularly difficult to accept. I recognize that and am sensitive to it. My opinion is that it doesn’t matter whether one conceives of resurrection as spiritual or physical – it might have been either one. Ultimately, it is a faith proclamation in either case, because it’s also possible that it didn’t happen at all, that Jesus just died and was dead. What is far more important is what that faith proclamation means for us as Christians.

And that ultimate meaning brings us back to faith vs. works. The apostle Paul, in his many writings now extant in the New Testament, talks a lot about faith. In a cursory examination of the NIV translation, I counted exactly 100 repetitions of some form of the word “faith” within Paul’s letters. And that was only counting the 7 letters scholars widely agree came from Paul. There are 6 or 7 others that have traditionally been attributed to him as well. Clearly faith was important for Paul.

Paul’s words about faith – particularly in Romans – have led to what I see as a major problem in modern Christianity. This is the idea that we are saved by “faith alone.” Paul argues, throughout Romans and elsewhere, that Christians are saved by faith, and not “works of the law.” This has been misunderstood in mainstream Christianity to mean that the “profession of faith” in God and Jesus is all that really matters. If you profess your faith and mean it, and if you “ask Jesus into your heart,” then you have attained salvation. Of course, there is plenty of lip service given to leading a good life, being kind to others, “living like Jesus,” and so on. But all of that is just icing on the cake. Salvation is actually attained by the profession of faith. It’s good to do the other stuff too, but it’s not required.

For me, this is a quite depressing misunderstanding of Paul, and it’s one that is unfortunately extremely common among Christians. When Paul spoke about “works of the law,” he wasn’t talking about “good deeds.” He was talking about Mosaic Law – Old Testament commandments about how Jews should live their lives. He was talking about things like dietary restrictions, lifestyle codes, circumcision, honoring the Sabbath, appropriately celebrating the various Jewish holy days, and so on. He was saying that these things don’t provide salvation because they are ultimately impossible to follow perfectly. Instead, salvation comes from God’s grace, through faith. And that isn’t just plain old faith. Paul makes it clear that the kind of faith he is talking about is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). In other words, faith is an action, not a mere profession.

That this was misunderstood even in the earliest generations of Christianity is apparent within the New Testament itself. People came to understand that all they had to do was profess faith in Jesus, and they were set. They had their “get out of death free” card. Much of the book of James is a response to misunderstandings Christians had over Paul’s direction about faith. James attacks those who think that mere professions of faith are good enough for salvation. What good is it, James asks, if you wish someone well, but don’t actually do anything to help them? In 2:17, he says: “Faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” The word “works” in that passage is not referring to Mosaic Law. It is referring to good deeds. James is attacking the platitudes and religious stagnation he saw around him. People had their profession of faith, their conversion to Christianity, and they were content to sit on it, offering lip service at best. James says no. James says that’s wrong. James says you have misunderstood Paul. Paul was talking about Mosaic Law as it related to faith, not good deeds or lovingkindness in relation to faith. James makes clear what Paul frequently left ambiguous – that faith without good deeds and loving actions was a dead faith. It was meaningless. It served no purpose. It was, as I have said elsewhere, a windmill with no wind.

Unfortunately, not a lot has changed since the time of James. Many Christians still think a profession of faith is all they need to attain salvation. Like the Christians of James’ era, they have their “get out of death free” card, and they are content to sit on it. It’s too challenging to actually follow Jesus in the lifestyle he taught. It’s too challenging to actually give ourselves away to others. And more than that, it’s not at all convenient to our modern way of life in this materialistic, individualistic western society.

Jesus showed his followers how to live for others. He showed his followers how to love one another and work together for the common good. He demonstrated how the kingdom of God is a present reality that we all can take part in. He taught that the kingdom of God is our responsibility, not some future event that we have no control over. Early Christians textualized this teaching and asserted the importance of faith working through acts of love and compassion. For Jesus and the earliest Christians, salvation was never about the future. It was about the here and now, and it was attained through acts of love.

As a Christian, I don’t engage much in absolutes. I recognize that what we know about Jesus comes from ancient texts that are wide open to interpretation. I recognize that we can’t know anything about God other than what we discern from those texts that we consider authoritative, and from our own personal religious practice – prayer, meditation, etc. I believe that God can be approached from many different religious traditions and I do not believe in claims of theological exclusivity. I feel a high level of contempt for those religious persons who claim to have the exclusive pathway to heaven, and anyone who doesn’t follow them has an exclusive pathway to hell.

For me, salvation is about life in the here and now. I have hope for an afterlife, but religion, for me, is about how we act and live together here on earth, in the present. So when I talk of “being saved” or “not being saved,” I am not talking about eschatology – that is, ideas about the ultimate destiny of humanity and the world. I am not talking about the end of the world and what will happen to humans after they die. I don’t know what happens to people after they die. Instead, I am talking about life in the present. Salvation for me, then, is expressing love for God through acts of love for others. Those two things cannot be separated. I cannot express love for God unless I am living for others, and I cannot live for others without expressing love for God. I approach this salvation through the teachings of Jesus and the earliest Christians who taught in his name. If someone approaches God from a different religious tradition, but one with ultimately the same ends, then I consider them a brother or sister in God.

For me, if a Christian is not expressing love for God through acts of love for others – that is, if they are not living for others rather than for themselves – then they are not taking part in the kingdom of God promised by Jesus. They are Christians in name only – which means they aren’t Christians at all. As James said, their faith is as good as a corpse.

Even though those words come without any underlying threat of eternal damnation and ultimate eschatological absolutes, I realize they may seem harsh. And lest I appear as a monstrous hypocrite, I will be the first to admit that I frequently fall short.

There is nothing more difficult in modern western society than to actually live like Jesus taught us to live. Our culture teaches us to pursue wealth, pursue material and personal gain, pursue power and influence and authority and status, and live for ourselves even at the expense of others. It teaches us that individualism is the ultimate expression of humanity, and reinforces the idea that if someone fails or falls on hard times, they probably have only themselves to blame. We promote charity, but we expect to get a tax write-off for doing it. We promote living Godly lives, but we expect divine blessings in the form of material gain for doing it – the age old Gospel of Prosperity. We toss a few bucks in the offering plate, give some money to the Santa Claus at the Salvation Army bucket every Christmas, and give our old, worn-out clothes to Goodwill – and we think it’s enough. We’re nice to people, we try not to be hateful, and we generally attempt to be contributing members of society – and we think it’s enough. We say our prayers, we attend worship services, and we don’t take the Lord’s name in vain – and we think it’s enough.

My argument is that it’s not enough. My argument is that the life of Christ is a life of service to others. Not service just when it’s convenient. Not service in the form of platitudes. But a real, living, active lifestyle of service for others. Living for others and not for ourselves. Putting the needs of others ahead of the needs of ourselves.

That’s salvation. That’s living as part of the kingdom of God. That’s true faith. And even if we frequently fail to live to those standards, the least we can do is try. Make the attempt. When we fail, try again. And never stop trying.

If we do that, we are following the life of Christ. We are living Christianity as a verb. If not, we are just silent windmills in a vacuum.

The Role of Women in the Resurrection

Carracci's Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ

It is frequently asserted by theologians and scholars from across the spectrum that women played a prominent role in the resurrection of Jesus. Whether one understands the resurrection as a metaphor for newness of life, a spiritual resurrection of Jesus’ soul, or a physical resuscitation of Jesus’ body, many agree that women played a central role in that original understanding.

I understand this position well because I have often made the argument myself. Our earliest Christian texts, both within the Bible and outside the Bible, depict women as having a central place in Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. Women are said to have been close followers of Jesus and to have helped finance his ministry; women are said to have been the only ones who stayed with Jesus at his execution; women are said to have been the first people to find the empty tomb and to see the resurrected Christ; and women held positions of authority and influence in the churches of Paul.

Taken together, these things indicate strongly that women played unusually significant roles in the birth of Christianity – unusual because of its placement in an era and region that was strongly patriarchal and in which women were second-class citizens not even considered reliable enough to testify in a trial.

This history, of course, has important and vital ramifications to theology. Even in the 21st century, there are still Christian churches, denominations, and institutions that do not permit women in ministry roles. The Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, does not ordain women to be ministers or even deacons. The Roman Catholic Church does not allow women to be priests, bishops, or popes, and doesn’t even allow its male leaders to get married (perhaps women would distract them from their heavenly duties?). Many folks from among these denominations and churches regard women in ministry roles with derision. One website I found stated that “women preachers are all false prophets.”

So recognizing the important role women played, both during Jesus’ ministry, at his resurrection, and even into the early Christian era in the Pauline churches, is vitally important to modern theology. Paul couldn’t be more explicit when he refers to Phoebe, the carrier of his letter to Rome, as a “deacon” of the church. He couldn’t be more explicit when he calls Priscilla of Rome his “fellow worker” in Christ Jesus (implying that she is in an authoritative teaching role like he is). He couldn’t be more explicit when he says that the Roman church meets in her house, implying she is the leader of that church. He couldn’t be more explicit when he calls a woman named Junia an “apostle” – that is, a preacher or missionary. He couldn’t be more explicit when he refers to women prophesying – that is, providing theological guidance to congregations.

While none of that is invalidated by the discussion that follows, I want to look more closely at the common idea that women were centrally involved in the resurrection. Biblically-speaking, the Gospel writers all agree that women, and specifically Mary Magdalene, were the first to find the empty tomb. Furthermore, Matthew and John assert that Mary herself was the first person to see the risen Jesus.

This, as mentioned above, has led to common assertions that whatever the resurrection was – metaphorical, spiritual, physical – women played a central role. The argument suggests that it is inconceivable that male scribes in patriarchal 1st century Palestine would have written women into a story where they didn’t originally exist – especially one as theologically important as the resurrection – so their presence in these accounts must point to early and reliable tradition.

While I have frequently made this point myself, I recently read an argument suggesting that perhaps the story of the women at the tomb was, in fact, a literary embellishment. This came from scholar J.D. Crossan in his book, “The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus.” Crossan, by no means, suggests a diminished role of women in modern churches based on this historical reconstruction, but simply argues that the textual evidence lends credence to literary embellishment rather than “history remembered.”

First, it is important to recognize that while a person might commonly argue that “all four Gospels agree that women were involved in the resurrection,” in reality this is only a single source, and not four sources. It is an issue of confusing texts with sources. We have four texts agreeing that women were at the tomb (actually, we have five, if you count the Gospel of Peter). But only one source. That single source is Mark. Matthew and Luke both used Mark’s account as a primary source in creating their own accounts. And while John has traditionally been considered an “independent” source from the other three, scholarly trends of the last 20 or 30 years have started moving toward the conclusion that the author of John, in fact, used one or more of the other three. Having read the various arguments, I am fairly convinced that John is not independent of the other canonical Gospels.

So while all of the Gospels agree that women found the tomb, there is only a single source at play there – the Gospel of Mark.

So the obvious question is this: Did Mark base his story on some earlier tradition, either oral or written, or did he just make it up off the top of his head?

The first option would seem to be the self-evident answer. Mark must have gotten his general information on Jesus from somewhere, and it is reasonable to assume that the story of the women at the tomb was included in that earlier source.

Crossan argues, however, for the second option – that the “women at the tomb” story was a creation of Mark. More specifically, he argues that it was a theological creation of Mark. In other words, it wasn’t just willy-nilly; Mark wasn’t making stuff up for fun. He was making a theological point.

The first bit of evidence comes from our pre-Markan accounts of Christianity. Many scholars, for instance, date the non-Biblical texts known as the Didache and the Gospel of Thomas to the middle of the 1st century, several decades before Mark. Neither of those documents, however, describes the resurrection at all, with women or without. We do, however, have one, and possibly two, resurrection accounts that predate Mark – the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Peter.

As to the Gospel of Peter, while most agree that it was written down in the 2nd century, a number of scholars argue that it contains early, pre-Biblical accounts of Jesus’ passion and resurrection. Some (namely Crossan) even go so far as to suggest that an early resurrection text – dubbed the Cross Gospel – is imbedded in the Gospel of Peter, and Crossan dates that hypothetical text to about 40 C.E., thirty years before Mark. Whether you agree with that hypothesis or not, the Cross Gospel does not include any women at the tomb. Instead, it is the Romans and the Jewish authorities – the enemies of Jesus – who find the empty tomb and who see the first vision of the risen Jesus.

As to the letters of Paul, there can be little doubt that they predate Mark or any of the other texts of the New Testament. Paul has very little to say about Jesus’ resurrection, but he does give a brief description of it in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15. He doesn’t mention anything about a tomb, but he provides a list of people the risen Christ appeared to. There is no mention of any women.

So our pre-Markan sources unilaterally fail to mention anything about women and the resurrection. If women played a prominent role in the resurrection, as is often asserted, and the Gospels of the New Testament reflect that tradition, shouldn’t we find the same tradition in our earlier sources? One would think yes, but the answer is no.

The second bit of evidence comes from a look at Mark’s overall theology. For years, theologians and scholars have pointed out that Mark tends to depict the disciples in a very negative light. In Mark, the disciples are bumbling and inept, never understanding despite continual clear instructions by Jesus. They don’t seem to get it when he tells them he will be executed and resurrected. When he enters the Garden of Gethsemane to pray before his arrest, Peter, James, and John – his “inner three” – fall asleep on him. Later, Peter denies knowing him, and all the disciples flee and abandon Jesus, never to be heard from in Mark’s text again.

Mark contrasts the lack of faith and general incompetence of the disciples – and specifically of Peter, James, and John – with a story of an unnamed Roman centurion who, at the foot of the cross, proclaims that Jesus is the son of God. The disciples never got it, but a pagan Gentile did.

Mark paints an equally negative portrait of Jesus’ female followers. He makes clear that Jesus had prominent female disciples, but those women are also depicted as not understanding and having a basic lack of faith. In his story of the women at the tomb, they go there not to look for the resurrected Jesus, but to anoint his body in a burial custom. Crossan points out that this may have demonstrated great love, but it did not demonstrate great faith. Clearly the women didn’t believe Jesus when he told them repeatedly that he would be resurrected after three days.

Furthermore, when the women are instructed by the heavenly messenger at the tomb to tell the disciples to meet the risen Jesus in Galilee, the women fail to do it, and instead flee in terror.

Like the story of the Roman centurion, the unbelief and disobedience of the women in Jesus’ inner circle is contrasted by the great faith of an unnamed woman at the house of a leper who, prior to Jesus’ arrest, anoints his body with expensive unguents. Jesus heaps praise upon her for her great faith, and predicts that her story will be remembered for all time. Why did this demonstrate great faith? Because she believed Jesus when he said he would rise after three days, so she anointed his body before his burial, knowing she wouldn’t have a chance to do so afterward because he would rise again.

Mark’s literary technique is clear: the male disciples, personified by the trio of Peter, James, and John, are inept and disbelieving. They are contrasted with an unnamed male pagan who asserts that Jesus is the son of God. The female disciples, personified by the trio of Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joses, and Salome, are disbelieving and disobedient. They are contrasted with an unnamed female at the home of a leper who has great faith that Jesus will rise again.

In that literary technique of Mark, a threefold theological implication to his readers is also clear. First, just because you come from a community claiming authority of one of Jesus’ inner circle, that doesn’t mean you have superiority or authority over others – after all, even Jesus’ own inner circle were inept, disobedient, and disbelieving. Second, even if you feel inept and undeserving of God’s grace, be comforted because even Jesus’ own companions were like you. Third, don’t feel unworthy if you were never a part of Jesus’ inner circle; after all, those outside of the inner circle, like pagans and humble, anonymous women, were exalted above and beyond even the inner circle.

In that literary and theological context, it makes perfect sense why Mark – despite the patriarchal society in which he lived – might have written women into a resurrection scene without any pre-existing tradition to support it.

The third and final bit of evidence is the way Mark’s account was used by later writers. It is clear from Matthew, Luke, and John, that they were basing their story of the women at the tomb solely on Mark – and not on some other oral or textual tradition.

Matthew’s account follows Mark’s almost word for word. He does, however, clearly see a problem with Mark’s negative portrayal of the women, and with the fact that there are no resurrection scenes in Mark’s account. So where Mark’s women flee from the tomb in “terror and amazement” and don’t tell anyone, Matthew’s women go with “fear and great joy” and immediately tell the other disciples – exactly as they were instructed to do. Where Mark’s women are disobedient, Matthew’s are obedient right to the letter, even going so far as to “run quickly” after being told to “quickly” go tell the disciples. Also, where there is never any resurrection appearance in Mark, Matthew has the women meet Jesus on the road, and later has the disciples meet Jesus in Galilee. Finally, where Mark’s women are demonstrating unfaithfulness by going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, Matthew’s women are simply going there to “look at the tomb,” as though to check to see if he’s risen yet. Throughout the entire scene, it is clear that Matthew is “fixing” Mark’s account – changing disobedience into obedience, unfaithfulness into faithfulness, and adding in resurrection appearances.

Luke’s changes mirror Matthew’s. The women find the tomb, but instead of disobeying, they go to tell the disciples. There are also extensive scenes in which the risen Jesus appears to the disciples (though never to the women, as in Matthew).

John’s account diverges the most from Mark, but it is clear that John was using the accounts of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Mary Magdalene is again the central character, and although no other women are mentioned by name, Mary does use the word “we” when discussing the discovery of the empty tomb, implying other women were there with her. John borrows Luke’s story about Peter running to the tomb and looking inside to see the “strips of linen” discarded there. The general negativity of Mark is retained by John when Mary Magdalene doesn’t understand that the empty tomb means Jesus has risen – she believes his body has been stolen. When she finally sees Jesus, she still doesn’t get it, mistaking him for the gardener. Finally, John refers to Matthew’s account when he has Jesus instruct Mary not to “hold on” to him. In Matthew, when Mary and the other women met the risen Jesus, they “grasped his feet” and worshipped him. Since John doesn’t say anything about Mary attempting to touch Jesus, Jesus’ words only make sense in the context of Matthew’s story.

Taking these three accounts together, there is no textual evidence suggesting that a different oral or textual tradition was used by Matthew, Luke, or John in forming their “women at the tomb” stories. Luke and Matthew relied exclusively on Mark, and John relied on all three.

Thus, the three lines of evidence – the internal literary and theological clues from Mark, the total lack of any suggestion about women at the tomb in any existing pre-Markan sources, and the exclusive reliance of the later Gospel writers on Mark’s account – all suggest that Mark developed the story on his own.

Having said all that, and having presented the argument, I am still not sure where I stand. On a personal level, I very much like the idea of women having a central role in the resurrection. It helps negate a lot of stereotypes so common in Christian churches. But as a historian and essayist, I have to make sure that my personal biases don’t interfere with any neutral historical conclusions that I embrace. I may like the idea of women being involved intimately in the resurrection, and of that historical fact being imbedded in our existing accounts, but just because I want it to be true doesn’t mean that it is.

Crossan makes a powerful argument that strikes deep at the notion that there must have been an earlier source for the “women at the tomb” tradition. His argument digs at the foundational assumption that says that no 1st century male writer would have added women into an important story when there was otherwise no historical basis for doing so. In fact, one of the hallmark arguments among Christian apologists for the reliability of the Gospel stories is that they depict women in prominent resurrection roles. Since it seems self-evident that no male in the 1st century would have added such a story where none existed, the argument says that the stories must reflect a level of historical truth. I have long generally agreed with this assertion.

Yet Crossan has adequately shown how and why such a male writer might have done just that. He illustrates persuasively the literary and theological aspects of Mark’s Gospel. By writing women into the resurrection scene, Mark was not elevating women into a position of prominence; instead, he was using that scene to demonstrate that Jesus’ inner circle of both men and women were generally inept, unfaithful, and disobedient, as this served his greater theological theme.

I do have some reservations, however. First, while the argument about Mark’s literary techniques is a persuasive one, I don’t think I can call it “final.” Crossan demonstrates how negativity can be read into the scene of the women at the tomb (unfaithfulness and disobedience), but I am not sure I am convinced that this negativity was Mark’s primary goal in that scene. Other scholars have argued that this scene was liturgical in nature, based on oral tradition of women mourners at the tomb, and of the belief that Jesus had been resurrected in accordance with the Jewish scriptures. While it’s true that the women are technically being unfaithful by coming to anoint his body in a burial ritual despite his promise to rise again, and while it is true that the women are technically being disobedient by not immediately going and telling the disciples what they have seen, I am not sure that Crossan has convinced me that this was legitimately the intention of the writer of Mark. Although I count Crossan among my favorite New Testament experts, I have frequently felt that he sometimes reads between the lines a bit too much, looking for evidence that doesn’t really seem to be there. I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t another example of that.

As a rebuttal to that, however, it seems undeniable that Matthew saw the same negativity in Mark that Crossan has seen, because Matthew clearly “fixes” those negative portrayals.

Second, Crossan makes a good point that there is no evidence of any “women at the tomb” stories prior to Mark, but it’s also true that we have extremely few sources of any resurrection stories at all prior to Mark. Paul gives very few biographical details about Jesus or the circumstances of his resurrection. He does give us a list of those Jesus was said to have appeared to, and he does say that this was the tradition given to him in Jerusalem very early on, but it’s certainly possible that Paul simply left out any reference to women out of misogyny or perhaps because he was having trouble with female prophets in Corinth (as deduced from the content of other parts of the letter). As for the Cross Gospel, that is an extremely contentious hypothesis, as I indicated above, and the majority of scholars reject it. If the Cross Gospel did exist, then Crossan’s point is bolstered, because women don’t figure in the resurrection. But if it did not exist, then Crossan’s point is weakened, because it leaves us with only one pre-Markan source for the resurrection, namely the letters of Paul. That’s not much to go on considering that we are talking about 40 years of tradition prior to Mark. There were most certainly a lot of texts and oral traditions going around during those years that we no longer have access to. So just because there is no longer any existing evidence for pre-Markan stories of the women at the tomb doesn’t mean those stories didn’t exist in the first century.

In the end, whether Crossan’s argument about the “women at the tomb” story is correct or not, there can be no question that women were central figures in early Christianity, both during Jesus’ life and during the rise of Christianity after his death. Thus, whether their role in the resurrection itself was historical or legendary, that does not change the fact that women’s diminished role in Christianity, beginning in the late 1st century, was a product of male-dominated human institutions, and not any divinely-mandated secondary status of women.

The Cross Gospel

The Cross Gospel is an early passion-resurrection text hypothesized by Jesus scholar J.D. Crossan as one of the primary sources behind the 2nd century Gospel of Peter, as well as the four Gospels of the New Testament.

As a “passion-resurrection” text, it tells the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, execution, and resurrection.

From a cursory examination, it seems that most accounts of the Cross Gospel go one of two ways: either they are accounts intended for a general audience that provide only a cursory explanation of the Cross Gospel without much detail (for instance, on the Internet), or they are accounts given in publications intended for academic audiences and are therefore not accessible for the average dabbler in Biblical scholarship.

My intent in this essay is to provide an overview of the Cross Gospel for armchair enthusiasts and those with a general interest in Biblical scholarship.

JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN



J.D. Crossan spent most of his career at DePaul University, where he is now a Professor Emeritus. He is widely regarded as one of the premier Jesus scholars alive today, and is both famous and infamous for his conclusions regarding Jesus of Nazareth and the history of early Christianity. Regardless of how one regards his conclusions, there are few who would disagree that Crossan is one of the most prominent, widely quoted, and widely debated New Testament scholars alive today.

THE GOSPEL OF PETER

Crossan has hypothesized what he calls the “Cross Gospel” from a study of the Gospel of Peter – a 2nd century work that has been available to scholars for more than 100 years, but which most average Christians are not familiar with.

Prior to the late 19th century, the Gospel of Peter was known only through a few references and quotations by early Church fathers, who mention it in writings from the 3rd and 4th centuries. In the 1880’s, however, a large fragment of the Gospel was discovered (like so many other lost Christian texts) in Egypt, inside the tomb of a 10th century Christian monk. That 10th century version was itself copied from just a fragment of the text, demonstrating that even in the early Middle Ages, most of the text was already lost.



The surviving text begins just after the arrest of Jesus, follows through his trial, execution, burial, and resurrection, and ends just after his tomb is found empty by Mary Magdalene and her “women friends.” It actually ends in mid-sentence, with Peter (writing in first person) going out to sea to fish together with his brother Andrew and Levi son of Alphaeus (identified in most traditions with the disciple Matthew).

Most scholars, including Crossan, agree that the original Gospel of Peter dates to the mid-2nd century – roughly 150 C.E. Eusebius, writing in the 300’s, refers to another Church historian who wrote about the Gospel of Peter around 190 C.E. So it must have already been in existence, and in wide circulation, by that time.

SOURCES FOR THE GOSPEL OF PETER

There are three obvious conclusions scholars can draw about the sources used by the writer of the Gospel of Peter. The first is that the writer depended solely on one or more of the New Testament Gospels in writing his text. The second is that the writer did not depend on any New Testament Gospel, and thus exclusively used some other source no longer in existence. The third is a combination of the first two – the writer of Peter used both New Testament sources and non-New Testament (or non-canonical) sources.

Very few scholars have argued for the second position. Most agree that the writer of Peter used one or more of the New Testament Gospels, and a fair amount argue that he also used some source not found in the Gospels and no longer in existence.

Crossan falls into the camp asserting that there are both canonical and non-canonical sources in the Gospel of Peter. He points out that if Peter is based only on canonical sources, why is there so much in the existing text that is not found in those four New Testament Gospels? A sizeable portion, perhaps more than half, of the existing Gospel of Peter has no parallels in the New Testament. It seems clear to Crossan and many others that the writer of this text was using some other source in addition to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and/or John.

THE CROSS GOSPEL

Crossan has formed the hypothesis that this “fifth source” for the Gospel of Peter is a passion-resurrection narrative no longer in existence, which he calls the Cross Gospel. He has dated this Gospel to the early 40’s C.E., roughly 10-12 years after the execution of Jesus. He has further asserted that it not only informed the passion-resurrection account of the Gospel of Peter, but was also the primitive account that informed the Gospel of Mark. Since Mark informed Matthew and Luke, and all three together informed John, Crossan has argued that the Cross Gospel is at the heart of all existing passion-resurrection narratives known to modern Christian scholarship.

This is, without question, a highly controversial view. Crossan himself has stated that when he first proposed it in the late 1980’s, it was met “with almost universal rejection” among his colleagues. I don’t think that “universal rejection” is still apparent – it seems that slowly but surely, more and more scholars are taking his proposal seriously. It remains, however, a distinctly minority view.

The primary argument against the Cross Gospel is not necessarily its existence (many scholars, as I mentioned above, agree that the Gospel of Peter uses a non-canonical source), but rather its unified content and dating.

First, as to the unified content. While many scholars argue for non-canonical sources in the Gospel of Peter, most assert that this content may have come from several sources, both written and oral, and may not represent an actual “consecutive” account (that is, an established written story with a distinct beginning, middle, and end). In other words, the content of Peter that does not come from the four Gospels of the New Testament may have been drawn from a number of different textual and oral traditions known to the writer of Peter.

Second, regarding the dating. This is perhaps the most controversial of Crossan’s arguments. Critics argue that while there may well have been some early source known to Mark which no longer exists, it is hard to equate the Cross Gospel with that Markan source.

Crossan responds to the first criticism by arguing that the material at question in the Gospel of Peter (that is, the material that does not come from the New Testament) has all the structural earmarks of a unified account – a beginning, middle, and end, as it were. If it was drawn from numerous written and textual sources, it would not demonstrate that sort of cohesion.

For instance, the text tells us that Herod Antipas, and not Pilate, ordered Jesus’ execution, and that the execution was carried out not by Roman soldiers, but by the Jewish people. Later, however, the Jewish people are stunned by the miraculous signs that take place during the crucifixion (darkening of the sun, the curtain of the holy of holies ripped in two, etc.), and appear to be on the verge of repenting and proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. The Jewish authorities, however, having witnessed the resurrection themselves (and thus, in effect, knowing that Jesus is the Messiah), plot with the Romans to cover it up, lest the Jewish people attack them for leading them to kill God’s promised Messiah.

With the exception of the miraculous signs at Jesus’ crucifixion, none of that is found in the four Gospels of the New Testament. Yet it clearly has a narrative cohesion one would expect in a single written story – and which one would not expect from a conglomeration of various written and oral traditions. The Jews execute Jesus on the orders of the Jewish authorities, the Jews are amazed at the miraculous signs during the crucifixion, the Jews are on the verge of repenting, so the Jewish authorities cover up the resurrection to keep their own people from attacking them out of anger that their authorities led them to crucify their own Messiah.

This seems to be (and is argued by Crossan to be) a cohesive and well-established written account being used by the writer of the Gospel of Peter. Furthermore, Crossan points out that while many scholars have disagreed with his Cross Gospel hypothesis, none have managed to show how a conglomeration of oral and written traditions could have resulted in the cohesive narrative found in the Gospel of Peter.

As to the dating issue, Crossan supports his date of roughly 42 C.E. by looking at the context of the story and comparing it to similar situations in Jewish-Christian history. He specifically argues that it was created in Jerusalem during the early 40’s, after Agrippa returned from Rome as the new King of the Jews.

Agrippa was a grandson to Herod the Great, but was raised in the imperial palace at Rome.



Because of those Roman connections, he eventually was given rule of a portion of the Jewish homeland in 37 C.E. Once installed, he deposed the Roman-appointed high priestly family, and re-established the priestly family that had been in favor during the time of his grandfather, Herod the Great. The Roman-appointed family, by the way, had been involved in the deaths of both Jesus around 30 C.E. and the early Christian Stephen around 37 C.E. The Christian Jews would no doubt have been pleased with Agrippa for deposing this priestly family.

Agrippa returned to Rome, however, in 39 C.E. and stayed there for two years. When he came back to Judea in 41, he was granted kingship of the entire Jewish homeland. One of his first actions was to reinstate the Roman high priestly family that he had deposed four years earlier. Shortly thereafter, he had James son of Zebedee (one of Jesus’ disciples) put to death, and arrested Simon Peter (who later escaped). Where Agrippa had been favorable in the eyes of early Christianity before, he now became its enemy.

Crossan argues that it was in this setting that the Cross Gospel was composed. He states: “The Romans were completely innocent then [at the execution of Jesus] because that was how they appeared now [in the early 40’s]. The house of Herod and the Jewish authorities were completely guilty then because that was how they appeared now. The ‘people of the Jews’ were ready to convert then because that was how they appeared now.”

THE CONTENT OF THE CROSS GOSPEL

I have already alluded to the primary content of the Cross Gospel in the points above. Pilate and the Romans are shown to be completely innocent of Jesus’ execution. Herod Antipas orders “the Lord to be taken away” instructing them to “do what I told you to do.” But who did Herod hand Jesus over to? That question is answered a few sentences later: “…he gave them over to the people” – that is, the Jewish people.

The Jewish people then run Jesus through the streets, spitting on him, hitting him with a reed, slapping his cheeks, and whipping him. They also put him in a purple robe and place a crown of thorns on his head.

Jesus is then crucified together with two criminals. The Jews (not the Roman soldiers, as in the Gospels) cast lots for his clothes. One of the criminals derides the Jews for executing Jesus. The people respond not by torturing the criminal, but by ordering that Jesus’ legs are not to be broken, so that he will die more slowly and suffer more.

By midday, the sky goes dark and the people aren’t able to tell whether it is evening or not. They fear breaking Mosaic Law by allowing a corpse to remain crucified after sunset and the start of the Sabbath. So they give Jesus a mixture of gall (poison) and vinegar to hasten his death. It works, and Jesus cries out “My Power, O Power, you have forsaken me!” The text does not actually say Jesus dies, however. Instead it uses a euphemism and says that Jesus was “taken up.”

After this, the curtain of the Holy of Holies is torn in two and there is a great earthquake. The darkness then dissipates and the sun reappears, showing it to be the “9th hour” (that is, 3 o’clock in the afternoon). The Jews are happy because they have not broken Mosaic Law.

Because of the miraculous signs during his execution and death, “the Jews,” “the elders,” and “the priests” – that is, all the Jewish people including their leaders – realize they have made a grave error and begin to “beat their breasts” and lament over the fall of Jerusalem, which must surely be coming from an angry God.

The Jewish authorities (“the scribes and Pharisees and elders”) become concerned that if Jesus’ disciples break into his tomb, revive him, and take him away, the Jews will become convinced that he has risen from the dead. So they urge the Romans to put guards at the tomb for “three days” – the time period Jews believed it took to ensure that a person was truly dead. Pilate agrees and sends a centurion named Petronius, together with his soldiers (presumably 100 of them), to guard the tomb. The Jewish elders go to the tomb as well. Once there, they roll a stone in front of it and seal it with “seven wax seals.” They then “pitch a tent” and literally camp out in front of the tomb. On the Sabbath (Saturday), large crowds come by and see the sealed and guarded tomb.

Early in the morning on Sunday, while it is still dark, there is a “loud voice in heaven.” The heavens open and “two men” descend in a shining light and approach the tomb. The stone rolls away by itself and the two men enter the tomb. The soldiers quickly wake up the centurion and the Jewish leaders and tell them what just happen. While they are telling the story, three men suddenly emerge from the tomb. The first two men are on either side of the third man, regally sustaining him with their arms the way a king might be led by his courtiers. The heads of the two men reach to the heavens, but the third man’s head goes “beyond the heavens.” The three men are being followed by “a cross.”

At this moment, a voice from heaven says: “Have you proclaimed to those who have died?” Jesus doesn’t respond, but the cross does: “Yes.”

This scene, of course, has made the Gospel of Peter and its Cross Gospel source infamous for those familiar with it. A walking, talking cross? Crossan, however, has argued persuasively that when taken in context, it is clear that the “cross” is not the cross that Jesus was crucified on, but rather a “cruciform procession” of the Holy Ones of Israel’s history that Jesus had just freed from hell. This “harrowing of hell” is an idea that has a long tradition in Catholic Christianity. The ancient Israelites, living before the time of Christ, must, by the definitions of Christian doctrine, have been in hell. So Jesus went there during his time in the tomb and freed those “Holy Ones” from their eternal torment. In the Cross Gospel source of the Gospel of Peter, Crossan argues that these freed Holy Ones exit the tomb with Jesus, forming a “cruciform procession” behind him. He uses this to argue that the earliest passion-resurrection accounts of Jesus viewed his death and vindication as a communal event rather than simply a personal event that happened to Jesus. Jesus, together with all of Israel, was vindicated upon his resurrection. Furthermore, the heads of Jesus and his courtiers are already up in the heavens because Jesus has already been exalted to God – he’s already resurrected and ascended, in other words.

After the resurrection scene, the centurion and his soldiers, together with the Jewish authorities, report to Pilate and proclaim that “truly he was God’s son.” The Jewish authorities, however, beg Pilate to cover it up and not allow his soldiers to tell anyone. The authorities fear that the people will “stone them” if they find out that they were led by the authorities to crucify the son of God. Pilate agrees.

ANALYSIS OF THE CROSS GOSPEL

The above story is what Crossan proposes was contained in the Cross Gospel. There are a number of scenes and events in the Gospel of Peter that I did not illustrate above, including a scene where Joseph of Arimathea asks for the body of Jesus, then buries it, and where Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty. These stories, by Crossan’s account, were drawn by the writer of Peter from the New Testament Gospels, and not from the Cross Gospel source.

As for the Cross Gospel itself, it is made explicit that the Jewish authorities urged the Jewish people to crucify Jesus, and then those people recognized their error and were on the verge of repenting. The Jewish authorities, fearing for their own safety, covered up the resurrection so that the Jewish people wouldn’t find out about it.

What is perhaps most significant, and unique, in that Cross Gospel text is that we have our only Christian story of the actual resurrection itself. In the four canonical Gospels, the resurrection has already occurred when the women find the tomb empty. Jesus then later appears. In the Cross Gospel, however, we have a story of the resurrection itself. Jesus is regally led out of his tomb by two heavenly men, their bodies already being exalted to heaven, followed by a procession of Israel’s Holy Ones who have been freed from the torments of hell. Furthermore, it is not the disciples or any of Jesus’ followers who witness this resurrection, but the Jewish and Roman authorities! The Jewish authorities are depicted as actually knowing from first-hand experience that Jesus rose from the dead, but covering it up to save their own skins.

The theological implications are fairly obvious there, and I alluded to them earlier in the context of Jerusalem in the early 40’s C.E.

Crossan argues that this text was the primitive passion-resurrection account used by Mark when developing his own, much more extensive, narrative. And following Mark were Matthew, Luke, and John. Thus, Crossan argues that familiar New Testament themes such as the purple robe, the crown of thorns, the beating and whipping, the two criminals – one of whom supports Jesus, the gall and vinegar, the decision not to break Jesus’ legs, the earthquakes, the harrowing of hell and the opening of the tombs of the Holy Ones, the sepulcher with a rolling stone door, the belief of the centurion, the “cry of dereliction” by Jesus on the cross, the heavenly messengers at the tomb – Crossan argues that all of this was original to the Cross Gospel, and informed the four canonical Gospels which were written after it.

Crossan, of course, does not argue for a literal interpretation of this Cross Gospel. He argues that it was theologically designed to show that the Romans were innocent of Jesus’ blood, the Jewish authorities were guilty of Jesus’ blood and of keeping the Jewish people from repenting, the resurrection of Jesus was a communal event of vindication for all rather than a personal event that happened to Jesus, and he argues finally that it was drawn not from “history remembered” but from “prophecy historicized.”

On that last point, “history remembered” would be an account drawn primarily from the memories of those who experienced it. Crossan, and of course numerous other scholars, have argued that the various Gospels of Jesus, both canonical and non-canonical, are not “history remembered,” but primarily “prophecy historicized.” That is, they are not based on memory, but are based on what the early Christians believed Jesus’ death meant, based on prophecy and scripture from the Jewish holy texts. Our accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection (including the Gospel of Peter), are unanimous in their assertion that Jesus’ followers abandoned him after his arrest. They weren’t there for the trial, the persecution, the execution, the burial, or even the resurrection. They do not reappear in our various texts until the women report that they found the tomb empty.

Most scholars, therefore, agree that Jesus’ closest companions didn’t really know what happened to Jesus after his arrest. Thus, the stories we get from Christian history are accounts drawn “according to the Scripture” (as stated by Paul), rather than accounts drawn from personal memory. Crossan argues that the same is true of the Cross Gospel, and that it was designed to fit the common Jewish wisdom stories of persecution before and vindication after execution (found in texts such as Isaiah, 2 Maccabees, and the Wisdom of Solomon). In effect, Crossan argues that the story is an early written account reflecting the early Christian belief that Jesus had been vindicated after his death and exalted to heaven by God.

CONCLUSION

As I made clear at the start, the Cross Gospel is a hypothetical text that has long been in wide contention among scholars. Many agree that the Gospel of Peter used non-canonical sources, but not all agree that this source was a single, consecutive narrative predating the Gospels of the New Testament.

The debate is sure to continue, but it is worth noting that when the hypothetical “Q Gospel” was first proposed by scholars in the 19th century, it was met with wide and almost universal rejection. Now, of course, it is accepted widely among scholars, and numerous arguments, conclusions, and historical reconstructions of early Christianity have been based upon it. One has to wonder if the Cross Gospel won’t enjoy the same sort of slow but sure acceptance in decades to come, as more information comes to light.

One thing seems sure: it will either become widely accepted, or it will finally be shown to be misguided. But for the time being – as Crossan has pointed out – no scholar has yet been able to show convincingly why and how it is wrong, or to make a counter-proposal that makes more sense.

The Craig-Ehrman Resurrection Debate: A Commentary

In March of 2006, a now famous debate took place on the university campus of Holy Cross in Massachusetts. The participants were religious scholars William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman, and they debated the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Craig is a noted religious scholar and professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, and Ehrman is a best-selling writer and head of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bart D. Ehrman

William Lane Craig

Having recently read the transcript, as well as a number of online commentaries, I wanted to add my own perspective to the mix. If you have the time and inclination, I strongly urge you to read the debate transcript yourself, as it is extremely informative in regards to the varied scholarly opinions about the historical rise of Christianity (Transcript link). The video is also available in installations on YouTube (YouTube link to the first segment). Evangelicals will no doubt find Craig’s arguments to be sound and convincing, and progressives and skeptics will find that Ehrman’s arguments seem unassailably rational.

If you don’t want to take the time to read or view the debate (it’s quite long, of course), then (lucky you!) you can simply read what I have written here. I will summarize what each scholar brought to the table, and provide my own commentary and analysis on their arguments.

CRAIG’S OPENING ARGUMENT

William Lane Craig opened the debate by presenting his case for a literal understanding of the resurrection. Although he doesn’t say it openly, he draws heavily on ideas presented by British scholar and theologian N.T. Wright in his book “The Resurrection of the Son of God.”

Craig first provides four “facts of history” (which I will call his “4 points”) which he asserts are agreed upon as reliable by the majority of the scholarly world. These facts are: 1) Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea; 2) Jesus’ tomb was later found empty; 3) Jesus’ followers believed they saw Jesus after his death; and 4) Jesus’ followers came to believe that Jesus had been physically resurrected from the dead. Craig points out that scholars like the aforementioned Wright go so far as to say that we can “know” that these four things are true with as much certainty as we can “know” that Caesar Augustus died in 14 C.E. or that the Temple in Jerusalem fell in 70 C.E. The textual evidence, Craig argues, is simply too strong to suggest otherwise.

Craig then takes these four established facts of history, and draws the conclusion that the “best” explanation for these events is that God truly raised Jesus from the dead. No other naturalistic explanation can better explain it. Craig argues that the Resurrection Hypothesis meets all the normal criteria for a historical explanation: “…explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, and so forth,” and that the existing naturalistic explanations do not. He notes that most scholars, including Ehrman himself, have agreed that the naturalistic explanations put forth through the years (conspiracy, apparent death, hallucination, etc.) are inadequate.

EHRMAN’S OPENING ARGUMENT

Bart Ehrman opened his argument by differentiating between a historian and a theologian. A historian, he argues, deals with empirical data, evaluating that data and postulating probable conclusions. As he puts it: “Historians try to establish levels of probability of what happened in the past.” A theologian, on the other hand, discusses what God does or doesn’t do.

Ehrman argues that a miracle, by its very nature, is a theological claim – it presupposes the existence of a God or gods that can perform such things. He points out that a miracle, by its very definition, is always the least likely explanation for an event. If it wasn’t the least likely explanation, it would not be classified as a “miracle.”

Since miracles are theological claims, and are always the “least probable” explanation of an event, no historian can accurately say that the best explanation of the resurrection is that God raised Jesus from the dead. That explanation is a theological one, not a historical one, Ehrman argues. You can’t claim that a miracle – the “least probable” explanation for an event – is, in fact, the “most probable.” In his own words: “And so, by the very nature of the canons of historical research, we can’t claim historically that a miracle probably happened. By definition, it probably didn’t. And history can only establish what probably did.”

COMMENTARY ON THE OPENING STATEMENTS

The argument put forth by Craig is fairly common in modern evangelical circles. If you take what we can know with a fair degree of certainty to be true about the resurrection stories (the “4 points” listed above), then the only hypothesis that adequately explains those four things is that God really did raise Jesus from the dead.

In my opinion, this argument has several problems. First, Craig argues that his “4 points” are generally agreed upon by the majority of New Testament scholars. This is a classic “appeal to authority.”

While there is certainly a time and place for these sorts of appeals, one cannot base an entire argument on such a claim. It is certainly possible that the majority of New Testament scholars are wrong. Most Egyptologists believed for many decades that King Tut had been killed by a blow to the head, but modern analysis and investigation has cast enormous doubt on that hypothesis now. So the simple fact that most scholars agree that these 4 points are factual does not actually mean they are, in fact, factual.

Furthermore, it is highly debatable whether “most scholars” actually agree with the factuality of these 4 points. In my own personal study of scholarly perspectives, I have not seen evidence that “most scholars” would necessarily agree with these points. Later on in the debate, Ehrman points this out too, arguing that, in fact, most scholars don’t accept these 4 points as indisputable facts of history. Both Craig and Ehrman basically insist that the majority of the scholarly world is on their side. Obviously they can’t both be right; in my own personal experience, I think Craig is overstating the scholarly consensus of these four facts of history.

The first two points – Jesus was buried in a tomb, and that tomb was later found empty – are especially debated among scholars. Many scholars have suggested that Jesus was, in fact, probably not buried in a tomb, and so that tomb could therefore have not ever been found empty three days later. They base this argument on the fact that 1) executed criminals in the 1st century would have been buried in common graves, and 2) the tomb tradition does not enter our textual sources until the Gospel of Mark – around 70 C.E., or 40 years after the event.

In the letters of Paul, which predate Mark, he never mentions a tomb, empty or otherwise. He simply says that Jesus “was buried” and was later raised. In fact, it is highly debatable whether “raised” for Paul meant a physical resurrection or a spiritual one. Judging by his accounts of Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection, it would seem that “raised” for Paul meant “raised in spirit,” not necessarily “raised in the flesh.” In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives a list of those people that Jesus appeared to. He includes several groups that are not known from any Gospel account (such as an appearance by Jesus to a group of 500 people), and he also includes himself. Clearly, Paul was not claiming that he himself encountered the risen Jesus in the days after the first Easter. Paul didn’t even convert to Christianity until several years after Jesus had died. Paul’s inclusion of himself among those who saw the risen Christ is a clue that he is talking about an ecstatic vision, not a literal resurrection of a dead body back into the material world.

Thus, the fourth point – that the earliest Christians came to understand that Jesus had been physically raised from the dead – is also at issue, as I have illustrated in the previous paragraph. Many scholars argue that the earliest Christians understood the resurrection to be a spiritual event, not a physical one, and that the stories of the New Testament are describing that spiritual event, and were never meant to be understood as Jesus’ actual body coming back to life. Instead, they believed Jesus’ soul had been glorified to God. A cursory reading of the resurrection appearances in the Gospels demonstrates that in almost every scene, Jesus seems to be more of a phantasm than literal flesh and blood (he appears and disappears, he looks different and people don’t recognize him, he rises up into heaven, etc.).

Craig’s third point – that the earliest followers of Jesus believed they had visions of the risen Jesus – is about the only one that is probably generally agreed upon by most scholars. It seems likely that apparitions of Jesus, or visions of Jesus, after his death, were indeed part of the earliest Christian experience.

So Craig’s assumption and assertion that “most scholars” agree with his 4 points is a tenuous one at best, and even if it’s true, the appeal to authority doesn’t actually mean anything. Scholars might be wrong.

The second problem with Craig’s argument is that he presupposes that since no existing naturalistic explanation adequately explains the rise of Christianity, the only alternative is that God must have therefore raised Jesus from the dead. This is classic “God of the gaps” reasoning. Since we can’t explain something, it must be God. 500 years ago, this was the basis for believing that thunder and lightning were representations of God’s anger. We now know that it has to do with electrons moving around inside water vapor clouds. So even if it is true that the existing naturalistic explanations of the rise of Christianity are inadequate, that does not mean that we must default to “God did it.” Maybe we simply don’t know yet.

Later in the debate, Ehrman illustrates this same point by suggesting that Craig only assumes God did it because Craig himself comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Perhaps, Ehrman argues, the god Zulu came and took Jesus’ body from his tomb and carried him off to the 12th dimension and subjected him to unceasing torture, allowing him to return from time to time to earth (in resurrection appearances) but disallowing him to let his followers know what was going on in the 12th dimension. This, Ehrman concedes, is an absurd theological explanation, but it demonstrates the point – Craig only assumes that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob raised Jesus from the dead and accepted his death as atonement for sin, because that is the religious tradition from which Craig himself comes. Without 2000 years of Christian history behind us, no historian would ever analyze the stories of Jesus of Nazareth and conclude that the ancient Hebrew God Yahweh accepted Jesus’ death as an atonement and raised him back to life. This is why Ehrman argues that Craig’s conclusion is a theological “faith” statement, not a historical research statement.

As for Ehrman’s opening statement, he argues that the historian cannot double as a theologian. This is an argument that I think has merit to some degree, but I also think that it is a cop-out. Ultimately the field of biblical scholarship is a multi-faceted discipline. A biblical scholar is both historian and theologian, academic and preacher. You can’t really draw conclusions about something in religious history without also drawing theological conclusions. The simple conclusion that “Jesus was not raised from the dead” is, in itself, a theological claim as much as it is a historical claim. These disciplines overlap, and it is dishonest not to admit that.

Craig points this out several times in his rebuttals by suggesting that Ehrman is arguing for a sort of “methodological atheism.” He concedes that in a scholarly paper, or in front of a classroom, one must differentiate between history and theology, but for the purposes of a debate, or sitting at home at the kitchen table, a historian certainly can and does make theological claims. He accuses Ehrman of dodging the issue by arguing for methodological atheism.

The problem with Ehrman’s assertion is that if a miracle occurred, and if God, in fact, raised Jesus from the dead, Ehrman’s position would disallow him to ever draw that conclusion. His position precludes that possibility, as much as it precludes the possibility of the god Zulu having taken Jesus to the 12th dimension. In fact, by saying that Jesus probably did not rise from the dead, Ehrman is, in fact, making a theological claim – he’s saying that God probably didn’t have anything to do with it. In that sense, his refusal to consider a miracle as a possibility draws a certain level of bias into his conclusions, though in my opinion this is to a far lesser degree than the bias that is drawn into Craig’s work by his commitment to evangelical Christianity.

THE REBUTTALS

After the opening statements, each scholar was given the opportunity for two rebuttal speeches, with Craig rebutting first, then Ehrman, then Craig again, and then Ehrman again.

In Craig’s first rebuttal, he attacks Ehrman’s argument about history vs. theology. He asserts that Ehrman’s arguments are self-refuting because if a historian cannot talk about God, then that same historian cannot comment on whether a miracle occurred or not – since to do so would necessitate talking about God. He goes on to say: “In order to show that the hypothesis is improbable, you’d have to show that God’s existence is improbable. But Dr. Ehrman says that the historian cannot say anything about God. Therefore, he cannot say that God’s existence is improbable. But if he can’t say that, neither can he say that the resurrection of Jesus is improbable. So Dr. Ehrman’s position is literally self-refuting.”

This is what we might call a philosophical “Gotcha!”

Craig goes on to discuss a probability analysis in regards to the resurrection of Jesus. This includes overhead slides and discussions of mathematical probability theories.

Craig’s argument gets somewhat convoluted at this point, but essentially he asserts that probability ratios demonstrate that Ehrman’s conclusions are fallacious. Ehrman, he asserts, is only considering the intrinsic probability of resurrection alone (up against our “background knowledge,” or what we know about how the world works). He is not considering it up against the historical facts (his “4 points”) or against the alternative naturalistic explanations. He argues that the naturalistic explanations are sufficiently improbable enough to “outbalance” the low intrinsic probability of resurrection. Ultimately he concludes, using a probability ratio, that it is probable, given our background knowledge of the world and the evidence for resurrection (the “4 points”), that God raised Jesus from the dead.

If the preceding paragraph was confusing, that’s because Craig’s argument was also confusing and vague. I admit that I did not really “get” the crux of his argument, and I don’t think Ehrman did either. Craig simply seems to be playing card tricks…using a convoluted mathematical ratio to prove that his position is “probable.”

Ehrman responds to this by saying: “I do have to tell you that if you think I’m going to change my mind because you have mathematical proof for the existence of God, I’m sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen!”

It’s also interesting that in the Question and Answer session at the end of the debate, an audience member asked Craig how he plugs the numbers into his ratio to conclude, mathematically, that the resurrection is “probable.” Not surprisingly, Craig admits that scholars can’t possibly assign numbers to the ratio calculations, which to me simply demonstrates that his argument is little more than a philosophical sleight of hand. It may sound good in a debate, but it doesn’t really mean anything as far as reality is concerned.

In Ehrman’s first rebuttal, he argues that Craig makes four mistakes. First, he makes “dubious use of modern authorities.” This is the argument noted above about Craig’s appeal to authority in regards to the “majority” of Biblical scholars. Ehrman argues that, in fact, most scholars do not agree with his 4 points, and even if they did, it still wouldn’t mean anything. He argues that Craig only thinks “most scholars” agree with him because Craig works in a very conservative, evangelical academic environment.

Second, Ehrman accuses Craig of making “dubious use of ancient sources.” He notes that Craig argues that Paul is our earliest source for the empty tomb tradition, saying the source is within 5 years of the resurrection. This, however, is insupportable. As noted above, Paul never mentions a tomb at all, empty or otherwise. He simply says Jesus “was buried,” and the word he uses there is the word that means, literally, to bury something in the ground. The Gospels, for instance, when talking about Jesus’ “burial” in a tomb, do not actually use the word “bury.” Instead, they say Jesus “was placed” in a tomb. You bury a body in the ground. You put a body in a tomb. So not only does Paul not mention a tomb, but his word implies very strongly that he was talking about a traditional in-ground burial. Secondly, Ehrman points out that Paul was writing 25 years after the resurrection, not 5 years as Craig asserts. Craig no doubt claims that Paul’s source is within 5 years because that’s when Paul was converted and when the traditions of Christianity were passed to him. But even if that’s true, that only demonstrates that the earliest source – within 5 years of the resurrection – says nothing whatsoever about a tomb, and instead refers to Jesus’ burial in the ground!

Third, Ehrman says that Craig makes “dubious claims and assertions.” He points out that Craig argues that the women discovering the empty tomb must be historical because no self-respecting 1st century Jew would invent a story where women are the heroes. This is a very common argument among evangelicals. Lee Strobel, in his best-selling book “The Case for Christ” makes similar arguments.

The problem, Ehrman asserts, is that taken in context, it makes perfect sense that Mark (the first Gospel writer) may have invented this story. Mark’s Gospel, Ehrman shows, is all about how no one in Jesus’ inner circle ever understood – his disciples didn’t understand, his family didn’t understand, his townspeople didn’t understand, etc. Instead, Mark continually depicts outsiders, people on the fringe, as being the only ones who “get it.” He states: “For Mark, only outsiders have an inkling of who Jesus was: the unnamed woman who anointed him, the centurion at the cross. Who understands at the end? Not the family of Jesus! Not the disciples! It’s a group of previously unknown women.” Ehrman argues, essentially, that this is a literary technique used by Mark. Having women find the tomb fits with Mark’s theme of how only outsiders and people on the fringe really ever understood Jesus. For Mark, Jesus’ message was for these people – the fringes of society, the outcast, the despised, the oppressed.

Finally, Ehrman accuses Craig of “drawing dubious inferences from his claims.” He states that Craig assumes Paul believed in an empty tomb because Paul talks about the risen Christ. If Christ was seen later, then the tomb must have been empty. But he notes that for someone living in the 1st century, a vision need not be physical in nature. He points out the Gospel stories of the transfiguration, where Jesus is seen in conversation with Moses and Elijah. “Are we to believe that these men, Moses and Elijah, came back to life? That Moses’ body was reconstituted and raised from the dead and that they appeared from heaven? Or was this a vision? Surely it was a vision; they disappear immediately. Ancient people had no trouble believing that bodies can be phantasmal, not physical.”

I think, generally speaking, that Ehrman’s arguments here are sound. The only point of disagreement I have with him is on his third point – that the stories of the women at the tomb may be fictional. While I understand Ehrman’s point that the women at the tomb fit Mark’s literary theme, I agree with Craig that it is unlikely that any Jewish male in the 1st century would have invented such a story. In fact, I think Ehrman’s argument on this point inadvertently demonstrates what Craig asserted. Mark, and the other Gospel writers, continually paint images of Jesus as challenging authority, uplifting the poor and outcast, and attempting to tear down societal and cultural boundaries that kept people in oppression. For Jesus, God’s kingdom was a kingdom where everyone shared the same table, rich and poor, strong and weak, powerful and oppressed, male and female, slave and free. So while the women at the tomb may have fit Mark’s literary purposes, I believe Mark’s literary purposes have a strong hint of history in them – that is, Jesus’ message was all about the outcast of society.

In Craig’s second rebuttal, one of his key arguments goes back to the discussion about Paul and the empty tomb. He argues that Paul’s language implies an empty tomb because it is part of what is essentially a 4-part outline of the Gospel resurrection message. This 4-part homily from the Gospels is something like: “Jesus was crucified, Jesus was buried in a tomb, Jesus was raised up, and Jesus was seen.” With the exception of Mark (which contains no appearances by the risen Jesus), all the Gospels essentially follow this resurrection homily. Likewise, in the passage from 1 Corinthians where Paul talks about Jesus’ burial, he states: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter.” Therefore, Paul’s statements seem to outline the 4-part homily from the Gospels: death, burial, resurrection, appearance. For Craig, then, burial in a tomb is implied in Paul’s words, because his outline of the story mirrors what was later written down in expanded form in the Gospels.

This is a fairly well-reasoned argument, but there are several problems with it. I’ve already discussed the first one – Paul’s use of the phrase “was buried” clearly implies burial in the ground. Paul is the only New Testament writer that ever refers to Jesus being “buried.” The Gospel writers all say he “was placed” in his tomb. Second, even if this 4-part homily is an early development in Christian history, that does not mean the later Gospel stories, which expanded on the homily, could not have included legendary material – such as a tomb, later found empty. I simply see no reason to suppose there is an implied tomb in Paul’s account. It seems like grasping at straws. Furthermore, even if there is a tomb implied in Paul’s account, it is dubious (to borrow a word from Ehrman) to base a big portion of a historical conclusion on implied words in one text.

Craig also responds to Ehrman’s comments about the women at the tomb. In this response, he makes a curious statement, claiming that we have “five independent sources” for the women’s presence at the tomb. I can’t for the life of me figure out what five sources he’s talking about. In the Bible, we have four Gospels, and only two of those Gospels are independent of the others – Mark and John. It is essentially universally agreed among scholars that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Thus, Matthew and Luke’s account of the women at the tomb are not “independent” accounts. As to Craig’s fifth source, I can only assume he is referring to Gnostic texts not found in the Bible, although it is not clear which one he is referring to. It would be difficult to assert, however, that any Gnostic sources were “independent” of the Biblical Gospels, as they were written many decades, and in some cases centuries, later. I can only, therefore, come up with two verifiably independent sources for the story of the women at the tomb.

THE CONCLUDING STATEMENTS

After debating back and forth in their rebuttals (I might actually call it “bickering”), each scholar gave a concluding statement, more or less summing up their arguments.

Craig reasserted his 4 points (Jesus was buried in a tomb, the tomb was found empty, his followers had visions of him, his followers came to believe he had been physically resurrected), again claiming that most scholars agree they are historically probable. He then affirms his conclusion that the best explanation of these 4 points is that God raised Jesus from the dead. He points out that naturalistic explanations cannot adequately explain these facts of the Jesus story. Specifically, he attacks an alternative theory put forth by Ehrman (and certainly others) that perhaps Jesus’ family (or someone else) stole the body. He notes that there would have been no sufficient motivation for this, nor would there have been time before the third day to hatch and carry out such a plan. He also argues that the grave clothes disprove this theory. He asserts: “Nobody would undress the body before taking it away.”

He finishes by giving a short personal testimony of his beliefs and an invitation to the audience to convert to Christianity.

Ehrman concludes first by thanking Craig for his testimony, but then pointing out that the testimony is evidence of the fact that Craig is: “…at heart, an evangelist who wants people to come to share his belief in Jesus and that he’s trying to disguise himself as a historian as a means to that end.”

This may have been a bit unnecessarily antagonistic, but ultimately that does seem to be Craig’s core motivation. He is an evangelical Christian; does anyone suppose that it is simply chance that all his historical conclusions fit perfectly with the evangelical form of Christianity he has already accepted?

Ehrman goes on to reassert his opinion that while anything is possible, a historian can only conclude was is most probable in any given historical scenario. He seems to concede that naturalistic explanations of the rise of Christianity seem improbable; however, any of these naturalistic explanations are less improbable than the explanation that God raised Jesus from the dead. The idea that Jesus’ body was stolen by his family or followers, for instance. This may be historically unlikely, but it is not as unlikely as the conclusion that Jesus was resurrected.

Ehrman finishes by outlining his own theory on how Christianity may have risen. He asserts that Jesus’ followers, grieving after his death, went to their scriptures – what we call the Old Testament – and came to understand Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of Man, the one who would justify a broken world. If Jesus was the Messiah, then he must have been exalted to heaven upon his death, like Elijah and Enoch before him. But the Messiah couldn’t die and go to heaven without justifying the world, so Jesus must be returning soon to inaugurate God’s kingdom. They came to understand him as a spiritual Messiah, not an earthly Messiah. After that time, stories began circulating and people began having visions of the resurrected Jesus. By this time, several years would have passed and no one could reasonably go back to check the grave because the body would have long since decomposed. Stories eventually made it to Paul and then to later Christians, who embellished the stories into narratives which ultimately culminated in the Gospels, 40 to 70 years later.

Although this is not a scenario that can be proven, it seems to me to be a historically-reasonable explanation for how Christianity may have started, and – as Ehrman asserts – more probable, historically- and scientifically-speaking, than the assertion that God must have raised Jesus from the dead. That does not mean, of course, that God did not raise Jesus from the dead. It simply means that based on what we can know about the world, and what we can discern from an analysis of the evidence, it seems likely that a natural explanation is more probable.

CLOSING REMARKS

It will come as a surprise to no one that I tend to think Ehrman “won” this debate. Naturally, since I tend to agree with Ehrman more than Craig, it follows that I will perceive him to be the victor. An evangelical would listen to the debate and no doubt draw the exact opposite conclusion. There can be no doubt that William Lane Craig is an intelligent, well-spoken, highly-educated academic who is not afraid to delve deeply into the evidence. For that reason, I hold a certain amount of respect for him. But at the same time, I felt that most of his arguments could not stand up to historical scrutiny, and I felt like he attempted to “win points” with the audience by pulling philosophical sleights of hand. This was particularly notable in his convoluted mathematical argument, and in his attempt to twist Ehrman’s words about history vs. theology into a self-refuting argument on Ehrman’s part. Craig may have won philosophical points there, but none of those debater’s tricks actually means anything as far as reality is concerned.

Ironically, Craig accuses Ehrman of pulling a “debater’s trick” on him in the Question and Answer session. In one of his rebuttals, Ehrman had been trying to show that Craig’s conclusions were biased, being informed by his own evangelical belief systems. He asked Craig to answer several questions for him. The first was whether Craig believes the texts of the Bible are infallible or not. If so, Ehrman asserted, how can anyone be expected to believe that Craig is able to approach them as a critical historian? The second question was on the topic of other historical accounts of miracle workers. If the stories of Jesus are historically reliable, then aren’t stories of other miracles workers also historically reliable, based on the same criteria? Finally, he asked Craig to explain how the religious faith he accepted at the age of 16 just happens to be the only one that his historically credible. Again, his point was to show that Craig’s conclusions are biased by his own worldview.

Craig passed up two opportunities to fully answer these questions, despite having 5 minutes left to speak during his second rebuttal. He did address, briefly, the question about other stories of miracle workers, asserting that stories of 1st century miracle workers similar to Jesus are actually later legendary developments based on the Jesus stories – an attempt, in other words, to create a Jesus that fit into Roman paganism.

In the Question and Answer session, however, one of the audience members asked Craig to respond to Ehrman’s questions directly. Craig said: “Dr. Ehrman is trying to play a little debater’s trick here on me, in which I simply refuse to participate.”

This is ironic, of course, considering that much of Craig’s argument against Ehrman’s assertions were little more than debater’s tricks, as I have indicated. His explicit refusal to answer Ehrman’s questions is also quite telling. He recognized that Ehrman had backed him into a philosophical corner, so he simply refused to play the game. One may see that as philosophically savvy, or intellectually dishonest. Instead of answering Ehrman directly, he deflected the argument by suggesting that his beliefs about the inerrancy of scripture are irrelevant. He asserted that regardless of what he believes about the inerrancy of scripture, he is approaching this topic using the same unbiased historical criteria that Ehrman or any other historian uses. He stated: “My attitude theologically toward the reliability or the mistakes in the Bible is just irrelevant tonight. The question is, what can you prove positively using the standard criteria? And my argument is that when you use those criteria, you can prove positively those basic four facts about the fate of Jesus subsequent to his crucifixion.”

I felt that this was definitely a deflection of a relevant point on Craig’s part. He may assert that his arguments are not influenced by his own beliefs, but his conclusions strongly suggest otherwise. No one comes to the table free of worldview biases. Even the atheist/agnostic scholar will bring that worldview to the table when he attempts to delve into the story of Jesus. No one can be theologically-neutral. The question, then, turns on who brings more bias to the table, the believing historian or the non-believing historian? It is my opinion that since the believer has far more to lose in drawing conclusions contrary to his beliefs, it is the believer who brings the most bias to the table. Both the believing historian and the non-believing historian stand to lose intellectual pride by drawing conclusions contrary to their worldviews, but it is only the believing historian who stands to lose God and eternity.

All in all, I felt that Ehrman out-dueled Craig in this debate, primarily because Craig’s arguments are largely theology dressed up as history, peppered with philosophical games that, when put up against real historical scrutiny, seem to lose their strength.

The Nature of the Resurrection

It is widely held within Christian circles that the resurrection of Jesus was an event that involved the physical resurrection of Jesus’ crucified body. That is, Jesus is believed to have physically died and then physically risen back to life three days later, leaving his grave clothes behind him in an empty tomb.

Indeed, this belief is so foundational to Christianity that many would argue that one could hardly call themselves a Christian if they denied the physical nature of Jesus’ resurrection. Most modern Christians, of course, do not conceive of their own resurrection as a physical one; instead, they assume that when they die, their spirit will go to heaven. In the Middle Ages, mainstream Christianity conceived of Jesus’ Second Coming as a time when all those who had died in Christ would come rising out of their graves, but in the modern age, this has more or less been replaced with the idea that our souls simply go to heaven upon our deaths. It has been my experience that only the most fundamentalist branches of modern Christianity still widely believe in a physical resurrection at the end of time.

Be that as it may, the idea that Jesus’ resurrection was a physical one is still widely believed and vitally important to many Christians.

Debates about the nature of Jesus’ resurrection were a central part of the emerging Christian religion in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and were ultimately put to rest by the ecumenical councils of the 4th century which asserted that Jesus’ resurrection was a physical one, and which outlawed as heretical any group or text that suggested otherwise.

Although discussions continued on a small scale among philosophers and mystics throughout the intervening centuries, it was not until the development of modern Biblical scholarship in the 19th century that debates about the nature of Jesus’ resurrection started up again on a wide scale.

Despite the fact that scholars and historians have been debating this issue for the last two centuries, most of this debate does not seem to have filtered down into the pews of most churches. I certainly have not administered any scientific polls on the topic, but it has been my overwhelming impression through a lifetime of involvement in various churches that most Christians do not give much thought to whether Jesus’ resurrection was physical or spiritual in nature. Most seem to see the issue of resurrection as an issue about whether it happened or not. Either Jesus was physically raised from the dead, or the stories about resurrection are simply unreliable myths. In my experience, the nature of the resurrection is not at issue among most Christians. They accept on faith that the resurrection of Jesus happened, and for them, “resurrection” unquestionably means a physical reanimation of a dead body.

My purposes here are not to argue whether the resurrection happened or not. There is a time and place for that debate. My purposes here are to discuss the traditional viewpoint of a physical resurrection, list its strengths and evidentiary support, provide commentary on its weaknesses, and ultimately draw a conclusion about what the earliest generations of Christians most likely believed about Jesus’ resurrection.

Evangelical New Testament scholars (and, of course, many theologians) generally agree that the earliest Christians came to believe that Jesus had been physically resurrected from the dead. In fact, for scholars like N.T. Wright and William Lane Craig, this is one of four “widely accepted facts” of Christian history. They substantiate this position by pointing to a number of clues.

First, they believed so strongly that Jesus had been physically raised from the dead that they were willing, themselves, to die for the belief. No one would have died for a belief in a spiritual resurrection. The motivation, these scholars contend, would not have been strong enough.

Second, the Gospels universally agree that Jesus’ tomb was found empty. An empty tomb implies very strongly that when the Gospel writers spoke of resurrection, they were talking physical resurrection, not spiritual. Otherwise, Jesus’ fleshly body would have still been inside the tomb. The tomb need not be empty if the resurrection was only spiritual in nature.

Finally, they argue that no 1st century Jew would have conceived of resurrection as anything other than a physical resurrection. This is perhaps their foundational claim when suggesting that the earliest Christians believed Jesus had been physically raised from the dead. They point out that Jewish resurrection theology developed in the last two centuries before Jesus’ birth, and it was a theology that asserted a general resurrection of observant Jews at the end of time. God would justify the world – right all the wrongs – by raising back to life those Jews who had died in the faith. Central to this theology was the belief that the dead body would physically come back to life, rising up out of the ground to live eternally in a world justified by God. Thus, “resurrection” to 1st century Jews – such as those Jews who made up the earliest generations of Christians – must by necessity have meant a physical resuscitation of a dead body.

While these arguments are certainly historically reasonable, I believe there some weaknesses that are important to discuss.

First, the assertion that the earliest Christians were willing to die for their belief in the physical nature of the resurrection.

This is more of a historical assumption based on Church tradition than anything else. In fact, we know very little about what actually became of the disciples and followers of Jesus who started spreading his message after his death. That they were profoundly changed by Jesus seems apparent. But that they went to their deaths for a belief in physical resurrection is not. Our sources that discuss the deaths of some of the disciples are not Biblical sources, and are not early sources. Instead, they come from writings of early Church fathers, writing, in most cases, a century or more after these disciples had died. Even Paul’s death, which is widely understood to have occurred as a martyrdom in the mid-60’s C.E., is not described in any of the texts of the New Testament – not even in Acts, which was certainly written after his death, and which otherwise gives the story of his life. Based on the lack of early sources for traditions about the deaths of the earliest Christians, it is by no means certain that they actually went to their deaths for the message of Christianity.

And that, of course, does not even address whether they died believing Jesus had been physically resurrected. Craig, Wright, and others argue that no one would have died for a spiritual resurrection, but this seems to be an unsubstantiated opinion. In my mind, if a man was convinced that Jesus had been resurrected by God, this would be sufficient motivation for martyrdom regardless of whether it was understood as a spiritual resurrection of Jesus’ soul or a physical resurrection of Jesus’ body. Ultimately, the meaning would be the same – Jesus was raised by God (either spiritually or physically), and so we too will be raised.

Second, the empty tomb tradition. On the surface, this seems to be a fairly strong argument. The earliest Christians must have been talking about physical resurrection; otherwise, there would have been no need for an empty tomb.

It is important first to note that Paul, our earliest source for the resurrection, does not ever mention a tomb, empty or otherwise. Our earliest surviving source for an empty tomb tradition does not come until the Gospel of Mark, about 40 years after Jesus’ death. Yet, perplexingly, folks like William Lane Craig argue that Paul is, in fact, our earliest source for the empty tomb tradition! The only comment that Paul ever makes about Jesus’ burial is simply that Jesus “was buried” (1 Corinthians 15:4). He does not say, or imply, the method of that burial, whether inside a rich man’s tomb, or in a common grave.

It is noteworthy, however, to point out that the word Paul uses here (the Greek word thapto) meant, quite literally, to bury something in the ground. It is used 11 times in the New Testament, with all the occurrences happening in the Gospels and Acts, the one exception being Paul’s usage in 1 Corinthians. Every time it is used, it is used when referring to the burial of a person in a grave. When the Gospels speak of Jesus’ burial in a tomb, they use a different word – the Greek word thithemi. This was a verb that literally meant “to lay” to “to place.” The Gospels never say Jesus was buried in a tomb. Instead, they assert he was placed in a tomb. Grammatically speaking, you do not bury something in a tomb. Burying implies putting a body in the ground, not in a sepulcher. So if Paul’s phrase “was buried” implies anything at all about the type of burial, it implies a burial in the ground, not the placement of a body in a tomb. In my opinion, it is clear that Paul either did not know anything about a tomb tradition surrounding Jesus (which seems unlikely if it were a fact of history), or in fact no tomb tradition existed at the time Paul was writing.

Scholars, like John Dominic Crossan, who doubt the empty tomb tradition point out that we know from countless secular sources that criminals who were executed by the Romans were not given the luxury of a private burial. They were either left, quite literally, to the dogs, or otherwise thrown into a mass grave. The likelihood, these scholars argue, that Jesus was given an honorable burial in a tomb is very low, given the historical context. Added together with Paul’s simple comment that Jesus “was buried,” as opposed to “was placed in a tomb that was later found empty,” it seems likely that the empty tomb tradition is a later development in Christian history.

But putting Paul’s story aside, there can be no question that the Gospel writers depict Jesus being laid in a tomb which was later found empty. Even if this is only a legendary development, how can that be reconciled with any argument suggesting that the earliest generations of Christians (including the Gospel writers) conceived of resurrection as anything other than physical? Again, a spiritual resurrection would have left the body in the tomb; it would not have been empty.

Scholar and theologian John Shelby Spong, drawing on the work of British scholar Michael Goulder, offers an interesting hypothesis. He argues that the Gospels were not works of factual journalism, nor were they ever intended as such. Instead, he argues that the Gospels were literary creations, told in the Jewish scribal tradition of midrash. Midrash was a writing style that was prominent during the era in which the Gospels were written, and it involved a creative re-telling of modern events against the backdrop of the collective Jewish past. Important figures would have their stories retold through the lens of important figures and events in Jewish scriptures.

Thus, it was a creative and literary overlapping of reality and fiction, history and imagination, and its purpose was to convey spiritual truths which could not otherwise be captured with normal language.

With this in mind, Spong argues that the empty tomb tradition began as midrash on the Jewish festival of Tabernacles. This was a harvest festival that involved setting up booths, or tents, in the wilderness to reenact the lifestyle of the Israelites in the Exodus period. At the end of this week-long celebration, the Jews would ritually “emerge” from their booths, drawing parallels with the Israelites of the Exodus finally emerging from their tent-dwelling in the wilderness into a new life in the Promised Land. The midrashic parallel between this tradition and the empty tomb of Jesus should be clear – like the celebration of Tabernacles, Jesus emerged from his booth into newness of life.

The aforementioned Crossan, and other scholars like Marcus Borg, make similar points, arguing that the Gospels are parabolic in nature. Thus, it may be that the empty tomb stories were intended to be parables conveying the idea of dying to the old self and being born again into the new, leaving the old life (the tomb) behind.

Ultimately, it is the difference between interpreting the Gospel stories as metaphor, midrash, and parable, versus interpreting them as literal, journalistic accounts of events that occurred in history. When you read the Gospels through the lens of the former, it is easy to understand how empty tombs and spiritual resurrections – two seemingly poorly-matched bedfellows – could have gone hand in hand. If empty tomb stories are midrash or parable, then they do not necessitate a physical resurrection.

Finally, the foundational argument of evangelical New Testament scholars: that no 1st century Jew would have conceived of resurrection as anything but physical.

Like the argument about the empty tomb, this seems, on the surface, to be a rather solid argument. There can be no question that 1st century Jews conceived of resurrection as a physical event that happened to the flesh and blood body. The body would literally be raised back into life. This is widely known and understood from Jewish sources.

The question, then, is not whether 1st century Jewish thought conceived of resurrection as physical; the question is whether a group of 1st century Jews might have broken from this tradition. And in that context, the assertion that the earliest Christians would not have broken with this Jewish tradition is a spurious one, for at least two reasons.

First, to suggest that a group of people – even 1st century, pre-Enlightenment people – could not have reinterpreted a deeply-held bit of theology is simply not supportable by all that we know about human nature. The fact that Jesus clearly broke with, and reinterpreted, many ideas within Jewish scripture is evidence enough of this fact. If Jesus could do it, so could his followers.

This, then, leads to the second point: is there any textual evidence to suggest that the earliest Christians tended to break with deeply-entrenched Jewish thought?

The answer to that question is, of course, a resounding and unequivocal “YES!”

In fact, the entire Christian religion is a break with deeply-entrenched Jewish beliefs. The earliest Christians, following in the tradition of their master, broke in many profound and dramatic ways with traditional Jewish theology. They came to reject Old Testament dietary restrictions; they came to believe that the kingdom of God was for all people, not just Jews; and most importantly, they completely altered Jewish messianic thought.

This last point is the most significant. Jews conceived of the Messiah as a conquering king, a man who would come from the genetic line of David and restore the Jewish kingdom to its former glory, overthrowing earthly oppressors (like the Romans) and inaugurating a new Golden Age of Jewish history. This was a piece of Jewish theology that was just as entrenched, and just as widely understood, and Jewish resurrection theology.

No one – certainly no evangelical – argues that the earliest Christians did not dramatically break with Jewish Messianic thought when they came to believe that the Messiah was an illiterate peasant from the backwoods of Galilee who was executed as a criminal. This was such a profound break with Jewish Messianic expectations that the Jews and Christians became bitter enemies by the end of the 1st century.

If the earliest Christians could break so intensely with Messianic theology, is it so difficult to imagine that they could not have also broken with resurrection theology?

The fact is, when seen contextually, it is insupportable to suggest that the earliest Christians would only have viewed resurrection as a physical event. If they could claim that the Messiah – someone who was supposed to be a conquering king – could instead be a peasant teacher who was executed as a criminal, they could most certainly claim that resurrection was a spiritual event and not a physical one.

There is still one important question to be asked, however. Did the earliest Christians break with traditional Jewish resurrection theology, and is there any evidence for such a claim in our Biblical texts?

I have already pointed out that our earliest Biblical source is the apostle Paul, and that Paul mentions no tomb, empty or otherwise. Paul does, however, talk about resurrection and even goes so far as to list those whom the resurrected Jesus appeared to. This is found in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul states that Jesus appeared to Peter and the twelve disciples and a group of 500 people, among others. He concludes his list of those the resurrected Jesus appeared to with himself. This is a vitally important clue.

No one supposes that Paul was around in Jerusalem at the first Easter experiencing the resurrected Jesus. We know from Paul’s own account, as well as from the second-hand account of his life in Acts, that Paul was a persecutor of the early Church before converting to Christianity several years after Jesus’ death. He certainly was not around at the first Easter to see the resurrected Jesus. Instead, his experience of Jesus was an ecstatic vision of Christ raised to glory in heaven. The fact, then, that Paul does not include any language about an empty tomb, and the fact that he includes himself in his list of those people that the resurrected Christ appeared to, is strong evidence that resurrection, for Paul, was a spiritual, apparitional, event, not a physical flesh and blood event. For Paul, Jesus was raised to glory at God’s right hand; he never got up out of his tomb and walked into Jerusalem.

From here, we move to the Gospels. Surely the Gospel language implies physical resurrection? In some cases, absolutely. The story of Doubting Thomas, found in the Gospel of John, is clearly a polemic against those who suggested that Jesus’ resurrection was not physical. Thomas, after all, is shown touching the healed wounds in Jesus’ hands and flanks. Yet even in that scene, the target was not people who claimed Jesus’ resurrection had been spiritual; the target of that polemic was people who claimed Jesus’ had not been resurrected, period.

In fact, most of the Gospel depictions of the resurrected Jesus seem to imply the exact opposite of a physical flesh and blood body. Jesus is able to appear and disappear. He is able to enter rooms that have the windows and doors barred. He is not recognizable to his friends and followers. He cannot be touched. He ascends into the sky.

These are all things that point strongly to an understanding that the resurrection – even for the Gospel writers – was a spiritual event, not a physical event that happened to Jesus’ body. And while both Luke and John have scenes that depict a human-like resurrected Jesus, demonstrating that his resurrection was real as opposed to myth, these Gospels are also the two sources that have the majority of the “ghostly” or “apparitional” language about the resurrected Jesus. It is Luke and John who say Jesus is not recognizable. It is Luke and John who say that Jesus appears and disappears. It is Luke and John who say that Jesus shows up inside rooms that have the windows and doors barred. It wasn’t that the Gospel writers couldn’t make up their minds about whether Jesus’ death had been physical or spiritual. It was that they were telling some stories with a human-like resurrected Jesus to contradict those who suggested Jesus’ resurrection was not real. Even in the Doubting Thomas story, prior to Jesus showing his pierced hands to Thomas, Jesus appears like a ghost amidst the disciples in a room that was otherwise locked down. Clearly the Gospel writer did not envision the resurrected Jesus being a flesh and blood body.

In the end, it is my opinion that the earliest generations of Christians probably did not conceive of Jesus’ resurrection as being physical in nature. They broke with Jewish traditional thought in a variety of ways, including on the subject of what resurrection meant. They believed that Jesus had been raised to the right hand of God. They did not believe, I am increasingly convinced, that Jesus’ actual body had reanimated.

With this conclusion in mind, what does this mean for Christian theology and beliefs? Well, frankly, not a thing. Is there really any difference, after all, in a spiritual resurrection and a physical resurrection? Does it really matter whether Jesus’ actual body came back to life, or whether it was simply his spirit – his self-aware nature – that was resurrected into eternity? In my opinion, the answer is no, it does not matter. Ultimately, it is important only because it helps us to move closer to the truth of what the earliest forms of Christianity looked like, and how the earliest Christians believed and behaved.

There is one issue with this assertion, however, that is important to note. And it centers on reliability.

If Jesus was only spiritually raised, then how could there have been any eyewitnesses? His tomb (or grave) would still have been occupied. No one could have proved anything because no one would have actually seen anything. You cannot witness a soul being glorified to heaven, after all. A spiritual resurrection would seem, at the very least, highly suspicious. One can imagine a 1st century discussion of the matter between a Christian and a pagan.

Christian: Jesus was resurrected from the dead, so we know that we can be raised too.
Pagan: How do you know Jesus was raised? Did you see him?
Christian: Well, no. I know he was raised because I just…know it.
Pagan: But how do you know? Aren’t his bones still lying there in his grave?
Christian: It’s the only thing that makes any sense. If Jesus was the Messiah, and I believe he was, then God must have raised him. The Messiah can’t get executed without actually doing anything first. Besides, Bill and Joe and Fred saw visions of Jesus at God’s right hand. So his soul must have been raised.
Pagan: How do you know they aren’t making it up?
Christian: Because I trust them. They wouldn’t make up something like that.
Pagan: How do you know they weren’t drunk or something?
Christian: Come on, I know these guys. They’re sincere.

You can see how the discussion would play out. Could Christianity have spread as far and wide and quickly as it did if it was based only on the assumption, no matter how sincere, that Jesus’ soul had been raised to glory at God’s right hand?

And these sorts of thoughts would play out in the modern mind as well. If Jesus’ resurrection was only spiritual, how can we be sure that anything actually happened? It’s only because we have first-hand accounts from those who saw the risen Jesus that we can be certain that there was a resurrection. So the resurrection must have been physical.

The problem here, of course, is twofold. First, we can’t be sure of anything, even if we do assume physical resurrection. They might have been making it up. They might have been hallucinating. Faith is an integral part of Christian belief, and that does not change whether you assume physical resurrection or spiritual.

Second, we do not actually have any first-hand accounts from those present at the first Easter. The Gospels and letters attributed to the disciples Matthew, John, and Peter are widely accepted across the scholarly spectrum to be accounts written only in those disciples’ names, not written by those disciples. And aside from those three figures, no other text in the New Testament even claims to be written by a witness to Jesus’ life.

So most of our “first-hand accounts” are actually accounts told second- and third- and perhaps even fourth-hand.

It is interesting and profoundly important to note, however, that we do have one first-hand account of the risen Jesus. That, of course, is the aforementioned vision by Paul. So our only first-hand account of resurrection is one that speaks strongly of spiritual resurrection, not physical.

That still leaves the question of how a spiritual resurrection belief could have led to the rise of Christianity. If nothing physical had happened to Jesus’ body and no one had actually seen anything, would anyone have bought the story? We know, of course, that people did come to believe, and came to believe in multitudes. Christianity spread quickly and widely, perhaps more quickly and widely than any new religion in history, with the possible exception of Islam.

It is an interesting question, and one which cannot be answered absolutely. I do not know if spiritual resurrection would have convinced people the way that people were obviously convinced.

But to address the question adequately, it is important first to separate our 21st century worldviews from 1st century worldviews. In the modern age, we are skeptical of visions. Even among religious believers, when we hear stories of ecstatic visions, we tend to assume it is either a lie or hallucination. We understand that disease processes like epileptic seizures and other brain disorders, as well as extreme stress and lack of sleep, can produce hallucinations. I recall a teacher in high school who told a story about how he stayed up for three straight days in college studying for finals. On the third day, he specifically recalls having an hour-long conversation with his friend in the cafeteria. Yet he later learned that his friend never saw him in the cafeteria that day, and the conversation never took place. So we understand, in the modern world, the scientific processes that produce visions or hallucinations.

But when it comes to the 1st century, we are dealing with a pre-Enlightenment era that did not fully understand the mind the way we understand it today. For folks living in that primitive time period, visions were a routine and even objective part of life, and were, in fact, a way that people came to understand their God or gods. Jewish scriptures, for instance, are rife with prophets explaining their visions of God, and those visions were certainly taken as “gospel” by Jews. The same was true among pagan religions.

So it may not be so hard to imagine, given the historical, pre-Enlightenment context, that people of the 1st century might have been just as persuaded by the evidence of ecstatic visions of Jesus as they would have been by claims of a physically resurrected Jesus. For those people, an ecstatic vision would have carried the same weight as a real-world sighting. In fact, the two would not even have been fully separated in the mind of a person living in the 1st century. Their lives were lived in a God-filled world. There were no atheists in the 1st century. There were no agnostics and skeptics. Gods were everywhere, involved in day-to-day life, controlling nature, controlling politics, controlling daily life. Ecstatic visions of those gods were commonplace and an accepted part of life.

Christianity, I believe, could still have risen the way it did, even if resurrection was understood spiritually and not physically. That certainly would not be true today of a new religion based on ecstatic experience, but it would have been true in the 1st century.

In the end, there is no question that this is a topic that will continue to be debated and discussed among scholars and theologians and armchair enthusiasts like me for decades to come. Ultimately we cannot have absolute answers about anything in history, but we can study the texts and the contexts, and reach conclusions about what is probable and what is not probable. It is my opinion that it is probable that the earliest Christians did not view Jesus’ resurrection as a physical event that happened to his body, but rather a spiritual event that happened to his soul.