CRJ: Class 2 Recap

Thursday March 10th, 2016 we had our second meeting to study “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.” This session consisted of a quiz on last week’s content, a discussion of the last three facts, and then an assessment of a few theories proposed to explain the facts. The Quiz The quiz was made up of eleven questions: some true/false, a couple multiple choice, and a few fill in the blanks. Every person has been given a secrettesting name to conceal actual names when posting scores. You’ll get your name at the next class.

The average score was 6.4/11 and the person with the highest score of 9/11 was "Carnegie Melon". Your quiz scores from each class will be summed and the person with the highest overall score will get a prize at the end. So keep studying. Next week’s quiz is the stuff recapped below! (The slides we went over can be found here) Some of Our Ancient Sources We’ve been encountering names of ancient sources—people who attest to facts we’ve discussed. So who are some of these people or sources? Below is a list we put together regarding briefly describing the ancient sources. These sources will also show up as references for some of the last three facts.

The Last Three Facts Fact #3: The church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed Before Paul was Saul. Saul was an anti-Christian, prominent Jewish Pharisee. He led the way in persecuting Christians for their blasphemous claims. Then there was a dramatic reversal in Saul’s life and he became known as Paul. Paul began worshipping Jesus as Lord and went around proclaiming that message! Nearly all scholars agree that there was a paradigm shift in Paul and that had to be due to something really big. His conversion was documented by Paul himself, Luke (in Acts), and independently mentioned by early Christians in Judea (as cited by Paul in Galatians 1:23). His conversion is also evidenced by the suffering and martyrdom he experienced. This is attested to by numerous ancient sources.

Fact #4: The skeptic James, brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed Jesus had siblings and, during Jesus’ life, they didn’t believe in him (John 7:5). James was one of those unbelieving brothers. This is supported by the historical criterion of embarrassment—it would have been embarrassing for Christians to record Jesus’ own brothers as unbelievers and yet that’s exactly what we read. This supports the truthfulness of the claim. But, we later read about James as a church leader (Ga 1:19; Acts 15:12-21). What could have caused this? It would certainly had to have been something dramatic (what would it take for you to believe that your own brother is God?!). 1 Corinthians 15:7 gives us just such an explanation: after Jesus had died he appeared to James. The fact that James really did come to believe in Jesus as Lord is evidenced by his suffering and martyrdom, cited by Josephus, Hegesippus, and Clement of Alexandria.

Fact #5: The tomb was empty The support for this fact can be remembered by the acronym J.E.T. Jerusalem factor. Impossible for Christianity to survive and expand in Jerusalem with the body still in the tomb. The enemies would have only to produce the corpse.

Enemy attestation. In claiming that Jesus' disciples stole the body, his enemies (Matt. 28:12-13; Justin Martyr, Trypho 108; Tertullian, De Spectaculis 30) indirectly affirmed an empty tomb; they would not have claimed such if the body were still in the tomb.

Testimony of women. Women are listed as primary witnesses to empty tomb. It's unlikely that the disciples would have invented the story, since a woman's testimony was not highly regarded and, in fact, would have been damaging to their claim (Luke 24:11; Josephus, Ant. 4:8:15; Talmud: J Sotah 19a; Rosh Hashannah 1:8; Kiddushin 82b; Origen, Contra Celsum 2:59; 3:55; Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Augustus 44 left out of 1 Cor 15:3-8 creed because of embarrassment!). Bonus support for this fact from “On Guard”: The fact of the Jesus’ burial: Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish court, in a personal tomb. Early, independent accounts: Mark 15:42-47; 1 Cor 15:3-5; Matt 27:57-61; Luke 23:50-55; John 19:38-42; Acts 13:28-31 Simplicity of Mark’s account: as compared to the account in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, Mark’s account is unembellished and to the point Of the five facts, this one has the least scholarly consensus (though still over 75%) but, as seen above, there are still good reasons to argue for this fact.

Encountering Opposing Theories Given these five facts (below) the task is then to determine what the best explanation of these facts is. Jesus’ Death by Crucifixion Disciples’ Beliefs that Jesus Appeared Conversion of the Church Persecutor Paul Conversion of the Skeptic James Empty Tomb Before diving into explanations we quickly discussed methodology. Is a historian allowed to propose and evaluate supernatural explanations?  We agreed that while it may be outside the bounds of a “historian” (debatably) there’s no reason a person (historian or otherwise) cannot at least consider a supernatural explanation on their personal time. In either case the natural explanations should be evaluated first. We also reminded ourselves that 100% certainty is not the criterion for determining the best explanation. Also, it’s not enough to simply propose possible explanations; any competing explanations should be evaluated based on support for their claims. So, that said, we looked at theories concerning legends, lies, and lapses. Each theory is mentioned along with the problems associated with the theory.

Embellishments: the story grew over time, like the game of telephone, to become a supernatural story of resurrection. (Four problems arise with this theory…)

The earliest, purest form of the story that we can find is the supernatural claim made by the disciples. An embellished story wouldn’t have converted Paul… … or James. There needs to be evidence for a particular legend story.

Non-historical genre: the literary style of the resurrection account is not literal, it’s just like Aesop’s fables. (Six problems with this theory…) Doesn’t account for the empty tomb A fable story wouldn’t have converted Paul… …or James. An argument needs to be made that this is a fable story. The resurrection accounts appear more like a historical genre. Early critics argued against a historical claim of the resurrection

Myth: the resurrection story is just a copy of those from other religions. (Three problems here…)

The accounts of rising gods in other religions are unclear. When read closely, without cherry-picking details, they aren’t really considered true parallels. The first true parallel in another religion appears over 100 yearsafter Christianity. Rising gods in other religions are not well evidenced and can be best explained without supernatural explanation. Correlation is not causation. Even if true, we would still need reasons to think first century Jews would make up a story to parallel a pagan religious story.

Fraud: the disciples lied and/or stole the body (fraud 1) or someone else stole the body so there was only an empty tomb (fraud 2). A couple problems here: The disciples really did believe they saw the risen Jesus (our second fact!). Hearsay and/or simply an empty tomb would not have converted Paul… … or James.

4. Disciples wouldn’t have believed based on empty tomb alone (fraud 2) 5. Only explains the empty tomb  (fraud 2) Here we needed to quickly pause and remember that, in the case of the early disciples, we are dealing with first century Jews and should think as such. For first century Jews, they had no conception of a dying and rising Messiah. They believed in a resurrection at the end of days but not of resurrection of a single person in the middle of history. It would be anachronistic for us to project modern Christian thinking onto first century Jews. Therefore, simply having an empty tomb to a first century Jew would not have been understood as evidence for a resurrection. This explains the next proposed theory.

Wrong Tomb: the disciples went to the wrong tomb that was empty and they assumed Jesus was resurrected. (Six problems here…) Doesn’t account for the appearances to the disciples Empty tomb alone wouldn’t have convinced the disciples (first century Jews) of a resurrection

3. Paul wouldn’t have been converted from this alone… 4. …nor James. 5. There is no historical support that they went to the wrong tomb. 6. We have detailed evidence that the burial site was known (we even know that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimethea!)

Apparent Death Theory: Jesus didn’t fully die on the cross; he was buried and later left the tomb, leaving it empty. (Three big problems with this theory…) All the medical evidence says Jesus died. (seeJournal of American Medical Association report 3/21/86) Implausible to believe that a bloodied, half-dead Jesus would have rolled away a stone, escaped the guards, and appeared to the disciples convincing them that he was the risen, glorified Messiah.

3. Paul saw a “glorified” Jesus, not a wounded Jesus. That wouldn’t have converted Paul or James. We haven’t yet evaluated the “resurrection hypothesis” but, of these six proposed explanations, none seem to be very convincing. Next week we will consider some remaining explanations.