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Loading...Here is an interesting post on the resurrection of Jesus that I made almost exactly four years ago today. It’s interesting because (a) I don’t remember writing it (and only vaguely remember having read the book) and (b) my own views ended up being very similar indeed (even though I don’t at all remember being influenced by the book!). These are views not widely shared by my colleagues in the field of New Testament studies, as will seem obvious (since most of my colleagues are committed Christians who believe in the resurrection!). In any event, here’s the post. Happy reading!
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One of the first books that I have re-read in thinking about how it is the man Jesus came to be thought of as God is Gerd Lüdemann’s, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (2004). Lüdemann is an important and interesting scholar. He was professor of New Testament at Göttingen in Germany, and for a number of years split his time between there and Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. He is a major figure in scholarship, and is noteworthy for not being a Christian. He does not believe Jesus was literally, physically, raised from the dead, and he thinks that apart from belief in Jesus’ physical resurrection, it is not possible for a person to be Christian.
This book is written for people with a lot of background in New Testament studies. It is exegetically based, meaning that he goes into a detailed examination of key passages to uncover their literary meaning; but he is ultimately interested in historical questions of what really happened. To follow his exegesis (his interpretation) requires a good knowledge of how NT scholars argue their points: the book is aimed at other NT scholars and, say, graduate students in the field.
The basic historical conclusions that Lüdemann draws – based on a careful analysis of all the relevant passages and a consideration of the historical events that lie behind them – is this:
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o When Jesus was arrested and crucified his disciples fled. They did not go into hiding in Jerusalem – then went back home, to Galilee (where *else* would they go? They went home, to get out of Jerusalem!)
o Soon after, it was in Galilee (not in Jerusalem) that belief in the resurrection occurred. It occurred because Peter had a vision of Jesus that included auditory features (he thought he saw and heard him).
o This “vision” was induced by psychological factors. Peter felt terrifically guilty for having denied Jesus, and the “vision” he had brought forgiveness from his deep guilt.
o This vision was like other visions that people have (all the time): visions of dead loved ones; visions of the Virgin Mary. In these visions, of course the loved ones do not *really* come back to life from the dead, and the Virgin Mary does not *really* show up at Lourdes, etc. These are psychologically induced visions.
o Still, like other people who have visions, Peter took the vision to be real and assumed that Jesus was alive again, in heaven.
o Peter brought the other disciples together, and maintained with them that the end time was near, as Jesus had originally preached, and that the kingdom of God was soon to appear. The evidence? The resurrection of the dead had already begun. The evidence? Jesus had been raised. The evidence? He had appeared to Peter. All this is happening in Galilee.
o The vision was infectious, and the mission got underway.
o Even Jesus’ brothers were caught up in the excitement and James became a believer in Jesus.
o The other person who had a genuine vision of Jesus was much later, the apostle Paul, who too experienced a psychologically induced vision of Jesus. In this case, he found Jesus’ teaching of forgiveness and mercy appealing, even as he was violently persecuting the church as an enemy. But forgiveness won out and in a cataclysmic break from his past, Paul had a vision of the living Jesus, convincing him that Peter and the others were right: Jesus was still alive, and therefore had been raised from the dead.
o Some Christians thought that these visions showed that Jesus was spiritually exalted to heaven – not that his body had been physically raised from the dead.
o Others, including Peter and Paul, insisted that in fact Jesus had experienced a physical resurrection of the body, which had been transformed into an immortal body before being exalted to heaven.
o The implication was that the tomb was emptied before Jesus’ started to make his appearances (other Christians also claimed to see him, but it is hard to establish that any of the others actually had any visions – they may have simply been building on Peter’s original claim).
o But by this time it was too late to know whether the tomb was really empty. For several reasons:
We don’t know how much after his death the vision to Peter came; Acts suggests that it was fifty days before the preaching began; if so, the body would have decomposed.
No one knew where he was buried anyway (the story of Joseph of Arimathea may be a later account, not something that really happened; Jesus may have been buried in a common grave or somewhere no one knew.
It is worth pointing out, Ludemann notes, that Christians in Jersualem appear to have placed ZERO emphasis on the location of the tomb. It was not until 326, according to Eusebius, was the alledged site of burial “rediscovered” under a temple dedicated to Venus. Life of Constantine 3.26-28.
And so, the short story: Chrsitianity started among Jesus’ followers in Galilee, sometime after his death, after Peter had a vision of Jesus that was psychologically induced.
So, to be clear, I’m not saying I agree with this entire reconstruction. But it’s very interesting, based on a detailed examination of all the evidence from the NT (and outside) by a skilled interpreter, and worth bearing in mind when trying to figure out what really happened both to Jesus’ body and to the followers of Jesus to make them believe it had been raised from the dead.
It almost sounds like he’s mirroring Schweitzer by using the gospels as biography in a modern sense to reach his conclusion? Do you know how Crossan views Lüdemann’s hypothesis?
I’m afraid I don’t.
I find it interesting that you and Lüdemann each create an extremely narrow rule separating Christians from non-Christians and then use it to exclude yourselves from Christianity. It is almost as if you somehow intuitively sense that you should not define yourself as being within Christianity, so you take up a narrow rule that “all Christians must believe in physical resurrection” or whatever, so you can declare that you are not a Christian. Not being a Christian is the goal, and making up a rule is the means. What do you think? Faced with similar dissonance, some others find a broader definition of “Christian” that lets them remain within the fold.
I actually have a very *broad* definition of what I think a Christian is or can be. But included in my definition is the sense that there is some kind of divine being in the world (“God”). And since I don’t think/believe there is, I don’t think I can rightly be called a Christian.
In today’s column, you repeat an idea from “God’s Problem,” saying “the problem of theodicy is to explain how God can be just given the state of pain and misery in the world. In other words, given the amount of suffering that people experience, how can one explain that a good and loving God is in charge?” From the context, I am assuming that “in charge” means that God can intervene in human affairs and change outcomes. Is that your intent? When I commented that you have a narrow definition of Christian, that was my meaning. To be a Christian, do you have to believe that God can intervene in human affairs and change outcomes. I say no. You?
No, I don’t think that. I think you can be a Christian and believe in a God who does not intervene. And then you don’t have as big or a problem with theodicy.
Thanks for this conversation. I appreciate it. Now I will think about this for a while.
If God doesn’t intervene, what does he do–if anything? You gave up on belief in divinity when you saw all around you evil getting away with evil and the good being abandoned to suffering and destruction, Clearly, God stands by when horrible crimes, genocides and the like, are being inflicted on innocent men, women and children. Not mere handfuls, but millions tortured and slaughtered, Some religionistas claim all will be evened up in the afterlife when all will receive their just due. That’s a convenient copout–unprovable either way. Are you aware of any reasonable (not risible, reasonable) explanation believers give for God’s shocking failure to intervene when such catastrophes are in progress, other than he’ll make it all right in “extra innings.?”
Yes, of course believers have all sorts of explanations! Maybe some readers here can indicate how they make sense of it all!
It seems reasonable since in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15 Paul defines the core of gospel as being “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 goes on to say in verse fourteen “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” This idea is echoed elsewhere; Romans 10:9 says “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” It think it’s fair to say if you don’t confess or believe those things the implication is you are not saved. It’s not as if Luedemann drew the line at belief in the resurrection because he had some kind of agenda; Paul himself states that this is the single fundamental belief of Christianity.
Considering all that you’ve written in books and the blog it’s little wonder you don’t immediately recognize your work from four years ago. … I have most of your books, so I guess I don’t have any questions today.
Seems plausible. Vermes, in his book, ‘the Resurrection,’ suggests that the vivid spiritual experience (he doesn’t use the word, ‘vision’) that happened to one or more of the disciples following the death of Jesus, took place in Jerusalem rather than Galilee. Not sure why without re-reading the whole book.
“Peter brought the other disciples together, and maintained with them that the end time was near, as Jesus had originally preached, and that the kingdom of God was soon to appear. The evidence? The resurrection of the dead had already begun. The evidence? Jesus had been raised. The evidence? He had appeared to Peter. All this is happening in Galilee.”
From my reading up on this topic over the past few years now (including your own books, Dr. Ehrman), I would conclude that the cause and effect relationship was in the opposite direction. That is, Peter and the other disciples were already firmly convinced that the mass resurrection of the dead was imminent (within months, if not weeks or days). Moreover, they believed their executed leader was the Messiah foretold of in the Prophets. Therefore, if Jesus was the Messiah that would mean he is supposed to lead the vanguard of the coming mass resurrection of the dead saints (i.e. he was the “first fruits” of the resurrection).
Now, since all the disciples believed that the Holy Spirit had come to them (as proclaimed in Joel), that would mean that they all had the divine gift of prophecy bestowed on them, so they should be able to communicate and commune with the the spirit world, including the exalted spirit of Jesus. So the disciples then actively sought to have “visions” — that is, it’s not like the thought of seeing visions of Jesus never occurred to them until they saw them, but, rather, they purposely tried to induce visions of Jesus — and, the human mind being as imperfect as it is, they probably did, in fact, come to see “visions” of the risen Jesus (whether in hallucinations or dreams).
Meanwhile, since Jesus’ execution was completely unexpected, the disciples then began to scour the prophetic writings to find an explanation and, hopefully, a plan to go forward. That’s when they started using certain prophecies, such as Isaiah 53, to explain and retroactively justify Jesus’ unexpected death. It’s within the prophetic writing that the disciples began to put together the puzzle pieces of the post-Crucifixion narrative, such as Jesus being in the tomb three days before rising (cf. Jonah in the fish; also, Jesus, being a faithful Jew, and God doing no work on the Sabbath, Saturday was skipped over so that Jesus could rise on Sunday), when in all likelihood Jesus’ corpse was thrown into a mass grave. The explanations the disciples found in the sacred literature include Jesus being flogged with “stripes” and getting a crown of thorns (again, compare Isaiah 53).
And now, it was only after all this that the disciples were then forced to rebut critics as to how they knew Jesus’ death and resurrection wasn’t fake. That is, how they knew, for a fact, that Jesus was dead and risen. And that’s when they started to concoct the story of Jesus being interred in a tomb (an honor rarely given to a lower class schlub like Jesus), which was, conveniently, donated by a wealthy ally amongst the Jerusalem elite (Joseph of Arimathea), and, finally, to quash all rumor and criticism that Jesus’ resurrection was faked, they added the detail of the women going to the tomb (why? to anoint the body, of course!), only to find it empty…with one…then two angels informing them that Jesus was, in fact, resurrected.
This order of events is what’s called an inside out reconstruction of events. That is, you start out with a pre-conceived notion and then you “reconstruction” the details of those events in order to fill in the gaps and reinforce that belief, essentially making it bulletproof (which is why it’s so hard to convince fundies that it’s all a load of BS). Such an effective reconstruction is a result of several common biases in thinking — including the confirmation bias, the hindsight bias, and the self-fulling prophecy (which, in this case, is a literal self-fulfilling prophecy!)
Were New Testament accounts of the Resurrection based on any interpretations of alleged Old Testament prophecies? I’m aware of general “prophecies” that could be open to wide interpretation, but I mean are there specific ones that might be more convincing than others?
The *idea* of a resurrection after three days is sometimes thought to be based on Hosea 6:3 or possibly the story of Jonah. The actual stories of the appearances — I don’t know that these are based on OT models, but I’d be happy for someone to come up with some ideas about it.
Thanks for (re-)posting this, Dr. Ehrman. I think I’m going to read some of Lüdemann’s books. By the way, you may have read this, but just in case: “http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/download/BETL249_Luedemann.pdf”.
If I may pls: thanks for that article. It is quite informative. Cheers.
Where does the Bible say Peter had a vision of The resurrected Jesus?
1 Corinthians 15:5.
Also in Luke 24:34
saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”
Never considered these as peter’s visions or dreams. Always taught Jesus was there w disciples in a physical body as narrated starting in vs 36.
Thanks
Yes, a vision usually assumes the person is actually there physically.
I’d like to see more emphasis being placed on the possibility that vivid *dreams* (rather than waking “visions”) convinced Peter and others that Jesus was, in some sense, “still alive.” I remember your having posted something, a while back, about studies that indicated dreams of that type occur frequently when people are mourning deceased loved ones.
It seems odd to us, but ancient people did not differentiate between sleeping dreams and waking visions, the way we do.
Actually, that explains a great deal.
It is also interesting to note that Mark 15:43
Joseph of Arimathea rolled the stone into place at the tomb. So the stone must not have been very large. But in mark 16 for the stone was “very large “. It got bigger overnight
In Luke 24, the Women return the next day with spices to prepare Jesus’ body.
If Jesus’ body had already been laid in a sealed tomb with a very large stone, why would the women think that the body should be prepared one day after his death ? Were they planning to roll the stone back?
Of course, In John 19 Nicodemus prepares the body with 75 pounds of myrrh. I guess the women didn’t know about that.
It’s surprising the second century editors didn’t create one seamless story.
How would you reply to the following objections?
1. It seems Mary Mag had a vision in Jerusalem not Galilee.
2. Paul states he has personal knowledge of many more than Peter and himself who saw Jesus.
3. The modern visions of Mary are usually due to people *expecting* to see her (neither Peter nor Paul had such an expectation).
4. Does Paul not mention Jesus’ physical ascension in 1 Cor 15 (or anywhere else) indicate he didn’t have a good explanation for it? The obvious question is “after Jesus physically resurrected, where’d he go and how’d he get there?”
5. In 1 Cor 15, aside from the timing, Paul doesn’t make a distinction between the nature of his vision of Jesus and the nature of the others’ visions of Jesus (like Peter’s for example). Did Paul believe Jesus physically appeared to him? (this seems significant since Paul equates his vision to Peter’s). In 2 Cor 12, Paul doesn’t know if a certain vision was physical or not… doesn’t Paul seem to blend what’s physical and spiritual? (cf. the gospels say Jesus can eat fish and appear in the middle of a locked room).
“3. The modern visions of Mary are usually due to people *expecting* to see her (neither Peter nor Paul had such an expectation).”
dr ehrman
can this argument be used to prove that mark did not expect reunion?
disciples forsook jesus and fled
that later writers have peter hanging around the tomb
“Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.”
“Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”
implies they needed to give their audience a hint that their was expectation of reunion, but mark left all of this out, which implies he did not expect reunion?
So, what would memory theory say about your memories (or lack thereof) of Luedemann’s book and/or influence?
Yes, my regular experience confirms very well what memory researchers say!
Does the disciples’ belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus’s body add any weight to the idea that they saw heaven as a tangible city in the sky above Jerusalem, and are you re-examining Gerd’s book in the context of the history-of-the-afterlife book you’ve been thinking about?
Yes, both ideas are deeply embedded in an apocalypytic world view.
Do you think this scenario fits well with the short ending of Mark?
Yup!
Interesting!
So, your last paragraph begs the question: which points do you and don’t you agree with?
That’s what I was surprised about. I agree with most of them. And I used to agree with about none of them!
The way that Ludemann interprets the fact (as in the ‘minimal facts argument) of the resurrection appearances is vastly different than what I imagine evangelicals have in mind when they state that ‘the disciples had experiences which they understood as Jesus rising from the dead.’
I think that’s one of the main problems with the minimal facts argument–some of the facts, especially that one, are vague enough to be interpreted in various ways. And the interpretation Ludemann offers is much easier to explain than one that more closely corresponds to the gospel accounts.
Several things stand out to me after reading this:
“Christians in Jerusalem appear to have placed ZERO emphasis on the location of the tomb…No one knew where he was buried anyway.” I have a hard time believing that Christians weren’t interested in knowing the location of Jesus’ tomb for lots of reasons.
On whether the tomb was really empty–“We don’t know how much after his death the vision to Peter came; Acts suggests that it was fifty days before the preaching began; if so, the body would have decomposed.” Jesus would have had skeletal remains!
“Peter had a vision of Jesus that was psychologically induced.” Paul too, but there’s no explanation as to why he had a vision. I don’t completely understand the subject of visions,as in, the type where a person is fully awake and literally sees a dead person. I’ve had other kinds of interesting experiences, but not that one. I haven’t met anyone that has either.
Yes, there would have been skeletal remains. But in a mass tomb, you wouldn’t be able to identify whose skeleton belonged to whom!
Right. What I meant was that Lüdemann implied there would have been no body (in a tomb is what I thought he meant in the first point) because it would have decomposed. The problem is that there would have been a skeleton. It’s not until the next point he states that Jesus could have been placed in a common grave. I’m not convinced of that so far. It makes more sense to me that Peter went to visit Jesus’ tomb and found it empty for whatever reason. Finding an empty tomb could certainly trigger a vision, not only for him but for others.
Pardon the double dip, but, what followers of Jesus would there have been in Jerusalem? Is there any evidence of a Jerusalem group of followers? I thought his ministry of just a few years had been just across Galilee? Perhaps all of the Tomb business is later invention once there had become a Jerusalem church that was arguing with other Jews?
I have had committed Christians say to me that unless I agreed that Jesus was (is) God that they would not wish to speak with me on any related subject. These are decent people, not (to my eyes) fanatics, but agreement that Jesus is divine is essential to any discussion. Others, not always the same people, state that if Jesus was not crucified and then resurrected (not always clearly defined) they could not be — would not be — Christians. I have always been puzzled when people assert that their belief in God is dependent on the bedrock assurance that Jesus was crucified, resurrected and now resides in heaven. I have always been puzzled that good people insist on limiting themselves and their religious beliefs in this manner. It seems to me that a person could believe that Jesus was sent by God to redeem the Jews and eventually the whole earth, that he preached belief in the one God and insisted on certain standards of conduct and a code of ethics, that he was arrested by the Romans, and crucified and died on the cross. What happened afterword might be in dispute, but resurrection would not be essential to revering him. Can you explain for me why belief in the resurrection is, for many, many people, the sine qua non of their Christian beliefs.
I think if Jesus died and stayed dead, for many Christians, then there was nothing about him in particular that would make you think he was the Savior, the Lord, or a divine being — and they may as well be Jews or something else.
Paul clearly taught this
1 Corinthians 15:14
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
The idea of Jesus’corpse rotting on the cross is repulsive to nearly everyone today when burials are so sanitized
.
I don’t see anything wrong with Luedemann’s overall view, but I get a bit cautious when someone starts trying to give the *reason why* Peter or Paul had a vision. I think all we can say is they had a vision and leave it at that.
Agreed!
Actually, all we can say is that somebody claimed that they had a vision.
I’ve always thought that the story of Joseph of Arimathea was a stretch. It’s more likely that the body of a crucifixion victim would rot on the cross than be given any kind of burial. In the same category as Pilate giving any consideration to the wishes of the Jews.
It’s your birthday! May the coming year be even better than last year was. 🙂
That would be amazing!!
I just finished your book on this topic, and I had a question. The Nicene creed describes the Son as “begotten”, but the arian heresy used “begotten” to imply that there was a time when the Father existed without the Son. That seems odd to me.
Also, when I used to read the Bible, I always felt that there was stuff missing. There were phrases that seemed to assume knowledge from the reader that I could not find in the Bible itself. Your books and videos seem to supply this missing knowledge, so the Bible makes a little more sense to me now. It’s kind of ironic that I couldn’t find these answers from Christian sources when I was a believer.
I think the idea is that if Jesus *became* the son by being “begotten” (conceived) then he must not have existed before that.
If the disciples returned to Galilee and had their visions (of whatever nature) of the resurrected Jesus there, why would the early church then relocate to Jerusalem?
thanks
I wish we knew! I’ve wondered if it’s because they thought Jesus would be returning there.
Perhaps when we have a final result of the famous “Tomb of Jesus” of Tarpiot we can better understand these proposals. By the way what do you think about Dr. Bart? I means, The Tarpiot’s Tomb ? I have not heard of the issue from you.
I think most scholars do no think of this as an ongoing debate. Apart from my friend James Tabor who is on this blog, I don’t know of major scholars of Jewish and Christian antiquity who consider it to be the tomb of Jesus. But James can maybe comment: are there others?
Well, I could be totally wrong, and often am, but it seems to me that a loving God would make all of this a whole lot clearer than leaving it up to four ancient Gospels written decades after the described events by unknown authors and filled with contradictions with different Gospels saying different things.
Lüdemann’s thesis as presented here sounds like a bunch of psychobabble to me.
Peter’s vision ‘psychologically induced’ by his guilty conscience for having denied Jesus thrice.
Paul’s vision similarly ‘psychologically induced’, but from a different cause, i.e. his admiration of Jesus teaching on mercy!
Sprinkle in some bullet points that no one debates about, like Jesus being arrested and executed, Peter traveling to Galilee, and James finally becoming a follower of Jesus, to add a scholarly sound;
Then some more speculation upon speculation till you get a seemingly somewhat ‘reasonable’ explanation for the theory of an empty tomb.
Bart,
Something caught my attention in your response to a question/comment above when you said you don’t believe in a divine being in the world. This is the theistic view of God as Christianity and Judaism are theistic religions. Have you, and I assume you have either professionally or personally, thought of ‘god’ outside theism and given thought to whether other notions of god, such as Being, Really Real, Ground of Being and on and on, resonate with you any more than the theistic view?
And there pantheistic and panentheistic views of God in the Bible and early Christianity as opposed to, or in addition to, theistic views? That would be an interesting book, at least for me.
Yeah, I have to admit, these options have never held any appeal for me.
Should a scholar not be open to all possibilities? Why is it that scientists nowadays think that only what can be seen with physical eyes and touched with physical hands (the material world) is true and real? That wasn’t always so. Why is it that this modern view is considered ‘correct’ when it is just a view? Why are visions considered ‘psychologically induced’, if in fact they could be portals to another dimensión of reality, the Real Real, the Ground of Being, the invisible (to physical eyes) world of spirit? Before discarding this possibility it needs to be investigared. It would explain visiones. It would explain God’s Problem, because it is not a problem of God at all but of our definition of God. The Bible with its theistic view is about beliefs, an attempt to explain what was perceived. What if this attempt to explain something went wrong? What it the theistic view is wrong and the pantheistic view a possibility? It would concord with the most recent discoveries in the área of quantum physics, which actually denotes that our view that only the material is real is wrong. Quite wrong, actually. Paul Davies, a renown physicist, is at the forefront of re-introducing a spiritual dimensión into hard core physics and he has no Christian agenda, just a very inquisitive mind. Already now there exists a scientific base (quantum physics with its implications) to be able to rationally explain visions, and ‘miracles’, and other psychic possibilities.
Should a scholar not be open to all possibilities? Why is it that scientists nowadays think that only what can be seen with physical eyes and touched with physical hands (the material world) is true and real? That wasn’t always so. Why is it that this modern view is considered ‘correct’ when it is just a view? Why are visions considered ‘psychologically induced’, if in fact they could be portals to another dimensión of reality, the Real Real, the Ground of Being, the invisible (to physical eyes) world of spirit? Before discarding this possibility it needs to be investigared. It would explain visiones. It would explain God’s Problem, because it is not a problem of God at all but of our definition of God. The Bible with its theistic view is about beliefs, an attempt to explain what was perceived. What if this attempt to explain something went wrong? What it the theistic view is wrong and the pantheistic view a possibility? It would concord with the most recent discoveries in the área of quantum physics, which actually denotes that our view that only the material is real is wrong. Quite wrong, actually. Paul Davies, a renown physicist, is at the forefront of re-introducing a spiritual dimensión into hard core physics and he has no Christian agenda, just a very inquisitive mind. Already now there exists a scientific base (quantum physics with its implications) to be able to rationally explain visions, and ‘miracles’, and other psychic possibilities.
If Peter, not just any old disciple, was the first to see Jesus alive, why would the story of a woman, the same woman, being the first to know of his resurrection make its way into all four gospel accounts? Did some factions want to take Peter down a peg, or assert the equality of female apostles?
My guess is that the woman/women discovering the tomb was the most widespread (earliest?) tradition. The idea that Peter was first comes from Paul.
Re: 1 Cor 15, v 3 and 4 (as mentioned in the comments above) – “…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…”
To which scriptures is Paul referring? I thought it was just the gospel writers who fished around for scriptural justification of their theologies. Is Paul doing this too? Why does he think these “scriptures” refer to Jesus?
Thanks, Bart.
We don’t really know! It is often said that he is thining of something like Isaiah 53, but he never quotes that passage in his writings. So it’s really a bit of guesswork to know what he is referring to.
Kind of like Matthew then, shoehorning bits of scripture to make his story sound authentic!
I think Process Theology makes the most sense and is intellectually responsible for modern day Christians. It has good ethics. God neither causes or stands by and lets evil happen. I believe God is spirit and suffers with the world and calls us in each moment to be the best we can be. We may not listen to that call and go our own way, but it is always there. God’s power is not coercive… it is persuasive. I believe God is omniscient and knows everything there is to know perfectly but that means knowing the future is open and has a wide range of possibilities, not as fixed or settled. God cannot force people or the world to obey God’s will. Instead God works by sharing with us a vision of a better way. God’s power lies in patience and love, not in force. I also believe God is with us in our moments of greatest guilt and despair. God works in everything to bring about the good and therefore is worthy of our love. But God is not in control. If God were in complete control, what need would God have of our service? Jesus taught that God’s peaceable kingdom (or empire) was the goal and we should all work together toward that peaceable kingdom.
This is sort-of related to this – I was thinking about your view of Jesus not having been buried in an individual tomb by any of the Jewish authorities (such as Joseph of Arimathea when I read the artcile: “”Where no one had yet been Laid: The Shame of Jesus’ Burial” by Byron R. McCane. The argument of the article is that some of the traditions of Jesus’ burial are probably historical because in none of the Gospels is Jesus’ burial presented as a truly *honorable* burial in the context of first century Judaism – the two key elements of an honorable burial (a family tomb and time set aside for mourning) are missing in all of them (save the Gospel of Peter). McCane states that the Gospel authors: “dignified it (the burial) as much as possible but did not deny its shame.”
What are your thoughts on this?
Side-note, McCane mentions that Cicero “mentions a governor in Sicily who released bodies to family members in return for a fee” and then cites n Verrem 2.5.45 – but when I looked at that reference, I couldn’t find what he was talking about. Would you know if he was referencing the wrong passage, or if perhaps I was reading it wrong?
I’m nmot familiar with the passage off hand, but the point is that we have no record of Jesus’ family having any access to the governor, or asking him for the body, or paying for it — so I’m not sure how it is a similar case.
I think the point of the reference (in the article I read) was to support his statement that: “Roman prefects like Pilate, in fact, often allowed crucifixion victims to be buried.” He later goes on to say:
“a request by a Jewish leader for the body of Jesus would not have been out of place, either, since Roman prefects–including at least one that we know if in first-century Jerusalem–did allow the burial of crucifixion victims. In the case of Jesus, such an allowance was likely, since Jesus was not caught up in a mass crucifixion, and his death did not come at a time of revolt against Rome. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day generally cooperated with Pilate in preserving public order in Jerusalem, and the occasion of Jesus’ death was a Jewish religious holiday. It may have taken a little nerve, then, but someone like Joseph of Arimathea could have reasonably expected that Pilate would grant his request for the body of Jesus.”
The conclusion, though, is not that Jesus was buried the Jewish authorities *honorably* as many Christians think he was, but that Jewish authorities buried him in shame, perhaps in a tomb reserved for criminals. The argument is that no Jew in the first century would recognize the burial of Jesus described in the canonical Gospels as an honorable burial. They would have recognized it clearly as a *dishonorable* one, despite some of the Gospel authors’ attempts to dignify the dishonorable burial.
Yes, I try to show why this is wrong in my book How Jesus Became God (though I have been a friend of Byron for many years, since he was a PhD student at Duke)
just want to clarify something about this. If it’s true that the burial depicted in the canonical Gospels is a shameful burial (specifically because it’s not a burial in a family tomb and there’s no time set aside for mourning), would that qualify as meeting either the criterion of dissimilarity or embarrassment (if no one knew what happened to Jesus’ body, requiring the earliest Christians to invent details of his burial, I’d think they’d invent an honorable one rather than the shameful one that’s described).
And if it does qualify for either of those two, then wouldn’t there be two criteria met for the burial, either dissimilarity or embarrassment along with the criterion of multiple attestation (Mark and John, along with the Gospel of Peter, which mentions Joseph)?
I know the criteria don’t guarantee historicity of a detail. I guess what I’m asking is whether or not you think that there are two criteria met in this case, and if you do, would your position be that the two criteria still don’t overpower the fact that it was regular practice for the bodies to be left on the cross?
No, the burial is precisely not a shameful burial. It was all properly done according to Jewish rules for such things.