Loading...In this post I continue discussing some of the issues that I learned about for the first time, or changed my mind about, while writing How Jesus Became God. This post is about an issue that I figured out (for myself) for the first time; I don’t know that other scholars have pointed this out in quite the same way. (Or if they do, I’ve forgotten about it.) It is about the tradition scattered throughout the Gospels that the disciples “doubted” that Jesus was raised even when they had clear evidence that he had been – namely, that he was standing right in front of them. How do we explain this doubt tradition?
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In considering the significance of the visions of Jesus, a key question immediately comes to the fore that in my judgment has not been given its full due by most scholars investigating the issue. Why do we have such a strong and pervasive tradition that some of the disciples doubted the resurrection, even though Jesus appeared to them? If Jesus came to them, alive, after his death, and held conversations with them – what was there to doubt?
The reason this question is so pressing is because, as we will see later in this chapter, modern research on visions has shown that visions are almost always believed by the people who experience them. When people have a vision – of a lost loved one, for example – -they really and deeply believe the person has been there. So why were the visions of Jesus not always believed? Or rather, why were they so consistently doubted?
Jesus, of course, does not appear to anyone in Mark’s Gospel. But he does in Matthew, Luke, John, and the book of Acts. Most readers have never noticed this, but in every one of these accounts we find indications –or rather direct statements — that the disciples doubted that Jesus was raised.
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Which tradition, in your judgment, is older: the ’empty tomb’ tradition or the ‘Peter/Paul/Mary visions’ tradition?
Definitely the visions. I explain why in my book.
Hi Bart,
I too have always wondered why the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus and why in John, the disciples who were fishing, did not realize that they were talking to Jesus?
Was it because Jesus was different somehow and because of this, they didn’t recognize him?
Furthermore, was perhaps this the main point that the authors wanted us to “get” about these 2 events.
That is, after the resurrection, Jesus was “different” and people didn’t recognize him for who he was?
John
It’s a great question. Usually it’s thought that it is because he had not yet “revealed” himself to them. But I wonder if it could be because there were stories floating around that what some of the disciples saw was thought by a few of them to be Jesus and a few to be someone/something else?
the muslims assume that a jesus lookalike appeared to be nailed to the cross and the christians attack the muslim god and scream “deception,” but thier god can walk around unrecognised and the christians claim “miracle”
i see double standards.
I can understand how individuals may have visions, but how can multiple individuals having the same vision(s) be explained?
Mass hysteria?
I deal with this in the book. Masses of people see the Blessed Virgin Mary with some regularity!
I know “group hallucinations” are possible. And I also know – from personal experience – that at least some people are capable of touching others’ minds and picking up tidbits from them. I think the study of these phenomena should be a high priority.
In my city, a group tried through meditation to influence enough others’ minds during the month of January to reduce the number of assaults! They reported mixed results…depending on whether they’d also been trying (as I hadn’t heard at the outset) to reduce the number of nonviolent crimes, like burglary. I found the whole idea disturbing: if some or all of us do have unrecognized mental “powers,” it could be dangerous to awaken them – even with the best of intentions – until we know more about them.
Something I thought about re: visions while I read the book last week: As you point out, people having visions of dead loved ones or religious figures is quite common. Yes, as you also point out, people coming to believe that loved ones or religious figures have been raised from the dead is quite rare. I see your point about how people today would likely have a different interpretation of these visions than first-century apocalyptic Jews (ghosts vs. resurrection). However, presumably these visions were just as common then as they were now, yet it seems even among first-century apocalyptic Jews people didn’t come to believe their loved ones had been raised from the dead that frequently (or did they?).
So I have trouble seeing why “a few people had visions” would go to “Jesus was raised from the dead” in this instance, but not in others. John the Baptist’s followers presumably had similar beliefs re: the apocalypse and resurrection, and based on the frequency of such experiences I’d be surprised if none of them had visions of him after he died, but apparently John’s followers didn’t develop the widespread belief he had been raised from the dead the way Jesus’ did.
What’s always struck me as surprising from the standpoint of ordinary psychological explanations was Paul’s vision: Paul didn’t love Jesus or even know him, and Jesus wasn’t a revered religious figure for him (quite the contrary) and yet he had a vision so dramatic and compelling it changed the course of his entire life.
It’s a very good question. And as with so much in history, I’d have to say that we don’t know the answer!
Perhaps Paul, seeing the influence and commitment of the Gentile converts, created this “vision” in order to have a stake in these offerings that were being so freely given to the apostles? Saul was a highly-educated Jewish member. Maybe he started his own small business out of seducing uneducated Gentiles out of their wealth…just a thought.
I try to point this out to believers and the normal response is a blank stare. I point out that Saul/Paul, who claims to have been a devout Jew, when he heard the beliefs of the Christians thought they were blasphemy, and only changed his mind after a “vision” which he thought was from God, and then flip-flopped and said those events were prophesied in the Scriptures. Again, a blank stare. To people who want to believe no amount of rational analysis will touch them. Yet somehow, with the help of thinkers like you, I was able to return to reason instead of blind faith. So keep speaking and writing.
In works of fiction, a device often used to convince or persuade someone to accept a what another is saying as “true” or “real” is to have a character say something along the lines, “I doubted, too, but now I believe”. No doubt (I say that tongue-in-cheek) followers encountered disbelief from others as they told the resurrection story. Perhaps they employed a similar technique to address the problem and it became incorporated in the oral tradition. For example, “Your not alone in your doubt. Even some of the disciples doubted.” And as you indicated, as time passed, embellishments came into play.
Absolutely, Richard Thrift! Yes, the literary devices, the castings, are most important! If people were meant to relate (convert) to this whole ‘Jesus is raised and is God’ idea, then they were going to have to see themselves in the story; they would have to be able to relate to others who have had this the difficulty when trying believe such a concept; and if your exemplars for this struggle of belief are the Apostles who knew him, well then … surely it’s even harder for me … so I’ll just skip trying (suspend it) and do the vicarious scriptural belief, so I can get on with the benefits of the religion. Not only is it a needed literary device in the tradition, but it is also a needed psychological one if you are to “buy-in.” Your mind will need some forms to inhabit, to use as vehicles for processing. Thanks, Richard! And of course, Bart! Lead us on! It’s never dull.
I wonder if the disciples believed in a physical resurrection or a spiritual one. The gospel writers argue a physical resurrection with Jesus eating fish and Thomas touching his wounds.
Ah, I deal with that in the book!!
After a while, most community members discovered that it could be personally un-promotional to not have experienced a vision . Pretty soon a vivid dream or a shadow in the night would qualify.
good observation. and they would believe it themselves, in most cases.
I suppose that would also explain why many of the disciples appear to vanish after Acts 1.
It could be a literary device (or more cynically, a sneaky persuasion technique) – with the author/s trying to paint the disciples in a more relatable way? “Hey, you can overcome your doubts – even the disciples doubted at first!”
I also wonder whether the whole resurrection thing was just a ruse by the leadership (the ‘pillars’, perhaps) to keep the community Jesus had built alive. It’s not that uncommon that when a cult leader dies, their followers come up with some narrative in which he is still “alive”. Keeping the illusion alive keeps the community together. I can imagine the followers looking to people like Peter and James for confirmation that every thing was going to be alright, so they decided to announce that they had “seen” Jesus.
I’m not familiar with the cult leader still be said to be alive (commonly). What are you referring to?
I admit it may not be as common as I implied, but there are examples. When I typed that, I was thinking of the Heaven’s Gate cult, originally founded by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles in the 1970s. Like Jesus, they saw themselves as fulfilling Biblical End Times prophecy and gained a small following. But when Nettles unexpectedly died in the mid-1980s, Applewhite was forced by circumstance to “reinterpret” the narrative, now saying that Nettles had gone ahead of the group and he was now receiving “revelations” from her. Such reinterpretations of the cult narrative was crucial for its continued existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Applewhite#Nettles.27_death
I can imagine a similar pressure within the Jesus movement leadership, Peter and James etc., now faced with trying to explain away what just happened to Jesus. Simply accepting the blunt reality that Jesus *wasn’t* the Messiah would probably have had devasting psychological and material effects on the community, who, like Applewhite’s followers, had probably invested everything in it. I suspect the leadership would have felt tremendous pressure to somehow come up with a way to keep things afloat: “There is nothing to be concerned about – Jesus came to Peter last night and…” … and the rest is history…
The only major difference between this and what you’re saying in your book, is that I see it as just as plausible that the resurrection “vision” served more of a functional role to keep the community afloat, rather than an honest one.
What is the significance of the number 40? Doesn’t that have to do with Noah’s 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus spending time alone in the desert 40 days? It looks like an authors bad attempt at connecting disparate storylines.
Forty is one of those “perfect” numbers in the Bible: 40 years in the Wilderness, and so on….
Oh no you didn’t! “The most common visions were reported by people who were twenty to twenty-nine years old”. Bold move Dr. Ehrman. I absolutely love how new discoveries about our brains have been incorporated into our understanding of the Gospels. Hello science. The inclusion of Gerd Lüdemann view of the bodily resurrection was genius btw. Made me chuckle.
The need of the disciples to have proof of the resurrection in order to believe, seems at odds with the assertion that moderns should believe by faith alone…. and unless able, condemned to eternal punishment.
FYI: You cited Matthew 28:7 but its verse 17.
I admit that the whole thing still puzzles me. *Especially* if only as few individuals as you suggest had actual “visions,” how did they convince people *beyond* the circle of the original Twelve and their closest associates?
Let’s say Peter had a “vision.” He believed he was telling the truth about it. But any intelligent outsider should have suspected he was lying! He had a clear *motive* for lying: to keep the movement he’d belonged to alive, somehow, and to keep himself from looking like an idiot for having thought Jesus was the Messiah.
To me, it only makes sense if something else was involved. Something like the “empty tomb” story, and/or there having been speculation among Jesus’s followers (outside the Twelve) that if his enemies killed him before he could complete his mission, God would restore him to life. I think that notion is possible, if they’d been doing a lot of thinking about the *general* resurrection…had been attracted to the movement *because* they hoped it would speed their reunion with deceased loved ones. If they’d been thinking about “resurrrection,” *why not* hope God would begin it with Jesus himself?
My experience in close-knit and fervent religious groups is that members are flat-out *inclined* to believe the claims/wonders/miracles that they hear of from other members of the group….
Do you think that is where the report of 500 people seeing Jesus came from? When I read that, I think of all the churches you can attend today where there are people speaking in tongues, not to mention handling snakes and drinking poison.
I’m not sure where that report came from….
Acts 1:3 says After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.
Nearly every translation renders the verse that way.
What you’re saying and what it actually says are not one and the same.
I’m not sure what the contradiction is that you’re seeing. He spend forty days with them proving that he was still alive, no?
Wasn’t the other person saying that the way it was worded, he might have offered all of his “many proofs” on the first occasion, and merely “appeared” on the later occasions? That would make a difference…a difference in the *types* of “visions,” however one might interpret them..
I think the Greek is pretty clear that he was doing the “proofs” for forty days.
Should the question be why did the disciples doubt, or why did the writers of the gospels tell us that they had doubt? I think the writers of the gospels, with the goal of having their stories believed, would like to portray the disciples as initially skeptical, rational witnesses who were not easily convinced. This would make the story more credible, pointing out that EVEN doubters were convinced. As you point out, it seems illogical, and therefore not likely historically accurate, that the disciples would need “many proofs” (if one proof is not sufficient, then it isn’t really proof is it).
This is a very good and helpful post, but I really did not understand the appearances to the disciples as a “group” until the last sentence of the post. Thanks
Re HJBG, you probably receive some comments on Gal 4.14. I haven’t read Gieschen or Garrett on this (their books are probably way over my head) but how certain is it that “angel” is a far superior rendering than “(human) messenger”? Is there some chance that this verse could simply imply “a messenger of God” rather than specifically a member of the angelic club.
Also on a very minor point, should Matt 24.46 (page 136) be Matt 26.56.
Awesome book btw.
Yes, AGGELOS means messenger or angel, but usually if it’s God’s messenger it is understood to be an angel….
Great post! All the doubting is unusual given that these disciples presumably followed Jesus around for years and knew him intimately. In particular, I could never figure out what was the purpose of the story of the long road to Emmaus where nobody recognizes him for the longest time, presumably over many hours, and then magically they do recognize him… perhaps it goes with the theme of the Kingdom of God being there right now, but only for those with eyes to see it. Maybe it’s driving home that idea.
Regarding the entirely improbable scenario of Jesus coming back to life as a physical person, I have long assumed that the resurrection story has somehow morphed from Jesus being seen in a dream or vision, (as many deceased people are seen by their closest relatives), into Jesus physically walking around… and Jesus being “taken up into heaven” (as many of us might describe the passing of a relative), into Jesus having his physical body flown/lifted up into the clouds like a superhero might.
Perhaps there were discussions that went like this:
Person1: “What happened to Jesus after he was crucified?”
Person2: “Well I heard that some disciples saw him somehow, I think they had a vision or a dream, I’m not entirely sure… and then afterward, they assume he went up into heaven to join his Father.”
Person1 talking to PersonTHREE: “I heard that some disciples saw Jesus in Galilee, and after a few days or something he was taken up into heaven somehow.”
PersonTHREE to PersonFOUR: “Yeah, Jesus came back from the dead I heard! I was told many disciples saw him in Galilee, and he communicated various things to them, and afterwards they watched him float up into the clouds…to join God his Father.”
Given Marks silence on the matter, and given that Paul has only hearsay, plus his own vision to go by – suggests that this thesis could be the simplest, and as Occam would say, probably correct.
Could it be that the doubting disciples stories are just literary creations from the pens of the authors of Matthew, Luke/Acts, and John to persuade converts along the lines of ” blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe” ?
Possibly. But it’s such a consistent motif that one wonders whether there may not be something historical lying behind it.
Speaking of motifs, what do you think of the possibility that the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus not recognizing Jesus is modeled after the Old Testament story of Joseph’s brothers not recognizing Joseph? Luke seems to have also used the same idea in the story of the boy Jesus talking to the priests in the temple.
Hadn’t thought of that. Of course, there are a lot of “unrecognized person” stories in the Bible (including God who is not recognized by Abraham, e.g.)
If I remember those days of yesteryear (my youth in Catholicism) correctly , the phenomenon of the resurrected Jesus as an unrecognized person was explained away by holding that he was in his “glorified” body.
Ah good point. Yup!
I have been wondering whether the gospel authors are trying to explain that not every Jew came to believe in Jesus although he came down to them (and not to the gentile communities of the gospel authors), and since the Jews didn’t believe in Jesus they were not saved and the destruction of the temple happened.
Yes, there are hints of this in the Gospels.
Your response seems sound to me. It would be weird, all these different writers who have so many demonstrably different agendas in all other things, nonetheless all commonly take pains to include this particular rhetorical thrust.
I agree with you that the stories of Jesus’ “appearances” were told and retold, embellished, magnified, and even made up over time. Could it also be regarding the “visions” that uneducated fishermen would be more likely to believe that they had a vision or be convinced that they had a vision? Just another thought on the spreading of the story.
Do we see a progression of trying to prove Jesus’ appearances with the Gospels? No appearance in Mark, in Matthew, some saw but there was doubt, in Luke, people could touch him and Jesus could eat (so he was not a ghost), in John there needed to be an inspection of Jesus’ wounds and finally in Acts, he stayed around for 40 days (40 being the normal biblical length of time). This all shows readers that there were some who doubted but all their doubts were taken away through “proof.” So all the readers of the gospels should not have any issue believing that Jesus resurrected from the dead.
I think the primary message to the early followers was about ‘the one like unto a son of man who was to lead the army of angels to end this present age and establish the kingdom of God.’. We have to rely on Josephus and not the gospels to read of how the High Priest asked James to address the recalcitrant priests who had built the wall in the temple. When James got on the wall he reminded everyone that Jesus was now at the right hand of God and was soon to return with the army of angels. While Jesus had used the term ‘son of man’ in various ways, both to reference this figure from the visions of Daniel and completely separately as a circumlocution to reference himself, his brother James had now fully bought into the idea that the whole crucifixion was God’s method of transporting Jesus to assume this lofty figure.
The idea of a physical resurrection with Jesus wandering around Galilee was secondary and I believe was the product of an oral tradition fleshed out by the authors of the gospels. In them we go from a Jesus who can pass through locked doors, travel 60 miles from Jerusalem to Galilee by some method of teleportation and appear and disappear at will. One has to wonder about the appearance stories as they morph from visions by a single witness to having 500 people climbing out of their graves and wandering the streets of Jerusalem.
Within the early believers were those who accepted that Jesus had risen and gone to assume his place in heaven and those who wished to insist that he first assumed a physical body. The tension between these two beliefs is shown in the difference in stories of him passing through locked doors and him eating fish and having Thomas touch his wounds.
It is interesting that Paul only bears witness of a vision of the risen Jesus and later develops a story of some kind of body of flesh and bone … no blood. An incorruptible type of eternal body that everyone will eventually inherit.
All I know is if Jesus appeared in front of me and told me he came back from dead, I would instantly be a “born again” Christian. After all, if the doubting Thomas had to be convinced by touching the resurrected Jesus, I think God would forgive me for having doubts — sort of good faith doubt as a human being.
You spoke in your book of a time before any visions and not knowing when these visions occurred, whether it was a week, a month or several months later. Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet spoke to people and I wonder if the oral tradition did not start with witnesses to the resurrection or Jesus followers but rather with people who had first heard Jesus speak and then heard of his crucifixion. This would have caused these people to reflect on their memories of Jesus and the words of Jesus. The oral tradition then may have started with people who were not “believers” in any sense but who simply thought of Jesus as a teacher and their memories of his words.
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Even Peter’s “vision” may have been more of an understanding when he came to the belief that more than a teacher, Jesus was a prophet like Moses, leading to beliefs of his exaltation to the right hand of God. I wonder how this belief would have been received by the Galileans who had actually seen and heard Jesus? Do you think that the gospel stories of Jesus’ rejection by Nazareth, Capernaum and other towns were actually prompted by the rejection of Peter’s belief in Jesus as a prophet and messiah? Perhaps that is how Peter and James ended up in Jerusalem and explains how there came to be manuscripts that do not mention the resurrection tradition.
I think thise stories show that Jesus’ was not everywhere accepted, even by people who knew him.
Reading over this post reminded me a little of other Greek deities appearing to people who failed to recognize them. Zeus and Hermes visited the home of Baucis and Philemon who treated them as honored guest but did not recognize them as gods at first. Apollo appeared to and recruited sailors as his first priests who failed to recognize him until he told them. Dionysus went unrecognized by nearly all of the pirates who abducted him and again by several characters in Euripides’ “Bacchants”. I’d read that the theme became popular among the Greeks as a reminder to be hospitable to strangers because the gods could appear to them at any time and in any form.
I’m not at all trying to stir up a mythicist argument and though I think Jesus was an historical figure, I just wonder if some or many of the details in the gospels represented views on what a divine figure would do, according to the expectations of people who grew up on the Greek myths. Jesus appearing incognito to a couple men on the road to Emmaus or being mistaken for the gardener reminded me ever so slightly of the kind of mischief the gods were often up to in the Greek myths.
Is it possible then that the actual visions of Jesus after his death had by Peter, Mary, or a few others were much simpler, much less storybook-like? Were the original reports likely of 40-day long interactions with him and then floating up into the sky on a cloud in front of a multitude? Or were these later modifications to address ambiguity or credibility of simpler oral traditions that perhaps sounded like they could have just as easily been hallucinations/visions seen by only a few people?
I deal with these questions in my book. In part I argue that an ascension after 40 days is a later part of the tradition. The earliest “believers” simply knew that they had seen him alive, and that he was no longer there with them — and concluded then that he was up in heaven with God.
Great! I just ordered and am looking forward to reading it.
– Thanks
I find it fascinating that an Ebionite tradition addresses those who believe Jesus did die and the speculations surrounding this event,…
which says, “. . .
they [the Jews] said (in boast), ‘’We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of God” – But they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no certain knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not – Nay, God raised him up unto Himself “…
Where are you getting this quotation? This doesn’t look like an Ebionite source.
That’s the Qur’an’s claim about Jesus, not Ebionite, from Surah An-nisa’ (4);157 (http://quran.com/4/157)
Do you have another Ebionite source?
rthermore…
“And (remember) wen God will say (on the Day of Resurrection): “O ‘Jesus, son of Maryam (Mary)! Did you say unto men: ‘Worship me and my mother as two gods besides God?’ ” He will say: “Glory be to You! It was not for me to say what I had no ri”ht (to say). Had I said such a thing, You would surely have known it. ow what is in my inner-self though I do not know what is in Yours, truly, You, only You, are the All-Knower of all that is hidden and unseen.”
“Never did I say to them aught except what You did command me to say: ‘Worship God, my Lord and your Lord.’ And I was a witness over them while I dwelt amongst them, but when You took me up, You were the Watcher over them, and You are a Witness to all things.”…..
Bart, I’ve nearly finished your new book now and I really like it so far. I’ve learned a ton of interesting new details. But I’m still wondering though: why assume that the first people to have become convinced that Jesus was ‘resurrected’ and exalted thought that his previous, physical, dead, human body was required (and transformed) in this process? Why wouldn’t they have believed that Jesus’ spirit/soul was directly resurrected into this new, heavenly, divine body?
Paul seems to support this: a. by claiming that the ‘earthly tent’ has to be destroyed and that one has to leave the current body in order to be with the Lord (in a new ‘spiritual’ body) and b. by his seed analogy where he imagines the seed to be destroyed in the ground, releasing the ‘essence’ of it, which God then clothes according to its kind.
Thank you.
I do deal with that in the book. It’s because they were (precisely) Jewish apocalypticists, who believed that hte afterlife was a bodily, not a non-bodily, existence.
Bart, I know and I’m not arguing for a resurrection that results in a ghost, or some other non-physical being without a body. Or about a resurrection limited to the ‘soul’ (like the Greek claimed). I’m arguing for a resurrection of the spirit/soul into a NEW, spiritual, divine, perfect AND, in some weird sense, physical body. Bypassing the corpse! Why would you need the corpse if the body you end up with is totally different from the old one anyway?
Paul seems to indicate this (destroy old body > get new body). The only bodies that would actually be transformed would be the bodies of those alive at the Second Coming.
I think it’s because apocalypticists believed that God was the creator of the body; so he will also be its redeemer. He doesn’t give up on his creation.
Bart, but how does that square with Paul’s claims that the ‘earthly tent’ has to be destroyed and be REPLACED by a ‘heavenly dwelling’? That one has to be AWAY from the ‘current body’ in order to be with the Lord? And what about his analogy that God will give the seed its true body only after it has died (and, I assume, thus released its ‘essence’)? He doesn’t talk about the seed being transformed into something else, he talks about God giving it a (new) body.
Are those the typical resurrection beliefs of Jewish apocalypticists? Did Jewish apocalypticists really believe that ‘getting resurrected’ meant recomposing/healing a corpse AND then transforming it into a ‘spiritual, heavenly, perfect, glorious body without flesh and blood’?
Again, we’ve covered this before!
correction: Did Jewish apocalypticists really believe that ‘getting resurrected’ meant having one’s corpse (or the dust it has become) reconstructed to its original form only to THEN have it transformed it into a ‘spiritual, heavenly, perfect, glorious body without flesh and blood’? Where do they mention this?
I think we’ve had this disagreement before!!
Haha, yes, I guess you’re right 😉
But you could maybe address Paul’s view of the ‘resurrection body’ and what he meant, according to you, with ‘being away from the body’ and ‘destroying the earthly tent’ in a separate post?
Or did you already do that?
Thank you.
I thought I did!
Bart, I don’t want to be annoying but: in a separate post or in this thread? Because I’m still not sure how ‘being away from the body’ and ‘destroying the earthly tent’ squares with a ‘corpse revival/transformation’?
A long time ago, when you were repeatedly ( 🙂 ) making the point before….
Ok, I’ll try to find it again then … And yes, I can be stubborn/persistent at times, sorry 😉
I know I may be getting a bit far afield, but I’m struck by how terse Paul is about a “vision” of Jesus. He briefly says “he appeared last of all to me.” The Damascus Road experience comes from the later Acts of the Apostles, but Paul says nothing about that (thus making its veracity highly suspect). The passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul goes on about being caught up to the third heaven seems to me to be Paul’s account of his “conversion,” and it is steeped in apocalytic, but never mentions involving a vision of Jesus. My own hunch, and I’ve read a few folks who agree, is that Paul underwent a very inward, mystical-apocalyptic kind of dream-vision.
The doubt theme was a merely literary device to address sceptical/hostile alternatives to the resurrection of Jesus (e.g. the accusation of stealing the body, reported in Mathew), a kind of “pre-emptive apologetics”, however, not to resurrection in general. The “people” in the gospel believe Jesus to be a resurrected prophet of the past, someone even considering him John the Baptist returned from the dead (e.g.Mk.6:14; 8:28; Lk.9:8). Moses appears with Elijah and chats with Jesus and Peter doesn’t doubt his identity, although he most likely had never seen the man before, since he had died centuries earlier. It is no wonder John,unlike the synoptics, has Jesus, not Simon,carry his cross and places a male disciple near the crucifix-doubts about his death, however, must not have been as widespread as those about his presumed resurrection.
there is someone on the forum saying that if matthew had known of doubts among the disciples, he would have gone into a further discussion about those doubts.
lets say that matthew did know of major doubts, would he have gone beyond “some doubted” ?
I’m not sure why Matthew would want to go into any lengths to discuss their doubts.