A new interview went up today that I commend to the notice of anybody who might have an interest in the Prophet Joseph Smith: “Rough Stone Rolling: Richard Bushman Reflects 20 Years Later: Joseph Smith still eludes me.”
It being Sunday, the day on which, according to the New Testament accounts, Jesus rose from the dead, I think it appropriate to share some notes that I’ve amassed on that subject:
“Essentially all critical scholars today agree that in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul records an ancient oral tradition(s) that summarizes the content of the Christian gospel. Jesus Christ died for human sin, was buried and raised from the dead, afterwards appearing to both individuals as well as groups of witnesses.”[1]
1 Corinthians 15:1-8—“I want to make quite clear to you, brothers, what the message of the gospel that I preached to you is; you accepted it and took your stand on it, and you are saved by it, if you keep to the message I preached to you; otherwise your coming to believe was in vain. The tradition I handed on to you in the first place, a tradition which I had myself received, was that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that on the third day, he was raised to life, in accordance with the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas; and later to the Twelve; and next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still with us, though some have fallen asleep; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all he appeared to me too.”
While it was Paul who wrote these words, he makes it very clear that this material was not something that he had invented but, rather, that, years before, he had passed on to his audience what he himself had been taught by others. “It is almost universally agreed today that Paul is here citing tradition.”[2] His Greek text even seems to reflect an underlying, earlier, Aramaic original.[3] “If he were writing today, he might have footnoted his source!”[4] What this means is that Paul’s testimony in 1 Corinthians is actually several years older than that scriptural book.[5]
Probably the majority of scholars believe that Paul first received this very early material during his visit to Jerusalem just three years after his conversion. During this time, he visited with Peter and James, the Lord’s brother, both of whom are said to have seen the risen Christ.[6]
Let’s examine the account in Galatians 1:18: “Only after three years did I go up to Jerusalem to meet Cephas. I stayed fifteen days with him.”
The Greek verb inadequately translated by the New Jerusalem Bible as “to meet” is historesai, or, in its dictionary citation form, historeo. It means not merely “to meet,” but “to inquire,” “to examine,” “to learn by inquiry.” It’s cognate with our English words history and story.
What was Paul doing when he spent fifteen days with Peter? It’s clear from the context that he was looking into the nature of the gospel message.[7] And the resurrection of Jesus was at the center of that message, without which the gospel is vain.[8]
Paul seems to have been meticulous about getting his information correct, and the center of the Gospel message was the resurrection of Christ. Fourteen years after his first visit with the Peter and James, Paul made a second trip to Jerusalem for the purpose of getting approval from them of what he was teaching. He met again with Peter and James, but, this time, he also met with the apostle John, as well.[9] And there may even have been a third visit.[10]
So Paul gained access to information that, as Ulrich Wilckens says, “indisputably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.”[11] Walter Kasper goes so far as to suggest that this “ancient text,” which we have today as 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, may have been “in use by the end of 30 A.D.”[12] Most serious New Testament scholars who write on the subject appear to agree that Paul received this material within a very few years of Jesus’ death, probably in the early to mid 30s.[13]
The atheist New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann agrees, remarking that “the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus . . . not later than three years. . . . The formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in 1 Cor. 15.3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 C.E.”[14] The philosopher Thomas Sheehan believes that the pre-Pauline formula that shows up in 1 Corinthians “probably goes back to at least 32-34 C.E., that is, to within two to four years of the crucifixion.”[15] Michael Goulder writes that this resurrection account “goes back at least to what Paul was taught when he was converted, a couple of years after the crucifixion.”[16]
And, as Martin Hengel points out, “evidently the tradition of I Cor. 15.3 had been subjected to many tests” by Paul.[17] He had met with Peter, John, and James, the Lord’s brother, who were principal eyewitnesses of the resurrection.[18] Morover, he apparently received their explicit approval for what he was teaching.[19]
Paul himself, following his list in 1 Corinthians 15 of the appearances of Christ to the apostles and others, declares that they were teaching the same thing that he was.[20]
Howard Clark Kee, an eminent New Testament scholar, remarks that Paul’s research “can be critically examined and compared with other testimony from eyewitnesses of Jesus , just as one would evaluate evidence in a modern court or academic setting.”[21]
There are other passages, particularly in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, that contemporary critical scholars have identified as very early creedal texts, snippets of the earliest Christian preaching. Among these are
Acts 1:21-22—following the death of Judas Iscariot, describes the selection by the surviving eleven apostles of Matthias “to serve with us as a witness of [Jesus’] resurrection.”
Acts 2:22-36—Peter stands with the other eleven apostle at Pentecost and addresses the crowd: “This man . . . you took and had crucified and killed by men outside the Law. But God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades. . . . God raised this man Jesus to life, and of that we are all witnesses.”
Acts 3:13-16—Peter, after he and John had healed a man in the temple, addressed the crowd: “You killed the prince of life. God, however, raised him from the dead, and to that fact we are witnesses.”
Acts 4:8-10—Peter, addressing the elite of Jerusalem: “Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, and God raised from the dead.”
Acts 5:29-32—Peter and the apostles before the Sanhedrin: “It was the God of our ancestors who raised up Jesus, whom you executed by hanging on a tree. By his own right hand God has now raised him up to be leader and Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness of sins through him to Israel. We are witnesses to this, we and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
Acts 10:39-43—Peter to the Gentiles gathered at the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion: “Now we are witnesses to everything he did throughout the countryside of Judaea and in Jerusalem itself: and they killed him by hanging him on a tree, yet on the third day God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses that God had chosen beforehand. Now we are those witnesses—we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead—and he has ordered us to proclaim this to his people.”
Acts 13:28-31—Paul preaches to the Jews in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia: “They took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people.”[22]
A majority of critical New Testament scholars, believers and unbelievers alike, maintain that at least some of these passages reflect very early sources because of their brevity, because of their lack of theological complexity, and because their structure, style, or diction seems to reflect language patterns distinct from Luke’s own.[23] And, obviously, the resurrection of Jesus is at the center of every one of them.
John Drane identifies these sermons in Acts as our “earliest evidence” for the resurrection of Jesus, and says that this material “almost certainly goes back to the time immediately after the resurrection event is alleged to have taken place. . . . [T]here can be no doubt that in the first few chapters of Acts its author has preserved material from very early sources.”[24] More specifically, Gerald O’Collins writes that Acts “incorporates resurrection formulae which stem from the thirties.”[25]
There is also the indirect evidence of James, the brother of Jesus. Critical scholars by and large accept the idea that this James, to be distinguished from the son of Zebedee who bore the same name, was an unbeliever and even a skeptic during the period of Jesus’s public ministry. The gospel of John reports that “Not even his brothers had faith in him,” and the story given in Mark of his brothers unsuccessfully seeking to speak with him seems consistent with that.[26]
Yet, only a few years later, James is the leader of the centrally important and influential Jerusalem branch of the Church, which is where Paul finds him when he makes his two visits to Jerusalem.[27]
What had happened during the interim? The early pre-Pauline creed in 1 Corinthians 15:7 says that James met the risen Jesus.
One scholar remarks that, even if the pre-Pauline creed of 1 Corinthians 1 had never been written down, “we should have to invent” an appearance of Jesus to James in order to account not only for his conversion but for his call to preside over the church in Jerusalem, the largest and most influential of the early Christian congregations. The majority of New Testament scholars, including even the skeptics, agree that James was converted by Jesus’ appearance to him.[28]
[1] Habermas, “The Case for Christ’s Resurrection,” 182.
[2] Reginald Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 10.
[3] ?
[4] Habermas, “The Case for Christ’s Resurrection,” 182.
[5] On this passage, see Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 10-11; Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), 97-99; John Kloppenborg, “An Analysis of the Pre-Pauline Formula in 1 Corinthians 15:3b-5 in Light of Some Recent Literature,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 40 (1978), 351, 360; John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 2, Mentor, Message and Miracle (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 139; Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, 277.
[6] Galatians 1:18-19; 1 Corinthians 15:5, 7.
[7] See Galatians 1:11-2:10.
[8] 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 14, 17; Galatians 1:11, 16.
[9] Galatians 2:1-10.
[10] Some see reference to a third visit in Acts 15:1-35, though others believe that it refers to the visit mentioned in Galatians 2:1-10.
[11] Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection: An Historical Examination and Explanation(Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1977), 2.
[12] Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1976), 125.
[13] See, for example, Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 10, 14, 48; Raymond Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1973), 81; J. A. Fitzmyer, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the New Testament,” The Month, SNS, 20 (1987), 409; J. D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus(Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1985), 70; C. E. B. Cranfield, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Expository Times 101 (1990), 169; Peter Stuhlmacher, Jesus of Nazareth—Christ of Faith, trans. Siegfried S. Shatzmann (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 8; Leander E. Keck, Who is Jesus? History in Perfect Tense (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2000), 139; Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 2, Mentor, Message and Miracle, 139.
[14] Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 38 (emphasis in the original). For comparable statements from other skeptics beyond those quoted here, see Robert Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 24; Jack Kent, The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth (London: Open Gate, 1999), 16-17; A. J. M. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 274 note 265; G. A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (London: Pemberton, 1986), 30.
[15] Thomas Sheehan, The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (New York: Random House, 1986), 118 (compare 110-111).
[16] Michael Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision,” in Gavin D’Costa, ed., Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 48.
[17] Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 38.
[18] See, for example, 1 Corinthians 15:5-7 . . .
[19] See, for instance, Galatians 2:9, Acts 15:23-35.
[20] 1 Corinthians 15:11-15.
[21] Howard Clark Kee, What Can We Know about Jesus? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1-2.
[22] Compare the teaching attributed to Paul at the Jewish synagogue in Thessalonica, at Acts 17:1-3, 30-31.
[23] [to dcp:] Expand notes from Habermas, “The Case for Christ’s Resurrection,” 186 note 16.
[24] John Drane, Introducing the New Testament (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 99.
[25] Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983), 109-110.
[26] John 7:5; compare Mark 3:21-35. The ultra-skeptical Jesus Seminar argues that agreement on a teaching in two independent sources indicates that the teaching may be older than the two sources. See Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 26. Mark is one of the three interrelated synoptic gospels. John is the non-synoptic gospel, independent of and rather different from the other three. Yet they both seem to agree that Jesus’ brothers were not among the disciples during his lifetime. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 2, Mentor, Message and Miracle, 68-71, notes in support of the idea that James was an unbeliever the fact that this would be consistent with Jesus’ frequent demand that disciples be willing to leave their families behind in order to follow him, even if it caused offense, and that it would be very unlikely for the early church to say something so very negative about a prominent church leader—Jesus’ own brother, no less!, which could even be taken as reflecting negatively upon Jesus’ credibility—unless it were actually true.
[27] Galatians 1:18-19; 2:1-10. Compare Acts 15:13-21.
[28] [to dcp:] Expand notes from Habermas, “The Case for Christ’s Resurrection,” 187 note 22.
Sunday is as good a day as any — can there really be a good day? — to courageously confront the evils contained in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.
Not content with ruining the lives of its benighted dupes in Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is exploiting vulnerable Africans, as well: “Latter-day Saints Across West Africa Unite in Christlike Service: Annual All Africa service project draws thousands”
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