Michael Barber on the Resurrection Narratives

The more I think about it, the more striking it is to me that the apostles claimed a resurrection at all. It would have instantly eliminated a lot of headaches had they just said Jesus lived on “spiritually”. But they were constrained by reality. As Barber points out:

Why make up a resurrection?

In his book, What Really Happened, Lüdemann asserts another explanation for the resurrection story: Peter, in his guilt and in mourning conjured up an apparition of Jesus to help him in his mourning process (What Really Happened, 93–94).

But even if Peter did this, why would the Church go on to proclaim a bodily resurrection of Jesus? Some might say the resurrection story was invented to prove that indeed Jesus was the Messiah. After all, the Messiah’s resurrection was predicted in the Scriptures, right?

Well, not explicitly. In fact, as Dale Allison observes, the resurrection was an event that was supposed to take place at the end of time (which, Christian eschatology still affirms). One looks in vain for a prophecy that suggests that the Messiah would rise by himself before that. So if Peter did have some sort of psychological event, it still doesn’t explain why the early Christians believed the Messiah had to rise from the dead. No specific text in the Scriptures actually says, “The Messiah will rise after three days.”

So where did they get this idea? Why assert it?

Peter could have come to the belief that Jesus had been vindicated and that his spirit somehow ascended to God even while his body remained in the grave. This would have fit perfectly well into Jewish views. Take for example Jubilees 23:31, which describes the righteous as follows:

“And their bones will rest in the earth, and their spirits will increase joy, and they will know that the LORD is an executor of judgment; but he will show mercy to hundreds and thousands, to all who love him.”

But no, the early Christians took one further step: he had been risen from the grave. Why invent such a belief—particularly one that seemed so unlikely!

In addition, I’m struck by a minor detail. Luke mentions Joanna as being at the empty tomb on Easter morning. He also mentions her earlier in his gospel as “Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward“.

This is notable for three reasons. First, because Luke is also the only evangelist to mention Jesus’ trial before Herod. Secondly, because Luke is also the only evangelist to mention Joanna at all. Which leads to the third interesting point: namely, that a common convention in ancient writers is that when a figure is named in an account like this (there being no such thing as footnoting), it is the signal that the person named is the source of the information.

If my guess is right, this would mean that Luke is, in part, relying on a tradition that comes to him from Joanna for both the Herodian trial narrative and the resurrection narrative. She is the perfect source for information about both, being close to witnesses or, in the case of the tomb, herself a witness.

He is also, of course, relying on Cleopas (or “Clopas”) who is the husband of “Mary, the wife of Clopas” (who was also present at the tomb). This Mary was with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb that morning, then told the disciples (including her husband who, later in the day, had his own encounter on the Emmaus road). Their son, by the way, was the James who goes on to become the first bishop of Jerusalem and is the author of the epistle of James. When he was martyred some thirty years later, Eusebius tells us the community elected none other than “Simon, son of Clopas” as his successor. Why that guy? Because he was James’ kid brother and the Jerusalem Church was treating the episcopacy as a sort of dynastic succession (quite natural for that time and place).

In short, all this resurrection stuff took place, not “once upon a time” or in cloud cuckoo land, but in history, with real historical witnesses whom the evangelists knew and interviewed.

He is Risen. He is risen indeed, not in myth.