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For some, the title may seem appealing, while to others it may be disturbing, but when it comes to historical study, the simple fact is that there is no way for a historian not<\/em> to doubt the resurrection \u2013 or to put it more precisely, a historian cannot but raise questions about the historical factuality of the early narratives that tell the resurrection story.\u00a0To paraphrase\u00a0Bart Ehrman (the actual quote is here<\/a>), there are any number of improbable historical scenarios for which there is no evidence whatsoever, but which are nevertheless inherently more<\/em> likely than that an individual who had been dead entered into the resurrection life of the age to come. In addition to legitimate skepticism about unparalleled claims, a historian is trained to ask about cultural-historical dynamics and other forms of explanation on a human level. Those who find such a naturalistic\u00a0approach threatening to their faith will want to avoid all historical study and not just Kris\u2019 book. Those who are interested in exploring plausible historical explanations, on the other hand, will benefit from reading this book.<\/p>\nAt this juncture, I should mention a biographical detail about the author: he is by profession an airline pilot and not a historian or Biblical scholar. As a professor, for the most part I teach undergraduates very few of whom go on to become scholars of religion or history. The aim of perhaps the majority of educators in my field is not to persuade most human beings to pursue higher degrees in our fields so that all attain the same level of expertise and qualifications, but to equip people with tools for critical investigation\u00a0which they can use in a variety of settings, regardless of their professions. Kris may not be a professional historian, but he approaches historical questions using the appropriate tools, and he has familiarized himself with the work of experts in the field and seeks to build on their contributions. Those of us who\u00a0are frustrated by\u00a0misconstruals and inaccuracies in media treatments or popular opinions regarding our fields will find Kris\u2019 book an encouragement. If nothing else, it proves that\u00a0if someone takes the time to investigate a topic, including learning how the relevant disciplinary tools are applied and familiarizing themselves with what experts have already written on a subject, they can draw balanced and even insightful conclusions.<\/p>\n
The book deals with many topics that I am particularly interested in, such as the dishonorable character of Jesus\u2019 burial, which is the focus of chapter 2. Komarnitsky provides a cogent case for the possibility that Jesus may have been buried in a trench grave rather than a rock-cut tomb,\u00a0mentioning in this context\u00a0a reference in the Secret Book of James<\/a> to Jesus having been buried \u201cin the sand.\u201d Chapter 3 investigates the background to the early Christian interpretation of Jesus\u2019 death as salvific, including a helpful\u00a0treatment of cognitive dissonance reduction. Also provided are Greco-Roman parallels to the disappearance of the bodies of those believed to have been translated to the realm of the gods.<\/p>\n Chapter 4 focuses on the appearance traditions, and relates them to the not uncommon experience of people seeing a deceased loved one some time after their death. What struck me most about this chapter were testimonies of individuals who had such experiences and, after seeing the deceased individual, were overcome with a sense of inner peace which sounds very much like the testimony those of us who have had a \u201cborn again\u201d experience might give.<\/p>\n Chapter 5\u00a0tackles the early resurrection tradition in 1 Corinthians 15 and its mention resurrection on the third day \u201cin accordance with the Scripture.\u201d The possibility that Jesus was not buried in a rock-cut tomb faces the hurdle that the narrative accounts in the Gospels connect the belief that Jesus was \u201craised on the third day\u201d to the discovery of the empty tomb. In addition, the question of which Scripture(s) were in Paul\u2019s mind is difficult if not impossible to answer. Kris combines both these questions and offers an intriguing suggestion: Psalm 16:10. Might it have been this text, combined with the belief that after three days a body underwent corruption, that led to the belief that Jesus had been \u201craised on the third day\u201d? On this point I found the argument\u00a0less persuasive, since Luke-Acts (where we find Ps.16:10 applied to Jesus) emphasizes the flesh-and-bones, corporeal character of Jesus\u2019 resurrection body in a way that Paul and other of our earliest sources do not.\u00a0Moreover, decomposition presumably was well underway by the third day in most cases \u2013 it was the face becoming unrecognizable by the third day that led to the Jewish belief that the soul of an individual remained in the vicinity until that time. Nevertheless, it is not clear that early Christians would have reasoned as I do about this subject, and thus the possibility that \u201craised on the third day according to the Scriptures\u201d indicated a belief inspired by Ps.16:10 deserves further consideration. For Kris, the early Christians who formulated the \u201ccreed\u201d in 1 Cor. 15:3-4 already believed that Jesus\u00a0had been\u00a0bodily raised to heaven, in a manner that involved the disappearance of the\u00a0corpse from whatever grave it had been buried in.<\/p>\n The final chapter offers some practical, functional reasons for the success of Christianity. It is to Kris\u2019 credit that he has no interest in denying the existence of positive aspects of Christianity. Indeed, if one is to provide a plausible\u00a0explanation of its success in naturalistic terms, presumably one cannot at the same time deny that there is anything about it that might be appealing! From a Liberal Christian perspective, it is not only non-threatening but perhaps even encouraging to consider that Christianity may have thrived and flourished precisely because it broke down social barriers and united people. Kris summarizes his own view as follows: \u201cthe founding event of Christianity is human equality, not resurrection\u201d \u2013 by which he doesn\u2019t mean that human equality is an idea that originated with Christianity, but simply that Christianity\u2019s emphasis on this point was central to its power and spread.<\/p>\n There is often a tendency to skip over appendices, but the one appendix in Doubting Jesus\u2019 Resurrection<\/em> is extremely interesting and ought not to be overlooked. Interacting\u00a0with such great scholars as Strauss, Sherwin-White and Scholem, Kris provides a compelling argument that legends can grow and develop at various rates, and thus one cannot extrapolate from allegedly typical growth rates for myths to the historicity or otherwise of the Gospels. And, quoting Strauss, Kris points out that Jesus was understood by early Christians in messianic terms, and messianic concepts had been growing and developing within Judaism for centuries prior to their being applied to Jesus, which makes for a potentially different scenario than when a heroic leader becomes the subject of legends starting, as it were, from scratch (p.151).<\/p>\n On the whole I found Doubting Jesus\u2019 Resurrection <\/em>to provide many insights and much food for thought. Although Kris is not a scholar by profession, his treatment of both primary and secondary sources is certainly such that even someone who is<\/em> a historian or New Testament scholar by profession will\u00a0benefit from thinking about and interacting with his discussions.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the subtitle of the book is both on target and potentially misleading. It asks the question \u201cWhat happened in the black box?\u201d The reference is not to the \u201cblack box\u201d they look for when a plane crashes (however apt that might seem as a metaphor, given Kris\u2019 profession), but to a mysterious unobservable area with data going in and results coming out, but little or no opportunity to observe the intervening processes. The precise events and phenomena that bridge the historical data of Jesus\u2019 life and death on the one hand and the rise of resurrection belief on the other are obscured from view by time and by sources that are piecemeal and at times divergent. And so the book does not purport to tell us \u201cwhat happened in the black box\u201d<\/em> \u2013 indeed, the book\u2019s conclusions are impressive for not claiming to have reconstructed \u201cwhat really happened\u201d but \u201cone<\/em> plausible way to read the evidence\u201d\u00a0(p.130). But that seems to be the best a historian can do, and\u00a0among the plausible interpretations of the evidence, Kris\u2019 deserves thoughtful consideration.<\/p>\n Also available in the UK<\/a> and as an ebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n I am grateful to Kris Komarnitsky for sending me a copy of his book Doubting Jesus\u2019 Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?\u00a0 For some, the title may seem appealing, while to others it may be disturbing, but when it comes to historical study, the simple fact is that there is no way for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-6123666309607327903?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")