Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins

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DOI: 10.1177/1476869005058195 2005; 3; 187 Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Michael Goulder Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins: A Response to N.T. Wright

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JESUS’ RESURRECTION AND CHRISTIAN ORIGINS:

A RESPONSE TO N.T. WRIGHT

Michael Goulder

University of Birmingham

Birmingham, UK

ABSTRACT

While acknowledging Wright’s competent handling of a wide range of primary

sources, this response takes issue with his conclusions by arguing that the bodily

resurrection did not happen and that the Gospel accounts are legendary and at

times contradictory. It is also argued that there are two distinct traditions of under-

standing the resurrection in earliest Christianity, i.e. a more ‘spiritual’ transforma-

tion associated with the Jerusalem church and the bodily resurrection associated

with the Pauline churches and represented in narrative form in Mk 16.1-8. This

response is divided into the following main areas: ideas of post-mortal life in

Judaism; 1 Corinthians 15; the Gospel narratives; and conversion-visions.

Key words: resurrection, empty tomb, historical Jesus, Pauline Christianity, Jeru-

salem church, N.T. Wright

This response to N.T. Wright’s recent work on the resurrection takes issue with

his conclusions by arguing that the bodily resurrection did not happen, and that

the Gospel accounts are legendary and at times contradictory.1 I will argue that

there are two distinct traditions of understanding the resurrection in earliest

1. David Bryan told me in the spring (2004) that Wright would be giving a paper on

Jesus’ resurrection to the British New Testament Conference ‘Jesus Seminar’ (Edinburgh,

September 2004) and invited me to be a respondent to it. I agreed but on the condition that

there was a paper to respond to—I have defective eyesight, and it would be impracticable for

me to read an 800-page book on the subject. Wright has in fact been unable to produce such a

paper; but fortunately he had written a preview of his book as the McCarthy Lecture for 2002,

delivered to the Faculty of Theology at the Gregorian University. This lecture is available on

the Internet on the N.T. Wright page, www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm.

Mark Goodacre was kind enough to find and print this lecture for me; and this paper is a

response to it. Unfortunately I had a stroke in May 2004, which prevented me from attending

the conference; but this response was written and circulated so that Wright was able to make

his answer to it at the seminar. I have not read all of Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of

God, and it may be that there are important differences between the book and the lecture, but I

have to do my best with what I have. References to Wright’s book are added from time to time

below in parentheses.

Journal for the Study of the

Historical Jesus

Vol. 3.2 pp. 187-195

DOI: 10.1177/1476869005058195

© 2005 SAGE Publications

London, Thousand Oaks, CA

and New Delhi

http://JSHJ.sagepub.com



188 Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Christianity, that is, a more ‘spiritual’ transformation associated with the Jeru-

salem church and the bodily resurrection associated with the Pauline churches

and represented in narrative form in Mk 16.1-8. I should like to comment on

four points: (1) ideas of post-mortal life in Judaism; (2) 1 Corinthians 15; (3) the

Gospel narratives; and (4) conversion-visions.

Ideas of Post-mortal Life in Judaism

Wright’s account of post-mortal life in Judaism is not unfair, although some-

times the emphasis needs changing. He writes, ‘Resurrection is thus a point on

the spectrum of Jewish beliefs about life after death.’ The Jewish term in rab-

binic Hebrew is techiyat ha-metim, translated by George Foot Moore as ‘the

revivification of the dead’.2 This refers in mainstream (Pharisaic) Judaism to the

resurrection of all (faithful) Jews in the future. There remains, however, the

problem of national heroes in the meantime. Wright properly cites Wisdom of

Solomon 3, as evidence of ‘souls of the righteous’ as persevering after death;

they only ‘seem to have died’, but they are at peace with God. Very likely, as

Wright says, this is a kind of temporary suspended life, with full bodily

resurrection to follow; but often heroes of the faith are thought of as having more

to do than be at peace. In 2 Macc. 15.12-16 Judas Maccabaeus sees in a kind of

dream the high-priest Onias and the prophet Jeremiah interceding with God for

Israel, and actively encouraging the leader and his troops. Interestingly, there is

a similar thought in Acts 7 where the dying martyr Stephen sees the heavens

opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Probably he is standing, not

sitting, because he is interceding with his Father, and encouraging his faithful

servant. Similarly, in Rom. 8.32 Jesus is thought of as interceding for the

Church, which cannot be separated from his loving concern. It is not therefore

so surprising if Christians in general came to think of their Messiah as having

risen again after death.

Nor is there much surprise to be taken at the Christian idea of transformation

after death. Philo describes Moses’ death in terms of God abolishing the dualism

of his body (sw~ma) and soul (yuxh/), and transforming him into mind (nou~j),

‘pure as the sunlight’ (Mos. 2.288). Furthermore, we may think that the same

idea of transformation may underlie the taunt of the Maccabaean martyrs that

they would receive back (komi/sasqai) their mutilated limbs (2 Macc. 7.11-12).

If you had had your tongue wrenched out and been boiled alive, you might well

prefer to have a new, transformed tongue and body to the old abused ones.

2. G.F. Moore, Judaism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), Index,

‘Resurrection’.



Goulder Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins 189

1 Corinthians 15

Directly after Wright has spoken of the spectrum of Jewish beliefs, cited above,

he continues, ‘If Christianity had been simply a sect of miscellaneous Jews who

had followed Jesus or approved his teaching, we might have expected a similar

spread of views, and the fact that we do not is a major part of our question about

Christian origins.’ This is puzzling because notoriously some people in the Cor-

inthian church said that ‘There is no resurrection of the dead’ (1 Cor. 15.12,

a)na/stasij nekrw~n ou)k e!stin, ‘there is no upstanding of corpses’). Wright

himself concedes this two pages later, but he adds surprisingly, ‘they were most

likely reverting to pagan views’. He gives no reason for this, and we might have

thought in view of the spectrum mentioned above that this was part of the

variety of Jewish beliefs—for there were Jews in the congregation (7.19). The

context also seems to indicate a Jewish background, for Paul cites two authori-

ties for the Christian preaching, ‘whether I or they’, that is, Paul and the Jeru-

salem leadership. This Jewish background of the deniers is confirmed by no less

than four features of the subsequent discussion.

The deniers based their belief on an exegesis of Psalm 8. The psalm said that

God subjects all things under the feet of man/son of man. They took it that this

referred to resurrection: Jesus now had all the powers under his feet, including

Death. Paul interprets the psalm to refer to the Parousia: it is only after his

Coming that the subjugation of the powers will take place, and Death will be the

last of these powers to be so subjected.

The discussion of the first and second man in 15.44-49 depends upon a sophis-

ticated Jewish tradition of the double creation of man in Gen. 1.27 and 2.7.

Paul continues, ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ (15.50).

This is the same controversy which we had in ch. 4, where some Corinthians

thought they were reigning already, but the kingdom of God did not consist in

talk but in power (4.8, 21). This is in the context of Corinthians ‘boasting of

men’ (3.21) and ‘being puffed up for the one against the other’ (u(pe\r tou~ e9no_jfusiou~sqe kata_ tou~ e9te/rou, i.e. for Peter against Paul).

Paul concludes the argument on a surprising note: ‘The sting of death is sin,

and the power of sin is the law’ (15.56). This again resumes an earlier discus-

sion. In chs. 1–2 Paul was contrasting his gospel, the word of the cross, with the

gospel of his rivals, ‘taught words of human wisdom’ (2.13). The ‘taught words’

were taught by the sofo/j, grammateu/j and suzhthth/j—that is, the Jewish

Mkx, rps and N#rd (1.19). The people who insisted on Jewish laws in Galatians

2 were Jewish leaders, Peter and James. With ch. 15 Paul returns to the central

theme of his gospel, now extended to the resurrection; but he has not forgotten

that his rivals’ proclamation centred on Jewish expositions of the law, in his

view a fundamental error, and a provocation to sin. Thus in four distinct matters,




ch. 15 betrays a Jewish background to the position of those who deny the bodily

resurrection of the dead.

The position taken by the deniers is not entirely clear; but we may think that

it is not dissimilar to that taken by ‘Solomon’. The souls of the baptized are in the

hands of God, and are at peace. They have not really died, and are not in Sheol/

Hades. Death has no dominion over them. Even if they have not been baptized

in their lifetime, it is not too late to do it by proxy now (15.29). This could then

be related to the message preached to the Thessalonians, one of whose members

later died, causing such alarm and dependency (1 Thess. 4.13).

The controversy in 1 Corinthians 15 is about the future of Christians, who

Paul maintains will be raised at the Parousia, while the deniers dispute this. But

this then invites the further question, what did the deniers think about Jesus

himself? If they said baldly, ‘There is no resurrection of the dead’, and asked

derisively ‘With what kind of body do [the dead] come [back to life]?’ (15.35),

it sounds as if these words applied to Jesus as much as to his followers. As Paul

himself argues from the precise parallel, it is difficult to think that they would

have missed it. In the opening of ch. 15 Paul describes the gospel which he

received as including the statement that Jesus has been raised (e0gh/gertai, 15.4);

and he goes on to say that this gospel was in common between him and the

Jerusalem leadership, ‘Whether I or they, so we proclaim and so you believed.’

We should therefore have to think that both groups proclaimed that Jesus had

been raised, but interpreted that slightly differently. Is this likely? We might

think not; but Mk 9.10 has Jesus tell the apostles to keep quiet about the Trans-

figuration until the Son of Man should rise from the dead; and the evangelist adds,

‘They kept the saying to themselves, questioning what the raising of the dead

was.’ Mark is often critical of the apostles and this is one case in which he shows

their lack of understanding, inamely, their difference from Pauline teaching.

In this way Wright’s alleged problem over the lack of a spectrum can be seen

to disappear. He said, ‘The fact that we do not have a spread of views is a major

part of our question about Christian origins’: but in fact it now appears that there

was such a spread, even among the original witnesses. Paul, brought up as a

Pharisee, took the Pharisaic position with a full bodily resurrection, Jesus as the

firstfruits (a)parxh/), the full harvest of Christians at the Parousia. It was part of

the original tradition that Jesus had been raised ‘on the third day according to the

scriptures’: which scripture is referred to has been a problem, and the best can-

didate from a weak field is probably Lev. 23.11-12. Here the firstfruits (a)parxh/)of the wheat harvest is to be offered on the day after the Sabbath following Pass-

over, that is, the third day after the crucifixion in the year of Jesus’ death. This

would then explain the reference to Jesus as the a)parxh\ in 15.20. In 15.44-49

Paul emphasizes that the first Adam was ‘of the earth, earthy’, while the second

man, Jesus, is ‘the Lord from heaven’, that is, at the Parousia. The Jerusalem

leaders, on the other hand, think there is no ‘upstanding of corpses’. To them




Jesus has been raised and is with God in heaven, like Onias and Jeremiah and

the Patriarchs; he has not been in Sheol with the dead, and baptized Christians

share his risen life in the same way that Paul himself expects ‘to be with Christ,

for it is far better’ (Phil. 1.24).

How the Jerusalem leaders reached this conclusion is unclear to us. It appears

to have something to do with the discussion about the creation of the first and

second man in Philo; for Paul is plainly polemical on this topic in 15.44-49.

Genesis 2.7 said ‘Man became a living soul’; but Paul cites this as, ‘The first

man Adam became a living soul’, and later he insists that the natural is first and

the spiritual is second. It may also have something to do with their having ‘seen’

Jesus: this did not suggest that he was there bodily, any more than Onias and

Jeremiah.

The Gospel Narratives

Wright is impressed by the dovetailing of the Gospel narratives with the Pauline

teaching of bodily resurrection, and infers that the second is due to the first. I am

impressed also, but draw the opposite inference. There are problems with each

of the four Gospels.

The earliest narrative is in Mk 16.1-8, but it is such a tissue of contradictions

as to defy credulity. The women are informed by the angel that Jesus has been

raised and are instructed to tell Peter so that he may go to Galilee and see Jesus

there; but they say nothing to anyone so that the story is left in the air. They know

that a huge stone has been rolled over the mouth of the tomb and do not know

who will be able to roll it away for them; but although they have come to Jeru-

salem with a party of able-bodied men, some of them probably their relatives,

they would rather roam the streets at half-past three in the morning on the chance

of finding a friendly gardener than actually request the help of someone to hand.

Joseph is said to be ‘an honourable councillor’ and expecting the kingdom of

God, but he has presumably just taken part in the unanimous vote to condemn

Jesus as blasphemer.

Wright attempts to escape the first difficulty with four weak evasions. First,

‘I do not think that Mark finished the Gospel at chapter 16 verse 8’: many other

people have suggested this but the consensus of Markan scholars rejects this. If

Wright means that the last verses were lost by wear and tear, we have Austin

Farrer’s ironic suggestion that the lector said to the church on Easter Day, ‘I am

afraid, brethren, that the end of the story has been eaten by mice.’3 If Wright

3. A.M. Farrer, A Study in St. Mark (London: Dacre Press, 1951), p. 173.




prefers the idea that as Mark was writing, there was a knock on the door, he will

have to suppose that Mark said to the police, ‘Please wait a minute while I finish

the sentence’, for 16.8 neatly closes the sentence. Alternatively, he suggests that

Mark did not mean that the women said nothing to anyone permanently; but was

intruding to explain why they had not made so important an announcement at

once. I agree with this, but in a more plausible context. Jewish Christians had for

a generation thought of Jesus as being raised in a ‘spiritual’ form, while Pauline

Christians thought that resurrection meant bodily resurrection. So in time a

Pauline Christian like Mark feels the need to supply a narrative with an empty

tomb; and this then is likely to raise the objection: ‘But why have we never

heard this story before?’ Mark supplies the obvious answer: ‘You know what

women are like. They were so scared that they never passed the message on.’

Wright does not attempt to counter the other contradictions in Mark’s narrative.

Matthew’s account stresses Jewish slanders about the disciples stealing the

body; Wright correctly says that this shows that the empty tomb story was

known, but once it was in Mark’s Gospel it was naturally known and this does

not show it to be historical. A more considerable problem arises from Mt. 27.52-

53, where there is an earthquake, the tombs are rent, and the bodies of the saints

appear to many. How is the historian to evaluate this? Wright comments that odd

things do happen in history; but surely the historian will treat anything as odd as

this with scepsis, especially in view of Matthew’s fondness for earthquakes (8.24;

28.2). If he is sceptical, why should he not be sceptical about Mark’s empty tomb

story? Wright provides convincing Old Testament texts as the basis for Matthew’s

additions, but he denies that Matthew has simply used them as the basis for his

inventing them (636). Wright’s suggestion that they are just ‘vivid metaphor’

(635) is fanciful. He objects that the Old Testament texts were understood escha-

tologically, and therefore Matthew would hardly have invented his narrative out

of them; but then Isaiah 60 was also understood eschatologically, and Matthew

has invented the gold, myrrh and frankincense in Matthew 2 on the basis of this

chapter.

Both Luke and John strongly add emphasis to the physicality of the post-

mortal Jesus. He is known in the breaking of bread at Emmaus. He eats with the

disciples at Jerusalem and shows them his wounds. In Acts he is mentioned as

having eaten and drunk with the apostles. John adds further stress to this physi-

cality. Jesus says to Mary, ‘Do not hold on to me; for I am not yet ascended’;

and the tale of Thomas’s doubts leaves the physical image powerfully in the

hearer’s mind. The motivation for this emphasis is made plain by Ignatius, a

committed Pauline. He cites Lk. 24.39 in the form ‘Handle me and see that I am

not a bodiless demon (daimo/nion a)sw&maton, Smyrn. 5.1)’. Wright protests

against such explanations that this is anti-docetic. But docetic, an ambiguous and

muddling word, is not relevant here. Jewish Christians thought that Jesus had

been raised spiritually; to Pauline Christians like Ignatius this was a mistake: if




Jesus did not appear to the apostles in bodily form, he was just a bodiless demon.

We are again reminded of Mark. Jesus came walking on water in full three-

dimensional form, and the disciples thought he was a ghost (Mk 6.46). The

Jerusalem apostles never understood it properly.

The tradition of Jesus’ burial goes back e0ta/fh (1 Cor. 15.4); it was important

as confirmation of Jesus’ death, according to Morna Hooker.4 But it is uncertain

how that burial was first understood. It is often thought that after being left on

their crosses the bodies of criminals were thrown into a common grave: cer-

tainly Josephus refers to many thousands of Jews being crucified and only one

set of bones of such a victim has been recovered from an ossuary. Also ‘the

Place of a Skull’ may well indicate that crucifixions were common where Jesus

died and that the skull of a criminal was in evidence thereabouts. The narrative

of the empty tomb which follows in Mark reads more like legend than history.

Legends have clearly been developing behind the Gospel of Peter and other apoc-

ryphal Gospels and Acts; and it would be just canonical prejudice to deny the

same process behind the New Testament Gospels. In time the Pauline churches

felt the need of some explanation of how Jesus had come to be buried and raised;

and Mark’s church has supplied such a narrative, albeit a very unconvincing one.

Later still Luke, another companion of Paul, has felt the desirability of extending

the physical emphasis. Jesus is now known in the breaking of bread and shows

his hands and side to the apostles, saying that a spirit does not have such flesh

and bones. And so to John, with Mary Magdalene and doubting Thomas to make

the same point still more memorably.

Conversion-Visions

Wright considers a number of alternative explanations for the Church’s convic-

tion that Jesus has been resurrected. Some of these seem like straw men but the

visions proposal is a genuine alternative. Wright criticizes it by drawing a com-

parison with the supposed vision of Peter in Acts 12, but this is not to the point.

Conversion-visions are the experiences of people in crisis as they reorient their

lives on a new basis: neither Paul, hearing the words, ‘Saul, Saul…’, nor Augus-

tine, hearing the words, ‘Tolle, lege…’, is experiencing a trivial misunderstand-

ing. Both men are hearing the voice of heaven at the turning-point of their lives.

There is a good number of instances of such experiences in the literature of the

4. M.D. Hooker, The Gospel according to St Mark (London: A. & C. Black, 1991), p. 380.




psychology of religion,5 and I have argued the case in an article, ‘The Baseless

Fabric of a Vision’,6 which should not be repeated here.

Conclusion

Wright has written a monumental book, and his mastery of the sources must

command respect; but I do not think that his arguments are strong enough to

carry his conclusions. The primary evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is the visions

of Peter, James and others, listed in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15. It

appears that the leading Jerusalem authorities, and their Corinthian converts after

them, interpreted Jesus’ ‘raising’ in a spiritual way; he was alive after his passion,

with God, in the same way that Onias and Jeremiah were understood in 2 Macca-

bees 15 as interceding with God and encouraging the faithful. They took it that

Jesus’ raising implied his subjection of the powers, including death, and that this

overthrow was valid for Christians also. In other words, they held a more

Hellenized form of Judaism, such as we find in Wisdom 3 and Philo’s account

of Moses’ survival of death. There is sufficient evidence here of Jewish notions

of transformation after death, and it is no surprise if the first Christians took the

same view. It may be that ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ was a centre for more Hellen-

ized forms of Judaism. Paul, however, was from a Pharisaic background, and to

him survival after death implied a bodily resurrection. Mainstream Judaism

expected this in the future, when God would bring ‘many’, that is, all faithful

Jews, back to physical life. Paul similarly expects this for faithful Christians at

the Parousia, and he takes the same view of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Day.

This involves a two-phase resurrection, with Jesus as the firstfruits and the full

harvest at the Parousia; and it may be that this was early understood from Lev.

23 as part of the prophecy ‘according to the scriptures’.

Wright’s further arguments on the Gospel narratives are weak. He speaks of

historians and of historical enquiry, but historians are sceptical of self-contradic-

tory narratives, and are careful not to dismiss inconvenient counter-evidence.

The belief in Jesus’ burial is early (1 Cor. 15.4), but it would be impossible for a

historian to infer that from the historicity of the Gospel accounts. Mark 16.1-8 is

so full of implausibilities that no historian could treat it seriously; and Wright’s

5. M.J. Meadow and R.D. Kahoe, Psychology of Religion (New York: Harper & Row,

1984), p. 90, document the case of Susan Atkins’s conversion to evangelical Christianity,

among others. W. Sargant, Battle for the Mind (Garden City, NY: Heinemann, 1957), p. 85,

describes the conversion of Arthur Koestler to Marxism, from his autobiographical, Arrow in

the Blue (London: Collins, 1952). See also E.D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion (New

York: Scribner’s, 1903); and F.J. Roberts, ‘Some Psychological Factors in Religious Conver-

sion’, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (1965), pp. 185-87.

6. In Gavin D’Costa (ed.), Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford: One World, 1996), pp.

48-61.




attempts to evade the problem of the women’s silence are profoundly uncon-

vincing. So although we may salute Wright’s attempt to provide a bulwark for

Christian orthodoxy as a high endeavour carried through with learning and zeal,

we have to conclude that his arguments do not carry the day.



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Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins