"The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective" Critical Book Review -- Part 1: Historicity of the Resurrection Narratives

Legendary Development 
Lapide summarizes the objection: "The inclination to 'secondary elaboration,' ... can even be demonstrated quantitatively: While Paul, who was closest to the events, needs only four sentences (1 Cor. 15:3-7) to express his faith in the resurrection, Mark, decades later, needs eight. After him, Matthew expands the report to 20 verses, followed by Luke who is able to report later more than twice this amount - 53 verses. The Fourth Gospel, edited two generations after Easter, long after the last eyewitnesses were deceased, devotes two full chapters of altogether 56 verses to the theme, in order to describe what its author could know only by hearsay." (page 39)

The first point I think should be made is the absurdity to place an early creed, of course short so someone can easily pass it on, alongside someone whose purpose for writing is to describe Jesus's life in a biography. Then, we can look at each individual Gospel, and see whether or not new reports necessarily prove invention and embellishment.

That requires three considerations: the different purposes authors had in writing their story of Jesus, and if every Gospel has different eyewitness accounts, which add to one another intentionally and unintentionally. I am not saying it is proven that, for example, the book of Matthew was written by the Disciple Matthew, but I do suspect it was and definitely do believe all four go back to eyewitness material. I'm saying if my beliefs are true, then these "problems" can easily be fitted into a Christian perspective.

Mark was written before all the other Gospels. In this post, I presented why Mark got his information from the leading Disciple Peter (so I believe it is proven there, not here). A major source of evidence was from J. Warner Wallace, former cold-case homicide detective who converted to Christianity from atheism because of facts he discovered. One point is that Peter described Jesus's life using a rough outline, as his scribe did as well. His account was, as Wallace called it, an early "crime broadcast" -- bothering only to get the very main points jumbled together(1). Therefore -- let there be no doubt about it! -- there is a narrative in Mark saying He had been risen from the dead, but it didn't go passed the empty tomb.

Onto Matthew. Lapide said that his record takes twenty verses to describe the resurrection. When I looked at the last couple chapters, my eyes found it significant that 15 verses were dedicated to Jesus's burial and the guards, where the real account of His return is also 15 verses. Lapide included the guards' report to the Pharisees, but that adds no extra information to Jesus's resurrection.

Actually, Matthew's report has more evidence for being historically accurate then false. This is because of where it looks unembellished. Embellishment is basically the inclusion of fantastic elements -- dramatic supernatural occurrences -- and other awe-inspiring inventions to doctor up a story. Lapide gives an example of a Jewish midrash over when the Jewish father Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac to God (a midrash is a record of interpreting scripture to bring out legal points or bring out lessons by telling a story).

Added to the story from Genesis 22 was: Satan spoke to God (like at the beginning of Job), God spoke to Abraham three times, Satan appeared twice to Abraham and his son to mislead them but was rebuked, angels watched Isaac on the sacrifice, etc. Lapide explains his comparison of this to the "legendary" Gospel reports: "The fact that neither heavenly voices nor miraculous deeds nor angels nor other celestial visions were missing did not detract from the believability of the expanded interpretation. On the contrary, the believing listeners were not as concerned about facticity as we are today and did not insist on historical precision as modern westerners do who are educated in a Greek fashion. So it assisted them to gain a better grasp of the 'metaphysical' meaning of the narrative, for which all concrete points are merely means of grasping intuitively the saving truth behind the things." (page 109)

Furthermore, he mentions another embellished story, much more related to early Christianity: "I cannot believe in ... the absurd miraculousness of the so-called Gospel of Peter. ... later generations ... tried to whip up enthusiasm by embellishing the truth." (page 128)

To appreciate his claim, take a look at this apocryphal gospel yourself:

"Early in the morning, as the Sabbath dawned, there came a large crowd from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas to see the sealed tomb. But during the night before the Lord's day dawned, as the soldiers were keeping guard two by two in every watch, there came a great sound in the sky, and they saw the heavens opened and two men descend shining with a great light, and they drew near to the tomb. The stone which had been set on the door rolled away by itself and moved to one side, and the tomb was opened and both of the young men went in.
"Now when the soldiers saw that, they woke up the centurion and the elders (for they also were there keeping watch). While they were yet telling them the things which they had seen, they saw three men come out of the tomb, two of them sustaining the other one, and a cross following after them. The heads of the two they saw had heads that reached up to heaven, but the head of him that was led by them went beyond heaven. And they heard a voice out of the heavens saying, 'Have you preached unto them that sleep?' The answer that was heard from the cross was, 'Yes!'" (2)

So, notice the legendary inventions: describing the many men present, the incredible moving of the stone, and the nearly unbelievable glorified beings leaving the tomb. (I pause to add that just because something looks made up doesn't mean it is. God definitely could have had something happen that way. Proof would have to be found elsewhere. But, to see why we should only consider the New Testament Gospels important, see again my post on the Gospel of Mark.)

Early on in his book, with the heart of an apologist, Lapide mentioned, "All three resuscitations [from 1 and 2 Kings] describe physical resurrections which are reported with significant sobriety." (page 49)

Ah, "significant sobriety." What an appropriate term! When I first read it, I thought of what he here explains: "Nowhere is the event designated as a 'miracle,' as an event of salvation, or as a deed of God, a fact which tends to support the plausibility of the report for the disinterested reader. We do not read in the first testimonies of an apocalyptic spectacle, exorbitant sensations, or of the transforming impact of a cosmic event.
"Instead of an exciting Easter jubilation we hear repeatedly of doubts, disbelief, hesitation, and such simple things as the linen cloths and the napkins in the empty tomb, of a race to the tomb which ends as 'idling' and such sober statements as for instance 'then the disciples went back to their homes' (John 20:10), or 'Peter ... ran to the tomb, stooping, and looking in, ... he went home' (Luke 24:12), and 'they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them' (Mark 16:8). It sounds almost as if any jubilant outburst should be dampened, more covered than uncovered, and as if the truth of the event needed no emphasis." (page 100)

(Sound like Lapide is contradicting himself? Defending the Gospels and then denouncing them? You don't know the half of it. I plan on explaining difficulties I had in understanding his book in part four, the conclusion of this Blog Project.)

Anyway, in my harmonization of the four empty tomb accounts, I mentioned how the one Gospel that sounds most invented is Matthew. Matthew sounds the most like the false Gospel of Peter. Yet if we look at the appearance to the Disciples, it isn't anything nearly as detailed as Luke! As a matter of fact, as Lapide presented as an unlikely invention, Matthew 28:17 "they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted."

Then consider what compares in Matthew's account to the Gnostic gospel. In four verses, there's an earthquake, a splendid looking angel descends from heaven, and the only men there become like dead men. The only real parallel of specific details is what the angel looked like (or, more accurately, angels, because the false gospel adds one). The Gospel of Matthew just barely resembles the Gospel of Peter.

Finally, look at the two verses of when He met the women. Jesus had very little to say, especially when introducing Himself. They respect Him, and He tells them to not be afraid and instead give a message to His Disciples. Matthew doesn't even elaborate on the implication of when they grabbed His feet, where Luke dedicates 7 verses to an explicit explanation (24:37-43). Instead, he gives it no thought.

Sure, Matthew does end with the high christological title of Jesus claiming to be God, but, like the moving of the stone, the rest of the narrative which looks unembellished only supports an accurate account.

(I once read a book titled Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan. Craig, the Christian, argued against three people who were considering the empty tomb story inventions that should be interpreted as non-historical, like Lapide did when comparing them to a midrash. One of Craig's responses was exactly how the story from Mark is "remarkable just for its simplicity and lack of apocalyptic embellishment." Many subjects that someone creating a story to substantiate a doctrine would add, like proof from prophecy and the use of christological titles, are missing(3).)

Comparing the second and third evangelists leave the legend hypothesis in an awkward mess. Luke readily admits that he was not an eyewitness, but rather he used accurate sources to create his biography of Jesus, as he writes in 1:1-4. Of course, one of them was Mark.

Luke's enablement of composing a Gospel fits perfectly with new events: Peter going to the tomb, the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus, and the details of the appearance in Jerusalem. Luke had different sources, unlike Matthew, who, being an eyewitness, focused on his material. Also, Luke may had looked at the two other written records and decided it would be a good decision to elaborate on what happened after the empty tomb.

Most interestingly, I believe that Luke is a great historian. While his three other counterparts are historically accurate, Luke's aim in writing is more focused on being a great work of antiquity. With that in mind, Sir William Ramsay wrote, "...if the large space devoted to [a] period is not deliberately intended by the author as proportionate to its importance -- then the work lacks one of the prime qualities of a great history." (4) Luke does devote a much longer part of his Gospel, which is shorter than the 28 chapters of Matthew, to the resurrection of Jesus.

(If you want to learn more about Luke's credibility as a historian and Sir William Ramsay, please see here, mainly the google doc. Actually, I currently have postponed a very extensive, challenging project about the Acts of the Apostles, which will be all about those two historians, plus one more.)

Finally, there is the Gospel of John, written "two generations after Easter" based only possibly on "hearsay." But what proof does Lapide offer that the Disciple John couldn't have lived to be, say, 90 years old? Furthermore, what proof does he have that people couldn't have learned the real historical facts from the Disciples? The early church does claim that John taught the early church fathers Ignatius and Polycarp.

This Gospel claims in 20:30-31 that it was written to enable others to receive salvation from faith in Jesus, proven by what He did after the empty tomb. So let's imagine that here we have a book with a very important purpose that comes from someone who knows exactly what happened. He was in Jesus's inner trio and found it important to include the Christ questioning Peter three times, and His miracles of appearances and catching fish to prove His power, because his personality as "the Disciple whom Jesus loved" finds it important to make explicit claims about Jesus's deity and sacrifice (3:16, 5:24, 8:58, 10:27-30), which the three Synoptic Gospels left out.

Even if the Gospel of John doesn't go back to that Disciple, that doesn't prove legendary creation. Accurate information could have been acquired elsewhere. Acts 1:3 says that Jesus appeared to the Apostles over a period of forty days and worked many convincing proofs.

As it was mentioned in Craig's and Crossan's debate: just because different books add events doesn't mean they made them up. How do we know Jesus didn't say or do those things? J. Warner Wallace converted to Christianity because of his study of the Gospels and how they look like eyewitness material -- filling in each other's accounts and having a harmony, yet still containing noticeable variants. I have found it bothersome when coming across the skeptical claim, because I can't recall ever reading any substantial attempted proof for it. No details past what Lapide gives, no dealing with counterarguments, just making a few assertive strokes with a pen about a hypothesis which may or may not be true. Nay, the historicity of the Gospels' resurrection narratives will rise or fall based on evidence for their credibility -- with unembellished accounts as a positive clue.

Did Paul Know About the Empty Tomb?
Lapide wrote concerning Paul's account of Jesus's resurrection: "The empty tomb of which Paul, the earliest Christian author, does not yet have knowledge, is typical of these incongruencies [different stories as dealt with above]." (page 38)

Atheist Keith Parsons points out the skeptical scholar Reginald Fuller, who explains that the word for appearing in the creed Paul cited doesn't distinguish between seeing with the physical eye or seeing with the spiritual one(5). I have read another debate with William Lane Craig, titled Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? His opponent, Gerd Ludemann, a world's leading advocate for the hallucination theory (everybody hallucinated Jesus after His death), also believed that Paul didn't know about the empty tomb and that the earliest accounts of Jesus should be interpreted as visions.

But a major problem used against Ludemann was that he thought this was the case because of Gnostic misinterpretation of "death" around A.D. 50, but the creed goes back to Jerusalem within two years of the crucifixion. The thing is, Parsons objection actually misses the reason Craig thinks Paul implied the empty tomb: the fact that he bothered to mention the burial.

Famous agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman explains Ludemann's different opinion (as emphasized): "Several points are worth emphasizing here. This ancient creed is a neatly balanced, poetical statement, with two halves. In both halves it makes a claim about Christ (he died; he was raised), indicates that the claim is 'in accordance with the scriptures,' and then offers an empirical proof: that he died is proved by the fact that he was buried; that he was raised is proved by the fact that he appeared to Cephas (Peter) and then to the twelve (apostles)." (6)

The first thought I heard about that idea is the fact that death means death. No one in Jerusalem, the place of the crucifixion, needs confirmation of His death. Crucifixion was the worst form of capital punishment, with torture before and during the cross. Unlike Ehrman, what I draw from the formation of the creed is that the two subjects at the beginning are undone by the last: Jesus's witnessed death is defeated by Jesus appearing to people, and Jesus's time of being laid in the tomb is defeated by Him being raised (otherwise the purpose of having a short, summarized creed would be obscured by adding more). Craig helps support my idea:

"The words and that are usually left out of English translations because they are grammatically unnecessary; but they are there in the Greek. And what they do is to order those events serially as having equal importance and equal weight. In other words, the burial is not just thrown in to somehow emphasize the reality of Jesus' death. Rather, we have listed here the principal, sequential events in Jesus' passion and resurrection: the death, the burial, the resurrection (which corresponds to the empty tomb narrative) and then the appearances. So Paul, I think, certainly does imply the empty tomb." (8)

So it actually goes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve."

But Lapide offers a much more direct reason for me to be surprised he suspects Paul didn't know the empty tomb: "The various conceptions of the resurrection in those times - all people or only the righteous; on earth or in heaven; pre-messianically or eschatologically; etc. -- resist any kind of systematizing. All schools have in common the belief that resurrection is a resuscitation of the dead, effected by God" (page 57)

Christian apologists agree with him. In an imagined debate between Paul and Muhammad, Micheal R. Licona wrote: "Regarding the empty tomb, Muhammad made a few suggestions as to what he thinks actually occurred. First, he claimed the empty tomb is a legend. He said that I never mentioned the empty tomb in my letters to the churches and that if I were aware of Jesus's empty tomb, I would certainly have mentioned it in the fifteenth chapter of my first letter to the Corinthian church. This is nonsense. I said resurrection. ...the Jewish and Christian concept of resurrection in the first century was the same as the Islamic view of resurrection. It is a bodily event. So if the body that died and is buried is the same body that is raised and seen walking around, this implies an empty tomb. Everyone in my day knew this, just like they knew nails were used in crucifixions. A redundant explanation was not required." (7)

Michael Goulder, professor of biblical studies at the University of Birmingham, on page 95 of the Craig-Ludemann debate called Jewish beliefs about the afterlife "quite various." He pointed to the death of Moses (Deut 34:7), but that he still "was around" (Mk 9:4-5), and Jeremiah was alive after his death and encouraged the Maccabees in war. "

William Lane Craig explained on page 184: "Similarly, Goulder's claim that Jewish beliefs about the afterlife were 'quite various' is misleading. Jewish views on the afterlife were not monochromatic -- some affirmed resurrection, some immortality of the soul, some denied immortality completely -- but they were all one in their conception of what was meant by resurrection of the dead. ... These examples are counterproductive for Goulder's claim. For as Gundry explains, the appearance of departed figures like Moses and Elijah at Jesus' transfiguration had nothing to do with literal resurrection. Neither did Jeremiah's giving to Judas Maccabeus a golden sword 'with which you will strike down your adversaries' (2 Macc 15:16), for this was the content of a dream that Judas related in order to rally his troops."

So when Paul received the creed from the Disciples, of course he would suspect an empty tomb and need them to tell him about it. Of course Paul knew of Jesus's empty tomb.

Citations:
1. J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (David C. Cook: Colorado Springs, CO. 2013), 166-167.
2. Frank Turek and Norman L. Geisler, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist (Crossway: Wheaton, IL. 2004), 287. They cite Ron Cameron, The Other Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 603.
3. Paul Copan, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI. 1998), 165.
4. William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen (Kregel: 2001), 230.
5. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books, 1993), 191. He cites Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 30.
6. Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (HarperOne: 2012), 249.
7. Michael R. Licona, Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI. 2006), 59-60.
8. Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli, Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 2000), 48.