The Resurrection of Jesus Fact #+4, part 2

 The Primitive Markian Account

Bart Ehrman makes it clear throughout his two chapters on the resurrection that he was once a believer who bought Christian arguments and was convinced that they could prove the resurrection happened. "Christian apologists often argue that the discovery of the empty tomb is one of the most secure historical data from the history of the early Christian movement. I used to think so my self. But it simply isn't true." (1)

(One great supposed proof of this is the implausibility of Jesus actually having been buried in an honorable tomb the Gospels describe. But the real historical certainty of Jesus's burial does not at all indicate that it was empty soon after His death.)

But when Ehrman wrote about this there is no mention of anyone like Jacob Kremer, a late Australian specialist in the resurrection, who was critical himself. Craig cited his work from 1977, where he said, "by far, most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb." (2) In the notes of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Gary Habermas and Michael Licona name 28 other unbeliever scholars Kremer cited(3).

Furthermore, in the first debate Gary Habermas had with former world's leading philosophical atheist Antony Flew, only Habermas was greatly citing sources and evidence. Flew, while definitely knowledgeable to at least the smallest degree any influential atheist should be about Christianity, was sometimes even marked down by judges because of how he didn't compare with his opponent on citing sources and using evidence(4)!

But then they were back together 15 years later, after he had, at least, reviewed Jack Kent's The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth. On The John Ankerberg Show  he conceded that Habermas was right that the twelve facts he was using were widely accepted, and this included the empty tomb (although it isn't as accepted as, say, the appearance to the Disciples)(5). There was, appropriately, a very quick skirmish on whether or not it happened, but in the end Flew recognized "impressive testimony." (6)

Now it is demanded that I answer the question, "Just exactly what evidence persuades skeptical scholars to believe in this claim?" And I'm glad I asked. 

While Ehrman doesn't think Mark invented the empty tomb story, he argues a reason for the way the first Gospel author makes it appear:

"Mark makes a special point throughout his narrative that the male disciples never understand who Jesus is. Despite all his miracles, despite all his teachings, despite everything they see him do and say, they never 'get it.' And so at the end of the Gospel, who learns that Jesus has not stayed dead but has been raised? The women. Not the male disciples. And the women never tell, so the male disciples never do come to an understanding of Jesus." (7)

Some examples he gives elsewhere(8) of cultural outsiders who understood was the unnamed women who anointed him (14:1-9) and the centurion at the cross (15:39).

But something which appears striking to me, also keeping in mind the argument regarding only the women staying at the crucifixion (from both Ehrman and Goulder), is that they didn't get the resurrection either! Mary Magdalene and her friends were going to anoint the body, didn't expect the stone to be moved, and had to remember that Jesus had predicted His resurrection (16:1-8). As Ehrman's observance was cited earlier, the empty tomb doesn't reasonably have the power to convince anybody, but to fit Mark's supposed purposes, they should have remembered. (And it's no use demanding that Mark must keep that fact straight: legend writers from their own different cultures can be "storytellers," as Ehrman enjoys calling them. Furthermore, that would just demand he didn't create this account and so it doesn't matter how it fits Mark's literary agenda.) 

Mark also says that an appearance to the Disciples is imminent. About this, it particularly stands out to me that Ehrman thinks Mark included the "Disciples and Peter" because Peter had betrayed Jesus three times(9). So the Disciples are just going to get converted like the women were: a spiritual being will appear to them and cite Jesus's prophecy. Furthermore, in my own post harmonizing difficulties between the four empty tomb accounts(10), I point out that it is illogical that they will never tell anyone. I think they didn't say anything until they were with the Disciples in secret, because they were shocked and afraid. 

Actually, William Lane Craig thinks Mark had the women running away in fear because his "theology" consists of "fright and terror and worship in the presence of the divine." (11) Furthermore, he agrees with me that they only had a temporary silence: if they hadn't had told, who would ever know this story? 

Going along with this, the ending of Mark is often theorized to have been such a way because it kind of leaves the resurrection as a haunting event: what will you do with this Jesus? Will you meet Him yourself? 

Anyway, there is a very significant difference between Mark's ending among all the four Gospels. It lacks embellishments such as fantastic elements, quoting scripture, and high christological titles(12). Ironically, the only title for Jesus is "Nazarene," which says he came from a place so obscure many Jews hadn't even heard of it(13). "According to Kremer, theological reflection on the meaning of the resurrection is completely lacking, a fact which points to an early tradition." (14)

I first learned about Ehrman's interpretation of Mark's Gospel (that only the culturally lesser people understood Jesus) in a debate between him and William Lane Craig(8). He calls the women being there a "theological reflection." This would directly contradict my point drawn from Craig drawn from Kremer. However, as I pointed out, their faithfulness doesn't work because they weren't, and Ehrman's talk of the entire Gospel being "filled with theological reflections" actually serves to drive my point of the empty tomb account lacking so many other possible inventions. To specify, a Gospel author would do a poor job just to say He is alive again in a plain fashion, and that during His ministry people less significant had a better job understanding Him. By themselves they carry no meaning for the one reading about this afterward! The resurrection needs to be explained like all the other Gospels do. I suppose someone could argue Mark's Gospel is that way to compare the culturally shamed Christians with the pagans and orthodox Jews, but I don't think this makes much sense. For if that was the case the Disciples should have understood it all and there be no friendly Roman centurion or Joseph of Arimathea.

"Moreover, the fact that the earliest Gospel (Mark) ends without any record of a 'resurrection appearance', has to be matched with the fact that the earliest account of 'resurrection appearances' (1 Cor. 15) has no reference to the tomb being empty. This degree of independence and lack of correlation between the two earliest records speaks favourably for the value of each. There is nothing to indicate that one was contrived to bolster the other." (15)

Christian scholar Wolfhart Pannenberg, in his response to the first debate between Habermas and Flew, referred to Hans von Campenhausen (a liberal scholar whom Kremer cited). One piece of evidence from him against it being a legend, as scholars like Bultmann believed, is that a later legend would include an appearance story(16). 

Now one can object, "But if the Gospels appearance narratives and empty tomb are both true, why didn't Mark include an appearance if he should have? Regarding the resurrection, if the Bible is true, Mark could add in an appearance story anyway because they weren't invented later and his information comes from eyewitnesses. And so, if the Bible is false, Mark could just leave out an appearance story, even though one of course would be invented originally (just look at all the other Gospels) and end it with such an ending to fit a theological reason." 

However, I have a very tough time believing that a Gospel writer who proves that the Disciples will see Jesus would leave out the rest of his story. Not the story -- that is to say, just anything that reportedly actually happened -- but his story. The narrative he got his hands on. Is it that important to fit a theological motivation? No other Gospel ends like Mark, but they still demand that one makes a decision about Jesus, of course, as they are just putting in more "proof" (albeit unnecessarily; a physical resurrection is already demanded). (I use quotation marks because these stories would be used as reports of what actually happened, but I'm sure skeptics of the 1st century would be like ones today and point that out as circular reasoning.) Mark definitely could have used it to his favor, with new and/or embellished details. For example, Luke got to say that the Disciples were "startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost" when Jesus appeared to them as a group (Luke 24:37). 

What makes sense to me is that Mark, who would know of the other appearance narratives, just decided to use the primitive account of the empty tomb. Because that story was the one he was most familiar with, he could end his Gospel the way it is. This wouldn't dishonor the appearances, because he didn't only include a single important part of his entire source for the resurrection. 

All this evidence -- the unembellishment in the story itself and lack of an appearance both indicate the same thing even separately, so they bolster each other -- supports the claim that Mark's empty tomb narrative is impressively early. When I read about Bart Ehrman using "the earlier the better" criteria for the probability of a story being true, it was only for the Gospels,  but it does show that this account wasn't "changed as they were told and retold over time" about "Jesus" and "Mary Magdalene." (17) In contrast, if any falsehood would slip into the early church accounts, it only did in the other synoptic Gospels, because they have the same core story as Mark. Its primitiveness looks to me like a report of just basic facts of what happened at the tomb, because of course they needed to remember the story of the tomb being empty. The narrative lacks human invention, showing it to be early -- from the time of eyewitnesses and from the ones who could report the basic facts because they visited it.  It was formulated way too early for there to be no one around to verify or disprove it. Non-Christian discoveries like the ones from Kremer and von Campenhausen observe that the empty tomb does not look like "a late tradition" because it first "appears in Mark." (18)

Alright, His tomb was empty. So what?

As Ehrman rightly pointed out, quoted in part 1, an empty tomb shouldn't force someone to jump to the conclusion and say, "God has raised this person from the dead!" Rather, other scenarios should be considered. Why should anyone be confident in the resurrection just because His grave didn't have His body anymore? 

I am not qualified to argue that the empty tomb proves beyond rational doubt that He was resurrected. But whatever the case, the empty tomb was just the start of Easter Sunday. It's not everything. Not by a long shot. 

I think it was Gary Habermas, the creator of the minimal facts approach, who I learned the material that is accepted by most skeptical historians (more than this claim) and is very vital for the resurrection conclusion, who said this (I paraphrase): "In order to prove that someone rose from the dead, you just have to prove that in the first place they were dead, and that people saw them alive afterward." 

Ancient encounters with the risen Christ are what I turn to next.

Citations:

1. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 164. 

2. Jacob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien--Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), 49-50. Cited in 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), 27. Craig rendered Kremer's Exegeten as scholars," not "exegetes" for clarity's sake.

3. See Gary R. Habermas and Micheal R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications: Grand Rapids, MI. 2004), 287. They throw in some scholars: Blank, Blinzler, Bode, von Campenhausen, Delorme, Dhanis, Grundmann, Hengel, Lehmann, Leon-Dufour, Lichtenstein, Manek, Martini, Mussner, Nauck, Rengstorff, Ruckstuhl, Schenke, Schmitt, Schubert, Schwank, Schweizer, Seidensticker, Strobel, Stuhlmacher, Trilling, Votgle, and Wilckens. 

4. Gary Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, edited by Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), xviii-xx.

5. Gary R. Habermas and Antony Flew, Resurrected? An Atheist and Theist in Dialogue, John F. Ankerberg edition (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, inc: 2005), 2-3/

6. Ibid., 26-28.

7. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 167-68.

8. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/is-there-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-the-craig-ehrman

9. Bart Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (Oxford University Press: Oxford, NY. 2006), 53.

10. https://onechristianthought.blogspot.com/2020/03/bible-difficulties-4-different-accounts.html

11. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016), 236.

12. For a detailed discussion on Mark's empty tomb tradition differing from the other synoptics, see part 1 of my blog project defending Mark.

13. For information about Nazareth, see part 2.

14. Copan, Real Jesus, 165. Craig cited Jacob Kremer, "Zur Diskussion uber 'das leere Grab," in Resurrexit, ed. Edouard Dhanis (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1974), 153.

15. James D.G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Westminster Press: Louisville, Kentucky 1985), 66.

16. Gary Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, edited by Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 131.

17. Bart Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford University Press: New York, NY. 2004), 122-23.

18. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 165.