Podcast 57: More Evidence for the Resurrection (Apologetics 8)

Apologetics 8: More Evidence for the Resurrection

Because secular historians don’t accept the inspiration of the bible, they don’t trust the Gospels as reliable witnesses about Jesus. Consequently, they’ve come up with various “criteria of authenticity” to sift the sayings and deeds recorded in the Gospels into historical and mythical categories. Last time we saw how Jesus’ resurrection still passes with flying colors when employing such a skeptical approach. This time we’ll discuss another historical consideration under the able guidance of N. T. Wright. He enumerates seven mutations within Judaism that cry out for an explanation. In the end, history seems to have a hole in it about the size and shape of an actual resurrection. The most plausible explanation is that God really did intervene in the middle of history and perform a miracle.

If you would like to take this class for credit, please contact the Atlanta Bible College so you can register and do the necessary work for a grade.

Notes:

Criteria secular historians use to determine authenticity:

1. multiple attestation: the more independent witnesses the better
2. dissimilarity: if something is dissimilar from Jewish historical context and later Christian tradition it is more likely to be historical
3. embarrassment: if something would have been embarrassing it is more likely to be historical (i.e. disciples not getting what Jesus is saying, Peter cutting ear off,
4. aramaisms: sayings that align with Aramaic: “straining out the gnat (galma) and swallowing a camel (gamla)”
5. coherence to Jewish context
6. coherence to early Christian tradition
7. coherence with other authentic material
8. anachronism

Two indisputable facts about Jesus (according to Paula Fredriksen)

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
   • attested by Paul, Gospels, Tacitus, Josephus
   • Romans were involved w/ his death
2. None of Jesus’ followers were crucified with Jesus
   • pulls in the opposite direction

Jesus as apocalypticist (Ehrman, Fredriksen, Sanders, etc.)

• Fredriksen, “w/o apocalyptic framework a conviction of resurrection is incoherent”

N.T. Wright has articulated seven mutations from the Jewish understanding of resurrection in the early Christian communities which cry out for an explanation. It turns out that the explanation of the missing event which would make sense of these mutations takes the exact shape of a grave-emptying bodily resurrection. His seven mutations are as follows:

1. Though the early Christians came from a variety of backgrounds there was virtually no spectrum of belief about what resurrection meant to the early Christians. In Judaism there were quite a few different views, that of the Pharisees, that of the Sadducees, that of Philo, and so on. However, the Christians leave no room for speculation as to what resurrection means and what it looks like.
2. Resurrection has moved from a peripheral idea to the central focus of the early Christian community. The word “resurrection” appears 43x in NT as opposed to none in the OT.
3. In Judaism it is often rather vague regarding what sort of body the resurrected will possess but in Christianity there is unanimous agreement that the body will be a transformed physical body which will use up the matter of the old body though it will itself also possess new properties.
4. The Christians saw The Resurrection as having been split into (at least) two stages—first Messiah is raised and then the rest at his return.
5. The resurrection means that God’s future (the resurrection is always seen in the OT as an end times event) has arrived early in the person of Jesus. This means that now his followers are i