I am getting the jump on Eastern. Usually I wait until two weeks after and say "I should do something on the Resurrection." I decided this year I'm devoting all three blogs (Metacrock's, AW, and Cadre) to the Res. This is my contribution to a book Called
Defending the Resurrection
edited by J.P. Holiding. I urge the reader to buy it as there are many
fine arguments made in it. Not all of this article was used. This is its
original form it was changed substantially in several ways, such are
the needs of editors.
Introduction
Skeptical
machinations are endless, anytime the tide turns toward the apologist
the skeptic will take a further step back and seek to change the ground
rules in a fundamental way. So it is with the perennial resurrection
debate since the tide was shifted by McDowell and then by Craig, years
ago. One of the major tactics used by skeptics to change the ground
rules has been to uproot all points of the compass so the apologist
can’t get his/her bearings as to what events are actually historical
and thus defensible. To accomplish this, the skeptic has partly pulled
off a resurrection of his own, by resurrecting old ninetieth century
clap trap that was dismissed ages ago. One of the major examples is the
historical nature of the empty tomb. McDowell then Craig both did fine
jobs of demonstrating that if the facts about the tomb are in place
the debate goes to the apologist. But then the atheists used the Jesus
myth idea, long disproved and discarded, to set up a new round of doubt
about the historicity of the tomb. For skeptics today the four Gospels
are not even factors, they are totally ignored as though they offer no
evidence at all, and all that they proclaim is regarded as pure
fiction. It is of paramount importance, therefore, to establish some
historical facts about the case and to nail down some of the points of
reference. In this department of points of reference pertaining to the
narrative there can be no more important point of reference than the
issue of when the story of the empty tomb began to circulate. This is a
crucial issue for several reasons: (1) it’s the lynch pin upon which
is hung all the empty tomb logic arguments of the major apolitical
moves of the last fifty years. That means two things: (a) it would mean
the writing is too early for the events to allow for development of
elaborate myth; (b) it would mean that a large number of eye witnesses
were still around, depending of course on how close to the events the
writing could be placed. (2) The earlier the date the more it would
undermine the Earl Doherty’s Jesus myth theories by distorting their
time table. Thus in this article I will be focusing upon the one issue:
when did the empty tomb story begin to circulate in writing?
There are a few assumptions that must be discussed up front. Why focus
on writing if we can assume it was told orally first? Obviously whatever
point at which the writing started, we can assume the material was
orally transmitted before that point. Writing gives us a concrete means
of pinning down a time frame. There’s no way to trace oral tradition as
to when it began except in the most general of terms. But dating a
text, however, we can be much more precise as to when the circulation
began. The other major assumption that must be understood is that no
one single individual wrote the Gospels. There were redactors and they
came out of the communities and the communities are regarded as the
authors now, not merely individuals. These communities of which I speak
are those into which the earliest follows of Jesus began to group
after the events which ultimately come to be represented in the
Gospels. Each of the Gospels is taken by scholars today as
representative of its own community.
[1] So there was a Matthew
community, a Mark community, a John community, and perhaps a Luke
community, although I tend to attribute Luke to the Pauline circle as a
whole and to the individual Luke himself. The problem this sets up for
the Evangelical apologist is that it may open some other areas of
conflict depending upon how deeply committed one is to an inerrant view
of the Gospels. I have encountered atheists who just assert that
redaction itself is proof enough that “it was all made up.” No serious
scholar believes this and it’s simply a matter of understanding the
more adult and sophisticated view to dismiss that bit of amateurish
thinking. Yet accepting the liberal assumptions may create more
problems for apologetics than it solves, this is a major issue that
must be solved, and it must be solved it in the most decisive way. I
will suggest solutions to the problems that are more evangelical
friendly, and I assert these positions for the sake of argument, to
show that even granting the assumptions of liberal scholarship the
resurrection still enjoys the support of the evidence. Be that as it
may my one overriding concern in this article is in proving that the
resurrection circulated, in writing, by mid first century period.
Therefore, I will be using the assumptions of liberal scholarship and
the evidence of liberal scholars. My reason for doing this is to
demonstrate that the case can be made not merely with materials from
writers skeptics expect to take the conservative side, but with fairly
liberal scholars who skeptics would expect to be skeptical.
There
are a couple of other aspects of this copying phenomenon that need to
be understood. First of all, one often hears conservatives saying
things like “there is no textual evidence for Q.” The reason for that
is that when Q was incorporated into the synoptic people stopped
copying it and eventually stopped using it, because it was incorporated
into a text that seemed more complete. Overtime the copies of Q rotted
away and on one bothered to copy it further. Secondly, as to the
assumption that redaction (which simply means “editing”) in and of
itself is proof that “It was all made up,” this is manifestly wrong.
The assumption is based upon the fallacy that no one could purposely
combine two holy books without believing that they were not “inspired.”
But the reason this is a fallacy in relation to the New Testament is
because at the time the process of redaction on the Gospels started the
redactors did not imagine that they were editing “the New Testament!”
They were not regarded as holy books. While some might think that’s a
green light to make things up, its’ also reason why they would not make
things up, because while they did not have a concept that they were
writing the Bible (thus no need to conjure up the fabricated essence of
a new religion) it does not prove in any way that they had no respect
for the truth. They were neither making up the Bible nor creating the
rudiments of a new religion; they had no idea of either of those
things. They were merely producing a sermonic document for the
edification of the community. They intended these works to be read by
people they were living with and perhaps to spread into a larger circle
of those who worshipped with them. But they did not think of themselves
as writing “the Bible.” The process is more analogous to a modern
preacher writing a sermon for Sunday; he doesn’t want to fabricates
thing that aren’t true, but he’s free to change certain aspects of the
order, combine different portions of other “sermons” and place ideas in
different contexts and create a document that will hold the audience’s
attention and teach them things, but in so doing communicate truth and a
story they already knew. No intention of “make things up” need be read
into it.
This is not to say that the redactors did not have great
reverence for the sources they used. They saw the prior sources as
testimonies of holy men signifying holy truth, even if they did not see
them as scripture. As we move up in time to the post apostolic age they
have an ever greater reverence for anything that tells them about the
origins of the faith and the words of Christ. Yet that doesn’t mean
they thought of themselves as writing the Bible. They were free to
quote and blend the quotes in with other quotes from other valuable
sources, but not free to “make thing up,” not free to lie or fabricate.
Thus we have the creation of the works we know as the canonical
Gospels as “patch works” put together out of prior sources. They didn’t
see themselves as producing the canonical Gospels, they saw themselves
as accurately reflecting truth for the edification of their flocks,
and pulling together the great sources of truth left to the church into
their own little humble sermonic contributions. In so doing they left
traces of early versions and as their products were copied some of
those traces hung on and they continue to testify to us of the earliest
roots of the faith. Several traces of these early documents, these
lost “Ur gospels” show up in the latter works of non canonical gospels,
some of which are tainted with Gnosticism. The famous Nag Hammadi find
The Gospel of Thomas is such a work. While it is clearly set within a
heavily Gnostic framework of the third century, some of the passages
prove to be an early core some of which are thought to be authentically
spoken by Jesus, some of which have been theorized as making up the Q
source. While Thomas is Cleary Gnostic some very anti-Gnostic traces
are left. The same process of redaction we see at work in the
canonicals is also at work in the non canonical gospels. So we find
traces of an earlier age. Of more direct bearing on the resurrection
story is the non canonical Gospel of Peter.
Gospel of Peter and the Empty Tomb
The
Gospel of Peter (aka “GPet”) was discovered in the ninetieth century
at Oxryranchus, Egypt. It was probably written around 200 AD and
contains some Gnostic elements, but is basically Orthodox. There are
certain basic differences between Gospel of Peter (GPet) and the
canonical story, but mainly the two are in agreement. Gpet follows the
OT as a means of describing the passion narrative, rather than following
Matthew. Jurgen Denker uses this observation to argue that GPet is
independent and is based upon an independent source. In addition to
Denker, Koester, Raymond Brown, and John Dominick Crossan also agree.
[5]
It is upon this basis that Crossan constructs his "cross Gospel" which
he dates in the middle of the first century, meaning, an independent
source upon which all the canonical and GPet draw. But the independence
of GPet from all of these sources is also guaranteed by its failure to
follow any one of them. Raymond Brown, who built his early reputation
on study of GPet, follows the sequence of narrative in GPet and
compares it in very close reading with that of the canonical Gospels.
He finds that GPet is not dependent upon the canonical, although it is
closer in the order of events to Matt/Mark rather than to Luke and
John. Many Christian apologists think it’s their duty to show that GPet
is dependent upon the canonical gospels, but it is basically a proved
fact that it’s not. Such apologists are misguided in understanding the
true apologetic gold mine in this fact. The fact that GPet is not
dependent enables it to prove common ancestry with the canonicals and
that establishes the early date of the circulation of the empty tomb as
a part of the Jesus narrative. As documented on the Jesus Puzzle II
page, and on Res part I. GPet is neither a copy of the canonical, nor
are they a copy of GPet, but both use a common source in the Passion
narrative which dates to AD 50 according to Crosson and Koester. Brown
follows the flow of the narrative closely and presents a 23 point list
in a huge table that illustrates the point just made above. I cannot
reproduce the entire table, but just to give a few examples:
Helmutt
Koester argues for the “Ur Gosepl” and passion narrative that ends
with the empty tomb. He sees GPet as indicative of this ancient source.
Again, the argument is not that GPet is older than the Canonicals but
that they all five share common ancestry with the Ur source. There is
much secondary material in Gpet, meaning, additions that crept in and
are not part of the Ur Gospel material; the anti-Jewish propaganda is
intensified, for example Hared condemns Jesus rather than Pilate.
[6]
Koester believes that the epiphanies (sightings of Jesus after the
resurrection) are from different sources, while the passion narrative up
to the empty tomb is from the Ur Gospel. It is on this latter point
that he Differs with Crosson, who believes that the epiphanies were part
of the Cross Gospel.
[7] GPet was at first thought to be a derivative
of the four canonicals but some scholars began to doubt this because it
seemed like a collection of snippets from the four and as Brown
pointed out, that’s not the way copying is done. Koester points out
that Philipp Vielhauer following Martin Dieblius,
[8] noticed that in
GPet the suffering of Jesus is described in terms of the OT (though
literary allusion) and lacked the quotation formulae (such as “he said
to him saying” or “as it has been written”) which indicated that it
came from an older tradition, since it would not be nature to take
those out. Koester also points out that Jurgen Denker argues that GPet
is dependent upon traditions of interpretation of the OT rather than it
is the four canonicals, it shares these traditions with the canonicals
because they all share the same prior source.
[9] Crossan uses Denker
and takes it further, they both see dependence upon Psalms rather than
the canonicals as a sign of being earlier than the canonicals, but
Crossan theorizes the date as mid first century. Koester says in
describing it, “he argues that this activity resulted in the
composition of a literary document at a very early date, in the middle
of the first century,” (notice he does not say “around” mid century but
“in the middle”).
[10] He argues that the earlier source (the Ur
Gospel) was used by Mark as well as Matthew and Luke and even John, as
well as Gpet.
Koester agrees with Crossan and Denker about the
passion narrative (what he calls the Passion Narrative—which includes
the empty tomb) circulating early. He disagrees with three specific
points none of which negates this basis thesis. The three points are
these: (1) Reliability of the text (of Gpet) which comes to us from one
latter fragment and could have been influenced by oral traditions and
the canonical gospels as read by latter copyists. (2) Crossan believes
that all the variations in Gospel tradition came from a core nucleolus
of very early writings that form the cross Gospel and that is the basis
of the canonical Gospels (combining a saying source (Q) with a
narrative Gospel). But Koester believes that the oral tradition was
still going up to the early part of the second century,
[11]and that it
was a fountain of information for various gospel writings all along the
way. (3) Crossan holds that the epiphanies (resurrection sightings)
were all from the Cross Gospel; Koester holds that they were from
various sources. But none of them negates the basic core thesis which
all three of them hold to, which is that the Ur Gospel passion
Narrative includes the empty tomb and that it circulated early, perhaps
mid century. Koester tell us his true opinion when the sates at the
end of his list of these three problems:
“The account of the
passion of Jesus must have developed quite early because it is one and
the same account that was used by Mark (and subsequently by Matthew and
Luke) and by John and as will be argued below by the Gospel of Peter,
However except for the story of the discovery of the empty tomb, the
different stories of the appearance of Jesus after his resurrection in
the various Gospels cannot derive from one single source. They are
independent of one another. Each of the authors of the extant gospels
and of their secondary endings drew these epiphany stories from their
own particular tradition, not from a common source.”
[12]
What is
he saying? First he is not disputing that the story of the empty tomb
circulated early, he affirms it. He says “except for the story of the
empty tomb” he means that is included with the original material, the
other resurrection related sightings came from other sources.
[13] Are
those other sources fictional? In Koester’s mind they may be, but his
conclusions are based upon the logic derived from the texts and the
fragments of readings found in them, so they could be fictional or
factual. They just don’t happen to be from that one original Ur Gospel;
there’s noting in logic that prevents them from being part of other
eye witness accounts. When he says the authors got these stories from
their “own particular tradition” he means each of the communities that
produced the individual canonical gospels has their own tradition
sources, so these could well have been eye witness sources. Let’s
bracket this for now and get back to it toward the end of the essay.
Koester
sets out to demonstrate his first objection to Crossan by showing that
the evolution of the gospel traditions were not set in stone and were
fed by the oral tradition, I am not conserved with, but in so
demonstrating he also illustrates one of the major arguments through
which we know that there was an Ur Gospel passion narrative that
preceded the canonical gospels. His argument against Crossan on the
side point also serves to illustrate the major issue here before us in
this essay. By “gospel traditions” he does not mean new fictional
material was being made up, he means the way the story is told. By mid
century how one told it was just as important as the content. The
particular order, and traditions these were still evolving but were
shaping up into a style and the style was being codified. That point is
alluded to earlier where it is said that reliance on the psalms to
describe Jesus suffering is earlier and that lack of certain kinds of
quotation allusions are earlier than the canonical writing, that’s
saying that telling it a certain way was forming up and when we see that
formation not present that is an indication of an early source. When
he says that Jesus’ suffering is described in terms of the psalms he is
not saying the psalms gave them the idea of making up Jesus’
suffering. This is close to the idea of midrash. The Jews liked to tell
things about history in terms of the Scriptures, it was like
reinforcing the truth to show that what God is doing today unfolds in
ways that allude to earlier acts of God. So they tell the story by
making a bunch of literary allusions to the scripture.
Two such
examples: the way Pilate speaks corresponds to Psalms and the response
of the people to Jesus’ crucifixion is patterned after Deut. 21:8 in
guilt of the people is expressed in tones that mock the prayer in the
ritual:
[14]
Matt 27: 24-25 Ps 26: 25-26
“so when Pilate saw
that he was gaining nothing….he took water before the crowd saying: ‘I
am Innocent of this man’s blood, see to it yourselves.’ I hate the
company of evil doers and I will not sit with the wicked, I wash my
hands in innocence and go about thy alter, O lord.
“and all the
people answered, his blood be upon us and upon our children.” “Set not
the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of thy people O Israel.”
In
acculturating these points Koester also, without explicitly saying it
until latter, shows that no one would copy anything in this way. Ray
Brown will make the same point as well and with a much more elaborate
chart. Here are elements from one of Koester’s small charts that
demonstrate the point; this deal with the mocking of Jesus after the
trail before Pilate.
Gpete 3:6-9
And they put him in a purple robe Mark 5:17 they dressed him with a purple robe
Matt 27:28 they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him
Luke 23:11 they put a shining garment on him
John 19:2 and arrayed him in a purple robe
And sat him on the judgment seat and said judge righteously o King of Israel. John 19:13 and he sat down on the judgment seat
And
one f them brought a crown of thorns and put it on his head Mark 27:15
/Matt 27-19 and plaiting a crown of thorns John 19:2 and the soldiers
plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head.
And others who stood by spat on his face Mark 14:65 one of the servants standing by struck Jesus with his hand
The
supposition most skeptics will make is that the author of Gpete merely
copies the existing gospels that were already known, changing a bit
here and there to suit his own taste. The problem is there are so many
allusions it’ clear the author was copying a tradition, and it’s a
tradition a kin to the canonicals in some way, either as the common
source they used or the canonicals themselves directly. No one copies in
the way that it that it seems to have worked. No one would say “I want
to talk about the purple robe so I’ll copy ‘they dressed him with a
purple robe’ from Mark but I’ll say ‘put’ rather than dressed like Luke
does.” No one copies by breaking down actual sentences from the
difference sources and using a word from this and a phrase from that to
make nuclear fragments like a sentence all the way thought the whole
document. It could be that one would take a chapter from one and chapter
from another and wedge in between still another segment from a third
source, not for each and every sentence. This is a disproof of the idea
that the author of Gpete merely copied the canonicals. No one copies
this way. As Raymond Brown states in The Death of the Messiah:
GPet
follows the classical flow from trail through crucifixion to burial to
tomb presumably with post resurrection appearances to follow. The
GPete sequence of individual episodes, however, is not the same as that
of any canonical Gospel...When one looks at the overall sequence in
the 23 items I listed in table 10, it would take very great imagination
to picture the author of GPete studying Matthew carefully,
deliberately shifting episodes around and copying in episodes form Luke
and John to produce the present sequence. [Brown, Death of the
Messiah,
[15]
"IN the Canonical Gospel's Passion Narrative we
have an example of Matt. working conservatively and Luke working more
freely with the Marcan outline and of each adding material: but neither
produced an end product so radically diverse from Mark as GPet is from
Matt."
[16]
Brown proves the tradition that Gpet follows is
old and independent. It’s much less likely that the author of Gepet
merely copied all his material form the canonicals. One copies an
exegetical tradition, and that tradition by the time of Gpet (late
second century) was already formed up in one way, and GPet shows
examples of another form which should be considered earlier because
it’s based upon the Psalms not upon Mark or Matthew. No one would copy
in such a way as to instill all four from of the canonicals into the
text, but traces of an original might be combined with latter works in
that way. The arguments that Brown makes are elaborate, he presents
several huge charts (no. 10 mentioned above). I can’t reproduce them
here, but the marital is very important. The arguments Koester makes
are extremely intricate. I do not have the time or space here to
present these arguments because they take up whole books, but suffice
to say many scholars, in fact the majority agree with Koester on these
points. “Nevertheless, the idea of a pre-Markan passion narrative
continues to seem probable to a majority of scholars. One recent study
is presented by Gerd Theissen in The Gospels in Context, on which I am
dependent for the following observations.”
[17]
The issues are
enormously complex and due to their complexity they lead to confusion
when people try to argue and prove things. May of Koester’s statements
have been misinterpreted by skeptics seeking to refute my use of his
material merely because they don’t read the book or consider the
context. I urge the reader to read Koester’s book, Ancient Christian
Gospels, and Brown’s book Death of the Messiah, as Well as Crosson’s
Cross Gospel.
"The Gospel of Peter, as a whole, is
not dependent upon any of the canonical gospels. It is a composition
which is analogous to the Gospel of Mark and John. All three writings,
independently of each other, use older passion narrative which is based
upon an exegetical tradition that was still alive when these gospels
were composed and to which the Gospel of Matthew also had access. All
five gospels under consideration, Mark, John, and Peter, as well as
Matthew and Luke, concluded their gospels with narratives of the
appearances of Jesus on the basis of different epiphany stories that
were told in different contexts. However, fragments of the epiphany
story of Jesus being raised form the tomb, which the Gospel of Peter has
preserved in its entirety, were employed in different literary
contexts in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew."[18]
The
other major reason for assuming the earlier date for readings in Gpet,
aside from the fact that no one would copy the synoptic the way the
readings indicate it would have to be copied if it was based upon the
synoptic, is that the reliance of these readings upon the OT indicates a
stage of transmission prior to the development that would obtain after
the synoptic. In other words, as said above, the story comes to be
told in a certain way; even historically true stores develop
hermeneutical traditions. When a reading demonstrates characteristics
prior to that development, we know it was written earlier. The Synoptic
do show some reliance on the Psalms. That’s because those are traces
hanging on from the Ur Gospel that show up in the synoptic. The four
canonical gospels and Gpet all use these readings as they draw from the
Ur Gospel but they also use other readings and had Gpet been dependent
upon the canonicals exclusively it would not show such total reliance
upon the Psalms but would include a great dependence upon the
canonicals. Brown’s charts prove this reliance of Gpet upon the Psalms
and not upon Matthew or the other canonicals.
[19]
Koester shows
that the scenes of mocking Jesus were based upon Isaiah 50:6, Zach
12:10 and the scapegoat ritual are also brought into it. One can
understand the meaning in drawing parallels between Jesus passion and
the scapegoat of atonement for Israel. The robe and the crown of thorns
are derived form the scapegoat ritual as well.
[20] The Gospel of Peter
reveals a close relationship between the mocking to the exegetical
scapegoat tradition. He argues that these parallels are closer than
those drawn between that tradition and the canonicals. He presents a
fairly large chart to prove it. This compares seven examples between
the scapegoat tradition, Gpet and all four canonicals.
[21]
“It
is evident that alone in the Gospel of Peter all three Items form the
Isaiah passage appear together while John only includes the first and
second (scourge and strikes) and Mark and Matthew only the first and
third (scourge and spitting). Moreover, only the Gospel of Peter
contains the same Greek terminology for scourging in agreement with
Isaiah while Mark and Matthew substitute the common Roman term for this
punishment only Isaiah and the Gospel of Peter mention the cheeks
explicitly with respect to the strikes.” The piercing with the reed
from the scapegoat allegory is preserved only in the Gospel of Peter
while John has used this item for the piercing of Jesus’ side after his
death; Mark and Matthew misread the tradition and change it to
“strikes with a reed.”…the relationship of the Gospel of Peter to the
parallel accounts of the canonical gospels cannot be explained by a
random compilation of canonical passages. It is evident that the
mocking scene in this gospel is a narrative version that it is directly
dependent upon the exegetical version of the tradition which is visible
in Barnabas.
[22]
That tradition he argues is earlier than the
canonicals by virtue of his greater adherence to the OT. The date of mid
first century fro the circulation of the Ur Gospel with empty tomb is
based upon old rule of thumb assumptions that textual critics always
work by, ten years for copy time and ten years for travel time. In other
words, travel time means the time it took for it to be copied and
travel times mean the time it too to circulate to other places. Counting
back from the 70, the standard assumption for the Date of Mark, twenty
years is about 50 years. That is how Koester explains it.
sources
[1]Stephen Neil, The Interpritation of the New Testament 1861-1961. London, NY: Oxford University press, 1964, 239.
[2]Dale
C. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus: “The Earliest Christian Tradition and
It’s Interpreters,” Journal for the Sutdy of Pseudepigrapha:
supplement. T & T Cllark Publishers (September 30, 2005) 305-6.
[3]Helmutt
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, Their History and Development.
Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990, 208.
[4] Ibid. 220
[5] Ibid, 218
[6] Ibid. 217
[7] Koester, find
[8] Ibid, 218
[9] Ibid.
[10]Ibid
[11]That’s
based upon Papias reportedly saying he enjoyed hearing the voices of
the great men speaking the words more than reading it on paper. That
does indicate that there was some use or oral tradition at that time but
if Papias was really old then he could have been referring to practice
that had died out in his youth.
[12]Ibid, 220
[12]
Ibid., 231 fn 3 he again clarifies his position from that of Crossan.
Atheists reacting to material on my website where I speak of this
habitually quote Koester assuming that the issue between him and
Crossan is Koster’s objection to the idea of a pre Mark redaction that
includes the empty tomb. That is not it at all. He makes It quite clear
he agrees with that. The issue is entirely about how material after
the initiation discovery of the tomb cam to be in the account, was it
original (Crossan) or latter (Koester).
[14] Ibid, 221
[15]Raymond
Brown, Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, A
commentary on the Passionnarratives in the Four Gospels. Volume 2. New
York: Dobuleday 1994 1322
[16]Ibid. 1325
[17] Peter Kirby, Early Christian Writings, Website, URL:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/passion.html last visited Jan 3, 2010.
[18] Koester, 240
[19] Brown, find
[20] Koester, 224-25
[21] Ibid, 226
[22] Ibid, 226-227
