The scandal of the resurrection of Jesus
Why is the resurrection of Jesus centrally important to the Christian faith? Paul emphatically claims that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Co. 15:14) Resurrection helped the early church to build up the divinity of Jesus. Peter, in his first sermon claims “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:36) Proclaiming Jesus as a God was very important to the group of disciples. Why?
To study the resurrection we need to remove the theology from it. Theology is a tool with a set of assumptions to understand life. These ‘assumptions’ are not facts or truth statements. These ‘assumptions’ have to be treated as assumptions and nothing more. We need to analyse resurrection merely as a report, whether historical or mythological. For a non-Christian the resurrection must be something that the Christians claim. Nothing more.
We need to read and understand the whole resurrection narrative with hermeneutics of suspicion. Read the narratives with suspicion. The basic question is who immediately benefitted from this story? What were the political and economic gains for the group which promoted the resurrection of Jesus and the resultant deification of Jesus.
Many scholars claim that what Paul narrates in 1 Corinthians 15 is an ancient historical creed circulating in the Jerusalem church and other churches. He claims that the risen Jesus appeared to Cephas and the twelve (v5) and then to James and the Apostles (v7). What is the idea here? Was the Jerusalem church divided into these two camps? What is the difference between the ‘twelve’ and the ‘apostles’? These two words seem to be technical terms specific to the politics of the early church in Jerusalem. This political divide becomes more evident when Peter claims that the risen Jesus appeared to only the twelve. “God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” (Acts 10:40–41) This seems to be an exclusive group. Peter and his group seem to make a lot of mileage with the resurrection and the resurrection appearances.
Contrary to this group the James group does not seem to use the resurrection and the appearances of the risen Jesus to establish their power in Jerusalem. James in his epistle does not give even a cursory reference to the resurrection or the appearances. It seems that this group did not use this to create the divinity of Jesus. For this group the creation of Jesus as God was not of any interest, because for them Jesus was a prophet, a prophet with a deep and timely message.
The next important element of Paul’s story is that this risen Jesus appeared to him too. From the account he refers to in Acts we know that it was not a physical appearance of Jesus. The whole resurrection appearances narrative is defined by this single fact — risen Jesus appeared to all just as he appeared to Paul. What Paul carefully informs is that the resurrection appearances were not ‘physical’.
The scandal of Thomas
One important information we can gather from the gospel stories is that Jesus challenged the temple based priestly establishment of Jerusalem like a prophet. He challenged the corruption in the temple management (Cleansing of the Temple), and he predicts the utter destruction of the temple. On another occasion he predicts a time when you do not need the temple, and you can worship God anywhere.(Jn. 4:21)
We can fairly imagine that a powerful small group of Jews (with support from the Roman authorities, I guess) who tried to undermine the Jerusalem temple establishment used the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus as a tool to demolish the temple establishment. Mark’s mention of Joseph of Arimathea as merely imagination by few critical scholars (Mark 15:43–47). We can be fairly certain that Joseph and Nicodemus formed part of this dissenting Jewish group. This group in close collaboration with Roman authorities created the resurrection story. This created a scandal, of course. (Mt. 28:11–15) This effort was to convince the Jews that the temple establishment is redundant now with the Messiah’s coming into history.
This group must have set up Thomas into this scandal. We all know that Judas Thomas was Jesus twin brother. This fact is carefully downplayed or hidden to promote Jesus as God himself. Virgin birth played the same role. Yeshua (Jesus) and Yehuda (Judas ‘Thomas’) were twins and looked the same. The Galilean crowd could distinguish them (they both grew up there in Galilee). The Jerusalem crowd could not do that. On many occasions Jesus could ‘disappear’ from the crowd because of this fact. The ruling authorities needed an inside man to tell them who is who, Yeshua from Yehuda. Judas did this service to the Jewish authorities. After Yeshua’s death the Joseph-Nicodemus group allowed Yehuda to create the appearances of risen Jesus story. When this fraud became known to the local people they hurriedly packed Yehuda off from Jerusalem. This fraud reflects in the fourth gospel. The writer of the fourth gospel is responding to this ‘scandal’ with the story of ‘Doubting Thomas’. What he asserts is that Thomas himself met the risen Jesus. This story is trying to tell those who made fun of this scandal that Jesus truly rose from the dead. He tries to prove that the resurrection story is not a scandal but a historical fact.
Paul claims that the risen Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at once. (1 Co. 15:6) Did they see Judas Thomas?
Ideological motivation
There is a possibility that a group of motivated Christians (followers of Jesus) saw the huge profit of making Jesus God through the resurrection story. Their power will magnificently increase by making Jesus divine. Resurrection provided a hugely useful tool. In Acts 10:40–41 Peter affirms that the risen Jesus appeared to only the twelve. “God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” This is an exclusive group. Paul counters this claim in 1 Corinthians. He claims that the risen Jesus appeared “to Cephas, then to the twelve” (1 Co. 15:5) and then “he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” (v7) He seems to claim that there were two competing groups of Christians in Jerusalem, Peter’s group and James’s group. We do not know whether both groups benefitted by the resurrection claim, but it is certain that Peter’s group gained much. Paul claims that he also is an equal claimant to the powers of the divine Jesus who was risen from the dead.
Paul and Peter made use of the resurrection to the hilt to build up their religious empires. In Acts 2, after the long sermon by Peter many in the audience asked the disciples what they should do. They were advised to receive baptism and join the group, the ‘church’. The story tells us that that day 3000 people were added to this group. The next few chapters of Acts tell us how the twelve (apostles?) had become powerful leaders with absolute authority. The narration describes the general feeling of the new group: “And fear came upon every soul.” (Acts 2:43) This fear became seriously threatening after the Ananias event narrated in Acts 5. “And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.” (Acts 5:11) This is precisely what the power group wanted to achieve, I guess. The resurrection of Jesus and the deification of Jesus enabled this to happen.
The empty tomb
For many Christians scholars, the empty tomb is the sure sign of Jesus resurrection. Many doubt that Jesus was ever given a decent burial as narrated in the gospel. Few critical scholars claim that as a crucified criminal Jesus would have never been given a burial in the first place. Usually the bodies were allowed to hang on the cross for the wild animals to ravage them. Mark claims that Jesus was properly buried by Joseph of Arimathea. (Mark 15:43–47) This story is corroborated by John (John 19:38–42). John includes Nicodemus too in this story. We should not (cannot) discard this tradition as something created by Mark (Crossan). It is also claimed that the burial happened according to Deut.21:22–23 (Dunn). The empty tomb is conspicuously absent in the Pauline epistles and the Easter Kerygma.
But Matthew narrates a scandal caused by the empty tomb. The leaders of the Jewish establishment feared that something of this sort might happen. So they went to Pilate and requested him to secure tomb. (Mt. 27:62–66) As they feared the body was missing the next morning. So they created another story to explain this. (Mt. 28:11–14)
What can we surmise regarding the empty tomb? Three possibilities:
1. The disciples of Jesus took Jesus’ body and hid it somewhere else and played the pre-planned drama of resurrection. This must have happened with active help from powerful Jewish leaders like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
2. Jesus did not die, but fainted. He was taken to a safe place to be given good medical treatment. He revived and escaped from Jerusalem. Some claim that he went to the Himalayas. Who knows?
3. Jesus rose from the dead and left the tomb empty.
All the above are possible. When Christian theologians and scholars claim that the empty tomb proves only the third possibility above it is nothing but their ‘theological’ commitment. Is there anything else?
Why resurrection?
It is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. This early belief in the resurrection is the historical origination of Christianity. Resurrection was nothing but the belief of some of the disciples. It has to be taken only theologically, not historically.
Resurrection of important people, particularly emperors was not a strange concept in the Greco-Roman world. Justin Martyr takes the resurrection in his stride. He writes, “And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.” (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 21)
Today we cannot even imagine Christianity without a deep belief in the resurrection. It is the foundation of the church. But what if we reject resurrection? Most Christians won’t know the difference! But it will destroy the empires of many selfish Christian leaders.
