A Legendary Moment in History

What is the historical foundation for the belief in the Resurrection?

Today begins the first of a series of five weekly articles on the Resurrection, which I announced back on Easter Sunday. In this article we will be addressing a most fundamental issue regarding the first Easter nearly two thousand years ago: did anything actually happen? To make the issue clearer I will restate it in terms of what exactly skeptics assert: while Jesus might’ve been a historical figure, nothing actually happened on April 5 (maybe Jesus actually died on April 3, but He stayed dead on April 5),¹ and the idea that Jesus was resurrected originated later in Christian history as a sort of origin myth for their faith (which really originated as a mediocre Jewish apocalyptic cult attached to Jesus of Nazareth).² What needs to be proven, then, was that the Resurrection, rather than being some fanciful myth, is grounded in history, its roots firmly set deep in the 1^st century. The apologetic significance of such proof will resonate, and will be influential in the following articles.

How do we determine that the Resurrection isn’t mere legend? Well, clearly, we need to demonstrate that belief in it doesn’t come too late for it to be reasonably argued that legendary material built on the underlying historical truth of Christianity. Dating the Resurrection narrative can be determined by look at both biblical and extrabiblical data.³ We will start with the biblical data.

Before we go any further, however, we must immediately and firstly address an important caveat. The dating of a New Testament text is not merely based on its internal evidence (what we can glean from the text itself), but also from the external evidence (references in other writings and the manuscripts of the text). It is, thus, important to note that, especially since the 19^th century, most New Testament textual critics haven’t argued that the New Testament was written in exceedingly late time periods,⁴ but rather, on the basis of the overwhelming manuscriptural attestation of the New Testament, which, while fragmentary in the earlier periods, demonstrates nonetheless that the New Testament existed before 100 AD.⁵ That alone is enough to certify the argument that Christian beliefs didn’t originate late and by legendizing. We will still take a look at the internal evidence of the Resurrection narratives themselves.

1 Corinthians 15 constitutes one of the main accounts of the Resurrection in the NT, besides the accounts in the Gospel. The whole chapter comments on the theological magnitude and significance of Christ’s Resurrection for all believers.⁶ Is all this just humbum, however? Mythical sophistry? Well, not at all. Based on the chronology of the Acts of the Apostles most scholars have assembled and inferred a chronology of Paul’s life,⁷ Paul first went to Corinth in 52 AD and remained there for over a year until sometime in 53 AD (cf. Ac. 18:1, 11). Time needs to be permitted both for Paul to engage in some additional missionary activity and for issues to begin arising in Corinth, for these issues to be communicated to Paul (by others and the Corinthians themselves), and for Paul to write a letter before 1 Corinthians (see 1 Cor. 1:11; 5:9; 7:1; 16:8, 17). We also need enough time to pass for Paul to be near Ephesus at whatever date we give, because this is where 1 Corinthians was written (1 Cor. 16:8). Based on all these factors most scholars date 1 Corinthians around 55-57 AD. This date is well within the lifetimes of everyone involved with Jesus’ ministry, and thus 1 Corinthians 15 isn’t disconnected from the historical bedrock of the Christian faith. Our observations don’t end here, however, because we can reasonably push 1 Corinthians 15 back even further, particularly verse 1-11. The reason is that most scholars consider these verses (esp. vv. 3-5) part of an early Christian creed that Paul has incorporated into his epistle. The creed needs to predate Paul (i.e., Paul didn’t create it ad hoc to use in 1 Cor. 15) not only because it uses Aramaisms (Paul is overwhelmingly Hellenic)⁸ but also because Paul himself tells us that he got it from elsewhere: “For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received…” This creed was passed onto the Corinthians by Paul, and Paul also had it passed onto him (he “also received” it). Since the creed is pre-Pauline scholars have argued that the creed dates to before 55-57 AD, possibly to the 40s AD as part of the development of liturgical practices in the early Chrisitan community (some have pushed to as early as 36-37 AD).⁹ In 1 Corinthians 15, then, we have a remarkably early attestation of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

One other prominent biblical example I will use is that of Mark’s passion narrative.¹⁰ Namely, I am looking at what is known to scholars as the pre-Markan passion narrative. You see, Mark is the smallest of the Gospels, it takes only 1-1.5 hours to read it, and if it was typed out as a standard 12-point double-spaced document it’d only be about 50 pages long. Its narrative is well-known for being high-paced and summative, with many episodes known in Matthew and Luke appearing in Mark as highly truncated (e.g., Christ’s Temptation occupies only two short verses). However, when we get to the Passion of Christ, the final part of Jesus’ life, Mark gets incredibly detailed and becomes far slower in his pace, with six whole chapters (one-third of Mark) being dedicated to it. The reason why, as accepted by many scholars,¹¹ is that Mark, rather than creating his very own Passion narrative, is taking from a pre-existing Christian narrative concerning the Passion of Christ and incorporated it into his Gospel.¹² There are several lines of evidence for there being a pre-Markan narrative, and one particularly convincing one I’ll give is how Mark anonymizes the name of the High Priest, while Matthew, Luke, and John openly identify him as Caiaphas. The reason, as put forth by Gerd Theissen, is that Caiaphas was still in office at the time of the narrative’s construction, meaning people would’ve known who “the High Priest” was (just how if I said “the President is going to speak later today” you’d know, based on your present historical context, who I was talking about).¹³ Since Caiaphas held office from 18-37 AD, and Jesus was crucified in 33 AD, the narrative would have to date to 33-37 AD. 

So, in summary, not only by virtue of the New Testament indisputably originating before 100 AD but also because of select internal evidences (two in this article: 1 Cor. 15 and Mk. 11-16) we can be confident that the belief in the Resurrection was well-established among Christians at an impressively early date (30s-40s AD). The significance of this is that there is absolutely no way that one could call this a legend, because legends don’t originate during the lifespan of hundreds, if not thousands, of eyewitnesses, and in areas where such beliefs can result in life-threatening persecution and loss. 

When we turn to the extrabiblical data that statement only gains more veracity because there is plenty of testimony about the Resurrection from an early date. Writings from ancient Christians such as Clement, Irenaeus, Ignatius, Tertullian, Origen, and others, show that the Resurrection was an incontrovertible and fundamental element of the Christian faith.¹⁴ Ancient non-Christian writings also document the widespread belief in the Resurrection among Christians, such as Celsus’ The True Word and Porphyry’s Against the Christians. 

All in all, the idea that the Resurrection originated as a late Christian legend is completely invalid. We know that the Resurrection narratives are firmly set deep within the 1^st century, and that all throughout Church history everyone was in agreement that this was a core element of the faith. It was never absent from Christianity, nor did it ever take a different form.¹⁵ However, the fight doesn’t end here, for even if the Resurrection was a truly ancient belief a number of explanations can still be devised to explain it away. Therefore, we must go further and prove that something spectacular truly happened on the first Sunday. That will be the focus of the remainder of this series, and so I hope to see you at the next article.

1. Just in case my specific dating of these events confuses you, I’m informed by the impeccable research of Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor in The Final Days of Jesus; see also.

2. This understanding of early Christian history and origins is essentially a summary of the views of prominent skeptics such as Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Price, and others.

3. The questioner or skeptic might be rubbed the wrong way by, in their eyes, “using the Bible to prove the Bible.” The reality is, however, that all we are doing is treating it just like any other collection of ancient documents and investigating whether these documents are historically reliable. No one objects when scholars use Caesar’s Gallic Wars to study his life. They are using it because it’s a historical document with historical value and we can learn from it. It’s not “arguing in a circle,” but merely using the data we have (see also).

4. E.g., liberal scholars such as F.C. Bauer and K.G. Bretschneider pushed the Gospel of John well into the 2^nd century before the discovery of 𝔓⁵² (which dates to 100-150 AD, and, based on its timing and origin [Egypt] points to an even earlier date for the Gospel itself; see Colin Roberts, An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library and Edward Andrews, The P52 Project [see also]; cf. Brent Nongbri’s “The Use and Abuse of 𝔓⁵²” as a moderating influence on overdone arguments that itself isn’t hyper-skeptical nor hyper-apologetic).

5. See Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament (4^th ed.); Norman Geisler and William Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (rev. & exp. ed.); F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents.

6. See N.T. Wright’s Surprised By Hope; Mike Heiser has two good podcast episodes on this matter, too, if you prefer podcasts to reading: NBP 88, “What is the ‘spiritual body’ Paul talks about in 1 Cor 15?” and NBP 95, “Resurrection and the Death of the Gods.”

7. Linked is a plain overview of said chronology. For a demonstration of how scholars develop that chronology see Gilmore Guyot’s “The Chronology of St. Paul.”

8. The use of the Aramaic Cephas instead of Peter and the fourfold use of “that” (Gr. hoti), which is common in Greek renderings of Aramaic prose, affirm this.

9. This discussion, of the creedal nature of 1 Cor. 15:3-5 and its dating, is primarily derived from Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 259-61, n. 24-25.

10. The reason why I’m only using two explicit examples from the New Testament is because of what I’ve already said about the New Testament as a whole: it is an early and well-attested historical document, with its textual evidence stretching well back into the 2^nd century and its genesis therefore certainly being in the 1^st. This proves all that I need to prove in this article: that the Resurrection didn’t come from a late Christian legend, but was always a core value of the Christian faith from its earliest days. This means nothing about its reliability or authenticity (i.e., the apostles/Christians could’ve been mistaken; maybe Jesus’ body was stolen; Jesus only was a spirit, not a physical entity), which will be focused on in the following articles.

11. Some skeptics quote from Gerald O’Collins (who accepts this argument) to argue that the existence of a pre-Markan narrative is disputed by scholars. In reality, all O’Collins actually said regarding the pre-Markan passion narrative is that reconstructions of what such a narrative would’ve looked like are debatable, not the existence of such a narrative. You can find O’Collins’ comments on the pre-Markan narrative in full and in context in ch. 4 of his Easter Faith.

12. The fullest treatment of the pre-Markan passion narrative I know of is Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context, ch. 4 (for articles/videos on it see here, here, and here.)

13. Theissen, The Gospels in Context, pp. 184-89.

14. The Gnostics themselves didn’t even deny the Resurrection, they just denied the orthodox teaching of it (i.e., how it is presented in the New Testament, as a physical resurrection, as the Gnostics repudiated bodily existence).

15. The only other legendary argument that is at times made is that the Resurrection was synthesized from the “rising-and-dying-gods myths” of neighboring pagan cultures. A number of factors, fallacies, and proper comparative studies disqualify such a theory. Edwin Yamauchi’s “Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?” is an excellent treatment of this issue (especially the first section).