In chapter 4 of Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God, focuses on what Ehrman believes we cannot know about the resurrection of Jesus. Early on in the chapter, Ehrman makes the distinction between belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the actual resurrection of Jesus. Thus, even though Ehrman correctly says, “Belief in Jesus’s resurrection changed absolutely everything. …Without the belief in the resurrection, Jesus would have been a mere footnote in the annals of Jewish history” (131), one can see where Ehrman is going. He is going to argue that the resurrection didn’t actually happen, but that the disciples believed that it did—and that is what led them to conclude Jesus was God. And that is what accounts for the origin of Christianity: not the actual resurrection of Jesus, but the mistaken belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
Now, to get to that conclusion, Ehrman has to reject the basic historical reliability of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection—and we have already noted in the earlier posts that is precisely what he does. But in the specific case of the actual resurrection narratives, Ehrman attempts to press his point by claiming that they simply cannot be reconciled with each other, and that they “disagree on nearly every detail” (133).
Irreconcilable Differences?
First, Ehrman claims that the different Gospels differ in who the women met at the tomb: was it one man (Mark), two men (Luke), or one angel (Matthew)? Secondly, Ehrman claims that Matthew and Luke disagree regarding what Jesus says the disciples are to do: in Matthew, they are told to go to Galilee, where they would meet Jesus; whereas in Luke, they are told to stay in Jerusalem, and that Jesus meets them that very day. And then, according to Ehrman, Acts tells us that they stayed in Jerusalem until Pentecost.
Since those are irreconcilable facts, Ehrman surmises, “The most plausible explanation is that when the disciples fled the scene for fear of arrest, they left Jerusalem and went home, to Galilee. And it was there that they—or at least one or more of them—claimed to see Jesus alive again” (136). Let me submit once again that Ehrman is succumbing to reading the text with the wooden literalism of a fundamentalist, without any consideration to the literary shaping of the text. And since he can’t make the two accounts reconcile in that way, Ehrman then proceed to put forth an entirely different option that is not supported by either account, and is ultimately just a product of his own imagination.
Simply put, we don’t have to make Matthew and Luke’s account “fit” in some literalistic fashion. We just need to consider the fact that Luke is writing a two-volume work, and he has structured Acts in a very deliberate way. He begins in Jerusalem and Judea, then branches out to Samaria, and eventually “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Thus, for his purposes, he simply chooses not to mention the disciples going back to Galilee—it’s unnecessary to the way he has chosen to shape his account. By contrast, Matthew isn’t telling the story of the early Church. Instead, he chooses to wrap his Gospel up in Galilee, the place where Jesus grew up.
Thus, in my opinion, it is more plausible that Luke is relating the resurrection appearances that happened that initial day. Then, since Pentecost happened 50 days after Passover, it would not be surprising at all that the disciples would have gone back to Galilee, and apparently had more encounters with the resurrected Jesus. Perhaps it was during that time that Jesus told them to go back to Jerusalem (which that did, to celebrate Pentecost) and wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (which is recorded in Acts 2). Whether or not one believes the resurrection happened is ultimately beside the point here—Ehrman’s claim that the two accounts in Matthew and Luke are irreconcilable simply is flimsy at best.
Incidentally, I find it interesting that while many skeptics like Ehrman go to great lengths to downplay or discredit the historical claim of the resurrection, I’ve never come across any attempts to explain away what happened at Pentecost. The skeptical claims are almost always limited to something like, “Oh, we can’t believe the resurrection accounts. They don’t perfectly line up—so the disciples probably just fled and then had some sort of visionary experience of Jesus later on.” Okay, if that’s the case, then what are we to do with Luke’s account of Pentecost in Acts 2? Is that a complete fabrication? Does Ehrman not believe there was an initial community of Jesus followers in Jerusalem? If he does, then how did it start? Simply put, how does one get to “private visionary experiences” to the start of a Christian movement in Jerusalem a few weeks after Jesus death?
I Corinthians 15:3-8
After discrediting the resurrection narratives as historically unreliable, Ehrman turns his attention to Paul, specifically to I Corinthians 15:3-8, where Paul explains to the Corinthian believers the tradition that was passed down to him regarding the resurrection of Jesus. I Corinthians was written around AD 55, and scholars acknowledge that what Paul relates in 15:3-8 is something he probably received from the original apostles themselves. It reads:
3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
For most people, this passage seems to be pretty clear proof that the testimony from the very beginning of the early Church was that Jesus really was killed, really was buried, really did resurrect from the dead, and really did appear to his followers afterward. “Not so fast,” says Ehrman! Here’s now he is able to say that I Corinthians 15:3-8 isn’t saying what it’s saying.
He first claims that 15:6-8 are Paul’s comments and elaborations on what was probably an original traditional creed-like statement of 15:3-5. Then Ehrman goes on to elaborate on what he feels is clear four-part pattern in two sections in the traditional creed (with his claims about each part in brackets):
1a: Christ died [fact]
2a: for our sins [theological interpretation]
3a: in accordance with the scriptures
4a: and he was buried [proof]
1b: Christ was raised [fact]
2b: on the third day [theological interpretation]
3b: in accordance with the scriptures
4b: and he appeared to Cephas [proof]
As always, up to this point in his analysis, Ehrman isn’t necessarily wrong. One can clearly see this kind of construction in 15:3-5. Yet, as we have seen a few times before, Ehrman soon lets his fundamentalist roots take him off course into some rather wild speculation. Case in point: Ehrman labels the second statement in each section as a “theological interpretation” of the first statement, and then concludes that “on the third day” wasn’t so much a statement that Jesus was resurrected on the third day, but rather that it was a “theological claim of its significance” (140). He then says that the Gospels don’t really tell us which day Jesus was resurrected, but only that the women went to the tomb on the third day.
You might be thinking, though, “What would the ‘theological claim’ regarding ‘on the third day’?” Ehrman points out that the phrase is found in Hosea 6:2 and Jonah 1:17, and claims that they were predictions in scripture: “This is a theological claim that Jesus’ death and resurrection happened according to plan” (141). There’s just one problem with Ehrman’s claim: it’s utterly false. Let’s be clear, no scholar regards either Hosea 6:2 or Jonah 1:17 as being a “prediction” of anything.
So what can possibly going on with “on the third day”? Well, maybe Jesus was actually raised three days after he was crucified. But wait, so what could it mean “in accordance with the scriptures”? My guess is that Jesus himself made that connection in Matthew 12:40—he was drawing an analogy between Jonah being in the belly of the fish for three days and him being in the grave for three days. Yes, Jesus was predicting he would be in the grave for three days, but he wasn’t saying Jonah 1:17 itself was a prediction.
Hence, to use Ehrman’s term, the “theological claim” of the “third day” isn’t that Jonah 1:17 was a prediction of the resurrection, but rather that Jesus’ was predicting his own resurrection and using Jonah 1:17 to illustrate it. Thus, without an actual resurrection on the third day, the analogy Jesus made would have (obviously) not worked, for Jonah 1:17 itself isn’t a prediction of a resurrection. And so, Ehrman’s attempt to argue that this somehow isn’t a statement that Jesus was resurrected on the third day is both curious and unconvincing.
And this leads us to the second odd thing Ehrman claims: that when the disciples claimed Jesus was “resurrected,” they didn’t mean they witnessed an actual, physical resurrection. Rather, they experienced visions of Jesus after he was crucified, and they thus concluded that he was now exalted at God’s right hand—and that’s what they meant by “resurrection.” And Ehrman claims that I Corinthians 15:3-5 supports that very thing.
How? Well, he points out that 4b simply says that Jesus appeared to Cephas (i.e. Peter). If Jesus had really been physically resurrected, Ehrman surmises, then why doesn’t 4a say Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea? He writes, “My hunch is that it is because he knew nothing about a burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea” (142). In addition, nowhere does Paul actually mention any of the women who supposedly saw the resurrected Jesus.
So, let’s be clear what Ehrman has done. First, he has simply dismissed I Corinthians 15:6-8, where Paul talks about Jesus appearing to many other people. Then he gives a very sketchy claim regarding “on the third day,” and he ends with the claim that since 15:3-5 doesn’t give every detail that is found in the Gospels, that therefore…Paul wasn’t claiming that Jesus had been physically resurrected?
That is quite the display of exegetical gymnastics to avoid the clear meaning of what Paul is talking about here. Indeed, Ehrman’s comments on I Corinthians 15:3-8 prove to be just the springboard that allows him, in the rest of chapter 4, to elaborate on his main claim: that (A) Paul and the apostles didn’t claim Jesus was physically resurrected, (B) there was no empty tomb, and (C) heck, we can’t even know if Jesus was actually buried.
And that is what I will cover in my next post.
