JESUS' RESURRECTION: Good News, Fake News or Alternative Facts (original) (raw)

The Resurrection of the Messianic Prophet

Philosophy and Theology, 2024

This article aims to provide an a posteriori argument for the veracity of the Christian conception of the Abrahamic religion that centres on God's action of sending a divine and atoning prophet-the 'Messianic Prophet'-into the world, who we can identify as the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This specific argument will be presented through Richard Swinburne's (modified) explanatory framework, which focuses on assessing the prior and posterior evidence in support of this identification. This, however, will be done in light of the work of Historical Jesus and NT scholars John P. Meier, N.T. Wright, Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado-which, in combination, will provide a means to ward off two important objections against Swinburne's methodology, and ultimately allow one to establish the veracity of the 'Christian Position', on firm historical grounds.

A Brief Analysis of The Historicity of Jesus' Resurrection

SAURAJ, 2022

The resurrection of Jesus has been a debatable subject since the beginning of the 1 st century AD; in as much as it is simple and easy to believe in the resurrection of Christ for Christians, it is not quite so in the world today, where skepticism and agnosticism dominate the culture. In the last two centuries, with various revolutions emerging, due to the prevalence of naturalistic view in the literature world, and theology, in particular, several leading scholars started a quest to re-study the historicity of Jesus' resurrection and subsequently considered the four accounts of the four gospels to be merely a myth. This article attempts to briefly analyze the quest and, most importantly, provide legitimate evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus. In this article, the gospels' account is considered ancient literature since our main priority is to know whether it is historical. Therefore, the historicity of the gospel account is analyzed through the methodology employed by both the secular and religious scholars, which in turn makes the study not biased. The analysis concludes and reclaims that the account of the gospel is historical.

The Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part II)

For Christians the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the foundation of our faith. One of the strongest arguments for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples and to unbelievers who then became believers. This paper surveys those appearances and also looks at other evidence for the resurrection of Jesus: the witness of the apostles, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and extra-biblical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus including the Nazareth Decree and the Shroud of Turin along with ancient non-Christian sources (Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Pliny the Younger) and ancient Christian sources (Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martyr).

The Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part I)

Is it possible to verify the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus? What is the correct historical method to approach the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus in the gospels? What criteria should be used to determine the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus? What historical evidence do the gospels present for the resurrection of Jesus? This paper is the first of a two part series that attempts to answer these questions. This paper was published in The Journal of Ministry and Theology 6.1 (Spring 2002), 63-87.

Reinterpretations of the Historical Jesus

1996

In addition to the major historical approaches presented in the last chapter, many have attempted to write more-or-less popular lives of Jesus. These authors often advocate unorthodox interpretations: Jesus never died on the cross; he was connected with the Qumran community; someone else changed his message to fit their own desires; he traveled to various parts of the word during the so called "silent years" or even after the crucifixion. Reinterpretations of the Historical Jesus While such works are given virtually no attention by careful scholars, these attempts are sometimes very popular with those who are unfamiliar with the data behind such questions. Many are bothered by nonfactual or illogical presentations, but are not quite able to locate the problems involved. This is the major reason that these approaches are included in this book. We will investigate several of the most popular recent attempts to present unorthodox pictures of Jesus' life. The Rise of the Swoon Theory Each of the fictitious lives of Jesus surveyed in Chapter 1 taught that Jesus survived death on the cross and was later revived. His "appearances" to his disciples were not miraculous, of course, for he had never died in the first place. The swoon theory, espoused by Heinrich Paulus and others during the heyday of the Liberal naturalistic theories, was quite popular in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was disproven by the facts and indicted by Liberals like David Strauss. Before examining this view, it will be helpful to present an overview of two contemporary attempts to write similar lives of Jesus. Hugh Schonfield's The Passover Plot created quite a sensation when it appeared.(1) However, very few readers were aware of the similarity between this book and earlier fictitious lives of Jesus. For Schonfield, Jesus had carefully planned his career of public ministry in accordance with his belief that he was Israel's Messiah.(2) Accordingly, he plotted events such as his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, on which occasion Lazarus helped him make the appropriate arrangements.(3) Jesus made especially intricate plans concerning his upcoming crucifixion, which required especially accurate timing. On this occasion his chief confidant was Joseph of Arimathea.(4) While Jesus was on the cross, Joseph made arrangements for an unidentified man to give Jesus a drink that had been drugged. As a result, Jesus slipped quickly into a state of unconsciousness, which made him appear dead. Nonetheless, Jesus was in a very serious condition when he was removed from the cross, especially complicated by John's report of the spear wound in his chest.(5) On Saturday, Jesus' body was removed from the tomb, after which he regained consciousness briefly, but died shortly thereafter and was reburied.(6) At this point, Schonfield turns to his proposed reconstruction of events that account for the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection. The unidentified man at the cross who administered the drug is the key figure in this reconstruction. He helped carry Jesus to the tomb, then returned on Saturday to rescue him. During Jesus' brief period of consciousness, Jesus asked this man to convey to his disciples that he had risen from the dead. However, Jesus died shortly after and this person helped bury him. It is also this anonymous person who was present in the tomb when the women came early on Sunday morning and was the one mistaken by Mary Magdalene as the gardener. Later this same man visited the disciples on the road to Emmaus, at the seashore and in Galilee. The disciples mistook this stranger for Jesus and proclaimed his resurrection from the dead.(7) It should be obvious to the reasonably impartial reader that this incredible sequence of events, where an unidentified man simply "appears" very conveniently whenever there is a need to explain anything away, is extremely questionable, to say the least. The entire plot closely parallels the fictitious lives of Jesus which are now so outdated and ignored by serious scholars. Indeed, even Schonfield admits that much of his account "is an imaginative reconstruction."(8) Later he explains that "We are nowhere claiming for our reconstruction that it represents what actually happened."(9) According to John A. T. Robinson, The Passover Plot is an example of a popularistic book which is factually groundless enough that, if the public were not so interested in virtually anyone who writes on Christianity, it "would be laughed out of court."(10) Therefore, we assert that there is a very high improbability against Schonfield's reconstruction of Jesus' life. One other example of the swoon theory in popular literature is Donovan Joyce's The Jesus Scroll.(11) The thesis of this book, which contains an even more incredible string of improbabilities than Schonfield's, will be left for a later section of this chapter. However, Joyce's account of the swoon theory is discussed here.

The ultimate miracle? The historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus

This contribution compares two views of the Resurrection of Christ; a traditional view that assumes that at the Resurrection, the dead body of Christ was transformed with the result that after the Resurrection, the grave was empty, and a revised view that assumes that the grave was not empty and that the Resurrection of Christ is not something that happened in this world, but in heaven. On the basis of a consideration of arguments for and against both views, the author argues for the traditional view. He goes on to show, however, that the traditional view cannot be adopted by historians who apply the principle of analogy. He argues, moreover, that this principle cannot be abandoned altogether. In the case of alleged singular events or miracles, however, this principle cannot be applied. This means that even if, as the author argues, the Resurrection is Geschichte (it really happened in this world, and the grave was empty), it falls outside the scope of Historie (it cannot be ascertained by the methods of strict historiography).

The Historical Jesus ? T&T Clark, 2008

In conformity with the appropriate method, the study proceeds through four chapters of unequal length. 1. The chosen starting point is the present Eucharist. It is as far as possible from the historical Jesus, but at the same time it is the most real element of Christianity: a presence of Jesus Christ and the formation of a community through the fulfilment of a certain Scripture, here and now. This evidently involves a vision of the human being, which it is necessary to clarify. In addition, it is a matter of an institution, that is to say precisely of a structure or of a model, which brings together by agreement a group of elements in which Scripture holds a privileged place. These elements will subsequently be explained in detail one by one, and then analyzed by going back in time. 2. At the other extremity are found the rather remote Jewish realities that surrounded Jesus in the first century, for which the work of Flavius Josephus constitutes a first-rate source. They are gathered together under two headings: first the sacred library, which was not at all at that time an archive rigidly set for centuries, but a still fluid collection with flexible contours; then Galilee, a small rural province with strong Pharisaic and Babylonian ties, as distrustful of Rome as of Jerusalem. 3. Between the two preceding poles appear the four canonical gospels that effectively resist all attempts at harmonization. In order to gauge the gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ that was later preached, they are first examined from a limited angle, by seeking to determine how the disciples became apostles. The conclusion that emerges is that the Gospel of John is the most Jewish and that of Mark to be the least useful in assessing the original milieu, which makes it necessary to reconsider certain current theories on the formation of the Gospels. 4. After these points as well as some others on the way the New Testament is used, to which other sources can be added, we finally reach the life of Jesus. We begin with the elements essential for the confession of the Christian faith (origin, baptism and passion of Jesus), and deal only at the end with his activity and his teaching, on which the Epistles and the Credo are remarkably silent. The conclusion is very modest, but precise: if we remain hesitant or ignorant in regard to the material details of many of the facts, we see on the contrary very well – and this is the essential – how they escaped being forgotten, that is to say how they have given rise to a word, because they have been understood, memorized and especially transmitted. Taken in a very broad sense, the fulfilment of Scripture has played – and still plays – an essential role. Abraham gives us this to understand in the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus (Luke. 16:31): “If they do not listen to Moses or the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” There are finally two Appendices. The first proposes a collection of non-biblical texts that help in being more specific about the silhouette of Jesus and of his circle. The second provides elements of a French bibliography; in fact, to lighten the presentation, all annotation has been omitted and the technical discussions have been reduced to a minimum, but most of the considerations and the options presented here have been studied and justified in more detail elsewhere; it is fair to add that many are subject to controversy. The chosen starting point indicates clearly that nothing can be demonstrated more geometrico. It is a matter first of all of reflections of a believer for believers. In regard to non-believers or of “misinformed-believers,” the only really useful Christian apologetic is a mixture of testimony and announcement of the Gospel, which moreover necessarily gives rise to objections. Even if it has long been asserted – and Paul recalls this – that the human being has the natural capacity to know God, it is evident that a positive mind can declare, in good faith and with good arguments, that Christianity is a deception, or at least an illusion. Such a one should congratulate herself/himself, since the Christian language offers its services, like a parable; it honours the demands of reason, but it cannot be imposed for fear of reducing the Gospel to a theorem, namely a cultural fact to master.