The Current State of Scholarship Concerning
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Christians who believe that Jesus was physically raised by God from the dead are often made out by teachers, the media and even by many pastors to be uneducated anti-intellectual traditionalists. We hear incredulous remarks like: "Don’t they know better? Have they never had a college course in religion, philosophy or history? Perhaps they are mindless followers of those phony television evangelists. They are brainwashed religious fundamentalists that want to impose their values on the rest of us! Don’t they know that Bible scholars proved a long time ago that Jesus did not rise physically from the dead—that it was just a myth or a legend?" Does one really have to be ignorant of modern scholarship to believe in the physical historical resurrection of Jesus? I want to briefly show that this belief is actually very compatible with modern biblical scholarship. Although liberal scholars do not believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead they do hold to some surprising conclusions in very much of a consensus.
Until recently liberal biblical scholars have held that the story of Jesus’ resurrection was just that, a story, made up by his followers decades, possibly even centuries after he died. They were either deluded or produced it as propaganda. Many did not even believe that the man Jesus ever even existed. However, that consensus has done a 180 in recent decades. First, it would be difficult to find a reputable scholar who believes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as a real man. Liberal scholars are in agreement that he really did exist.1
Second, they are also in surprising agreement that the core events about the empty tomb and appearances recorded in the Gospels are historically accurate. The biblical writers were reliable historians.
Third, they agree that the tomb was found empty on Sunday morning by some women followers of Jesus. D. H. Van Daalen has remarked,
it is difficult to object to the fact of the empty tomb on historical grounds; most objectors do so on the basis of theological or philosophical considerations. More New Testament scholars are honestly dealing with these empirical facts.2
Jacob Kremer is a specialist in resurrection research. He states,
By far, most exegetes hold firmly . . . to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb.3
Fourth, liberal scholars have changed their minds about Jesus' appearances to his disciples. The late Norman Perrin, a liberal scholar, wrote,
The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based.4
A leading scholar on the resurrection and apologist William Lane Craig reports,There is a widespread consensus among New Testament critics that the disciples did see "appearances of Jesus" after his death, and a considerable number interpret these appearances in terms of the bodily resurrection and appearances of Jesus.5
In other words, even liberal scholars are concluding that the disciples believed they saw Jesus rather than inventing them as a literary device decades later. Although many liberal scholars still seem to view these appearances as hallucinations induced by a strong psychological denial of Jesus' death they are coming much closer to belief in a physical resurrection. The plausibility of the appearances being hallucinations is addressed elsewhere. What is important to note here is the liberal scholars' consensus that the appearances were real to the disciples. The story was not made up years later.
Fifth, the majority of liberal scholars agree that the origin of the Christian faith is based on the disciple's belief in his bodily resurrection. It used to be assumed that the Christian faith evolved over a long period of time and the belief in the resurrection was intruded as a myth or legend. However, this view is no longer popular either since it simply does not account for the explosive growth of the first century church. Craig maintains,
Whatever they may think of the historical resurrection, even the most skeptical scholars admit that at least the belief that Jesus rose from the dead lay at the very heart of the earliest Christian faith. In fact, the earliest believers pinned nearly everything on it.6
After a debate on the resurrection, William Lane Craig wrote,
What I was trying to capture in a succinct way by the word established is the fact that the majority of New Testament scholars today, not conservatives, not fundamentalists, concur with the facts of Jesus' honorable burial, his empty tomb, his postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples' belief in his resurrection. This is a surprising truth, not widely appreciated by nonspecialists. But none of our respondents disputes my claim to stand solidly with the mainstream of scholarship on these four facts, so that charges that I represent a blinkered orthodoxy more interested in tradition than in truth ring hollow.7
In stark contrast to this true picture of the state of contemporary scholarship stands the phony picture of John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk, cofounders of The Jesus Seminar and authors of popular books. As masters of the media they have mislead the press and public to think that their research and conclusions represent the current state of New Testament scholarship. A flurry of cover articles in popular news magazines and television interviews have duped a misinformed public into thinking that their traditional views need updating. They have both used the media and been used by the media. Both parties scratch each others' backs to serve their radical agendas.
The Jesus Seminar is not affiliated with either of the two most important and influential organizations of biblical scholars which number in the thousands. Luke Timothy Johnson cuts to the chase,
A truer estimate of the number of participants who met regularly, wrote papers, and voted on decisions is closer to forty. The Seminar’s climactic publication, The Five Gospels, lists seventy-four "fellows" of the seminar. The numbers alone suggest that any claim to represent "scholarship" or the "academy" is ludicrous. . . . the roster of fellows by no means represents the cream of New Testament scholarship in this country. . . . Forty of the seventy-four fellows listed by The Five Gospels received their doctorates from five schools: Claremont, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Chicago, and Union Theological Seminary.8
The truth is that these scholars are on the radical left of scholars who specialize in the study of Jesus.
Now, you and I know that just because a majority of scholars, liberal or conservative, believe something doesn't necessarily mean they are right. This would be a logical fallacy. If they are right it is because they have carefully studied the evidence and come to their conclusions logically and independently. The point of this article is to show that the majority of liberal scholars who have examined the historical evidence in a less biased way than before have come to the conclusion that Jesus' tomb really was found empty, the disciples believed they saw Jesus and began proclaiming his resurrection immediately rather than making it all up decades later.
Wow! This is getting exciting! Maybe more of them will realize that if they would put away all of their illogical anti-supernatural bias they will realize the evidence entitles them to believe that Jesus rose physically, proving He was the Son of God, Messiah, the Savior of the World.
References
1 See both Habermas, Gary. The Verdict of History. Nashville:Thomas Nelson Publishers. 1988 and Wilson, Ian. Jesus: The Evidence. Regnery Publishing. 2000.
2Craig, William Lane. Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Truth Journal. Available on the World Wide Web at http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html.
3Ibid.
4Ibid., See also, Perrin, Norman. The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Minneanapolis:Fortress Press. 1977.
5Wilkins, Michael and Moreland, J. P. Jesus Under Fire. p. 156.
6Wilkins, Michael and Moreland, J. P. Jesus Under Fire. p. 159.
7 Copan, Paul and Tacelli, Ronald. (eds.) Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann. InterVarsity Press, 2000, p. 163.
8 Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Real Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1996. p. 2 - 3.
Copyright 2005. Gary C. Burger and New Media Ministries. This article may be reproduced and distributed freely as long as it is done so in its entirety. If quoted it must be properly cited as a reference.
