151 Haer. 5.7.1.
152 Haer. 5.7.2.
153 Haer. 5.8.1–4.
154 Haer. 5.9.1, 4.
155 Haer. 5.9.3f.
156 Haer. 5.10.1f.
157 Haer. 5.10.2–11.2.
158 Haer. 5.12.1–6.
159 Haer. 5.13.1.
160 Haer. 5.13.2.
161 Haer. 5.13.3. Cf. too 3.23.7, which stresses (with 1 Cor. 15:20–28) that death is to be seen as an enemy which will eventually be destroyed completely.
162 Haer. 5.13.1, 5.
163 Haer. 5.14.
164 Haer. 5.15.1.
165 Haer. 5.15.2f.
166 Haer. 5.17f.
167 Haer. 5.20.1f.
168 Haer. 5.25.23–30.
169 Haer. 5.31.1; the heretics say that Jesus, ‘immediately upon his expiring on the cross, undoubtedly departed on high, leaving his body to the earth’. lrenaeus quotes, among other biblical proofs, a passage which he also quotes in 4.22.1, where he says it comes from Jeremiah. It is not found in any MSS of the OT known to us; Justin (Dial. 72) declares that the Jews had removed it from their texts lest it be used against them. See too Haer. 3.20.4 (where lrenaeus says it comes from Isaiah).
170 Haer. 5.31.2.
172 Haer. 5.35. On this theme and its wider role in lrenaeus cf. Hill 2002 [1992], 254–9.
173 Haer. 5.36.2.
174 Iren., Frags. 9, 10, 12, the final one expounding the seed-and-plant illustration yet once more. John of Damascus lived in the late C7 and early C8.
175 On the complex task of discovering which of the works attributed to him Hippolytus actually wrote, and on the integration of his vision of cosmic renewal with individual blessed post-mortem existence in the present and resurrection in the future, see Hill 2002 [1992], 160–69.
176 Christ and Antichr. 63f.
177 Ag. Plat. 1.
178 Ag. Plat. 2.
179 On Origen see Crouzel 1989; on the resurrection, and the subsequent debate, see DeChow 1988, 373–84; Clark 1992; Bynum 1995, 63–71, with full bibliog.; Hill 2002 [1992], 176–89. Among older studies, that of Chadwick 1948 remains seminal, along with Chadwick 1953. See too Perkins 1984, 372–7; Coakley 2002, 136–41.
180 Bynum 1995, 64. Origen’s need to combat chiliasm, and its particular version of bodily resurrection, while defending his own version of the same doctrine, is the particular focus of Hill, loc. cit.
181 Or. on Ps. 1:5: in Methodius, De Res. 1.22f. For the whole question see Clark 1992, 89 n. 31. We may wonder whether C. S. Lewis was aware of the ancestry of his argument in 1960 [1947], 155: ‘It is presumably a foolish fancy … that each spirit should recover those particular units of matter which he ruled before. For one thing, there would not be enough to go round … Nor does the unity of our bodies, even in this present life, consist in retaining the same particles. My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually. I am, in that respect, like a curve in a waterfall.’
182 Bynum 1995, 66.
183 Bynum 1995, 67–9.
184 De Princ. 2.10.1.
185 De Princ. 2.10.3, quoting 1 Cor. 15:51.
186 De Princ. 23.6.4, having just quoted 2 Cor. 5:1 which speaks of the new body ‘not made with hands’. Origen seems to assume that the sun, moon etc., being part of the original creation, are in that sense ‘made with hands’. It is at points like this that some, in his own day and subsequently, have wondered whether Origen shared to some extent the ancient pagan belief (described in ch. 2 above) in ‘astral immortality’: see e.g. Scott 1991.
187 De Princ. 3.6.5.
188 ET Hoffman 1987 (the book is reconstructed from the copious references in Origen’s own work; on the problems attending this enterprise the remarks of Chadwick 1953, xxii–xxiv are still salutary). A useful summary of Celsus’ objections, tracing them back through Justin’s opponent Trypho to first-century themes, is found in Stanton 1994.
189 Hoffman 1987, 60.
190 Hoffman 1987, 67f.
191 Hoffman 1987, 68.
192 Hoffman 1987, 71.
193 Hoffman 1987, 133 n. 59 (with refs.) points out that this comparison was standard in anti-Christian polemic.
194 Hoffman 1987, 72.
195 Hoffman 1987, 90.
196 Hoffman 1987, 109.
197 Hoffman 1987, 110.
198 Hoffman 1987, 112.
199 C. Cels. 1.70.
200 C. Cels. 2.43.
201 C. Cels. 2.55f.
202 C. Cels. 2.56.
203 C. Cels. 2.57.
204 C. Cels. 2.58.
205 C. Cels. 2.59.
206 C. Cels. 2.60f.
207 C. Cels. 2.62.
208 C. Cels. 2.63.
209 C. Cels. 2.64.
210 C. Cels. 2.65, 67. See the similar line of thought in Coakley 2002 ch. 8.
211 C. Cels. 2.69.
212 C. Cels. 2.77.
213 C. Cels. 5.18; the quote is from Celsus.
214 C Cels. 5.18f.
215 C. Cels. 5.20f.
216 C. Cels. 5.22. For Riley to say that Origen’s deduction of bodily resurrection from scripture was simply ‘based on his method of interpretation’, and that since his opponents had other methods of interpretation their results were just as ‘scriptural’ as his (1995, 61) is to use the word ‘scriptural’ in a bizarre sense. We see what Riley means when he declares that Marcion of all people was ‘one of the most “scriptural” Christians of his day’ (64)—Marcion, who rejected the Old Testament in its entirety and ‘edited’ the New with a large pair of scissors.
217 C. Cels. 5.23. More or less the same argument is repeated in another context at 6.29.
218 As Chadwick points out (1953, 281 n. 6) this was an already hackneyed quotation from Euripides (Frag. 292).
219 C. Cels. 5.56; further justified in 5.57. Origen says that this question belongs alongside an exposition of the gospel texts themselves.
220 C. Cels. 5.58. Elsewhere Origen was quite ready to let go of the literal meaning: ‘If someone carefully studies the Gospels with respect to the incongruities in historical matters … he gets dizzy and will either give up any attempt to establish the truth of the Gospels, and—since he does not dare to fully deny his belief with respect to (the story of) our Lord—will at random choose one of them, or will accept that the truth of these four does not lie in the literal text’ (Comm. in Ioannem 10.3.2).
221 C. Cels. 7.32.
222 C. Cels. 7.33f.
223 C. Cels. 7.35.
224 For a short introduction see e.g. Harvey 2000.
226 See e.g. Charlesworth 1992. Text and tr. in Charlesworth 1977 [1973]; tr. updated in Charlesworth 1985, 725–71.
227 Creation: e.g. Od. Sol. 7.9; 16.5–20. Incarnation: e.g. 7.6 and frequently.
228 For the Spirit, see esp. e.g. Ode 36. An early trinitarian formula rounds off Ode 23 (23.22).
229 Od. Sol. 3.5; 11.12 (where the rest is ‘immortal’); 16.12, etc.; see Charlesworth’s note (1977 [1973], 20 n. 7).
230 e.g. Od. Sol. 3.8f.; 6.18
231 Od. Sol. 9.7; 17.2; 28.6f.; 33.9, 12; 40.6
232 Od. Sol. 11.16, 18, 23, 24; 20.7. It is perhaps surprising that Hill 2002 [1992], 125f. does not explore this further. For the whole theme of immortality in the Odes, see Charlesworth 1985, 731.
233 Od. Sol. 15.8–10.
234 On the translation of Od. Sol. 17.13 see Charlesworth 1977 [1973], 77 n. 17. This poem may be an anticipation of the ‘harrowing of hell’ scene in 42: see below.
235 Od. Sol. 29.1, 3–6.
236 Od. Sol. 41.4, 12; Charlesworth 1977 [1973], 142 n. 7 cites H. Leclercq as taking v. 4 as a reference to the resurrection, though Charlesworth opts for the incarnation. The verb in question (rûm), as in 29.3, can be translated either ‘exalted’ or ‘raised’, as is reflected in Charlesworth’s two translations (1977 [1973], 141 as against 1985, 770; 1992, 114).
237 Od. Sol. 22.8–12.
238 Od. Sol. 42.10–18.
239 See the note in Charlesworth 1977 [1973], 147 n. 17.
242 On which see Metzger 1977; Petersen 1994.
244 For the NT view cf. e.g. 1 Tim. 6:16: Jesus is the only one who possesses immortality as of right. See 269 above.
245 See Perkins 1984, 351f. For the Jewish background see e.g. Bauckham 1998a, 275f.
246 See Hennecke 1965, 425–531 (text with full introd.); Attridge 1992 (clear introd. with recent bibliog.); Elliott 1993, 429–511. For discussion, see Riley 1995, 167–75.
247 See Hill 2002 [1992], 126f., referring to other discussions.
248 Ac. Thom. 41; cf. Bornkamm 430f. (in Hennecke 1965).
249 Ac. Thom. 147 (Hennecke 1965, 520f.).
250 cf. Robinson 1982, 6. I include the recently published Gospel of the Saviour for reasons that will be obvious (see Hedrick and Mirecki 1999).
251 On the Nag Hammadi finds, see Robinson 1979; for a review of research on the most important text for our purposes see Fallon and Cameron 1989.
252 On Thomas cf. NTPG 435–43; JVG 72–4. Many scholars have settled on a mid-second-century date for Thomas; but several today, e.g. Koester and Patterson, advocate the middle of the first century. See the summaries in e.g. Elliott 1993, 123–47; and nb. the fresh arguments for the late C2 in Perrin 2002.
253 Koester, in Robinson 1977, 117. There are many interesting examples of gnostic use of New Testament writings, including several to do with the resurrection, in Pagels 1975.
254 See Riley 1995, 130. For other interpretations see Miller 1992 [1991], 309. See Gos. Thom. 29; 87; 112. It is possible, though, that the ‘undressing’ in the Coptic is a mistranslation of a Syriac word meaning ‘renounce’: see Perrin 2002, 40.
255 cf. Gos. Thom. 56: the person who understands the world has found only a corpse, and the person who has found a corpse (i.e. who realizes that the world is only a lifeless shell), of that person the world is not worthy.
256 Gos. Thom. 50.3: ‘If they ask you, What is the sign of your Father that is in you? say to them, It is movement and repose (anapausis).’ See Patterson, Robinson and Bethge 1998, ad loc. The idea of ‘rest’ is also found in the version of saying 2 in P. Oxy. 654 (‘having reigned, they will rest’). Cf. Rheg. 43.34f.
257 Riley 1995, 131.
259 Jn. 2:21; cf. 2 Cor. 5:1–5.
260 This is argued at length by Riley 1995, 133–56, his point being that it provides evidence for a form of early Christianity which specifically denied the bodily resurrection both of Jesus and of his followers. He speculates that an early version of the saying existed which Johannine Christians adjusted one way (so that it spoke of bodily resurrection) and Thomas Christians adjusted in the opposite direction. Other speculative tradition-histories are of course equally possible.
261 Sayings 29; 87; 112.
262 Saying 100: ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, give to god what is god’s, and give to me what is mine.’ In other words, Jesus is superior to ‘god’, as ‘god’ is to Caesar.
263 Tr., with short introd., in Robinson 1977, 188–94 (J. D. Turner).
264 Thom. Contend. 138.39–139.30; human intercourse is again denounced in 139.33–140.3; 144.9f.
265 Thom. Contend. 141.16–19.
266 Thom. Contend. 142.10–143.10; 143.11–144.19.
267 Thom. Contend. 145.8–16.
268 I am for once in agreement with Riley (1995, 167). even agree with his description of the worldview in question, in which the soul must remain ‘weightless and pure’, and must resist being caught and dragged down by being identified with the material realm, as a ‘venerable philosophical context’. He does not seem to notice that it is the exact opposite of what all early Christians (and a great many Jews) believed about the created order, the nature of human life, and the ultimate human destiny.
269 For the text, see Peel in Robinson 1977, 50–53; also in Peel 1969, with full discussion; summarized in e.g. Peel 1992, with other more recent bibliog. See too e.g. Perkins 1984 357–60.
270 Rheg. 43.30–44.4 (the text is numbered according to its place in the NH codex I).
271 See Peel 1969, 37.
272 Rheg. 44.13–38.
273 Rheg. 45.32–5.
274 Rheg. 45.36–46.2.
275 Rheg. 46.16–19.
276 Rheg. 47.2–27. Peel 1969, 42 speaks of the believer being given a ‘new, transformed flesh upon his ascension to heaven at death’.
277 Rheg. 47.30–48.6 (italics, of course, added).
278 Emphasized by Peel 1969, 43.
279 Rheg. 48.6–11.
280 Rheg. 48.12–16, 27f
281 Rheg. 48.34–8.
282 Rheg. 49.14–16; cf. Peel 1969, 45f.
283 Rheg. 49.16–24.
284 Rheg. 49.25–36.
285 See esp. Peel 1969, 139–50.
286 Robinson 1982; see too Riley 1995, 8f.
287 It will be more convenient to examine the Gospel of Peter, which is not from Nag Hammadi, in ch. 13 below (592–6).
288 cf. Staats in Wissman, Stemberger, Hoffman et al. 1979, 474.
289 Gos. Phil. 68.31–7 (tr. W. W. Isenberg in Robinson 1977, 141).
290 Gos. Phil. 73.1–8.
291 Gos. Phil. 56.15–57.8. The idea that the Lord ‘rose up first and then died’, and the connection of this with baptism, has an interesting modern parallel in Barker 1997.
292 See e.g. Gaffron 1970, citing a parallel from Hippolytus; Van Eijk 1971. This could mean (as some would say for the author of Rheginos) that the writer of Gos. Phil. was a confused orthodox believer, rather than (as Robinson: see below) a gnostic making a small concession in an orthodox direction.
293 Gos. Phil. 57.9–22.
294 Menard 1975.
295 See too Perkins 1984, 360–62. Robinson 1982, 16f. says that Philip here represents the furthest point that gnosticism ‘could reach out toward orthodoxy without forsaking its basic position of contrast’, quoting the Apocryphon of James 14.35f. (cited below) in further support. His claim, though, that the position of Philip on the future body is the same as that of Paul is frankly absurd.
296 Apoc. Pet. (NH 7) 72.9–26. Jesus also appears as a great light in the Letter of Peter to Philip 134.9–18. See too Mary’s vision in Gos. Mary 10.10–16 (Robinson 1977, 471–4, here at 472).
297 Apoc. Pet. 83.6–15.
298 Apoc. Pet. 83.15–84.6.
299 Apocryph. Jas. 2.16–28.
300 Apocryph. Jas. 7.35–8.4.
301 Apocryph. Jas. 14.32–6.
302 1 Apoc. Jas. (NH 5) 29.16–19.
303 Let. Pet. Phil. 133.15–17. Text tr. Wisse in Robinson (ed.), 1977, 395–8, here at 395.
304 Let. Pet. Phil. 134.9–19.
305 Let. Pet. Phil. 137.6–9.
306 Robinson 1982, 10f.
307 Exeg. Soul 134.6–29.
308 Hedrick and Mirecki 1999.
309 Gosp. Sav. 107.12.3f. (lines 4–22).
310 Gosp. Sav. 122 (lines 60–63). There is also a reference to Jesus’ descent into Hades ‘because of the souls that are bound in that place’: 97.2.1 (lines 59–63).
311 In the first sentence I have changed ‘bodies’ in Hedrick and Mirecki 35 to the singular ‘body’, in accordance with the Coptic soma.
312 Robinson 1982.
313 Nothing in the scholarship of the last generation has challenged Moule 1966, 112: ‘even the most spiritualized Pauline Pharisaism parts company with the type of gnosticism illustrated by the letter to Rheginos.’
314 Preserved in Eus. HE 5.1.1–2.8.
315 Eus. HE 5.1.63. A further revealing anecdote follows: one of those jailed for professing Christian faith, a certain Alcibiades, was living a life of great austerity in prison, eating only bread and drinking only water. He was persuaded by the other Christians to widen his diet lest any suppose that he had come to believe that material things were evil in themselves.
316 e.g. Robinson 1982, 6, playing off the ‘left-wing’ trajectory represented by second-century gnosticism (which, he says, has ‘modulated’ out of some of the earlier apocalyptic radicalism) against the process whereby ‘main-line Christianity … standardized, solidified, domesticated itself and moved, as sects are wont to do in the second and third generations, toward the mainstream of the cultural environment.’ One only has to imagine what Ignatius, Polycarp or Justin would have said in reply, as they faced martyrdom, to see how totally baseless this picture really is—and to wonder why it has proved so seductive in the scholarship of the last generation.
317 On the non-persecution of gnostics, and its connection with their disbelief in resurrection, see Bremmer 2002, 51f., citing Frend 1954 and Holzhausen 1994. See also Pagels 1980. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.24.6; 3.18.5; 4.33.9) makes the point in various contexts; see too Tert. Scorp. 1.6; Eus. HE 4.7.7.
318 See NTPG 155f., with other refs.
319 The grandiose claim of Robinson 1982, 37 that the gnostic vision of ‘resurrection’ (which he describes thus: ‘For Jesus to rise in disembodied radiance, for the initiate to reenact this kind of resurrection in ecstasy, and for this religiosity to mystify the sayings of Jesus by means of hermeneutically loaded dialogues of the resurrected Christ with his gnostic disciples’—a striking summary of these texts) is as consistent as that of the orthodox is ambiguous. Internally consistent it may be. But Robinson seems to mean more: that it has as good a claim as, say, Justin or lrenaeus to stand in a direct linear relation to the Easter vision of the first disciples. Our historical study rules this proposal out completely.
320 Text (preserved only in an Arabic paraphrase of Galen’s Summary of the Republic) tr. in Beard, North and Price 1998, 2.338.
321 Riley 1995, 179 draws the exact opposite conclusion: that ‘the early idea of the resurrection of Jesus and the postmortem state of his followers was spiritual, represented in various ways by Paul, the Hellenistic Church to a large extent, and Thomas Christianity’; and that ‘the earlier conception’ was that ‘Jesus had risen alive as a spiritual being, in a spiritual body of light’, while for themselves they ‘hoped in the promise of a heavenly afterlife, to be free from the body and its sufferings as spiritual beings’. In what way, then, did they differ from the pagans around them? Why were they persecuted?
Chapter Twelve: Hope in Person: Jesus as Messiah and Lord
3 On which see JVG 495–7.
4 Hengel 1995, 1; cf. too Hengel 1983 ch. 4. At 1995, 4 n. 3 he admits that the titular sense would work well at Rom. 9:5, but says that since ‘Paul nowhere else uses the word as a title’ it is better to treat it there as a name as well. This looks suspiciously like the triumph of theory over evidence.
5 See Wright, Climax ch. 3; Romans passim, esp. at 1:3f.; 9:5; 15:3, 7, 12. In the present vol. see the treatment of e.g. 1 Cor. 15:20–28 in ch. 7 above.
6 See Hengel 1995, 1f.
8 Jn. 1:41. The theme is already hinted at in the dialogue with John the Baptist, where he denies that he is the Christos (1:20, 25; cf. 3:28).
9 Jn. 20:31: hoti Iesous estin ho Christos, ho huios tou theou. The normal translation, ‘that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God’, puts the emphasis in the wrong place: the definite article with Christos, and the absence of one with Iesous, makes this clear, as the grammatical parallel in 5:15 shows. Cf. too 1 Jn. 4:15. I shall argue in ch. 17 below, not least on the basis of the parallels between the prologue (1:1–18) and ch. 20, that ch. 21 was added after the book was basically complete.
10 e.g. Jer. 23:4f.; Ezek. 34:23f.; 37:24; Mic. 5:4; 7:14; more detail and refs. in JVG 533f.
11 Euseb. HE 3.19f. Cf. NTPG 351f.
12 Ign. Eph. 18.2 (cp. 20.2); Trall. 9.1; Did. 9.2; Barn. 12.10.
13 Ac. 11:26; cf. 26:28; 1 Pet. 4:16. For ‘the Way’ cf. Ac. 9:2; 18:25f.; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22.
14 Suet. Claud. 25.4; Tac. Ann. 15.44. Cf. NTPG 352–5.
15 Jos. Ant. 18.63f.; 20.200–03 (cf. NTPG 353f., where I suggest that the key phrase about Jesus in Ant. 18 is neither a Christian interpolation nor a confession that Josephus believes Jesus to be the Messiah, but a way of identifying Jesus: ‘ “The Christos”, of whom you have heard, was this man.’). I find it extraordinary that Hengel can claim (1995, 2) that the latter passage ‘shows how completely Christos had become a proper name’.
16 JVG ch. 11. See too e.g. Hengel 1994 chs. 1, 2.
17 NTPG 307–20; JVG 481–6.
18 For the details, see NTPG 176–8; 165f.
19 Jos. War 7.153–8.
20 This is the basis of the historical answer to theories of the type propounded by e. g. Schillebeeckx 1979 (see ch. 18 below), Marxsen (e.g. 1968a, 1968b), and Wilckens 1968, 68f.
21 Details in NTPG 179f.
22 1 Cor. 15:7. On the question of whether, and to what extent, James may have followed Jesus during his lifetime see now Painter 1997, 11–41; Bauckham 2001, 106–09. Bauckham concludes (109) that, ‘contrary to the usual view, James was among the disciples who accompanied Jesus and learned his teaching, at least for a significant part of Jesus’ ministry.’ This remains in apparent tension with Jn. 7:5, and of course James is not mentioned as a follower of Jesus at any point during the gospel narratives.
24 Ac. 15:13–21. Cf. too Ac. 12:17; 21:18.
25 Gal. 2:12. On James and his significance see e.g. Painter 1997; Chilton and Neusner 2001; and other literature there. In view of this it is the more interesting that there is no sign in any of the resurrection stories in the gospels of an attempt to construct a ‘resurrection appearance’ that would legitimate James as the leader he undoubtedly was; the only relevant reference is of course 1 Cor. 15:7 (until, that is, the much later Gospel of the Hebrews, cited by Jerome, De Vir. Ill. 2).
26 See Chilton and Neusner 2001, esp. the essay of Bauckham.
27 Euseb. HE 2.23.1–7.
28 HE 2.23.10.
29 HE 2.23.13f.
30 HE 2.23.18.
31 Jos. Ant. 20.200. Cf. NTPG 353f. At the time of revising this chapter (October 2002), a report has appeared of a first-century ossuary, found near the Mount of Olives, bearing the inscription ‘James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’.
32 For the speculation about John, cf. e.g. Lk. 3:15; Jn. 1:24–8; for the transfer to Jesus, cf. Mt. 4:12; Jn. 3:25–30; 4:1–3; Mt. 11:2–15/Lk. 7:18–28.
33 ‘ “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.’
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894, ‘Silver Blaze’.)
34 So, rightly, Wedderburn 1999, 21.
35 For this paragraph, which could be considerably expanded, cf. Wright, Climax chs. 2, 3; NTPG 406–09; JVG ch. 11.
36 This is a highly abbreviated summary of the hypothesis we can trace back to W. Bousset and forward, through Bultmann, to much scholarship between 1950 and 2000.
37 Ps. 2:7–12. The translation problems in the final phrases do not affect the point.
43 On ‘son of man’ cf. NTPG 291–7; JVG 510–19.
44 See, for a start, NTPG 299–307; JVG passim (see index s.v.), and esp. chs. 6 and 10.
46 e.g. 1 Cor. 6:9f.; 15:24, 50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5; 1 Thess. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:5; 2 Tim. 4:1, 18; and cf. Rom. 5:17, 21 on the future ‘reign’ of god’s people, or of ‘grace’.
47 1 Cor. 15:24–8; cf. Eph. 5:5 (‘the kingdom of the Messiah and of God’). See too e.g. Heb. 2:8f.
48 For other early Christian texts relevant to this discussion, see JVG 663–70.
50 See Wright, ‘Paul and Caesar’; and e.g. Horsley 1997, 2000; Carter 2001; and several works on Revelation, e.g. Rowland 1998.
51 See Wright, Romans, on both passages; also Wright, ‘Fresh Perspective.
52 See esp. Oakes 2001 ch. 5.
55 Rev. 1:5; 19:16; cf. 5:10; 10:11; 11:15–18; 15:3f.; and the entire sequence of thought of both chs. 13–14 and 21–22.
56 Mt. Pol. 9.3.
57 Mt. Pol. 10.1f.
58 cf. e.g. Rom. 13:1–7, on which see Wright, Romans, 716–23; 1 Pet. 2:13–17; and see above all the analysis of Christian political thought offered by O’Donovan 1996.
59 Wright, Climax, chs. 4–6. On this whole topic see esp. Bauckham 1999.
61 Ac. 2:20; 1 Cor. 1:8; 5:5; 2 Cor. 1:14; Phil. 1:6, 10; 2:16; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Pet. 3:10.
64 Isa. 8:13: the Lord, him you shall sanctify (kyrion auton hagiasate); 1 Pet. 3:15: the Lord Messiah you shall sanctify (kyrion de ton Christon hagiasate).
66 Wright, Romans, 416–19.
69 e.g. Maccoby 1986, 1991.
71 For the distinction of the train of thought by which Paul (and others) reached their own conclusions and the (quite possibly very different) arguments they used to convince others of the same point, see Wright, Climax, 8–13.
74 Compare the distinction made by Gallio according to Ac. 18:14f.
75 On the ‘titulus’ and its context and meaning within the ‘trials’ of Jesus, see Hengel 1995 41–58.
76 See JVG ch. 13.
79 See JVG ch. 13 for details and arguments.
80 See further e.g. Watts 1994; Tan 1997.
82 See Newman 1992, passim.
83 cf. e.g. Hengel 1983, 77. For the texts cf. e.g. LXX 2 Sam. 7:12–14: kai anasteso to sperma sou meta se [‘I will “raise up” your seed after you] … ego esomai auto eis patera, kai autos estai moi eis huion [‘I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son’]. See the discussion at 149 above.
84 Nickelsburg 1992, 691.
85 e.g. 1 Pet. 2–3: the difference between this and the solemn curses of e.g. 2 Macc. 7 should be noted carefully (cf. 409 above).
86 cf. NTPG ch. 12.
87 For Jewish tomb-veneration cf. e.g. Mt. 23:29; on the Antioch martyr-cult see Cummins 2001 ch. 2, esp. 83–6; for Christian martyrs cf. e.g. Mt. Pol. 18.2f, and above, 549, with reference to the martyrs of Lyons. For the suggestion that there was a cult at Jesus’ tomb see below, 701–3.
88 On this see e.g. Rutgers and Meyers 1997; McCane 1990, 1997, 2000; and Bynum 1995, 51–8, going beyond our period but with much suggestive material. See above, 90f.
89 ODCC3 253. See too Bynum 1995, 55f. for evidence about the rise of eucharistic celebrations in graveyards, and for the link between early eucharistic theology and what was believed about the resurrection.
90 NTPG 364f.
91 ‘Lord’s Day’: Rev. 1:10; Ign. Magn. 9.1; Did. 14.1. First day of the week: Ac. 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2.
92 Ign. Magn. 9.1; Justin, 1 Apol. 67. On the whole question see Rordorf 1968, esp. ch. 4; Polkinghorne 1994; Swinburne 1997, 207–12; Wedderburn 1999, 48–50; Carson 2000.
93 On the sabbath within second-Temple Judaism see esp. Schürer 2.424–7, 447–54, 467–75; and cf. mShab. passim. In the NT see the (admittedly controversial) Rom. 14:5–12 (where the resurrection is given as part of the reason why one must not judge others in such matters); Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16.
94 cf. NTPG 366f.
95 The two earliest uses are probably Sib. Or. 8.217 (late C2), which launches a whole poem (8.218–50) based on the acrostic, and which adds stauros (‘cross’) at the end; and the inscription of Abercius (in Lightfoot 1989 [1889], 3.496f.), dated c. 200. It is also found in Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, and in e.g. Aug. Civ. Dei. 18.23. Celsus attacks Christians for forging supposedly ancient oracles (Or. C. Cels. 7.53).
96 Obvious passages include Rom. 8:9–11.
97 On the nature of the questions see NTPG 123f.; JVG 137–44, 443–72.
98 On the so-called ‘delay of the parousia’, see NTPG 459–64.
99 cf. NTPG chs. 11, 12, 15.
100 See above, ch. 11. For the ‘political’ thought of the early writers see O’Donovan and O’Donovan 1999, 1–29. The book begins (despite its title) not with Irenaeus but with Justin Martyr; it is perhaps a pity that it did not also include e.g. Ignatius or Mt. Pol.
Chapter Thirteen: General Issues in the Easter Stories
1 A classic statement may be found in Bultmann 1968 [1931], 290. Modern landmark statements of similar positions are found in e.g. Robinson 1982; Riley 1995.
2 Lk. 24:10 does tell us who the women were, which adds the mention of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James (as in Mk. 16:1) to the parallels, though Luke then mentions Joanna while Mark mentions Salome.
3 Mk. 16:2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 6, parallel to Lk. 24:1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 6. The last phrase is the other way round in Mk. (‘he is risen, he is not here’).
4 (In what follows, refs. are to vv. in Mt. 28/Mk. 16): week (1/2); Mary Magdalene, Mary (1/1); white (3/5); you seek Jesus who was crucified (5/6); he is not here, he is risen (6/6, Mark having the phrase the other way round); see the place where (6/6); tell his disciples (7/7), he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him (7/7), from the tomb (8/8). A few other verbal echoes may indicate that one text has adapted the other, e.g. ‘see, I told you’ (idou eipon hymin, Mt. 28:7) with ‘as he told you’ (kathos eipen hymin, Mk. 16:7).
5 (Refs. to vv. in Mt. 28/Lk. 24): week (1/1); seek (5/5); he is not here, he is risen (6/6; agreeing against Mark in the order of the phrases, but Luke adds ‘but’, alla, between them); from the tomb (8/9). In Mt.’s ending (8) the women ‘ran to tell (apangeilai) his disciples’; in Luke’s (9), they returned ‘and told (apengeilan) all these things to the eleven and all the others’. There is, to put it mildly, no ‘Q’ in sight.
6 Though with mnemeion for tomb rather than Luke’s and Mark’s mnema and Matthew’s taphos.
8 See Alsup 1975; Fuller 1980 [1971]; Lüdemann 1994, ch. 4.
9 Wright, Frith, 477–84; see the discussion at ibid. 55, 566f. In his second, longer and acknowledged work on the eucharist, Frith refers to an earlier and shorter book. The anonymous tract, known simply by the opening words of its title, A Christian Sentence, corresponds closely to the appropriate description; but variations, not least in the proposed consecration prayer, demonstrate that it could not have been the result of someone attempting to produce Frith’s ‘first treatise’ by projecting back from the hints in the later book.
10 Origen On Matthew 10:17; Euseb. HE 3.3.2; 6.12.2–6 (noting the doubts about this book held by Serapion, bishop of Antioch in about AD 190); Theod. Heret. Fables 2.2. James 1924, 90 says that the discovery was made in 1884, but C. Maurer, in Hennecke 1965, 1.179, corrects this to 1886/7. Brief introductions: Maurer loc. cit.; Quasten 1950, 114f.; Mirecki 1992a; Elliott 1993, 150–54; fuller discussions in e.g. Charlesworth and Evans 1994, 503–14; Kirk 1994; Verheyden 2002, 457–65. English text in Hennecke and Schneemelcher 1965 1.183–7; Elliott 1993, 154–8; Greek text in Aland Synopsis 479–507, where parallel with the canonical texts.
11 Crossan 1988, summarized (and with the layered text conveniently displayed) in Crossan 1995, 223–7. See Koester 1982, 163, followed by e.g. Cameron 1982, 78; cf. Koester 1990, 216–40. Koester has not, however, agreed to Crossan’s central thesis (1990, 219f.). A different and nuanced view is sketched by Bauckham 1992a, 288 (see too Bauckham 2002, 264): that Gos. Pet. was dependent on Mk. and on the ‘special material’ available to Mt., the latter via oral tradition independent of Mt.’s (different) use of the same material. The fact that several such hypotheses can plausibly be advanced shows how difficult it is to arrive at certainty.
12 Gos. Pet. 9.34–10.42. The translation follows Maurer (Hennecke 1963, 186) with Crossan’s variations (1995, 226).
13 e.g. D. F. Wright 1984; Green 1987; 1990; Meier 1991, 116–18; Brown 1994, 2.1317–49; Charlesworth and Evans 1994, 506–14; Kirk 1994. Elliott 2001, 1321 says that, with only a very few exceptions, there is a ‘general consensus of scholarly opinion’ that the work is secondary to, and later than, the canonical accounts. Most recent commentators agree (e.g. Davies and Allison 1988–97, 3.645; Evans 2001, 531). See too JVG 59–62.
14 See too Ign., Magn. 9.1; Did. 14.1. Contrast 1 Cor. 16:2; Ac. 20:7.
15 The closest parallel is with Asc. Isa. (possibly late first or early second century) 3.16f; but which text got the idea from the other, or whether both got it from a lost third, is impossible to judge.
16 e.g. Crossan 1995, 197.
17 So e.g. Rebell 1992, 97. The question of whether the awakened ‘saints’ in Mt. 27 constitute an exception must be dealt with in ch. 15 below.
18 Gos. Pet. 13.55–14.57.
19 e.g. Gos. Pet. 11.50, 12.52.
20 NTPG ch. 14.
21 The classic argument to this effect was made by Dodd 1967.
28 See e.g. Lemcio 1991; and the discussion in NTPG 142, and chs. 13 and 14.
29 This is what makes it difficult, simply (for the moment) at the level of paying attention to the texts, to elide the original ‘seeings’ of Jesus with subsequent Christian experience of the risen lord, as does e.g. Coakley 2002 ch. 8.
30 So, rightly, Wedderburn 1999, 37.
31 Noted briefly by Williams 2000, 195.
32 In any printing of the NT that carries such references. The Nestle-Aland Greek text provides a good start; the 1898 Oxford edition of the Revised Version has not been superseded in this respect by later English translations.
33 1 Macc. 14:8, 11–15. For the echoes, see e.g. Ps. 67:6, and the picture of Solomon’s rule in 1 Kgs. 4:20–34, with the prophetic echoes of both passages in e.g. Isa. 17:2; Mic. 4:4; Zech. 3:10. See too the various biblical pictures of the just judge helping the poor, keeping the law, punishing the wicked; and the adornment of the sanctuary, as in the case, once more, of Solomon (1 Kgs. 7:40–51).
34 Jn. 20:9. See Menken 2002, who offers the very unsatisfactory explanation that John’s Christology is complete at the cross and so needs no extra scriptural support thereafter (see below, ch. 17).
35 cf. too Ps. 104:30; Ezek. 37:9; Wis. 15:11. The other passages are 20:17 with Ps. 22:23 (‘I will declare your name to my brethren’); 20:28 with Ps. 35 [34 LXX]:23 (‘my Lord and my God’); and the various ‘shepherd’ overtones from Jn. 21:15–19, e.g. 2 Sam. 5:2; Ps. 23:1; 78:71f. (though it would of course be impossible to refer to sheep and shepherds without evoking scripture in the mind of a regular reader).
37 See below, ch. 16, for one possible echo; but it remains an echo, not a point which could have generated the whole story.
38 Crossan 1991 ch. 15. However, Crossan later suggests (1998, 568–73) that an exegetical tradition (which he describes as ‘male’) was modified by the ‘ritual lament’ of the ‘female lament tradition’, and that one crucial modification was the elimination of exegesis from the surface of the text. ‘There is no evidence for a passion-resurrection story’, he writes (571) ‘that does not presume, absorb, embody and integrate exegesis as its hidden substratum and basic content’ (italics original). This extraordinary statement invites the counter-assertion: there is no evidence for a later exegetical treatment of the resurrection (as in the tradition from Paul to Tertullian) which does not presume, absorb, integrate and embody history as its visible substratum and basic content.
39 This is the explanation popularized by e.g. Wilckens 1977; Pagels 1979, 3–27; Gager 1982.
40 Jn. 20:31 might be thought to be an exception: the resurrection should convince you, John says, that the Messiah is Jesus, and that if you believe this ‘you will have life in his name’. But here, as throughout Jn., ‘life’, though designed to continue beyond bodily death, is something the believer has in the present. Another possible exception is the story in Mt. of the bodies of the saints coming out of the tombs. Among the many puzzling features of that story, however (see ch. 15 below), is the fact that it is not produced as a sign of what will happen to all the righteous in due course. The third possible exception proves the point: in Mk’s longer ending, ‘those who believe and are baptized will be saved, but those who disbelieve will be condemned’ (16:16). There is nothing like this in the genuine narratives.
41 In the same way, neither of the ascension stories (in Luke and Acts) have anyone say, as I once read in a draft movie script on the life of Jesus, ‘He’s gone to heaven, and one day we’ll be going there too.’ As an adviser to the project, I protested; the ending was altered.
44 So, rightly, Dodd 1967, 34.
45 Perkins 1984, 137: despite apocalyptic imagery elsewhere, here Jesus is still Jesus.
47 Lk. 24:42f., 39, 16, 31, 36, 51. On the non-recognition see Polkinghorne 1994, 114. On the distinction of ‘real’ and ‘visionary’ in Luke’s thought cf. e.g. Ac. 12:9, 11.
50 Lewis 1960 [1947], 152. Coakley 2002, 135, 140f. notes this phenomenon but does not, to my mind, draw exactly the right conclusions from it.
51 The anti-docetic theory is taken for granted by e.g. Hoffman 1987, 60. Goulder 1996, 56f. makes great play with it. See the summary in Perkins 1984, 110 n. 79. Conversely, Muddiman 1994, 132 is right to reject this as ‘most unlikely’ (Muddiman 132–4 anticipates in a brief form the whole line of our present section).
52 For what follows, see Polkinghorne 1994, 115, quoting Baker 1970, 253–5: Jesus is neither dazzling nor a resuscitated corpse.
53 See e.g. Bode 1970; Osiek 1993; Lieu 1994. See now esp. Bauckham 2002, ch. 8. Bauckham 258f. provides a long list of scholars who support the point I am here summarizing, noting the weakness of opposing arguments.
54 For a recent survey of the role of women in the stories cf Corley 2002, ch. 5.
55 cf. e.g. Trites 1977, 54f.; O’Collins 1995, 94; Bauckham 2002, 268–77. For rabbinic evidence cf. e.g. mSheb. 4.1; mRosh haSh. 1.8; bBab. Kam. 88a. Josephus adds the following to the law of witnesses (Dt. 19:15): ‘From women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their sex’ (Ant. 4.219).
56 Mk.’s highlights Joseph of Arimathea as a ‘respected councillor’ (15:43; cf. Lk. 23:50, ‘good and righteous’). They would have loved to be able to say the same about the people who arrived first at the tomb.
57 For the different role of women in Gos. Pet., see Verheyden 2002, 466–82.
58 So e.g. Schweizer 1979, 147.
59 See Wedderburn 1999, 57–61 (against e.g. Lüdemann).
60 I describe the two dimensions thus lest anyone should think that I am attributing to the evangelists a naive belief in a literal three-decker universe.
61 See too J. Barton 1994, 114: ‘belief in the resurrection preceded all the interpretations of it.’ Contrast e.g. de Jonge 2002, 45–7.
62 The formulary nature and presumed early dating of 1 Cor. 15:3f. points in the same direction. On the way in which community-shaping traditions like this remain reasonably constant, see Bailey 1991. Bailey has been criticized on points of detail, but in my judgment his overall thesis remains sound.
63 Patterson 1998, 213f. grossly overstates the problem. The more balanced account in e.g. Edwards 2002 is still inclined to conclude that the stories are a hopeless tangle.
64 The link between Lk. 24:12 and 24 is complicated because one major MS, the fifth-century western text ‘D’, omitted v. 12, as did the Old Latin MSS and Marcion. It has sometimes been argued, not unnaturally, that the verse is a compilation of Jn. 20:3, 5, 6 and 10, but if every other MS in the entire tradition contains it, it seems more likely that Luke knew, at this point at least, an abbreviated version of a story like John’s. This verse is an example of a wider phenomenon, the so-called ‘western non-interpolations’, on which see Metzger 1971, 191–3 (on this v., 184).
65 On the plausibility of the disciples making various trips to Jerusalem, precisely for festivals such as Pentecost, cf. e.g. Moule 1958.
66 The harmony offered by Wenham 1984 is hardly over-simple, but not many have found it convincing. The polemic against harmonization by e.g. Carnley 1987, 17–20 is interesting: it is not just that it is difficult to do, but the very attempt ‘must be ruled out of court at the outset as a fundamentally mistaken enterprise’. Carnley then, of course, proceeds to mount a lengthy historical reconstruction of what ‘must have happened’; why this is not also a mistaken enterprise is not clear.
67 See the critique of the ‘leadership’ explanation by Bremmer 2002, 51f.
Chapter Fourteen: Fear and Trembling: Mark
1 For a preliminary discussion of Mark see NTPG 390–96.
2 McDonald 1989, 70.
4 In this chapter and the next three I am writing in parallel with Catchpole 2000. Sadly his book arrived on my desk too late for me to interact with it in the way I might have liked.
5 For the details see, in addition to critical texts, Metzger 1971, 122–6; and the full bibliographies and discussions in Gundry 1993, 1012–21; Cox 1993; Evans 2001, 540–51.
6 See Kelhoffer 2000.
7 cf. e.g. the parallel between the picking up of snakes in v. 18 and Paul’s experience in Malta in Ac. 28:3–6.
8 McDonald 1989, 70, quoting Kelber 1983.
9 e.g. A. Y. Collins 1993, 123.
10 The strongest recent case for Mark having written an ending which is now lost is that of Gundry 1993, 1009–12, followed by Evans 2001, 539f. Fenton 1994, 6 suggests that the reason such arguments are still made is because of opposition to the regular explanations for the sudden ending. I cannot speak for Gundry or Evans; the reason I make the case for a possible lost ending is because of the exegesis of the rest of the text (below).
12 On the possibility that the beginning, too, is lost, and that the present opening is a later editorial addition (it is easier to leave a text truncated at the end than at the beginning), see NTPG 390 n. , with the refs. there to Moule 1982 and Koester 1989.
13 See Evans 2001, with discussion of various scholarly views: the word gar is capable of ending a sentence or even a book, but there is at least as good reason to think that Mark intended to write more as to think that gar was intended as his last word. The parallel with Sarah in Gen. 18:15 (‘Sarah denied it and said, “I didn’t laugh,” for she was afraid’ (ephobethe gar)) remains haunting and suggestive, but proves nothing one way or the other. If anything, it suggests that the story should continue. Sarah, after all, lived to see her sceptical laughter confounded.
15 Mk. 4:26–9: the seed grows secretly, while the sower ‘goes to sleep and arises’ (katheude kai egeiretai) night and day; at last he puts in the sickle, because it is time for harvest. The apocalyptic overtones (note the echo of Joel 3:15) reinforce the context of a coming great judgment in which ‘many who sleep in the dust shall awake’ (Dan. 12:2; the Theodotion version uses the same verbs as Mk. 4:27). For resurrection in the ‘sower’ parable itself, see McDonald 1989, 55–8, 72.
16 See Mk. 13:2 with 14:58f. (and the discussion in JVG 522f.); 14:30 with 14:66–72, esp. 14:65 (the guards mock Jesus as a false prophet, unable to tell who is hitting him, while out in the courtyard Jesus’ earlier prophecy about Peter is coming true).
17 Mk. 4:40 is followed by a still greater fear, recognizing that Jesus has authority over creation, a pregnant point as we look forward to ch. 16.
19 On this section, cf. Combet-Galland 2001, 106–08.
20 See Jn. 2:19–22 with Mk. 14:58–62.
21 I find an ally here in Rudolf Bultmann. In his famous History of the Synoptic Tradition (1968 [1921], 285 n. 2, with extra material at 441) he has a long note arguing, against E. Meyer in particular, that it is perfectly possible that a further ending was lost, and pointing out that this does not affect the question of whether vv. 1–8 form a complete pericope in themselves. Any who may be anxious about my forming an alliance with Bultmann will find relief in the following section.
22 Crossan 1991, 415 asks whether ‘Secret Mark’ concluded with a story about the finding of an empty tomb, and answers ‘of course it did’.
23 If, instead, Mark used Matthew, as e.g. W. R. Farmer continued to argue to his dying day, the same conclusion would naturally follow.
24 Bultmann 1968 [1921], 290.
25 e.g. A. Y. Collins 1993, 129–31.
26 The material can be lined up in a different way. According to Perkins 1995, 730 the parallel between the transfiguration story and the Easter story means that the point of the empty tomb is that Jesus has been translated into heaven like Elijah and Moses. I believe this to be a multi-layered misunderstanding.
27 cf. Robinson 1982.
30 Above, ch. 9. This is of course controversial, but nothing much hinges on it, except for those who go to string concerts and grumble at the absence of wind music.
31 So, rightly, A. Y. Collins 1993, 114.
32 Bultmann 1972 [1921], 290 n. 2.
33 O’Collins 1973, 16.
35 For the ‘grammar’ of stories cf. NTPG 69–80.
36 Matthew has simplified the story by not mentioning anointing or spices. John (19:39f.) has Joseph and Nicodemus anoint the body, so the problem does not arise.
Chapter Fifteen: Earthquakes and Angels: Matthew
2 On the question, see, in addition to the commentaries, Senior 1976; Wenham 1981; Denaux 2002.
3 See Davies and Allison 1988–97, 3.634, pointing out that in Asc. Isa. 9.17f. they ascend with Jesus; in Ac. Pil. 17.1 they return to earthly life and die again subsequently; in Theophylact, writing a thousand years later, some of them are reported to be still alive.
4 See the analysis of Troxel 2002, who argues that Mt. has composed the scene, on the basis of 1 En. 93.6, not to signal the dawn of the new age, but to lead to the centurion’s confession; Denaux 2002, 133–5, disagrees.
5 McDonald 1989, 91: the earthquake is ‘Matthew’s code for an apocalyptic act of God’.
6 Crossan 1998, 517f.
7 On Ezek. 37 cf. e.g. Grassi 1965; Cavallin 1974, 110. For Zech. see e.g. Allison 1985, 42–5; Aus 1994, 118–30.
8 cf. Troxel 2002 for the various possibilities.
10 See now Troxel 2002, 41. The theme of Jesus raising others—perhaps all the pre-Christian righteous—to new life is developed in several works from the second century onwards: e.g. Od. Sol. 42.11; Ign. Magn. 9.2; Iren. frag. 26, making the link with the present passage. See further Bauckham 1998, 244.
11 Senior 1976, 326f. speaks of an ‘implicit soteriology’.
12 Troxel 2002 is right that this is not the immediate meaning in context. Yet, for Matthew, the centurion’s confession, which Troxel rightly sees as the main point, is itself related to the inaugurating of the new age.
14 Mt. 28:2: ‘Behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone and sat upon it.’
15 Some (e.g. Troxel 2002, 36, 47, citing others) have suggested that ‘after his raising’ in Mt. 27:53 must be a later addition, but this is scarcely a satisfactory solution to a problematic passage.
17 For the charge, see Jn. 7:12, 47; cp. Mt. 9:34; Lk. 23:5, 14; more details and discussion in JVG 439f.
19 It will not do to say (Evans 1970, 85) that the story is about a tomb and a body, not about resurrection. As the story makes clear, the reason the tomb and the body matter is because of a reported promise that Jesus would rise again on the third day.
20 Justin (Dial. 108) reports that the story was still being told by anti-Christian Jewish apologists in the mid-second century. A somewhat convoluted account of how the story came into existence is offered by Weren 2002.
22 Dan. 7:13f., 17f., 21f., 27. Cf. JVG 360–65, 510–19. Kellerman 1991, 184f., in a suggestive meditation on the political significance of Mt.’s story, draws attention to the Dan. parallel (though not with all the meaning I have suggested), and then goes on to point out that, when the guards are bribed, ‘now the seal is on their lips. In counterpoint to the Great Commission, they are paid handsomely to advertise a lie … to bury again the truth.’
24 Corresponding to the Hebrew hinneh, ‘behold’.
25 Mt. has 62 occurrences of idou, as against 8 in Mk. Lk., which is slightly longer than Mt., but similarly fond of biblical language, has 56 occurrences, none of which are parallel to those in Mt. 28. The word is often translated ‘suddenly’, presumably because ‘behold’ is archaic and without direct equivalent in contemporary English. But strictly speaking it conveys no temporal sense, but rather introduces an important or striking fact. A colloquial equivalent might be ‘Guess what!’
26 Semahot 8.1.
27 cf. mOhol. passim. As Danby explains (1933, 649 n. 3), this stems from the reading of Num. 19:14 according to which a person or utensil can contract a seven-day corpse-uncleanness by being under the same roof (or ‘tent’; oholoth means ‘tents’) as a corpse.
29 ‘Worship’ of Jesus in Mt.: 2:2, 8, 11; 8:2; 9:18; 14:33; 15:25; 20:20; 28:17. Mk. has two occurrences (5:6; 15:19, the latter being the soldiers’ mockery), and Lk. one (24:52), none of which is parallel to anything in Mt.
30 Unless we count the echoes of Dan. 7:9 (the Ancient of Days, with clothes white as snow), and the more distant ones of 10:6 (the angel whose face is like lightning), in the description of the angel; but these are not strong (snow and lightning are obvious images for whiteness and dazzling brightness), and in any case they cancel one another out (Mt. can scarcely have intended to imply that the angel was simultaneously playing both those roles).
32 Perkins 1984, 135, 137 suggests that the early traditions of the resurrection were auditory, not visionary, and thus that stories such as Mt.’s must have been later. This seems to me without foundation.
33 Matthaean themes stated one last time include: discipleship, revelation in Galilee, the mountain, worship, authority, teaching, the ‘close of the age’, and the promise ‘I am with you’ which evokes the opening angelic promise that Jesus will be the Emmanuel, ‘God with us’ (1:23). See e.g. McDonald 1989, 93 n. 18. There may be a hint of a ‘new Moses’ theme, with Jesus on the mountain looking out into the promised land, which is now of course the entire world.
34 cf. Mt. 10:5f.; 15:24; Evans 1970, 88, 90 is surprised at this widening of the commission, changing the earlier rule. But see too 2:11; 8:11–13, with JVG 308–10. On the question of ‘all nations’ or ‘all Gentiles’ see Perkins 1984, 134, 147 n. 83.
36 Against e.g. Evans 1970, 83. Carnley 1987, 18 takes a similar line: Mt.’s final scene, with Jesus enjoying ‘a heavenly status and authority’, shows that they simply involve ‘the manifestation of the raised and exalted Christ “from heaven”, as it were’. The phrase ‘as it were’ (which Carnley repeats in similar contexts at 25, 143, 199 and 242!) indicates uneasiness, as we might expect granted the implausibility of the argument as a description of what Mt. intended to write about. Carnley has not noticed that Mt.’s Jesus has authority on earth as well as in heaven. His theory about heavenly manifestations, however, plays a large part in his own reconstruction (234–42) of a hypothetical early tradition which is (as it were) swallowed up in the gospel resurrection narratives we now have.
37 Against Evans 1970, 83. On the authority of the ‘son of man’ in Mt. cf. e.g. 9:6, 8; and cp. 11:27; 21:23–7. The link between the universal Lordship of Jesus and the Gentile mission, both firmly rooted in Jewish messianic expectation, is entirely missed by Bornkamm (see Evans 1970, 89).
38 Granted, the father, son and Spirit here are not exactly paralleled in Paul; the two passages quoted give lord—god—Spirit and god—son—Spirit. However, since it is clear that one of Paul’s central understandings of Israel’s god is that he is the one of whom Jesus is the son, this difference is more apparent than real. Cf. too e.g. 1 Cor. 12:4–6 (Spirit-lord-god).
42 On ‘the close of the age’ in Mt., cf. 13:39f., 49; 24:3 (where it is linked with the fall of Jerusalem and the parousia of Jesus). See too Heb. 9:26; 1 En. 16.1; 4 Ezra 7:113.
43 cf. Mt. 1:23; 18:20 with mAb. 3.2, 6 (see JVG 297). There are deep biblical roots to the promise of YHWH’S being ‘with’ his people; cf. e.g. Dt. 31:3–6; Hag. 1:12–15.
44 For these and other Matthaean themes cf. NTPG 384–90.
45 cf. NTPG 396–403.
Chapter Sixteen: Burning Hearts and Broken Bread: Luke
1 J. Gillman 2002, 179–85 offers a recent study of Luke’s narrative artistry at this point.
2 For the textual problems of this verse cf. 613 above. The parallel passages in Jn. are 20:3, 5, 6 and 10.
3 See Evans 1970, 98–101.
5 Morgan 1994, 13 seems to me wide of the mark when he suggests that Luke/Acts presents Easter more as the reversal of the crucifixion than as ‘the inauguration of the new age by an event which anticipates God’s final victory’. That last phrase sums up quite a lot both of Luke 24 and of the wider agenda of Acts.
6 I have explored this more fully in Challenge ch. 8. On the Emmaus Road story see now Schwemer 2001.
7 Lk. 9:22; 13:33; 15:32 (the close, of course, of the parable of the prodigal son); 17:25; 22:37. The only other occurrence of the word in Luke is at 21:9 (‘wars and revolutions must take place’).
8 cf. too 2 Kgs. 6:17; but that appears to be an accidental parallel.
9 Ellis 1966, 277 with 192; the other meals are at Lk. 5:29; 7:36; 9:16; 10:39; 11:37; 14:1; and of course 22:14. This depends on not counting the Zacchaeus story (19:8), where the meal is implied but not described.
11 Ac. 12:20–23 (cf. the similar story in Jos. Ant. 19.343–61); 12:24.
13 Acts 2:36, etc.; see ch. 10 above. There are of course multiple links forward into Ac. from the thematic moments in Lk. 24: cf. e.g. Ac. 3:18; 17:3; 24:14f.; 26:22f.; 28:23.
15 cf. ch. 10: Ac. emphasizes strongly the definite bodiliness of Jesus’ resurrection. On the recognition in Ac. of the difference between visions and reality cf. 605 above.
16 Jos. War 3.399–408; 6.312–15; see NTPG 304, 312f.
17 The phrase ‘and was carried up into heaven’ in the latter verse is missing in two major MSS. On the ascension and its significance see esp. Farrow 1999.
18 Jn. 20:17; see below, 666. I do not understand how Perkins 1984, 86 can claim that Lk. 24:51 and Jn. 20:17 ‘presume that Easter itself is Jesus’ ascension into heaven’. That seems to me precisely what both writers insist it is not.
19 2 Kgs. 2:11f.; see above, 95f.
20 Dan. 7:9–27; cf. NTPG 291–7.
21 Crossan 1994, 197. See too Crossan 1995, 216: stories of the empty tomb and the appearances ‘are perfectly valid parables expressing [Christian] faith, akin in their own way to the Good Samaritan story’. My point in this section is not so much that I disagree with this interpretation, but that Luke himself would demonstrably have done so.
22 e.g. Borg, in Borg and Wright 1999, ch. 8.
23 In Tob. 12:19 the angel Raphael, disclosing his identity to Tobit and Tobias, declares that during his time with them he neither ate nor drank; they were seeing a vision (horasis). In Ac. 10:41 Peter declares that the disciples ate and drank with Jesus after his resurrection; the strange verb in Ac. 1:4 can be translated ‘eating with them’ instead of ‘staying with them’ (on the problem, see Metzger 1971, 278f.; Barrett 1994, 71f.). Segal 1997, 110f., carried away by his interest in Luke’s portrait of Jesus’ risen embodiedness, has him ‘celebrat[ing] the Lord’s Supper, eating bread and drinking wine’—something which enthusiasts for sacramental theology would love to have found in Luke’s text, but have not, for the very good reason that it is not there.
24 In John, it is hands and side that are mentioned, not feet. Despite popularized accounts of the crucifixion, none of the canonical gospels mentions, in describing the crucifixion, the nailing of Jesus’ hands and feet.
25 See Peters 1993, 67, pointing out (against Cullmann in particular) the danger of getting too tied to particular word-choices.
Chapter Seventeen: New Day, New Tasks: John
1 My acknowledgments at this point to the composer Paul Spicer are recorded in the Preface, xx. On the John/Paul divide in the early C20, see my ‘Coming Home to St Paul’.
6 It is quite unwarranted to suggest that the story of Peter and John has been inserted or interpolated, at a late stage in the tradition, into an originally independent story of Mary (e.g. Carnley 1987, 19, 45).
7 Jn. 21:15–19, echoing the ‘shepherd’ discourse in 10:1–30.
8 Harvey 1994, 74, summarizing what he takes to be an early Christian view which he then describes as ‘good Johannine theology’, backing up this claim by suggesting that the resurrection appearances in John are not used as an ‘aid to belief’. See too e.g. Macquarrie 1990, 413: though John includes resurrection stories, their significance is reduced. This is a strange comment on the fullest Easter stories in the New Testament. For the theme of Jesus ‘going away’ cf. e.g. Jn. 13:33; 16:28; and many other passages in the Farewell Discourses (chs. 13–17).
9 Jn. 20:17. See the discussion of Evans 1970, 122f. Brown 1973, 89 suggests that the incident is ‘a dramatization of the theological truth that Jesus has not returned to ordinary existence but rather to a glorified existence with his Father’; if that were the truth, the story is surely not a dramatization of it but a falsification. Davies 1999, 15 suggests that ‘Do not touch me’ is to be explained on the analogy of the pagan belief that until three days were fully past the dead were not fully dead and so were still considered dangerous. This seems to me about as bizarre a misunderstanding of John as one could imagine.
10 Okure 1992, 181f., highlighting the incident as a kind of apostolic ‘sending’. For Homer’s wraiths see above, 40–42. See below, 691.
11 cf. Evans 1970, 116, speaking of a tension between the rest of the gospel and the Easter stories, and suggesting that, strictly speaking, the theology of the gospel leaves no place for resurrection (see above, ch. 9).
13 On the textual problems of the verse see Metzger 1971, 198.
14 Williams 2000, 186f. His proposal is designed to function more at the level of method and theology: see ch. 19 below.
15 Against e.g. Evans 1970, 120, who declares himself ‘surprised’ by the ‘massive realism’ of these stories.
17 On the ‘signs source’ see above all Fortna 1970, 1988, 1992. Recent studies include Köstenberger 1995; Koester 1996.
18 See the suggestive comments of Barrett 1978 [1955], 78.
19 There is only one occurrence of pisteuein in ch. 19: in v. 35, the writer claims eyewitness knowledge of the blood and water coming from Jesus’ side, the evidence that he really is dead, and emphasizes that he says this ‘so that you may believe’, anticipating 20:31.
20 These are the only occurrences of apistos and pistos in the book.
21 The suggestion of Robinson 1982, 12 that v. 29 moves the thought in a ‘gnostic direction’ is patently absurd in the light of the new-creation theology that permeates the whole chapter. The possible link between the blessing in v. 29 and the coming to faith of the beloved disciple in 20:8 is explored by e.g. Byrne 1985.
22 The biblical allusion seems to be to the river that flows from the restored Temple in Ezek. 47:1–12, and behind that to the river that flows, in four branches, from the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:10–14); cf. too Sir. 24:25–7, 30f.; Rev. 22:1f.
23 Jn. 7:39. The clause ‘for the Spirit was not yet’ is as stark in Greek (oupo gar en pneuma) as it is in that translation. The variations in both the ancient MSS and the modern translations merely highlight this.
24 Jn. 14:16f., 26; 15:26; 16:7–15.
33 John uses the verb agapao 37 times against Paul’s 34; he uses the noun agape only seven times, against Paul’s 76. These statistics of course hide many relevant questions.
35 The suggestion that the disciples’ surprise on seeing Jesus indicates that this was the first appearance they had witnessed (Carnley 1987, 17) is purely imaginary. For a recent survey of the chapter cf. Söding 2002.
37 cf. 1 Pet. 5:1–4.
38 e.g. Söding 2002, 231: John 21 is ‘ein kirchenpolitisch brisanter Text’, ‘an explosive church-political text’.
39 See the judicious comments of Evans 1970, 121 on the theories of Bultmann, Grass and Marxsen.
40 See Riley 1995, 78–126: the Johannine author and/or community are putting ‘Thomas Christians’ (i.e. the group who based themselves on Gos. Thom.) in their place.
41 Riley 1995, 123f.; cf. Gos. Thom. 13, 108.
42 I remember hearing Dominic Crossan say in a lecture that the resurrection narratives ‘trivialize Christianity’ (by which he meant that they turn it into a power-game). In fact, it is theories like Riley’s that trivialize these stories.
43 It would be a further large jump to link such a hypothetical group of ‘Thomas Christians’ with Gos. Thom. In any case, Thomas’ reported desire (in this passage) to base his faith on the evidence of his physical senses hardly corresponds to the theology of that work.
46 BDAG 349.
Chapter Eighteen: Easter and History
2 Lüdemann 1994 is a classic example. In public debates following the book’s publication, Lüdemann insisted over and over that this conclusion was assured by modern science (as though the ancient world had been ignorant of the fact that dead people stayed dead).
3 I use the word ‘probable’ in the common-sense historians’ way, not in the highly problematic philosophers’ way (cf. e.g. Lucas 1970); that is to say, as a way of indicating that the historical evidence, while comparatively rarely permitting a conclusion of ‘certain’, can acknowledge a scale from, say, ‘extremely unlikely’, through ‘possible’, ‘plausible’ and ‘probable’, to ‘highly probable’.
4 There is a considerable literature devoted to the meaning and use of necessary and sufficient conditions; see e.g. Lowe 1995; Sosa and Tooley 1993. I first met the complexities of necessary and sufficient conditions through the work of J. L. Mackie, now collected in Mackie 1980.
5 For a similar way of putting the question, see e.g. Williams 1982, 106.
6 So, rightly, Stuhlmacher 1993, 48. However Stuhlmacher puzzlingly sees most of the appearances (not that to Mary in Jn. 20) as being ‘from heaven’.
7 Schillebeeckx 1979 [1974], 381: a ‘vanished corpse’ is not in itself a resurrection. (On Schillebeeckx, however, see further below.) See too McDonald 1989, 140; Macquarrie 1990, 407f.; and cf. Polkinghorne 1994, 116–18. Perkins 1984, 84 is right to say that an empty tomb would not by itself generate belief that someone had been raised, but since she bases this on the belief that the emptiness or otherwise of the tomb is irrelevant for the Christian proclamation her conclusion is worth less than it might have been.
8 The strange report in Mk. 6:14–16 seems to be the exception that proves the rule; see above, 203, 244.
9 Wedderburn 1999, 65 rightly concludes that the evidence demands that something must have happened on the first Easter day, then wrongly suggests that the ‘something’ might simply have been ‘a fruitless search for a body’. This would not, I submit, have been sufficient by itself to explain what happened thereafter.
10 A classic modern study is that of Jaffe 1979. Whatever interpretations are put on such events (the book is in the ‘Jungian Classics Series’), the phenomena which it reports are obviously widespread, though not frequently spoken of in a world where people are afraid of being thought gullible or the victims of fantasies.
11 Lüdemann 1994, 97–100 makes experiences of this type central to his explanation of the initial ‘visions’ of Peter and Paul.
12 cf. Riley 1995, 58–68, followed by e.g. Crossan 1998, xiv–xix.
13 Ac. 12:9, etc. On the danger of seeing the experience of visionaries as paradigmatic for understanding the ‘meetings’ with Jesus see e.g. Schneiders 1995, 90f.
14 Thus, for example, Crossan’s insistence that human beings are ‘hard-wired’ to have this kind of experience (1998, xviii) militates against such ‘visions’ as a way of explaining why the early Christians came to speak of ‘resurrection’. His repeated description of the early Christian experience as ‘the vision of a dead man’ (xiii, xiv, etc.) looks remarkably like deciding the case before examining the evidence. On ‘cognitive dissonance’ see the discussion of Festinger, below.
15 See e.g. Chariton, Call. 3.7.4f. Jaffe 1979 provides plenty of modern examples, typically of people who suddenly see a friend or family member in the room with them and subsequently discover that they had died at that moment.
16 The discussion of the empty tomb by Lindars 1993 is full of flaws. Once we read (119) that the narratives were ‘rationalisations of the Resurrection faith among people for whom abstract truths tend to be expressed in concrete forms’, we no longer expect a serious historical discussion of first-century Jewish belief. O’Collins 1997, 13–17 lists scholars who have been persuaded that the tomb was empty, and argues cogently against the theory that Mark invented the story himself (as held by e.g. A. Y. Collins 1993).
17 Lk. 24:41–3; Jn. 21:1–14 (the text does not say explicitly that Jesus ate, but it is surely implied in ‘come and have breakfast’ (21:12; cp. 21:13 with Lk. 24:30)); Ac. 10:41. I am grateful to Prof. Charles Talbert of Baylor University for emphasizing this point in private conversation.
18 Against Vermes 2000, 173, who suggests that the empty tomb stories faded as the appearance stories increased. See too the long tradition represented by e.g. Schillebeeckx 1979 [1974], 332f., who suggests that Mt., Lk. and Jn. have combined the originally independent traditions of visions and empty tomb to make it look as though they belonged together as the bases for belief in the resurrection, whereas in fact (he says) the empty tomb stories are later projections and the ‘visions’ are subjective experiences. See further below.
19 At this point I find myself in substantial agreement with Sanders 1993, 276–81, a brief account but one which contains more good historical judgment than many of far greater length.
21 Vermes 1973, 41. In 2000, 170–75, Vermes neither restates nor withdraws this conclusion. Cf. too O’Neill 1972; Rowland 1993, 78. Carnley 1987, 60f. declares that we cannot reach this point ‘using only the critical techniques of scientific historiography’; without being sure what presuppositions are thereby being smuggled in, I would nevertheless submit that we have got to this point through step-by-step argument from actual evidence.
23 See esp. Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956; Festinger 1957. See too Jackson 1975. Festinger is often cited as offering an assumed alternative sufficient explanation for the rise of early Christian belief (e.g. C. S. Rodd in his review of JVG (Exp. Times 108, 1997, 225): ‘the challenge which Festinger presented … still has to be met’).
24 Festinger 1957, 5f.
25 Festinger 1957, 149–53.
26 Festinger 1957,61–71.
27 Festinger 1957, 252–9 (Indian earthquake: 236–41; Japan and the war: 244–6; Millerites: 248–51). The full report, upon which the following comments are based, is Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956.
28 Festinger 1957, 258.
29 Festinger 1957, 259.
30 Festinger 1957, 259.
31 A similar proposal is made by Schillebeeckx 1979 [1974], 347, following J. Delorme: that the burial narratives were ‘circulated by pious Christians unable to bear the idea of Jesus’ being buried dishonourably’.
32 I was first alerted to the need to deal with this question by the Exp. Times review referred to in n. 23 above.
33 cf. e.g. Barley 1986, 34f.
34 The flying-saucer group was hardly large enough to warrant inclusion in a chapter whose subtitle was ‘Data on Mass Phenomena’ (Festinger 1957, viii–ix, acknowledging a need for haste in publication). Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956 indicate that they are aware of the serious methodological flaws involved in this project, but one would not guess that from anything in Festinger 1957, the flagship work of the overall hypothesis for which this particular project functioned as the final, and supposedly most telling, example.
35 See Richardson 1996, 171–3.
37 This is the flaw in Barr’s suggestion (1992, 109: ‘the more expectation there was that a great religious leader should come alive again after death, the more that same expectation goes to explain the claims that it had been fulfilled’). Cf. too de Jonge 2002, 47f.
38 e.g. Goulder 1996; cf. the comments of O’Collins 1997, 10f., not least his ref. to Pannenberg 1968 [1964], 95–8. Carnley 1987 ch. 4 provides an exposition and critique of several sceptical theories.
39 Schillebeeckx 1979 [1974] (cf. JVG 24f.); the following refs. are to this work unless otherwise noted. A sustained exposition and critique of Schillebeeckx’s work on the resurrection, in some ways parallel to my own and in other ways emphatically not, is in Carnley 1987, 199–222. Schillebeeckx, born in Belgium, worked for many years in Holland.
40 Schillebeeckx, 647.
41 Schillebeeckx 346f.; 383f.; 387; 390; 397.
42 Schillebeeckx 352; if this is not an echo of Bultmann, I do not know what is.
43 Schillebeeckx 329–404, esp. 332; 542; and cf. 725f. n. 33, where Schillebeeckx is careful to justify the literal three days of the liturgical triduum.
44 cf. JVG 24.
45 Schillebeeckx 346.
46 Schillebeeckx 391. In agreeing with this, we might comment that at 1 Cor. 15:17 Paul ought to have written, ‘If your faith is valid, and you are no longer in your sins, then Christ is risen!’
47 Schillebeeckx 380f.; cf. the wonderfully muddled footnote, 704 n. 45: ‘An eschatological, bodily resurrection, theologically speaking, has nothing to do, however, with a corpse.’
48 Schillebeeckx 331f., 334f., 336, 702f. There are interesting gaps in logic here: (a) however devout the people concerned may have been, visitors to a tomb that contained a body are unlikely to have generated spontaneously a tradition according to which the tomb did not contain a body; (b) if the tomb was not empty, why would people start inventing Easter liturgies in the first place? These do not seem to have occurred to Schillebeeckx or those he cites. See the discussions in Perkins 1984, 93f.; Carnley 1987, 50; and cf. e.g. Lindars 1993, 129, citing the Mishnah refs. to the practice of tomb-visits, including the provision of special chambers or booths for visitors (mErub. 5.1; mOhol. 7.1). The reductio ad absurdum of the ‘tomb-cult’ theory is reached in Riley 1995, 67, and in e.g. Williams 1998, 232 (Joseph of Arimathea offered an unused tomb to the early Christians so that they could meet there for symbolic celebrations).
49 Schillebeeckx 358.
50 Schillebeeckx 343. Like many writers, Schillebeeckx takes no notice of the striking passages in Ac. about Jesus’ body not having decomposed (e.g. Ac. 2:31, quoting Ps. 16:10; see above, 452–7).
51 Schillebeeckx 378. Similar summaries: 346 (suggesting that modern faith-experience is basically the same sort of thing as that of the early disciples); 384.
52 The broad viewpoint of which Schillebeeckx is typical is subjected to damaging historical criticism by Stuhlmacher 1993, 47f.
53 Schillebeeckx 518–23, and frequent refs. to ‘Jewish views’ etc., e.g. 346.
54 Schillebeeckx 341.
55 Schillebeeckx 369, 377f.; in Ac., in fact, Paul sees Jesus while his companions do not; in 1 Cor. 9:1, Paul declares that he has seen Jesus (Schillebeeckx implies he had not).