Transcription
Today is a day that Christians call Good Friday. It's the day when they believe Jesus died on the cross, died as an atoning sacrifice for their sins. And of course, after Good Friday, on Sunday they celebrate what they believe was the alleged resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Now, they believe passionately this happened, that Jesus actually died, the tomb was empty, and he rose from the dead. But I, I'm, I'm very um interested to note that some very eminent New Testament scholars, including Christian New Testament scholars—after all, most of them are Christians—um have cast some very interesting doubts on this story, on the historicity of it, whether it really happened. So these are not my doubts; I'm not sharing with you my own anxieties about anything. I just want to share with you what one particularly eminent New Testament scholar, who I had the privilege of uh talking to on blogging theology, Um, a man called Dale Allison.
Now he is professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States, one of the most eminent uh places of learning and Christian seminary in America. And he's a great guy actually. And as I say, I've done a couple of videos with him. You can watch them on BT, and he's produced this book called *The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, polemics, and history*. Now this is definitely an academic work, um not for a popular audience, although anyone can read it; I think it's quite accessible. On in chapter 7, there's a bombshell story he tells, and I've been aware of this before, but he really goes into the weeds of it, and um it's a fascinating story actually.
And just to set the scene, what, what's he talking about? The resurrected holy ones? What's he talking about? Well, according to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 27, Jesus dies on the cross. He cries out in despair, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me," um and then there's an earthquake, and something really interesting happens. Now this is an historical event according to Matthew, but very, very, very few people think it actually happened, and the implications for this doubt about the historicity of the event are uh uh, you know, earthshattering—quite literally an earthquake under the whole Christian story. And I'm hoping as we go through this chapter 7, not all of it but bits of it from Dale Allison's book, he will explain to us, and I have my own bits and pieces, why this causes massive problems for the whole death and resurrection story of Jesus. And again, this is not my idea. This comes really from Christian scholars, many of them, and from the text itself, which throws up these problems. We're not inventing problems; they're there in the text. So just going to look uh at some passages from this book.
So he starts off—uh, the title of the chapter is called "Resurrected Holy Ones." What's he talking about? There's only one resurrection, that's of Jesus, surely. But no, if you look at Matthew's gospel, chapter 27: verses 51-53, we see an a an astonishing series of resurrections. I kid you not. So I'll just read to you what he says. "Perhaps the most curious text in the whole New Testament," James Dunn has dubbed it, "completely puzzling." James Dunn is the famous New Testament scholar from the University of Durham. "In the most, the most puzzling text is Matthew 27:51-53. In exceedingly short space, it breathlessly unfolds, seemingly in three couplets, a series of astounding events." And here he quotes in the Bible in English: "And the earth shook, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared, and they appeared to many people." Now for him this is a problem of history. I'll just share with you uh the passage on the screen here, although it's good to look it up in your own Bibles if you have one. So there we go. That's, that's the passage in the New Revised Standard Version.
So the pro, what is, what is the problem of history? He writes, N.T. Wright, the British New Testament scholar, wants to leave open the question of the historicity of Matthew's surreal episode. His rationale is this, and he quotes: "Some stories are so odd that they may just have happened. This may be one of them, but in historical terms there's no way of finding out." End quote. And Dale Allison then said, "This is not much of an argument. Who would urge, with reference to the tale of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt, that some stories are so odd that they may just have happened, and this may be one of them? Surely oddness suggests fiction far more that far more often than it suggests non-fiction," he writes. So I hope you'll begin to see the problem here. We have these mass resurrections from the dead in public at the same time that Jesus died and rose again. And they were these people who had been resurrected from the dead, an event, if it took place, far more astonishing, miraculous, and momentous than the solitary resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which was only witnessed apparently by his disciples. Here we have a public event in Jerusalem itself.
So anyway, back to the text. Wright's half-hearted argument arrives at no firm conclusion. "In historical terms there is no way of finding out," he says. "While Matthew's little story mirrors an event of the past, my verdict is different. We can be almost pontifical here." In other words, he's absolutely sure Matthew 27:51-53 recounts a miracle unsurpassed anywhere else in the Gospels or other books of the Christian scriptures. Indeed, if it happened, it is the most amazing event of all time. But it did not happen. Okay, Dale, Professor Dale Allison, professor of New Testament at this America's leading seminary, is very clear that these mass resurrections did not happen. The astounding series of prodigies has left no trace in the other gospels, Acts, Paul, Josephus, or for that matter any other source prior to Matthew. It stands alone, half a century or more after the incredible events it reports. Yet the stupendous marvels depicted in Matthew 27, had they firm grounding in known fact, would quickly have become a bedrock of Christian apologetics, especially as they speak of many saints and many holy ones, many pious Christians, and many witnesses. While this is to be sure an argument from silence, some arguments from silence have force. Matthew 27:51-53, which fails to name any of the many saints or any of the many to whom they appeared, is a religious fiction spawned by the religious imagination. The same source that gave us the seven sleepers of Ephesus and St. Catherine's exploding wheel—reality has melted uh has melted into fable.
So this is very, very interesting. So this extraordinary series of miraculous resurrections on a mass scale—people coming out of their tombs, walking around, going home to their families in Jerusalem—in public Jerusalem at that time of year was very, very, very busy. This is a major public event, finds no trace in any other source in history. The book of Acts knows nothing about this. Paul, the Apostle Paul, knows nothing about this. Josephus, the Jewish historian from the first century who wrote about Jerusalem and Judea, doesn't know anything about it, and nor does any other source. Matthew knows nothing about it. Luke knows nothing about it. John knows nothing about it. Q, a source used by both uh Matthew and Luke, knows nothing about it, or any other source. It stands alone. Why would no one else report this extraordinary event? Why would they all ignore it? How can they not know about such a—is much more public than the almost private alleged resurrection of Jesus, Jesus's followers. Um, so that's a very good point. And then he says it would quickly have become a bedrock of Christian apologetics. Of course it would. Everyone would have mentioned it. Look, Jesus died on the cross. He rose from the dead. But look at all these other people. Look here. Here's, here's their names. We know who they are. This, this woman, this man, this boy, this old man. They all, they all saw their family members who had died raised from the dead appear to them, you know, not just appear to them, they were with them in Jerusalem. But no one ever mentions this. So if it would be a fantastic piece of Christian apologetics propaganda to bolster the gospel, bolster the claim that Jesus rose from the dead as well. But no one, no one mentions it.
To continue right here, Tom Wright is nearly alone in his open-mindedness regarding Matthew 27:51-53. Tom Wright is a very conservative evangelical New Testament scholar. He was bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He's still very much active. He does YouTube stuff. I mean, he's a good, he's a great scholar, but he's very, very, very conservative, and he's the one that keeps the door open, you know. It's just, just strange enough and odd enough that maybe it actually happened. This is a slightly odd argument, but that's his position. Um, and, and Dale Allison says, "Wright is nearly alone in the world of scholars in his open-mindedness regarding this story." These days, even many conservative or even evangelical scholars express doubt or more than doubt. In Donald uh Hagner's words, "Matthew in these verses is making a theological point rather than simply relating history." Although there may have been, according to Hagner, an earthquake near the time of Jesus's death, the fact has undergone elaboration. Matthew's scene is theology set forth as history. It is a piece of realized or historicized apocalyptic, depending on Old Testament motifs found in such passages as Isaiah 26:19, Daniel 12:2, and especially Ezekiel 37:12-14. H, maybe it doesn't read like that in Matthew, does it? Because the historicity question is clear. It presents as a package: Jesus dies on the cross. At that time, numerous people, many, many people come out of their tombs, the saints. They, they were raised from the dead as well. They entered the holy city, in other words Jerusalem, and were, and were seen by many people. So these are all interconnected. If you start saying—which this person does—"Oh, well, maybe the story of the mass resurrection is a bit of theology. It's a religious truth. It's not meant to express actual historical—" If you start going down that path, then you contaminate the whole thing. All of what Matthew says may be made up. If Matthew is capable of making stuff up uh about the mass resurrection, what else has he made up? What about the resurrection appearances? What about this? What about that? What else has he made up? And if he thought it was history, then how reliable a historian is he? Because he's, he's quoting from an alleged event which is clearly fiction. And so he can't be trusted. Either way, it has potentially significant consequences for the whole story.
So um, that would be my view. Um, interestingly, um our author here, here we go again, Dale Allison, *The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, polemics, and history*. Our author says on page 170, "Michael Lacona shares Hagner's judgment." Now Michael Lacona is very much an active evangelical uh New Testament scholar in the United States. You might well have heard of him. But interestingly, even this very conservative evangelical scholar shares Hagner's judgment. Uh, in other words, it's, it's a made-up story. Although his justification for it is a bit different. This is very interesting. Focusing on the prodigies often associated in antiquity with the deaths of important figures, he comes to this verdict: "Matthew 27:51-53 is written in the language of special effects." So you've seen the movie special effects, you know, that's what it is. No, it doesn't really happen. It's a special effect. The piece is poetic, quote unquote. "It emphasizes that the great king has died and perhaps the day of the Lord has come," and this is Lacona in his own book on the resurrection, page—und, sorry—548 to 53. So it's a bit of sci-fi special effect. I, it's completely anachronistic in my view, because special effects, this whole kind of imagery, this trope is very much 21st century or 20th century, but not back 2,000 years. What do they know of special effects then? So um, our author here, um Allison says, "I agree with Lacona's historical judgment. Matthew 27 is not history. I very much doubt, however, that the evangelist Matthew, as Le Lacona and others believe, was being consciously poetic, or that he anticipated readers who would find purely theological meaning." John Calvin, this the great Rena, this the great reformer who, along with Luther, basically founded the reformation because of his Renaissance education, was quite aware that, quote, "the ancient poets in their tragedies describe the sun's light being withdrawn from the earth when any foul crime is committed, and so aim to show a portent of divine wrath." This was a fiction that drew from the common feelings of nature. So something terrible has happened. Even the sun withdraws its light in horror or shame or wrath. You know, the cosmic consequences, the impact of actions by people on earth. Um, but he says this is a fiction. Yet Calvin simultaneously thought that the sun did indeed go dark when Jesus died. If you look at uh Calvin's commentary on this, he says so. In other words, the reformer could discover a literary trope and history in one and the same sentence. Maybe it was not so different in Matthew's time and place. He continues, "The issues here quickly become complex. An increasing number of scholars have proposed that some stories in the gospels should be understood as purely metaphorical. In other words, they didn't happen." And these increasing number of scholars are Christian scholars. Now people don't know about these scholars. I mean, this is the typical gulf between the leoty, the general public, Christian public, and the Christian academics and what they're really up to. And that's why I'm sharing this with you, because what they often say about Jesus or the resurrection, or did he think he was God, or the Bible, is often quite shocking because they've been forced to think about these issues by the Bible itself. They're not skeptics for the sake of being skeptical normally. They have been forced to confront realities in the Greek text and in history. So such stories, excuse me, such stories, in the words of Marcus Borg, a Christian scholar, "are not based on the memory of particular events, but are symbolic narratives created for their metaphorical meaning. As such, they are not meant to be historical reports. Rather, the stories use symbolic language that points beyond a factual meaning." End quote. He, he would include in that judgment the virgin birth and the resurrection. So Roger, uh Roger David Al is of a like mind. "The gospels preserve uh Hagedic tales that in their original Jewish Christian settings were not mistaken for history as it really was. Heroes instead greatly appreciated a create a a a narrator's creative ability in shaping traditions already known to them in order to express a religious truth or truths about Jesus, their Lord, the Messiah of Israel." Now personally I don't buy any of this, but it goes on. "If Borg and Al are right, the way is open to supposing that a Jewish evangelist could have incorporated or created an episode such as the resurrection of the Holy Ones, whose fictional character he and his first audience took for granted." In other words, everyone knew this was, you know, just a fanciful story. Literal readings came later through a misunderstanding. So originally they were meant to be symbolic truths expressing religious insight into, you know, how I feel about faith. You know, Jesus rose from the dead. What I really mean is my faith rose from, rose from uh death, and I became a a firm believer in God, and I became alive. This metaphor became literalized uh by a misunderstanding of later generations. So Dale Allison says, "Yet the gospels do little, in my judgment, to make us think that their authors intend any of their narratives to be understood as purely metaphorical." The same is true, I now wish to argue, of Matthew 27:51-53 in particular. So he doesn't buy this, and neither do I, because there's actually no evidence at all that they thought like that. And indeed, Christians traditionally don't take it like that either. What the gospels say is meant to be taken as history. So the idea is believed.
So what are the implications uh of this? What are we to conclude? Well, the upshot is that at least in Matthew, fiction has found a foothold. We are here in the region of Christian legends. That fiction, moreover, is about empty tomb, empty tombs, and people seeing the dead. "The body, many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city, and they appeared to many." So if fiction has found a foothold in the gospels, the gospel of Matthew—the only place to recount this extraordinary mass resurrection—what else is fiction? This is my question. How can we rely on Matthew, who either inadvertently, unwittingly quotes some fiction, fictitious made-up stories, so perhaps he did think it happened as he in your, or he's making up a story, which is actually my view, because he's using it somehow to talk about the the cosmic explosive consequences of Jesus' death and resurrection, such that it impacted other dead people who came out of their tombs. It had like a a theological shock wave that hit the the the area, and, and it caused other people—God raised Jesus, and other people were affected as well in their tombs. They came out, something like that. It was, it's kind of like the apocalyptic impact of, of Jesus' death and resurrection. But if he's making up these stories—people came out of the tombs and walked around and went back to their families—how can we trust anything else he says? It devalues the currency. His credibility as an actual historian is compromised. I would have said, if it had really happened, it would have been the story. It would have been used for Christian propaganda purposes in, in their evangelism in the, in the first century. Everyone would have been talking about it. Everyone would have mentioned the names of people. There have been stories, books, articles, you name it, would have been written about it by them, for them, about them, to talk about this.
So as he continues, "I observed in chapter 6 that people have sometimes created fictitious stories about miraculously vacated graves. In this chapter, I have in effect contended that the originator of Matthew 27 did precisely this. That individual, furthermore, alleged that a number of resurrected individuals appear to many people in Jerusalem. The potential implications of such storytelling are sobering, especially when one agrees with me that Matthew, who was a relatively sophisticated individual with some sort of scribal background, took the fiction to be fact. Whether the desire to avoid the repercussions of all this have anything to do with Tom Wright's refusal to recognize Matthew 27 as unhistorical, I do not know. And I refrain from conjecturing about Lacona's motives for classifying the passage as a piece of Hagada, a poetic legend as theological special effects, never intended to represent the literal past. One understands, however, why some conservative Christians found Lacona's proposal upsetting, and in defense of their idea of biblical inherency—the idea the Bible is completely without error, completely factual, completely true—anxiously took to berating him publicly. He got a lot of flack, Lacona, this evangelical scholar, from Christians, conservative Christians, for, for saying this was fiction. In effect, once the nose of the camel of fiction is inside the tent of resurrection, who knows what else may enter," this is Dale Allison's poetic Arabic metaphor. "Once the nose of the camel, once the camel's got its nose into the tent, the tent of the resurrection, who knows what else may happen." In other words, what else can be called, called into uh doubt, he says. "Everyone who has read the apocryphal gospels—there are lots of apocryphal gospel, gospel of uh, gospel of Peter, gospel of Mary, gospel of Judas, and so on—knows Gospel of Thomas, knows that some Christians in the second century and later were motivated to invent religious fictions, including fictions about the Easter events. My argument in this chapter is that those inventors were not without first-century predecessors who, among other things, contributed to the canonical traditions about Jesus's resurrections." So in other words, later Christians made up stories about Jesus. Everyone believes that, whether it be, you know, even more spectacular resurrection effects or other miraculous stories. Um, but he's saying that the, the first century also did, the first-century writers also did this too, and Matthew is one example of that.
So to what extent is the special uh material in Matthew an aberration? Do the stories of Jesus offering himself for inspection in Luke 24 and John 20—you know, "touch my hands, touch, touch, you know, touch my side, see that it's all real"—do they betray apologetic interests, in other words, are they made up as well? You have to ask, "Does Mark's angel derive not from a vision recalled but from a story improved from a creative hand making a theological upgrade?" He asks, "Questions such as these are all the more pressing when one takes into account the numerous tensions and contradictions that reveal themselves when one inspects the, the uh, the accounts of Jesus' resurrection side by side." Because if you do that, if you put the story or the stories of Jesus' resurrections in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you put them side by side, you will see very uh stark contradictions and discrepancies. Such contradictions and tensions raise acutely the issue of how often invention has intruded into historical recall. So we must ask how much of these stories are really history and how much are fiction, fiction.
In conclusion, one final comment in this regard. He says, "While most of Matthew's embroideries, in other words his uh fiction, fictitious editions, may, to judge from comparison with Mark, come from the second half of the first century, we have no reason to suppose that the temptation to elaborate traditions for theological and apologetic ends went everywhere unfelt, or if felt, when everywhere unheeded in earlier days. Legends do not courteously wait to arrive until their protagonists are long dead and gone." In other words, fictitious stories don't just come about much later after the person left the scene. They can happen even in the earliest moments of that person's life. Fables about Alexander the Great circulated from the beginning. The Syriac life of Simeon Stylites was composed within 14 years of Simeon's death by monks uh living uh where Simeon lived. And I remember coming across these extraordinary stories uh when I was at uni, uh and yet it often stretches uh credulity. These, this story just seemed impossible. Legends trailed a Sabbatai Sevi before his apostasy. George Washington died in 1799, and a few months later Mason Parson Williams published a hagiographical account of the first president in which history and edifying romance are inextricable. David Crockett was, in part because of his own self-promotion, half myth already to his contemporaries. That the angel Moroni revealed the whereabouts of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith was part of Mor, was part of Mormon's foundation myth from day one. When the Sioux warrior Red Cloud was climbing the tribal hierarchy, rumor is told of his ability to fly, to shapeshift, to talk to animals, and to be in two places at once. And he appears to have done little to squelch such claims. An astounding tales surrounding Rabbi Schneerson long before he expired. It is observed, Renan—Renan was a great um French New Testament scholar, the greatest of errors, errors to suppose that legendary lore requires much time to mature. Sometimes a legend is the product of a single day. In other words, it can be pretty much instantaneous. Renan may have been wrong about many things, but he was not wrong about this. Dale Allison concludes, "The answer to the question of how long do legends take to form is best answered with another question: How long does it take to retell a story? In other words, no time at all."
So uh, those are my uh thoughts uh this Easter uh weekend. Uh, I, I think there are a number of points here. The shocking lack of corroboration in other first-century sources of this mass resurrection of the dead. No corroboration from Mark, Luke, Josephus. This raises questions about its historicity. If it occurred, its absence from other records is really puzzling, given its potential to be the most amazing event of all time. Sometimes people have argued—uh, some Christians have argued—that theologically Jesus' resurrection is prioritized in the Christian tradition because it validates his uh identity as Messiah and son of God who defeats death and so on. But it's very odd because other people who are not Christians, like Josephus, didn't mention it either. They're not going to downplay this because of the supreme importance of Jesus' resurrection. So why would they focus on mere resurrections in Jerusalem? What, what really mattered was Jesus' death and resurrection. Well, I can see the logic there to downplay or deemphasize these mass resurrections for theological reasons if you think about it. But it doesn't account for why no one else who wasn't a Christian, like Josephus or anyone else, didn't mention it. They weren't concerned. They weren't interested about Jesus being the resurrected Lord; they, they were, they were not Christians. They didn't believe anyway. They didn't believe uh in Christianity. So that's why uh I think these uh events, these very questionable events, um do mean that uh it is quite possible that the other events were also made up.
They are also fiction. They've been embellished, like religious legends sometimes are. And that's why, um, I think there are good grounds for doubting, having serious doubts about many of the Christian stories, um, for the that for for those reasons.
If we can show in one instance that someone either made up or credulously uh accepted an alleged report which has no foundation at all, either way it causes um lack of trust in the story, I would argue.
Until next time.