Comment: History and the Christian Resurrection
Easter weekend featured a plethora of Jesus and Bible documentaries on cable and free-to-air television: I watched Decoding the Past: the Resurrection on the History Channel. The documentary, colourfully illustrated as History docos tend to be, presented Christian Theology interleaved with limited doses of historical skepticism. It featured two of the most prominent Christian apologists – Lee Strobel and William Lane Craig. In general historians have problems accepting miracle claims and typically exclude them from historical analyses much to the chagrin of Christian scholars. So, why should historians exclude miracle claims like Jesus’ post-death appearances?
Historical research and analysis are all about the probability of past events combined with interpretation. People should ban questions like “what really happened?”. Expressions like “best evidence suggests…” and “little support for…” are more realistic characterisations. Not surprisingly well-qualified historians, using exactly the same sources, can quite commonly draw different though equally well-argued conclusions. This can be very frustrating for outsiders seeking definite answers.
Historical research, like that of the sciences, is essentially a secular activity, independent of any religious faiths. Historians assume that the world and its people behaved in the past as it does today. So claims from the past of people flying unaided would be seen as highly improbable, if not impossible, as that cannot be done today. We have no reason to accept “supernatural” occurrences of the past that we would not accept today. Historical research assumes a predictable, natural world and miracles are rejected as making historical probabilities to historical impossibilities. Historians have little choice to do this as they are trying to make sense of considerable uncertainties without the acceptance of (highly improbable or impossible) miracles.
So what interests historians with claims of Jesus’ post-death appearances? It is the followers who make the claims. Scholars will so attempt to understand the nature and likelihood of his execution within the Jewish social context of early first century. The voracity of the claims themselves are not part of the historical analysis.
Historians work with physical evidence, written documents and artifacts – tax records, commercial documents, household items, artworks, and so on. The primary written sources for Jesus’ execution are the Christian texts – canonical and apocryphal. Here are the earliest:
Letters of Paul, dated around 50CE, were occasional letters written to early Christian communities as instructions and advice. Surprisingly, Paul mentioned nothing of the historical Jesus, only concentrating of the risen Christ, the one of later Christian faith. Even when discussing a moral point with one of his communities Paul argued without referring to a pertinent Jesus saying (later quoted in a gospel). Some scholars see that omission as evidence against the existence of the historical Jesus. Either if not the case Paul provides no useful evidence for Jesus, the man.
The “Q” document, hypothetically constructed by scholars from the common text of Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark. “Q” contains sayings of Jesus only without any narratives about his life; his execution is unmentioned. “Q” is dated around 50CE or earlier.
The gospel of Mark, dated around 70CE, is considered to be the first New Testament gospel and the basis for Jesus ministry of Matthew and Luke. Like the other gospels the authorship is unknown. Mark makes no mention of Jesus’ life prior to his baptism by John and he ends the gospel with an empty tomb after his execution. Post-death appearances of Jesus are unmentioned. As an aside we need to remember that the gospels are Christian propaganda, documents of faith, that give a narrative structure to the Jesus stories and sayings circulating amongst the Christian communities. They were written by urbanised, Greek-educated Jews some 40 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. By contrast most scholars characterise Jesus as an Aramaic-speaking, itinerant Jew, preaching in rural Galilee.
The gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John dated between 80-100CE and again are of unknown authorship, offer vastly differing accounts of Jesus after his death. Their stories are difficult to reconcile. Similarly their infancy stories differ markedly.
Given their theological intent, separation in time from the events portrayed, and inconsistent coverage of Jesus’s death, these early texts seem problematic as the basis for historical research. The precise nature of his execution and subsequent events appear more an area for religious faith than independent historical research.
Alex McCullie
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