Of course, some may think that the Jewish report of the empty tomb is simply an invention of the early Christians. But such an assertion is question begging; it merely assumes what has not been proven. Once again, we ask for the evidence for such claims.
Continuing, certain evidences for the empty tomb also argue for a specific burial for Jesus. (6) From a very early date, the pre-Markan passion account points to an empty tomb.29 And if the story was created later, (7) why would women be cited as the initial witnesses, given the fact that they were not even allowed to give testimony in law courts? Such details argue for the traditional scenario.
Further, (8) Jesus’ burial is supported by confessional statements in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 and Acts 13:29.30 These early, traditional reports confirm the ancient belief that he was buried in a tomb rather than in some unknown grave.
Lastly, (9) the apostles’ early proclamation of the resurrection message in Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus died, was in direct opposition to the will of the Jewish leaders. This reality would have provided a catalyst to make sure that the burial details were known and that the grave was, in fact, empty.
In sum, the agreement of each of the Gospel texts, the lack of any early, contrary documentation, both the Jewish and Roman interest in Jesus’ death, the Jewish polemic admitting the empty tomb, the pre-Markan narrative, the witness of the women, the early confessional statements, and the Jerusalem preaching all argue strongly against Crossan’s challenge to the traditional burial of Jesus.31 His allegation that absolutely no one either witnessed the burial by the soldiers or otherwise remembered it is simply unconvincing. Nothing even approaching strong evidence favors his hypothesis.
The Resurrection of Jesus
The Jesus Seminar fails to provide adequate evidence for either its general response to the supernatural or its particular skepticism towards the resurrection. But perhaps separate Seminar scholars offer a more careful response. Do we find additional critical approaches to this event? We will examine comments from Crossan and Borg in order to ascertain their thoughts on this subject.
John Dominic Crossan
Crossan probably spends the most time on this issue and does present a rather novel approach. He holds that the accounts of both Jesus’ nature miracles and his resurrection appearances are not concerned with miraculous acts, but with authority structures in the early church. Taking Paul’s famous account in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Crossan notes “that there are three types of recipients” of Jesus’ “apparitions or revelations” consisting of: “three specific leaders,” Peter, James, and Paul; “two leadership groups”: the twelve and the apostles; and “one single general community” represented by the five hundred.32
Concerning these “three types of recipients,” Crossan then makes two proposals. First, the post-resurrection phenomena are not about Jesus’ appearances, but are “quite deliberate political dramatizations” showing the priority of one leader over another, or one group over the community as a whole. Second, the nature miracles (of which the resurrection is the greatest) likewise “serve the same function” and describe not Jesus’ power but the “apostles’ spiritual power over the community.”33
Thus, Crossan interprets both the nature miracles and the resurrection narratives not as being indicative of any supernatural occurrences, but as a socio-political commentary on the early church leadership. The chief leaders held authority over the main groups, in turn directing the church community as a whole. These miracle texts, then, serve the purpose of being a powerful facilitator in establishing and maintaining the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
So what does all of this mean concerning the resurrection of Jesus? Crossan thinks that the New Testament accounts are not primarily concerned with the facticity of the appearances, but rather with “power and authority in the earliest Christian communities. That is what they were intended to be, and that is how we should read them.”34 In this sense, then, we ought not be inquiring about the miraculous element, and doing so is to trivialize the message. These accounts “tell us nothing whatsoever about the origins of Christian faith but quite a lot about the origins of Christian authority.”35
Does this say anything about the facticity of the resurrection appearances? Even if recording the miraculous element is not the chief point of the New Testament narratives, Crossan is careful not to infer that the appearances never really happened. In fact, in speaking about Easter he expressly affirms: “Of course there may have been trances and visions.” Then he adds that these sorts of things happen “in every religion” and so we should not be surprised.36
1. Inadequate basis
When considering Crossan’s hypothesis, several critiques immediately come to mind. First, and in spite of some interesting contentions, Crossan has not established his sociopolitical schema as a central theme in the early church. Interpreting references in light of a secondary construction is far from proving it to be the original intent of the authors. His account remains an unverified hypothesis.
2. The resurrection and early church authority
Second, even if his theme of power, authority, and leader-ship is important to some extent,37 his de-emphasis of the facticity of Jesus’ resurrection simply does not follow. For Paul, it was not merely receiving “revelation from Christ”38 that even made one an apostle in the first place, but specifically having seen the resurrected Jesus (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8).
In fact, without this event, what is the basis of the claim to authority on behalf of the other two leaders specified by Crossan, namely Peter and James? In both of these cases, as well, the resurrection provided the rationale for their authority. It might be said that Peter’s influence came at least in part from Jesus’ appearance reported in the extremely early tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:5, and confirmed by another ancient confession in Luke 24:34. Numerous scholars have agreed, noting the link between Jesus’ appearance and Peter’s authority.39
But to say, as Crossan does, that the authority structure was the chief point of these narratives, with “nothing whatsoever”40 being learned about Jesus’ appearances and origin of the church is certainly mistaken. As Joachim Jeremias asserts, the “decisive event” here is that “the Lord appears to Peter.”41 While Reginald Fuller also characterizes the appearances as hierarchical in the early church mission, agreeing to some extent with Crossan, he still insists on definable appearances.42
The same is also true of James, in that the Lord likewise appeared to him (1 Cor. 15:7). Fuller concludes rather strikingly that even if the appearance to James was not recorded in the pages of the New Testament, “we should have to invent one in order to account for his post-resurrection conversion and rapid advance.”43 Thus, the texts insist and most scholars agree that it is unjustified to separate the appearances from the early church power structure.