Geza Vermes - The Resurrection: History and Myth

Foreword

Each of the main topics of the New Testament that focused on Jesusthe Nativity, the Passion, and the Resurrectionconfronts the historian with its own special problem. Complicated though its source material may seem, Good Friday, the culmination of the last few days of the life of Jesus, is in reality the simplest. Let me state plainly that I accept that Jesus was a real historical person. In my opinion, the difficulties arising from the denial of his existence, still vociferously maintained in small circles of rationalist dogmatists, far exceed those deriving from its acceptance. Also in my opinion, the scholars task is simply to sort out and assess the evidence and determine the reasons why, when, and by whom Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified. It is even possible to propose, with the help of known astronomical data, the most likely date for the event, Friday, April 7, AD 30, corresponding to the eve of the Passover full moon. Other scholars may disagree and advance a different date or shift the blame more onto the Jewish authorities than on the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, but the debate will remain firmly set in the real world of history and law, Jewish and Roman.

The story of the birth of Jesus is surrounded by thicker haze and is less solidly grounded in fact. The information relating to time and space is more dubious, and legendary elements abound (virgin birth, miraculous star, angels, and dreams). Nonetheless it is hardly questionable that shortly before the death of Herod the Great, a Jewish boy was born in Bethlehem or Nazareth, who about thirty years later, following a brief public career, died on a cross and was buried not long after the fifteenth year (AD 29) of the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius.

The Resurrection of Jesus, on the third day after his burial, followed by his ascension to heaven on the same day or after forty days, is of a quite different nature. Unlike the crucifixion, it is an unparalleled phenomenon in history. Two types of extreme reactions are possible: faith or disbelief.

My own standpoint will differ from either of these as I intend to act as a detective seeking, as I did in my previous studies, to investigate what the authors of the New Testament actually say in their writings, and not what interpretive Church tradition attributes to them. Unraveling the true meaning conveyed by the evangelists, Paul, and the other authors of the Christian Scriptures, and illuminating it with what we know from the Old Testament and all the relevant Jewish and Greco-Roman literary and archaeological sources, is the purpose of this volume. Its aim is the construction of a tenable hypothesis, but ultimately it will be up to the readers to make up their minds. The dilemma they have to confront and resolve is how to reconcile the extreme importance ascribed to the Resurrection by Christianity with the very limited amount of interest in the subject discernible in the authentic teaching of Jesus.

Not long ago an eminent Anglican churchman asked me what I was busying myself with, and when he heard that after The Passion and The Nativity I was writing a book on The Resurrection, he sagaciously observed, That seems to be the end of the story, except perhaps for the judgment.

Prologue:
The Christian Notion of Resurrection and Its Historical Antecedents

Resurrection is unquestionably one of the most important and intriguing concepts of the Christian faith. Saint Paul, to whom this religion owes more than to anyone else, leaves his readers in no doubt in this respect:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vainIf Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. (1 Cor 15:1314, 17)

It is true to say that the emphasis laid on the notion of resurrection, and the centrality it is accorded in the Churchs teaching, are unparalleled in the religions of antiquity. In the Judaism of the Old Testament, resurrection made only a few late and foggy appearances, probably not before the end of the third century BC. It was not asserted definitely before the time of the Maccabean revolution in the 160s BC, and even from then on its acceptance grew slowly and remained far from universal. In its strict meaning, the revival of a corpse, it struck non-Jews in the Greco-Roman world as at best a nice dream, but more generally as folly (dementia), according to Pliny the Elders sharp remark. Even in the Acts of the Apostles of the New Testament, when Paul preached the resurrection in the Areopagus of Athens, most of his philosophically educated listeners, Stoics and Epicureans, simply poked fun at his babbling (Acts 17:18, 32).

Resurrection, or more precisely, bodily resurrection, is definitely a Jewish idea. It entails the corporeal revival of the dead, the reunification of the spiritual soul and the material body of a deceased person. In the Hebrew Bible, resurrection first appears as a metaphor, symbolizing the rebirth of the nation. It depicts according to the mystical vision of the prophet Ezekiel the figurative clothing with flesh of the dry bones of the people of Israel, and the blowing by God of the breath of life into the skeletal remains of a defeated, dispersed, and exiled nation. The resurrection of the dry bones indicates something different from spiritual survival. It is not to be confused with the Greek (Platonic) concept of the escape of the soul from the prison of the body to proceed toward the Elysian Fields of heaven. It is not identical with the eternal life of the spirit. This idea of liberation is a familiar feature of the writings of Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora, and the notion of eternal life without specifically implying a renewed presence of the body is also commonly attested in the Greek New Testament. These are ill-defined notions that must be handled with great care if confusion is to be avoided.